When does an enemy stop fighting you? When they think you think they’ve already won.

Some guy who thought he was clever

Getting the majority of your soul ripped wholesale of your body is a lot like a car crash: You’re slightly more likely to survive if you don’t tense up.

Perry would’ve liked to have said that he saw it coming a mile away and was fully aware of the problem and crafted a perfect plan to survive years in advance…but it was dumb luck and a healthy smattering of paranoia on Natalie’s part. During the course of their studies of the soul, fueled by his own previous experiences and a desire to not go out the way he’d nearly done three years ago, They’d come up with techniques. Hypothetical ones.

You’re not gonna tear someone’s soul out for practice. But if it does happen, you should relax.

Easier said than done. He’d never seen any test monsters not resist, but the theory was…plausible.

Relaxing while something is tearing a chunk out of you was unnatural and violating in every sense of the word.

Thankfully it was quick.

When the blast hit him, Perry relaxed every muscle in his body, falling backwards and letting his mind drift in the kiddy pool of the soul.

Large portions of Perry vanished in a fraction of a second as ragged bits of the soul that were fused to the machinery inside him came along for the ride. His love of pie, his family, his taste in clothes, and myriad more simply ceased to exist. The only parts of Perry’s soul that were unaffected was a microscopic thin film on the very outside, the newest layer of the Perry onion that hadn’t been fused with The System and Abun’Zaul.

It was disturbingly painless, losing his soul. They say you can’t feel pain in the brain. The same holds true for the soul.

His mind wanted to lash out, to cling to memories and loved ones as they were ripped out of him, but Perry simply forced it to lay back and let itself be obliterated.

Why? Because the parts of his mind that clung to his soul might also get yanked out, and the parts that clung to those parts, ad infinitum. The delicate edges of the Perry bubble might get popped.

The more he struggled, the worse the damage would be.

It could mean the difference between 60% soul damage: debilitating, but not lethal, and 80% damage: enough to make him forget to breathe.

And then a huge chunk of Math got ripped out, and the percentages no longer made any sense.

An instant later, Perry’s back hit the ground, the white beam descending from the rift in space above him cutting off as the last of Abun’Zaul and the System were drawn in. A moment later, the rift itself zipped up.

It was the most counter-intuitive defense P…Perry had ever performed…probably.

This must be what dad felt like, Perry thought idly, his vision gradually darkening. Breathing was too much effort. His heart beat at an odd, stuttering pace, like a car struggling to start.

A magic eye appeared, seemingly confirming his situation for a moment before winking out.

He felt a little shuffling on his chest as an ounce of something rustled around.

Perry was too far gone to actually look, but on the very edge of his vision, he saw a tiny little Natalie climbing out from under his shirt. The figurine in the locket. She’d been upgraded in the last three years.

Tiny metal Natalie climbed down from his chest to his pocket, then returned, bearing a massive ring above her head, faintly glowing. She held it aloft in front of his nose, scowling down at him with cute disapproval.

Oh right. I was gonna get married.

Vision failing him, Perry scraped together every precious ounce of Give-a-shit he could muster and funneled it all into his right hand, bringing the trembling limb up to his chest, where the Tiny Nat waited.

His thumbnail depressed her belly-button, rendering the silvery statuette inert.

Instantly, a rush of emotions and impetus flowed through him as the stored up soul scaffolding in the locket deployed itself, providing him the means to think and move.

He gasped as his heart roared like an engine.

***Tyrannus***

“Still alive, but seemingly comatose and not breathing my lord,” his scryer said. “The blast has disrupted the battle between Slak’vreth and Alkush.

Fascinating. Still alive? Although he’ll die in a matter of minutes, possibly sooner when one of the nearby demons decides to eat him.

“Watch until you know for a fact he’s dead, then send the footage to me.” Tyrannus said. Never hurt to be a little paranoid, but right now he had more exciting things to address. He turned to his rift-cutting team. “Send Alkush a care package. Always handy to have a Greater Demon owe you a favor.”

