Yuta bid his daughter farewell as Hoshi disappeared to her personal corner of the afterlife.

So many ponies; so very, very many ponies—and Yuta was going to get acquainted with each and every one, once we were finished with what needed to be done.

As Hoshi was about to step into the portal to her arcadian tomorrow, Geoffrey surprised us all by getting onto his knees embracing the little girl with a hug of his own.

When she asked why, he replied, with tears in his eyes, “I have a little girl just like you, you know? I want to hug her, but I can’t.” He wept. “But I can hug you,” he added, “so I will.”

It was deeply touching.

Geoffrey blushed in embarrassment, turning away for us as Hoshi bid her father farewell and disappeared through the portal. Count Athelmarch walked about, muttering under his breath as he struggled to regain a semblance of composure. Fortunately, he eventually succeeded.

For the final test, I dismantled the connection between Yuta and Geoffrey’s emotions. Their feelings were entirely their own once more.

I hoped the lessons would stick.

“Well,” Brand asked, “are we done here? Have you two made up?”

They stared at him for a bit.

“Yuta, Geoffrey,” I said, addressing them both, “you came from opposing sides of a terrible conflict, but… I hope you can see that you don’t need to be each others enemies. The situation was to blame: the horrors of Munine colonialism, and the no-holds-barred desperation with which the Trentons fought for their freedom. Please,” I said, “there will be time later to weigh our sins and pass judgment and make recompense. Right now, I need your help. Both of you.”

I sighed.

Yuta and Geoffrey stared at one another.

“I sympathize with your pain,” Geoffrey said, “and wish your family had not died.”

“Your brother was a good man,” Yuta said. “He deserved better.”

“Thank you.”

“Does this mean you two are friends now?” Brand asked.

The two men looked at each other. Geoffrey spoke up first, shaking his head. “I’m not so sure. For all our similarities, we are still two very different people, after all. Still—”

Yuta snorted, in a chuckling sort of way. “I respect a man who is willing to tell me to my face that he dislikes me.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Geoffrey said. “Though I do foresee myself taking too much of a liking to you, Lord Uramaru,” he turned to me, “I don’t want to cause Dr. Howle any more trouble than I already have. There is no point in rehashing our vendettas.”

“I can agree with that,” Yuta said.

“Though it’s obvious,” Geoffrey said, “if we were to have an honest fight—no powers—I would win.”

Yuta scoffed. “Your sword isn’t even curved.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please…” I stepped forward. “Let’s not start fighting all over again.”

They both stepped back.

I walked up and patted them on the backs.

“This is good,” I said. “This is good.”

“Um, Dr. Howle?” Geoffrey said, pushing off me.

We both stepped back.

“Yes?”

“There is one thing I still do not understand.” He stared at Yuta. “I think Lord Uramaru’s thoughts kept my doubts at bay, but now, I am confused again.”

“About?”

He looked at Yuta and I. “What is a star?”

I shared stares with Yuta and Brand, in that order.

“What do you mean?” Yuta asked.

Feeling more than a little panicked, I waved my hand over Geoffrey’s head. Plumes of memories flowed out from him. This time, I focused on the backgrounds, ignoring the people, places, events, and emotions.

“Genneth?” Brand asked.

Fudge, I thought.

I pulled away from Geoffrey, ending the memory stream. I turned to Brand. “I was so focused on their memories that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the backgrounds. Look. Here’s two memories of the same night.”

With another flick of my hand, I summoned a memory from both men: sights of night skies. The two memories hovered in front of us—a pair of windows in the air. Both were memories of night, but where Yuta’s night had stars, Geoffrey’s was black and void, like mine.

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I pointed at the stars. “Those are stars.”

“I… I don’t understand,” Geoffrey said.

I turned to Yuta. “Do you mind if I put your understanding of the concept into him?”

The samurai nodded. “It would be my pleasure.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and focused. A second later, a stream of gold particles wafted from Yuta’s head to Geoffrey’s.

The knight’s eyes went wide with realization. He stared at the night sky of his memories with visible terror. “Why are there no stars?”

I turned to Brand. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said.

“On a count of three…” Brand replied.

Three silent seconds later, we both spoke up at the same time.

“It’s another world,” I said.

“Two different worlds,” Brand said.

“What?” Geoffrey asked.

I pointed at the Hoduul mountains. “Everything beyond there, and all the strange stuff spreading onto the desert—those are memories of worlds other than our own.” I turned back to face them. “When I first learned that Yuta’s memories showed the night sky as having stars in them, I was worried that, as Andalon had suggested, perhaps the fungus was somehow altering the timeline as it destroyed the stars in our sky.”

Yuta nodded. “And that theory is no longer viable because…?”

I pointed at the two memories floating above the sands. “These are the same night.” I pointed at both skies’ blood red moon. “That’s…” I conjured up a memory of a documentary I’d seen about Sakuragi. “That’s the lunar eclipse of 1608.”

Yuta nodded. “The night I foiled an attempt on Lord Sakuragi’s life.”

“Yes, and it’s the same night in both memories,” I said. “If the fungus was attacking the timeline, even though there might be differences between the way things are now and the way they were in the past, two different observations of the same moment of time ought to be the same. But they’re not. So… perhaps it’s a different version of our world. Yours, I mean,” I added, pointing at Yuta.

“Is that even possible?” Geoffrey asked.

