Topher's blood stuttered and jerked in his veins; he staggered, then nearly fell to his knees as the full import of everything shocked through him.

I can't lie in this room. Nobody can.

All the Demon Lord has to do is not fight Sugimoto, and there's a million ways he could do that.

The third option is the fail-safe -- if you, Topher Bailey, kill me.

He wasn't here to get Zanasha back; he hadn't outsmarted anybody. He'd been brought here -- led by the nose right from the start -- to serve exactly one purpose, and one purpose alone.

"Stop," he croaked, but his throat filled with bile. He tried to think up something -- anything -- he could say to stay Sugimoto's hand, but the chamber's Edict against falsehood stopped his lies in his mouth before he could utter them. He had only one play. "Please. Don't make me do this." If he kills Yariel, Zanasha doesn't go free -- only if I kill him. So the whole reason this was all set up -- every step, every move -- was to put me here, where I'd be forced to fucking save him from Sugimoto. Topher couldn't believe the level of bullshit in play.

"Mr. Bailey." Topher's heart trembled within him; Sugimoto, clearly dying and in great agony, was speaking to him in English again. "He is not... who... you think." A book, battered and bloodstained, fell from his other hand where it clutched at his wound. "We all... have our part... to play. Do you remember?"

Topher, very much against his will, did. Not because we despise her, or wish her harm; but because it is the burden which is hers to bear in this conflict. Do I make myself clear? His traitor eyes, still venting the cries of his agony, continued to dribble tears; but he raised his weeping gaze to meet Sugimoto's and was stricken by the look that met his own.

"You have... five seconds," the young man gasped. His feet flexed on the stone beneath, then shifted into a crouching stance of perfect poise and readiness; the sword, still dripping someone else's raw red heart's blood, swept around and down into Sugimoto's left, its cutting edge pointing straight at Topher in anticipation of violence.

But Topher felt no fear for himself; he'd been torn apart by the Kiku-no-Tsurugi a dozen times during the Madz'kgha, and he could do it again if he had to. But the strike wouldn't stop with him; it would trap Zanasha in an endless living death, and consign everyone on the world below to a doom he couldn't even visualize. It's already in motion. I started it when you came in. Helplessly, he raised his hands; the one thing that would stay Sugimoto's blade was weakness, and it wasn't a lie to say he was weak. He'd always been weak. And no matter how big his muscles got, no matter how many spells he could cast, and no matter how high the numbers in his Status climbed, he'd always be weak. Because...

Strength doesn't win fights, Chrissy, his father's voice whispered in his mind. Putting the other guy in the ground does.

Sora Sugimoto, even in his current state, is impossibly fast. In the time it takes him to detect killing intent, he could cross the five-meter distance between himself and the other two men and slay them both in less time than it would take for their optic nerves to register the beginning of his movement. But his plan has a fatal flaw; neither Yariel nor Topher bear him any killing intent (the former because he understands that this is a critical component to his plan, and the latter because he's both expecting and hoping that Sugimoto will survive what's about to happen). But what happens next does not occur on the time-scale of consciousness, but that of physics.

Without moving at all -- indeed, without any outward sign that he is doing anything other than surrendering -- Topher Bailey establishes two nodes of Attraction outside of himself. The first is the super-continent below, visible through Yariel's portals; the second, naturally, is Sora Sugimoto. And the mass differential of these two objects is very great indeed.

Without transition, Sora Sugimoto was simply gone; the Kiku-no-Tsurugi, torn from his fingers by the forces at play, clattered bloodily to the floor as it was left behind. From behind himself, Topher hears a strange sound -- a sort of whirring, sucking noise -- and he whirled around in horror just in time to see a vanishing glimmer drift away down towards the earth below. "He's pretty tough," he heard himself saying, as if listening to a third party. "He might be okay."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"Oh." Yariel, looking embarrassed, scuffed a shoe at the carpet. "That's actually a few thousand portals, all very small, using atmospheric lensing for zoom and stuff. You basically atomized him."