“Yes my lord,” they said, bowing their heads.

In a rare moment of rudeness, Tyrannus didn’t acknowledge them, simply staring at the symbiotic spirit held in the vial in front of him. It swirled this way and that, shifting through every color of the rainbow, and more that were simply invisible to the human eye, the three constituent parts battling each other furiously, in a permanent deadlock.

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“Gentlemen…the Philosopher’s Stone. A symbiotic spirit that can create any Essence in any quantity, regardless of type, even simultaneously producing opposing ones that would normally be impossible. The very essence of…Paradox.”

Someone hesitantly clapped, shaking Tyrannus out of his musing.

“I’m taking this to the lab. You know what to do.” If any of his attendants knew ‘giddy with excitement’ looked like on a massive red dragon, none of them said anything.

With a brief nod, the team got to work.

The scrying specialist turned back to the circle, resummoning the eye just in time to witness Perry get devoured by one of his own trolls.

****Paradox***

All I’m saying is, a little blood would really sell it. Tear off a limb or two.”

“And I’m saying, I can’t grow back limbs right now, so that would be really bad.” Perry said, his hand fluttering above his chest, barely able to lift. His body was hale and hearty, but the will to move was still recovering.

Karth got a cunning smirk on his face.

“You couldn’t stop me if you wanted to, could you?” he asked.

A faint thread of panic ran through Perry a moment before the scrying eye winked back into existence, staring down at him.

“Don’t worry boss, we’re gonna sell it.” Karth said, his lips peeling back from massive teeth in an ominous grin.

“Karth, don’t!-”

Karth proceeded to eat him, tearing off his legs and swallowing him stump first.

Perry passed out from the shock, his body compressed from all sides as he slid down the giant’s gullet, the faint red light of Norgoth disappearing behind Karth’s teeth.

Perry wasn’t sure how long he was out, but since he wasn’t expecting to wake up at all, opening his eyes and seeing the sky of hell was definitely an improvement.

Karth was beating his chest and hacking, making uncomfortable faces. Perry was lying on the ground, his leg-stumps tied off with leather straps.

“You…Suck.” Perry muttered, the state of his body matching that of his soul. But his mind was still working. He’d put a lot of effort into preserving it.

“I deserve an academy award,” Karth said, clearing his throat. “That eye followed me for half an hour. You know how hard it is to act normal when you’ve got something stuck halfway down your throat?”

“You know I could’ve bled out...EASILY in that time?”

“You’re tough,” Karth said, shrugging. “Beside, I couldn’t fit your whole body in my throat. Consider your legs a toll for helping you fake your own death.”

He patted his tummy with a satisfied sigh.

Perry surveyed himself, anemic, weak, pissed off, and covered in stinging acid. He decided to hold a grudge. Perry knew it was a cultural thing. Trolls didn’t think much of violence or dismemberment, and he HAD sold Perry’s death pretty hard.

That deserved a reward.

“Eugene.”

Eugene arrived a moment later, descending from the fold in reality he was hiding in. A useful trait inherited from the Hopping Butchers Perry had studied on The Island.

“Now, Perry-“ Karth said, raising his hands.

“Get me a sample of Karth’s spine,” Perry said, pointing.

“Eugene, sto-AGH!”

Eugene leapt up and skittered around Karth’s defensive flailing, his razor-sharp blades excising a single vertebra, causing the troll to drop to the ground.

“You…suck,” Karth groaned, rubbing his closing wound as Eugene delivered a chunk of troll-spine, with a couple of their ichor sacs hanging off the side.

“Good boy!” Perry said, plucking one of the sacs off and discarding the rest. “Design mode.”

Eugene sat, opening his mouth, and Perry tossed the troll ichor in.

