***Cruiser Wode-00342, Council Main Base, Higher Planes***

***Nix***

“He... is... gone,” Celes manages to bring out between sobs, wiping away at the constantly running tears on her now messy face.

I wince, trying my best to comfort her by holding onto her shoulder, but not daring to come any closer in case her personality switches again. My status as her daughter 'might' give me some protection, yet, I am not entirely certain that I am exempt from sudden violence in case she has another meltdown like earlier in the infirmary.

That guard who followed my father's orders and took her out of there certainly looked like he was put through the wringer after my mother got her hands on him. She wasn’t pleased when she learned that he was the one who took her out of there, following Angrod’s orders.

And in absence of the real culprit, the poor sod was the only available target for her rage.

I hand her the cup of water which I brought for her from the bathroom.

When I heard that Celes was brought to one of the guard-ships, I came over and commandeered a suite after learning of her meltdown. The general public doesn’t have to know of her instability.

“Mother,” I start, thinking carefully of what I am about to say, “I am sure that Dad had his reasons. He wasn't sure that you could have won that fight. He must have wanted to make certain that you are there for the kids.”

“He...” Celes clasps the cup of water between her hands until the Mana Crystal cup yields with a silent 'crack', spilling water all over her thighs. “… betrayed… me!”

“Hahaha…” I try to laugh off the fact that Mom just broke a cup made out of Mana Crystal with her bare fingers.

'Crack!' 'Crack!' 'Crack!'

Bending over, I pull the shards out of her quivering fingers, hoping that I am not about to share the guard's fate. What would have worked to calm down Isabella? “Dad didn't betray you. He loves you with all his heart. He tried to protect you in his own way.”

She sets her jaws in a clearly defiant manner and I tense, reading myself to flee.

“If he isn’t dead, and if I don’t have to wait for a thousand years until he reincarnates, then I will teach him what it means to leave his soul-partner behind a second time!” Celes proclaims.

I attempt to set things right so that she won’t kill Angrod when he returns. “It’s not like-”

“He did!” she growls. “Don’t think that I have forgotten that he left Isabella sitting in the rain.” Her eyes narrow. “Actually, this whole situation seems very similar to back then. He also got himself killed and then he didn’t show himself for a few thousand years, despite the fact that he clearly had the means to return to me.”

“I rather doubt that ‘getting himself killed’ is ever going to be an intentional part of his schemes,” I comment.

“Oh, then you don’t know him,” Mom retorts. “If he is faced with a more powerful opponent and sees a chance to get one in on his enemy, he is perfectly fine with paying with his life, given he is pissed off enough.”

“See, then you don’t have to worry,” I reassure her. “As of yet, the Calamity hasn’t taken anyone he cares about, so there is no reason to go all out on it. It’s much more likely for him to silently off Warden. That snippy AI is turning him crazy. The two are very similar; the AI often seems to know what he thinks. There is nobody else who can get that easily under his skin aside from you.”

Celes huffs but doesn’t answer. Instead, she turns her attention to the panorama screen which shows a roaring maelstrom of energy, encircling something like a gateway; a hole in the multiverse that leads to the Lower Planes, the realms of Chaos and Insanity.

Chiffre and his community are still trying to find out what exactly Angrod did to rip a hole into the multiverse. Normally, blowing up the Ragnarok’s core shouldn’t have had such an effect, so there must be something else at play.

I recognize the dimension to which the gateway leads since Angrod brought me there when he taught me how to control my divinity. It’s his home, so I am certain that whatever this is, it was supposed to happen.

My only hope is that he didn’t intend for us to bail him out because I have no intention of going back there without a very good reason.

When the Ragnarok self-destructed, it took the Calamity’s bastion with it, obliterating every trace of the enemy and almost our fleet too, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Angrod ordered the retreat before he decided to go rogue.

“It’s been like this for hours,” Celes whines, having switched back to teary-eyed mode.

I pat her reassuringly on the back one more time. “You look horrible. I suggest you sleep. And I will tell the others that you are resting.”

She nods and I sigh, turning to leave the apartment.

Outside, I am intercepted by Ireth and Katrine.

“How is she?” Katrine asks.

“Very upset,” I summarize. “Dad should be prepared to run once he is back.”

“You sound very confident.” Ireth looks down to watch the anomaly on the tablet which she brought with her. “Though, I have my doubts that anyone could escape that.”

“Let’s just say that it isn’t the first time that I have seen a rift like that.” I gesture at her tablet. “He showed me a similar one when he took me to the Lower Planes. Dad seemed very fascinated by it.”

“Let’s just hope that-” Katrine lets out a surprised gasp when the anomaly shown on the tablet suddenly collapses in on itself and disappears.

The both of them look accusingly at me.

“Ah,” I shrug. “The one he showed me didn’t do that.”

