The memory held firm; it did not want to let her go. She had memorized every detail in that living room. Every paraphernalia in the long life and career of an academic that seemed indistinguishable from any other tenured professor. Reginald Unas had taught her many things. The immutability of scientific law, for instance. All things in nature worked to an internally consistent logic; there were no contradictions, only mistaken or incomplete observations by flawed human beings. That’s why human beings needed their own laws, their own internally consistent logic. He had said something else as well, but she could not remember. Sometimes she questioned how much of the memory was real and how much was invention. She had had a long time to stew in it, wondering if there had been anything she could have done.

But grandfather hadn’t been murdered; he had just been old. Blaming her younger Self was almost akin to masturbation.

“Stop,” Lyssa said. Her hand rested on the shoulders of her younger Self. The Self who had been locked in that oily canvas of a living room for half her life. Over and over, replaying the death of the one man she had ever loved. There was morbid humor in remembering that the time they had spent together was a minor fraction of her life.

She left the room, emptied now, two wet streaks crawling down her cheeks. But it was done. It would not sit in the back of her mind, repeating ad nauseum until all of its details blurred. She carried it with her now. It was an acceptance of sorts, and it felt terrible.

Time was supposed to heal, but she knew better. It wasn’t time that did the work, it was memory. People didn’t get over loss. They forgot it. Trauma healed by slowly pretending it never happened to you. Until it became true, and recalling it turned into an act of reading from the sterile page of a history book, absent of emotion or intimacy.

Lyssa would not be fooled. Her memory would stay intact, emotions and all, unchanging, frozen, static. She flexed her hands experimentally and felt the bubble of momentum-slowing energy crackle on her palms. Her stasis generation.

She moved on.

Absinthe was a different matter. That Self was not found in a room. To access her was to adopt a state of chaos; Lyssa needed order. She would have to stay put wherever she was.

That left only the one who had buried herself deep. The mental might, fueled by hate and resentment. Lyssa felt the weight of the dark even as she approached the lift. It rattled in transit, the lights in the ceiling shook in descent. As predicted, the lift would not stop at the cave. The one who left the hierarchy had carved herself out.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Bildungsroman’s realm was deeper than before. Even before exiting the lift Lyssa could feel the weight of emotion drag her to the floor. Where Eury was the freedom from dread, Bil was the embrace of hate. The recognition of the world’s inherent unfairness and the rejection of it.

She walked the dark corridors of Bil’s realm. Black stone arches and expansive dimensions. It was nothing like Sethlana’s perspective. The stone here was opaque, hard, cold, and its roots ran deep. Perhaps to the very heart of Lyssa being. Resentment was fundamental to Lyssa’s life, after all. If they moved together, who would be in the lead?

There was no fire and brimstone here, no ostentatious show of power; Bil had changed so much since her first defeat. Pale light suffused the ceiling. Lyssa found herself walking for what felt like days. There was no sound, not even whispers. Silence.

There, draped in inky shadow. Lyssa found her Self at the bottom of a pit. She wallowed in a pond of tar. The tar was not smooth. It was viscous and riddled with bumps.

Elbows. Hands. Faces covered in the smooth mud. Lyssa’s face. Discarded splinters of the Self. Bil had been splitting herself, brewing them to maturation and cannibalizing the parts she liked. It was impossible to tell how much the Self had grown.

A low scream gripped Lyssa’s heart. The sound was muted, like the paralyzing infrasound roar of a beast. She fell to her knees, trembling, her limbs refusing to obey her in this metaphor realm. She could only watch.

Bil grabbed her right wrist with her left and pulled. She split down the center of her chest. Black blood poured in torrents. Ribs held rigid, strained to their limit, then cracked. Skull fractured into two, and the missing halves refilled themselves. The two halves took a moment to reform. Then they turned on each other, sinking their teeth into their necks, collars, tearing themselves apart. Viscera and bone joined the pond, producing slow waves. One remained again.

Bil turned to see Lyssa kneeling by the shores of the pond. She said nothing. The Self had tried different ways of convincing Lyssa. Through fear and intimidation, through cold logic. None had worked. She had been rebuffed in all attempts. There were no more words.

Lyssa’s control returned in time to block Bil’s lunge. The tar adhered to the Self’s shoulders like a placental dress, painting an oil-slick trail as Bil closed the distance and pinned Lyssa to the stone floor. Lyssa grasped Bil’s neck, holding snapping jaws at bay. The other Selves were a different story. She could let them suffuse through her without losing herself. Bil was too strong. She could not risk it. Lyssa screamed with exertion, though only a low, buzzing tone came out. There was no other choice.

She called on the strength of her other Selves and grappled Bil onto the floor. Even then it was difficult. She was on a timer as well. This realm was caustic.

Lyssa buried her teeth into the Self. She tasted of ice and cold stone, and memories clouded by hate. Bil roared silently and returned the favor. Those same memories became sharpened by hate. The tides turned, the pendulum swung, until one remained.