Content Warning: Excessively Graphic Themes, Direct Visual Conveyance, Theoretical Cognitohazard, Sacrifice, Trauma.
Author preface: There is no shame to be had if you overlook this "Fragmentary Vector," as I'll be exploring what's pertinent in later chapters. Just know: I am aware it's not my place to judge, not that I would. My Mind is a… very fucked up place.
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[Input: "Never Long Enough To Be Heard, Ever Loud Enough To Be Felt"]
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(Vitals_are_Green/Cognition_is_Clear/Infosphere_Is_Pure)
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[Sequence_ID:// 27318-SOT-a:// "The_Grey_Star_Incursion_of_HIY_6311" – Re-Render_Iteration_"Arduen"_Initiated]
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{Heart of Stelluo, Holy Imperial Year 6325
Month 07, Day 33, Local Time 16:37:29}
Fourteen years prior, a Profanity Above Profanities was uttered at the peak of the Holiest Spire, in a city of Silver and Adamantine, all in a moment of weakness.
Now, the Last of its Great Spires had all but corroded; the symbolic breaking of a seal set into motion by its Founder.
The sun threw the last of its rays before being obscured by clouds of crimson the very next second. Then, they bled, fractured, and wretched. An ungodly black light broke through the veil between heaven and earth, as flying daemons fused with mechanisms and infernal magicks broke down through the cracks in the foundation of the sky, and descended; spreading across the plane.
It was said that the Heart of Stelluo fought to their last, but no one knows what happened to its denizens and defenders. There wasn't so much as a shred of flesh left to soil the streets. Everything was just… empty, after the event. All that remained was an echo of fallen divinity, subsumed by a Broken Pattern.
And the Heart and Soul of a Theocracy that reigned sovereign over its dominion for over six thousand years... was made hollow in less than an hour from the moment the Incursion rose from it.
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{Local Time 23:25:53 – Outskirts of Kariagua}
[Point-of-Perspective: Arduen]
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We were so close to the border of the forest, Kariagua was within sprinting distance… Then we saw it, and our faces were overcast with terror. Spires of lightning danced about the skies and tumbled down from the heavens to strike the skyline down. Smoke billowed upward from blazing homes and businesses were razed in an unrelenting inferno.
We were too late. Kariagua was falling, our research had been destroyed, an Incursion was sweeping across the plane, and now everything we'd worked for was going up in flames.
I fell to my knees, a primal despair welling up in my gut; I wanted to hold my mouth shut. Alas, my woe took the better of me…
I cried out to the fractured, crimson heavens, howling. But when the tears parted enough for me to see clearly, at the peak of the blood red horizon, I saw a void in the likeness of a God attempting to permeate the veil above Kariagua, behind the hollow shadow of discord the Incursionists were sewing; a rainfall of fire, fury and static. I felt something in the moment I saw it, something *attempting* to etch itself into my mind.
"WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT GAZE UPON THE SKY," My reactions superceded the information I was processing, and before I realized it, I had collapsed in a mess on the forest grounds.
I writhed in agony and Tess rushed to my side as I felt the intent of that thing fighting against the wards I had engraved into my mind many years prior, until I felt one of them resonate against against it. A very peculiar one, I had nearly forgotten about.
Chaos.
Entropy.
Disorder.
With the intent barred by the wards, I regained my faculties long enough to pull out a crystalline capsule out of my satchel and hand it to Tess to administer. The intent raged against the wards before long once again though, and I felt them starting to bend as my whole body convulsed against the strain. She just had to get the contents in my mouth, but she had to do it while I was still able to fight against it.
"Tess! He's going to die if you don't do it now!" I heard Arginold shout as he raised his staff.
In a half moment, I felt my body freeze up against her spatial restraint, and then the sensation of something sticky falling down my throat. A split second later, a surge of energy like a torrent of shadows came pouring out of my right eye and coursed straight back into the sky. Tess released her spatial technique and I coughed up a hearty serving of blood.
Through a raspy voice, I tried to explain as I attempted to get back up to my feet.
