There was a deep black smoldering scar carved into the hillside in the shape of a crescent moon. It went so deep you could see a glowing line of red at its furthest depths where it broke into the lava flows. And of Fate there was no sign. Not even a flicker of aura.

Jez breathed in, and breathed out, ash fluttering on his breath as his vessel flaked away. It was done.

This body had little time left. He wondered if he ought to be feeling so much satisfaction in this moment. So much peace. It felt awful, to bask in another’s demise… and yet—Fate was destroyed. Below, his army, immolating, would burn out the rest of Fate’s army too. And with it, the last of the true resistance.

Hell would soon be his.

And the rest of the Multiverse would topple soon after.

There would be rules, once they were all one. A fair and just system of Multiversal laws. A ban on violence. Certainly murder. He would put in place an ethos of loving-kindness and good faith conduct. All living creatures had goodness in them—this he fervently believed! But all were also capable of great evils. As of now the world was built around power. But he would rebuild it around community. He could see it now so clearly in his mind’s eye, each of those golden nodes a plane, strung together in one unbroken chain—

But… he frowned, inspecting the chain.

Something wasn’t right. These lights—these golden lights, the nodes he’d drawn from to fuel this battle… they were flickering like candles in a winter wind. Flickering, flickering, flickering… out.

A third of his Upper Realm nodes. Gone cold.

He stood in still shock. It… couldn’t be. Shouldn’t be. He had stuck Infinity Hearts on each of those planes! So long as they lived…

His nodes were flickering back up, to his vast relief.

But his relief was short-lived.

When they flickered on they flickered white. They made their own white links amongst one another, spurning the gold. A hefty chunk of his network—suddenly dead to him.

He called out to them. But they would not listen.

“I don’t… understand…” he breathed.

“Apologies, Jez,” drawled a high voice from behind. It was Salieris, stepping across the air, flashing his fangs. His smile was not kind. It was hungry. “I shall be taking over from here.”

And the Emperor of the Jiangshi gave a deep bow.

“You’re betraying me,” whispered Jez.

“Correct.”

“You… waited until I was overdrawn. Weakened. Before you struck.” It made a disgusting amount of sense.

“And for the last true threats to me to battle themselves out.” Salieris raised a fist, and inscribed on the back was a bone-white infinity. “It seems to have worked a charm! Wouldn’t you say?”

“You would break what makes us strong.” This time Jez couldn’t keep the tremble out of his voice. “You would threaten our vision of the Multiverse—”

“No, no,” said Salieris, looking up in exasperation. “Can’t you see? No one wants this new world order of yours save for you, Jez! The rest of us are perfectly content preying on each other. We thrive on it. A great deal of us only follow you to leech off of your powers! As it turns out… enough of us exist for a critical mass.”

Salieris crossed his arms behind his back. “And they now follow me.”

“I—” Jez grasped for the words, found none. Great chunks of his—Kaya’s—body were dissolving before his very eyes; his foot had been reduced an ashen nub, his arms flaking away fast beneath the elbows. His armies weren’t faring much better. The bulk of them seemed to be cringing now, groaning and clutching at their heads. They were already overdrawn. And now their powers had just been split.

“I thought we were friends,” he said numbly.

Salieris laughed at that. It was a laughable thing to say. But what else did Jez have? It was true.

“Oh, Jez.” The Jiangshi wiped a tear from his eye. “You never were fit to be a ruler, I’m afraid.”

“Stop this,” tried Jez. “Please—I beg of you! You would ruin us!”

“No, no,” sighed Salieris. He grinned, one sardonic, mocking line. “I would ruin you. But the Multiverse is not about you, Jez dear. Do take care?”

His body dissolved in motes of white light. He was gone.

Jez stood there alone, staring at nothing, body breaking apart faster and faster now, whole chunks of flesh flaking to ash. Watching his armies gutted, flaking away. His vision of a glorious Multiverse flaking away with them. Ash on the wind. That was all. Maybe that was all it ever was.

He was choking now. This body had little time left. And he howled. A primal, animal howl that reverberated across the valley. His eyes streamed with gold, streamed with tears.

The ashes crept up the chest, up the throat.

And Kaya Rust, who began her life on a separate plane, in a separate world, ceased to be.

***

Dorian’s eyes were wide open. Flattened against the ground, all he could see was the sky. And the figures dueling in it.

Now they were all gone.

“Fate?!” he croaked.

The old fart was not gone. He couldn’t be. It made no sense—Fate was a universal constant! You might as well have told him gravity had been taken away.