Atomized...! This time, Topher did fall to his knees; a wail escaped him, cut off sharply as he gnashed his teeth and bit down on his despair. "You bastard!" he howled at Yariel. "How many kids do you have to fucking kill?!"

"As many as it takes," the other man responded sadly. "And you killed him, not me. It's getting easier every time; this time you didn't even say you were sorry."

Topher moaned in torment; he wanted to flop to the ground, but he couldn't bear the idea that Yariel might finish him off while he was blubbering about not letting a teenage psychopath gut him. Instead, he clenched his teeth in fury and Attracted the Kiku-no-Tsurugi to his hand; it leapt into his grasp as though made for his hand alone. This can kill him, he understood instinctively. It ignores Defense. It'll gut him like a fish. Gathering the strength in his newly-muscular legs, he crouched, then leapt, raising the sword overhead and screaming his agony and defiance as he brought it down with murderous rage on Yariel's head.

"Oh, that won't work." Without seeming to have moved at all, the young-seeming Puerto Rican man was standing on tiptoe along the back edge of the blade; he shuffled off it and stood to one side, looking depressed. "I'm the Infinite King, remember? It's not just a title. Here, have a look." He muttered a couple of words Topher couldn't hear, then made a waving gesture; a status window appeared before him, then turned to face Topher directly.

Name:

Yariel Arce

Level:

∞

Class:

Infinite King

HP:

∞/∞

MP:

∞/∞

SP:

∞/∞

Strength:

Rank ∞

Dexterity:

Rank ∞

Constitution:

Rank ∞

Intelligence:

Rank ∞

Wisdom:

Rank ∞

Charisma:

Rank ∞

Skills:

All (Rank ∞)

Special Skills:

All (Rank ∞)

Unique Skill:

Understand Literature

Topher didn't understand. Topher couldn't move, couldn't think. "Fake," he muttered, his eyes darting about for some escape from the threat before him. "Could be Minor Illusion. I don't have to buy this."

Yariel shrugged again; it seemed to be his most habitual gesture. "I can't lie here, remember?"

Topher swung again; the Infinite King ducked under it nonchalantly, scratching his nose absently. "I'm not dumb," he seethed. "You never said it was true. You summoned an image, then said you couldn't lie. You could have fooled my Detect Status, maybe you're not even really the Infinite King who bound Vashyarl --"

Abruptly, Yariel laughed; the transition from sad, hesitant forbearance to cruel violence was terrifying. "That's what you're worried about?" Contemptuously, he kicked Topher in the face; the impact collapsed his skull, ruptured his spine, and nearly tore his head physically off his body, but his Wyrd healed the damage instantly as he flew backwards to crash into the chamber's rear wall. "Maybe you should read that book he dropped."

Topher, blind with agony, flopped around on the ground and groaned; as his sight returned, he could see Yariel picking up the Kiku-no-Tsurugi and running his fingers over it gently. "That's a really nice sword," he commented to nobody in particular.

Trembling, Topher crawled to the book Sugimoto had dropped; desperate for any kind of hope, he forced it open, bloodstained pages crackling with abuse. But it was almost unreadable now; so much destruction and water damage had battered and ruined it that only a few sentences remained unobscured -- names he didn't recognize, dates he didn't understand. Frantically, he tore page from page in an anxious search for something, anything usable; and when a single phrase he could read jumped out at him, he nearly unbalanced and fell forward onto his face.

The five words which remained legible were in the middle of a much larger passage; only smudges and fragments of words surrounded it. But the words that remained were clear, and their import could not be mistaken.

The Day The Infinite King Perished

Slowly and incredulously, Topher raised his head to stare at Yariel; the other man ignored him entirely, lost in contemplation of the Kiku-no-Tsurugi. "You can lie," he whispered, horrified. "The Infinite King is dead."

Yariel, losing interest in the sword, tossed it away negligently; it clattered to the floor over by Zanasha's prison. "I never lied," he disagreed. "I am the Infinite King. I'm just not the first Infinite King."