Ireth rolls her eyes and gestures for the rest to follow her. “Nicosar and Arthur are already in the command centre, so I will just give them a call. I am sure that they are already using the whole fleet to search the region.”

As it turns out, we never reach the command centre, because Arthur and Nicosar meet us halfway there and ominously enough, they redirect us to the ship’s isolation cells.

I purse my lips, growing impatient when they aren’t forthcoming with information, and instead guide us to one of the cells. “So? What have you found?”

“Nothing,” Arthur comments. “As far as our egg-brains can tell, the anomaly is completely gone.”

“But they found a survivor at the centre of the anomaly,” Nicosar adds. “It’s not Angrod though. More like one of the fiends, but different. We had them teleport it to this cell.”

We take a look into the cell, trying to place the creature inside with anything familiar.

“That’s not a fiend.” I point into the small room which is separated from us by a clear wall of Mana Crystal. “The fiends are all oozing this inky slime which slowly evaporates. This one is just… dark… shadows?”

I fail to describe the vaguely humanoid amorphic creature, but any distinct feature I would choose is immediately replaced by something else. It seems like it is in a state of constant flux.

Did we bring a denizen of the Chaos over into this dimension? That would be a bummer. I thought creatures from realities with vastly different laws of physics can’t exist for long in each other’s habitats.

“Maybe it’s a new version?” Nicosar comments.

Our theories are cut short when the creature suddenly warps, flowing like water into the shadow which Arthur’s figure threw into the cell, only to emerge right in front of his feet and outside the barrier.

“Boo!” The fiend wriggles his disproportioned fingers and spreads his arms in front of Arthur.

“Fu-” Arthur is about to lose his shit when a screeching Celes flies past me, ramming our guest into the cell’s sight-window.

“Bastard!” Celes’s fist hammers into the creature’s head, causing it to bounce off the windowpane before it slides down to the ground, decked by a single hit. But that isn’t enough for my mother. She swings her leg, kicking the creature with the grace of a football player trying to send the ball to the other side of the field. “Traitor!”

Too stunned to react, I can only watch as Ireth and Katrine pull Celes away from our prisoner who is now shrinking, taking on the shape of a familiar man.

“Hi, honey.”

***Cruiser Wode-00342, Council Main Base, Higher Planes***

***Angrod***

I was flowing, riding the colossal energies of the explosion as they wiped my fortress and the Calamity’s base out of the multiverse.

Somehow I am aware of it happening, as my soul was a part of this power, my body gone. I existed in a state of pure energy. My soul was riding this wave of destruction, its life to be measured in milliseconds. I was also aware of the Calamity and its endless hunger.

But to me, it felt like an eternity.

Then I realized that I could use this power. Within the boundaries of this eruption of mana, I could use the energy as long as there was a guiding will!

With one mental hand, I reached out, using the power to return to open a doorway to my soul’s home dimension. Here, where I was god, everything was possible.

Reforming my body while ignoring the rules of physics was a matter of wishing it.

The other mental hand, I jammed down on the connection I could feel between me and my enemy, imagining the creature yielding a choked gasp as I reached into the amalgamation of souls that made up its being. Without hesitation, I grasped everything I could get a hold of and ripped the souls right out of the creature.

What goes in also must come out at some point.

And the next thing I knew was that I drifted in a sea of darkness, stars shining all around me.

My gamble had worked! I had managed to reach the next stage of ascension! If there wasn't empty space all around me I would have laughed right then and there, which was sadly impossible without air.

I still victoriously clasped the marble which contained everyone I could save during that second of being almost all-mighty and studied the changes to my new body, and the instinctive grasp I seemed to have on my new abilities.

All that was left to do was to get back to Celes in order to apologize and to calm her down.

Or should I rather say that I have to survive the meeting? She is going to be so mad. Will she be happy to see me?

I stretch my mind to sense my surroundings and to my surprise, I have no troubles doing so. Did my abilities actually increase from this experience? I guess I never before handled such a huge amount of raw power or gave in to my divinity to such an extent.

The decision of my next step is taken from me when I forcibly get transported into a cell of all places.

So, barely one minute later, I find myself on the ground in front of the cell, begging for my life while my mother and stepmother are trying to keep Celes from performing a live vivisection on me. “I am sorry, sugar cat! I will never do it again, I promise!”

The room goes silent as the others gape at me, though Celes still seems to be an angry wreck of nerves with bloodshot eyes.

She wrestles herself free of Katrine’s and Ireth’s grasp. “Hell! No, you will never do that again! I will make sure of that! What are you trying to hide in your fist?” Unerringly, she zeroes in on the prize of my little experiment. In a moment, she is on me and claws the soul marble with our saved people out of my fingers.

“Those are souls,” I try to explain. “I ripped them out of the Calamity.” I rub my cheek where she slapped me.