“There’s a world with hummingbird people in it,” Brand said. “If that can happen, who’s to say multiple versions of our own world aren’t possible?”

Then, to my surprise, both Yuta and Geoffrey stepped back in shock.

“Uh… Genneth?” Brand said.

I turned around.

“Mr. Genneth…?”

Andalon floated above the ground, her sky-blue hair beating in an unseen wind. She held her hands at her chest, against her pale, airy nightgown.

“Andalon…?!”

“Is this really her, Genneth?” Brand asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, this is her.”

Obviously, this was a shock. As far as I knew, she was still angry with me. Barely had that thought crossed my mind when Andalon shook her head in dismay.

“No, Mr. Genneth! I’m…” But then she shook her head, “No, it doesn’t matter. Something bad is coming! Something really, really bad!”

My blood ran cold.

“What? What is it?”

“I remembered, Mr. Genneth!”

My pulse went through the roof.

Andalon looked me in the eyes. “It wasn’t Amplersandalon, Mr. Genneth. It wasn’t.”

“What wasn’t?”

“When we first did the nekkomancy, you know the portal to Amplersandalon that was there?” she asked.

“Yes?”

She shook her head grimly. “It wasn’t. It wasn’t Amplersandalon. It was the darkness.”

I blinked. “No, that… that’s not possible.”

“What portal is she talking about?” Geoffrey asked.

I turned to face them. “When you and your companions arrived in our time period, there was a fight, and all of the infected began going feral,” I said.

“Yes.” He nodded. “But something stopped them.”

“That was me,” I said, tapping my finger on my chest.

“You?”

“Yes! And when it happened, there was this portal. I felt it draw in Andalon’s power. It was Andalon’s greater self, connecting us to her. Or at least, that’s what I thought it was.”

Neither of them seemed to understand.

Thankfully, Brand picked up the slack for me. “Andalon is a spirit being—probably divine in origin, likely either another Angel, or perhaps an agent thereof—working to counter the fungus and the forces of Hell it is allied with.” He pointed at Andalon. “The way Genneth explained it to me, the Andalon inside Genneth—the one we’re currently looking at—is just a piece of a greater whole: &alon.”

“Why is there an ampersand?” Geoffrey asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. I sighed. “Anyhow, Andalon was able to channel her greater self’s power, which I then manipulated, and that’s how I control the zombies, and the infected, more generally. Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification, but it gets the main idea across.”

“You used this power during our rescue,” Geoffrey said, nodding in understanding.

“Yes.”

“So… what’s the problem?” Geoffrey asked.

“She’s saying that the portal isn’t what it obviously is,” I said.

“How is it obvious?” Yuta asked.

“Yuta, in your memory, we saw a portal the fungus had made. That’s what made Andalon freak out. It’s what made her mad at me.”

Andalon nodded with me, which only further emphasized my point.

“And that portal was clearly different from the &alon portal,” I added.

Brand’s eyebrows rose. He leaned into our conversation, dark lips tightening in an inquisitive, pearly toothed smile. “Might this be something I should know about?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Mr. Genneth—”

“—Here, I’ll show you.” I blinked. “Wait…” I turned to Andalon. “Are you going to be okay with this? I can’t have you freaking out on me again.”

“Andalon is scared,” she said, “but I know you hafta do it.”

I blinked.

“That… that’s very mature of you,” I said, somewhat surprised.

“What’s ma-chore?” she asked.

“It’s a good thing,” I said. “But… what changed? You were upset with me before.”

She looked at the four of us. “You fought away the bad wyrmehs. It was… really cool. Maybe you can be strong, together?”

Brand grinned at me. “And you were worried this misadventure wouldn’t amount to anything!”

I turned to Andalon. “Are you going to get scared again?” I asked.

“Maybe?” she replied.

I sighed.

I guess I was just going to have to play things by ear.

I turned to Yuta. “Do you mind if I go back to your memory of your time-traveling?”

The samurai shook his head.

Then I waved my hand, and we all dove in. A droplet of water fell from the sky. As it splashed on the sand, its waters wiped the desert away and replaced it with the night of the fall of House Uramaru.

We stood far from Yuta’s estate, which could be seen burning in the distance.

Geoffrey looked up and gawked.

He pointed at the stars. “Wh-What…” He cursed. “Norms take me, what is that?!”

I wanted to answer him, but Andalon went and screamed. “Mr. Genneth, look!”

One crisis at a time, I suppose.

I turned to face her, only for my jaw to drop.

“See, Mr. Genneth, I told you!”

Human memories were subject to change. I was well aware of this. The electrochemical and cytostructural networks that held up human memories were prone to change over time. Rosy-hued nostalgia really was a thing; it had a quantifiable biochemical basis. Because human beings couldn’t relive their memories in full like a wyrm could, every time a human being recalled a memory, they would focus on some aspects at the expense of others. Maybe it would be what someone said, or the emotions we felt, but, whatever it was, by focusing on it, we added a tiny spin to the memory. Individually, these spins might not do much, but, over time, they would accumulate, altering the memories in all sorts of subtle ways. Rather than being set in stone, our memories were the product of a never-ending dialogue between our past and present selves.

But none of that applied to the wyrm I was becoming. There, memories really were set in stone. I remembered my remembrances, and their remembrances, too. And it was that fact that made my eyes go wide with shock as I beheld Yuta’s memory of the time-rift.