And Kaya too. After all that? Just…

He sighed, resting his head on the smote ground.

To one side, Yama was unspooling. He was leaking gold far too fast. Leaking life far too fast. The Godking was clutching at his skull, sniveling and howling. Something within him had broken. It seemed his body was in full revolt against his mind. And it was winning.

If anything, his soldiers were faring worse. Some were already splayed out.

So they’d won.

And Dorian yet lived.

So why was he so disappointed?

Maybe he’d liked the old fart more than he admitted. And after all that trouble keeping Kaya alive, well...

See, this was precisely why he avoided attachments! Hadn’t even been a deep one, really. But it still sort of stung. Now all he felt was a lingering sense of annoyance. At Kaya, and at Fate, for dying on him. And then at himself, for being annoyed at all.

Then his eyes shot wide open.

If Fate was gone…

What about his upcoming journey to collect the rest of his bodies?!

***

Jez sat with his feet in a tranquil spring pool. Its waters were clear, schools of silver-scaled fishes drifting lazily about, blending with the ripples. A small waterfall trickled down a cluster of stones like big black eggs. Above, streaks of white cloud were splashed on a brilliant blue sky.

And all of it utterly failed to calm him.

He sat there numb. Staring. Sighed. Stood, wiped off his feet, and started on the sandy path out of the room.

He’d sat there once with Kaya. Not long ago. He shook his head.

“He’s right,” he whispered. Salieris, that was. Jez was unfit to carry out his vision.

Salieris.

The very name had him clenching his fists so hard he drew blood.

He was finding it very hard to love that man.

He was finding it very hard to love any-one, at this precise moment.

He stomped his way down the echoing stone halls to his room of cleansing, and entered. There was the garden. And there was his whip, mounted at the center of it. Here was where he came to cleanse his mind. To scour himself of negative feeling. To root out rage, so that he knew that all he did was with the love, and kindness, and the goodness of the Multiverse in mind.

So that he was certain he was not a monster.

He giggled. It was infectious. Starting from a quirk of the lips, spreading down his chest, until it heaved along with his whole body in raucous fits of laughter, until there were tears running down his face.

He drew his sword and, in one furious motion, slashed.

The pocket dimension was torn asunder.

He kept slashing. And slashing. And slashing, a snarl twisting his lips, eyes bloodshot. Slashed until that hateful fervor was down to a simmer.

And by then he’d so scarred this world it was on the verge of collapse. Just gaping emptinesses in reality. Like wallpaper badly torn.

What was this fucking charade?

What was he playing at?

‘Kindness’? ‘Love’? Punishing himself, over and over, and for what? It all seemed suddenly like some delusional performance. Self-restraint indeed! While his enemies massed behind him, ready to pounce like the vultures they were. But they hardly needed to. Why, he tore himself apart here for them! What a kindness!

There was a time for kindness.

After his vision was made real.

Until then…

He stood, and left, and stalked with purpose toward the dungeons. The dungeons where he kept his Godkings. Where he was so insistent on memorizing their names, every one, being kind, on keeping torture to a minimum, on giving each and every one an option to stay imprisoned or join his cause…

He giggled once more. This time he would not go for a friendly hello. Oh, no.

This time he would do what had to be done.

Self-restraint.

What a fucking joke!

All this time he had so fastidiously denied himself certain routes to victory. He would not be made a monster—oh, no, not Jez. For that would make them just like the rest of them, wouldn’t it? No—he would stay true. Set an example.

But all his morals, all his good intentions—they weren’t worth shit if he lost, were they?

Salieris, the slimy snake, he did not understand what he was capable of. What he had been holding back.

None of them did. But they would. Soon.

He would make sure of it.

***

Dorian was pretty sure he wasn’t going to die. Even with his insides made mush and his outsides not much better. Torchdragons’ powers of regeneration were a sight to behold.

So at least he had that, he supposed!

He sat up, and that was when he heard a wheezing voice. Far off and tiny, yet it carried across the battlefield even so.

“Hello!”

And then a soot-stained blip dragged himself over the lip of the crescent crater. A blip with aura so weak he practically seemed a mortal. A blip missing all of its lower body. But the upper body seemed cheery enough. Fate was weakly smiling.

“I’m happy to report,” he croaked. “I’m not dead just yet!”

He let out a soot cloud cough.

The whole battlefield stared at him in stunned silence

“Would—would one of you fine folk please lend me a hand?” He looked down at his lower body. “I seem to be a bit… indisposed…”