"Something… tried to imprint… on me… Entropic… So… don't… look up…"
My attempt was weak, however, as I collapsed back on my hands and knees and then threw up the contents of my stomach.
"You are in no condition to speak, Arduen," Tess' voice was full of uncertainty. "Arginold, what can we do??"
"The Heart of Stelluo is lost, but Kariagua isn't yet," His ragged voice carried a grave tone, "However, if whatever Arduen saw breaks through the Veil, it will all be for naught." He sighed, resigned; yet I didn't sense that he was hitting a dead-end… more like…
"So, I guess it's about time I told you about my Deus Ex Machina."
Out of nowhere, two unidentified attendants phased out of the shadows.
"Master Arginold, I'd advise you not-," The first one began, but Arginold cut them off.
"You have no authority over me, and there's no point in us holding our cards close to our chest at this point. Do not forget your position."
"Master… is it really time?" The second querried.
"If it isn't… then may Nobody forgive me, and may Arius absolve me."
I was slowly regaining my composure, that failed imprinting left one hell of a migraine.
"Arginold, what haven't you… been telling us?" I managed.
"Only that I've lived for the last 300 years as an Unregistered Exception, and in that time, I've managed to pick up a wealth of secrets and rituals. I… may be able to bring this tragedy to a somewhat happier ending…"
"I'm sensing... a but."
"No buts. All it's going to cost me is everything, and that's a small price to pay when these people are still fighting, still struggling, still praying… when they still have hope. Bring it here, now Number One."
"…"
"Or else."
"… Yes sir."
"Don't be like that, Number One; I know the why. I don't fault you, but this is not something I can pass up."
The first attendant stepped forward slowly, and produced a peculiar-shaped satin sheath.
"Arginold…"
Placing his staff on his backpack, he received it with care, and slowly unwrapped the satin from its contents, revealing a large, rusted iron parrying blade. He cradled it in his hands tenderly, as though he was cradling his own son.
"I myself, had hoped I'd never have to lay eyes on it, much less use it; those desires mean nothing now. This has to be done. Arduen, Tess, #1, #2… I need you to buy me two minutes."
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There is a myth as old as the Modern Human race in Sybelia, of an era several hundreds of thousands of years ago, that fell to ruin by Misbegotten Causality, and almost swallowed that world whole in a maelstrom of rage and hatred. Of how three survivors of this force were stripped of their names, and had their identities consolidated into Titled Nobodies, made a pilgrimage to the peak of the highest natural mountain in the Planes of the Story to find Hope. How they found this Hope in self-sacrifice, and compelled three Supreme Deities to set foot in their world, to shepherd and sustain their remaining brethren in the world to come.
At the summit of Mount Ehki, atop its fifth Strata, the Three Titled Nobodies found the very blade Arginold was now in possession of, encased in its true sheath of hyperstatic-time and crystalized causality. If Arginold was indeed an unregistered Exception who had spent three centuries biding his time and hoarding knowledge then it would make sense he was able to get through its true Sheath. Now the question was… did he know the Rules for making use of it?
If our records were to be believed, the last time someone had made use of it was way far beyond ten-thousand years ago. If there were any place an Unregistered Exception would be able to go in order to learn of such things… It would have to be a Primary Greater Archive at the heart of a Nexus, otherwise, he'd have to somehow attain an audience with Arius… and come back intact. It would turn out… Arginold had managed the latter, but only for an instant. That being said… he had to believe that instant would be enough, for it to actually be enough.
Such was the Parameter Prima of the Second Half of the First Anomaly; Arius' Athema: 'Etch.'
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He held his Staff, which we would learn much later on was actually his transmogrified Exceptionary Function Actualizer, in his left hand as he brandished Etch in his right. I had never seen him even hold a Kitchen knife, before; he primarily relied on Telekinesis, but as we four formed a shield around him, the fliers above Kariagua almost immediately took notice and reshaped their formations.
He pounded his staff against the ground once, and something echoed that action in response from everywhere and nowhere at once. An Unspoken yet Unignorable Declaration of Intent.