“Combine this with the framework from Astra’s Mending, the nutrition supplement from Nathanial’s Plenty and the DNA safeguard remover from the cancer curse: the Paradox Mod. ”

In an eerily human voice, Eugene began to sing Saint Natanya’s Hymn to Astra as Essence emerged from his claws, weaving them around Perry’s legs. The legs healed…then feet began to sprout from the end of his stumps, slowly lengthening until they matched his previous ones.

Normally, Astra’s Mending wouldn’t have regrown his legs, but the human body wasn’t well understood by Manitians before they came to Earth. They used magic and called it good. Cell structure, germ theory, DNA…hadn’t really been a thing.

They just prayed to a goddess and left it up to her. Which was fine for most things, but the goddess didn’t know that much either. No offence.

Another reason I like the scientific method.

The reason most limb-regrowing spells didn’t work was because they didn’t re-activate the DNA responsible for limb growth that went dormant shortly after all a fetus’s parts were where they needed to be.

The ones that did work brute forced it and either resulted in poor copies, or took too much energy.

Who knew a cancer curse would have the answer?

Perry wriggled his new toes momentarily before Taking care of his next problem: Billy Kline having his soul in a bottle. He probably didn’t have a lot of time before it was rendered down into a convenient Symbiotic Spirit and Perry was in serious trouble.

Perry didn’t even have time to consider the Ship of Theseus Paradox and wonder if he was still himself without his soul.

Nope, he didn’t have time for that existential bullshit. He was on a deadline. His lack of soul granted him a single path to victory that hadn’t existed before, and he was going to take it.

Off in the distance, Alkush and Slak’vreth had grown to epic proportions and were duking it out like two kaiju, their battle reverberating across the barren landscape while their amassed forced pushed against each other around their feet.

Alkush seemed to have been reinvigorated somehow, and Slak’vreth was on the back foot, defending herself as Alkush pushed forward with his magic and…what appeared to be a new gun with Tyrannus’s image carved into the side.

Perry wasn’t sure how a sword was fighting toe-to-toe against a gun, but he was pretty sure the entire thing was largely symbolic, as they were on a spiritual plane.

No time.

“Eugene.” Perry said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his phone, fiddling with the tiny latch that would release Gna’kis.

The bioweapon trotted up beside him, looking up at him with its horrifying pitch-black orbs.

Perry wordlessly circled the battling greater demons and their armies with his index finger before pointing up. “Up.”

Eugene hacked with glee before launching itself into the air. Around him, the plane of Norgosh wobbled as thousands of Eugenes dropped out of folds in reality and launched themselves into the air.

Crack.

The phone cracked open and Gna’kis unfolded, stretching her limbs with a grateful groan. “It’s about time, that phone is stifling!” she said, rising to her full height and peering at Perry with a frown.

“Did you get smaller?” She asked, standing nearly seven feet tall.

“My lord Gna’Kis,” Karth said, the symbol on his forehead radiating demonic energy that pulsed through his body as he knelt. The dozen remaining trolls followed suit, kneeling in front of a bemused E-girl.

“You just grew more powerful, and I grew weaker,” Perry said with a shrug. “You’re not used to regulating your presented power, so it’s showing as size disparity.”

“Neat!” she said, looking at her hands and comparing them to Perry’s head. “Who’s big and strong, now?” She asked, looming over him with a smug smirk.

“I’ve got a question for you.” Perry asked.

“Oh?”

Moment of truth. Now we find out if three years of highly unethical soul-modification bore fruit.

“Who’s your lord?”

Gna’kis rolled her eyes and sighed, kneeling down in front of him.

“You are.”

Perry tousled the giant E-girl’s hair.

“Good, because I’ve got a buffet on the way for the Lord of Sinful Technology and her knights.” Perry said, motioning to where the first Eugene was dragging back his prey. More bodies were being dragged back behind him.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

More.

“Eat up.” Perry said. “We’re gonna need everyone big and strong when we go ‘negotiate’ with the Demon Lord of war.”