"I'm sorry to make you buy time, and I promise it won't be for naught." He said it so resolutely, so easily. We simply couldn't help but feel slightly uplifted in that moment. Maybe that's what made all the difference in the end. His staff sang against the ground twice, and again something answered in all directions from no detectable source the same count. A Solemn Acknowledgement and Acceptance of Purpose.
"Regardless of what comes after, know it has been an honor to know each and every one of you." So he meant it when he said this was going to cost him everything. I can only guess at what was going on in his mind. He hated Kariagua… he always told me as much, but he never once spoke ill of it's people. Of course there were a few bad apples who earned his ire, but he never had need to speak of them. As far as I could figure, either he did love the inhabitants of the town, or he was so deadset on burning it down himself that he was willing to risk his existence just to deprive a fallen god of its chance to do the same. I can't say anymore, but the why… well… we would soon find that out ourselves. This time, his staff reverberated against the ground thrice, and all of existence seemingly beckoned to its call. The Will and the Resolve to Dare Do Battle.
It all began the instant he sat down in a lotus position. It took only fractions of a second, but far too quickly to fathom. Something in the air shifted. The legions of daemonic incursionists in flight above Kariagua had regrouped and reformed and charged at us with blistering speed. We were still several hundred meters away from Kariagua's walls, but they'd be here in seconds. Number Two threw up a screen trap of vibrating mana cable in an semispherical-omnidirectional layout around us. Number one put up two field magicks inside and outside of the net with dual casting; creating an insulating buff barrier on the inside of the net, and an outward-facing magick-dampening field outside of the net. Tess readied her spatial magicks, I had my hand in my satchel, and ephemerally thin, half-perceptible threads began to gather about Arginold, not wrapping or restraining him, but dancing, as if beckoning to him. He was meditating, looking for the right one.
"Arduen, say a prayer for us all," Arginold managed to make out half-lucid as he meditated on the ground amidst the threads, "For this will be my Final Trinary Duel." He said only as much a split-second before the first wave of Incursionists entered the range of the magick-dampening field, and cut themselves to ribbons against Number Two's mana cables. Tess had managed to erect a similarly semi-spherical spatial barrier within all of the three defensive fields from the ground up to protect us from splatter-based cross-contamination. We knew nothing of where the Incursion was originating from, but we could tell it was more than likely inimical to human life based on the augmentations the daemons were utilizing. I grimaced, then put my free hand in my pocket and pulled out a charm I had held onto for quite literally as long as I can remember… and smeared the blood I had coughed up on my hand earlier upon it.
"I call upon the Mistress of Fate, Luck and Fortune; we seek your grace in our darkest hour. If my future must be drawn upon to equalize our odds of winning in the present, then let our resolution be the scales the odds are weighed upon. I offer up my lifeblood, as I have stained this charm with. GIVE US THE STRENGTH PURIFY THE PATH AHEAD OF US, ENTARIA!"
'You'll fall short if you're only weighing your own future against the imminent demise of millions, young one.'
I could barely believe it, she had… actually responded directly. But her words hung heavy in my heart from the moment I heard her response.
'Then what else must I wager!?'
'Arduen… it's not you alone who must wager, but those who must have already made their choice. I have heard your call, and the bets have been placed. The scales have been tipped, but only slightly. I will hope it is enough, as it is all you and I have left to us both here. Don't let the chance slip you by. You'll know it when it comes.'
We were barely twenty-five seconds in, but the barrage of enemies did not slow or decrease in number. Meanwhile, we had a mounting pile of scrap-being fitted with augments that did paragons know what. Under normal conditions, such a fortified stance would be unorthodox to consider penetrating, but we all could tell without so much as glancing in another's direction… the rest of us, aside from Arginold, were all having the same sinking feeling it our gut.
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{POV Shift: Arginold}
"It's been a long road, hasn't it old friend?"
"You seem… rather chipper in spite of knowing our obligation in this fight, and its inevitable outcome, regardless of whether we suceed or fail in what follows."
"Believe it or not, Arginold; I have no reason not to be. You've made your choice, and I am proud to see this through to the end, unto the last of each of us, at your side."
"But… why?"
"You're worrying over pointless question, partner."
"IT'S IMPORTANT TO ME! YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IS COMING, SO JUST TELL ME!"
"…"
"…"
"…"
"… Is there really no other reason than simply because you ended up with me as your Exception?"
"I didn't end up with you, I willfully consented to it, and even requested it of my own volition."
"So then-."
"Because… I couldn't stand to dissuade you from being yourself when this is who you are, someone willing to put your life, your being, your entire existence on the line for people you barely know…"
I wanted to cry. 250 years ago I thought I'd cried my last.
"Even in the dire state you're in, you're still thinking of others over yourself. Even me, not even a complete thing."
"!#&$^%#(… what is it that allows you to face the prospect of oblivion, by my hand no less!?"
"You're still asking those questions. You already know the answer, Arginold. What is it that you should be asking- what is the one weakness you always suffered from?"
Oh. Of course… it was something so simple. It had to be…
"Partner, I request your aid, for what will most definitely be the last time."
I saw my other half smile, welling with pride from ear to ear.
"Now that, is truly Exceptional; to be able to be the bigger person and ask for assistance when you know that you need it the most."
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Tess was the first to notice, I would come to find out later; even with the magick dampening field the tech fused into the corpse fragments were still working, we would learn, as they were designed to. That, and the number of bodies being piled up was skyrocketing, but that was a problem we were all keenly aware of with no means to deal with it. It was a pitfall only "Traversers," or "Plane-walkers," people who had braved the other side of Incursions and/or outlying dimensional planes to combat/investigate them, would possibly be familiar with on this scale. We… were not "Traversers." We were conscripted Peace Officers of Damocles Division, working in tandem with the Noble House of Oz, exiled from Stelluo for alleged (but with the intent of defamation, it should be noted) Heresy and assisting with the Uttered Profanity in the GodSpine, Stelluo's Holiest Spire, who had since been exonerated and absolved by The High Council of our Strata in Sybelia. Some of the greatest P.O.'s they'd ever seen, but we still were lacking in experience with this kind of combat; how could we not be? In any case, it all fell apart one minute and fourty-five seconds in, when Tess noticed a humming sound coming from the mountain of sundered daemonic gore and viscera.
She rushed to reinforce and overlay her spatial barrier over itself.
"The Corpses are reacting to something!"
We were so close, just twelve seconds away. Arginold was almost finished, he was reaching for a string when a Tess detected a subsonic pulse emanating through the ground from the remains of the slaughtered Incursionists.
"DAMN IT!"
Blood dripped from her nose as she strained herself to split her focus in each hand between making another barrier barely a particle thick when the ground erupted beneath us in a flash of unholy light while upholding the current barrier. I caught on just a little too late and turned to her, but she had already jumped in my direction.
'It's not you alone who must wager.'
No-!
"Almost-!"
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CW-Referenced.
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Last Chance to Abandon the Sub-Narrative
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She pushed me out of the way within five hundredths of a second before a sequentially conjoined and jagged-tipped spine erupting out of the ground… and straight through her spatial armor… punctured through both sides of her throat before my horror-shocked eyes. I didn't even have the time to blink. I didn't have the time to do anything. The world shocked itself into a moment of eternity around me, with everyone else barely holding on. Those were… The longest seven seconds of my Life, in which I lost my God-daughter to the Fury of the Incursion of HIY 6325.
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I never wanted her anywhere near conflict. I knew her parents for almost as long as I knew Arginold, shy a few decades; They were Traversers, and were renowned for their capacity to come back from Incursions, with a 75% survival rate for their teams, and bringing the dead back with them over their shoulders. They didn't just bring hope to our Strata, they inspired others from the adjacent planes. They adorned armor forged of hyperstatic light, and taught me a great many lessons about Artifice over the 264 years I knew them. Three Years prior to their disappearance, Elliara and Evanuel showed up at my library late in the evening with the former being visibly pregnant. Archatae and Rythie saw them in quickly and ushered them unto me in Sect 1. They told me that they were going to retire once she had given birth and that they would do one last incursion after their child reached a suitable age.
Then they asked me the question; requesting that I be her Godfather. I remember asking them why? I was not good with children, they knew of plenty of people better suited to be parents than I. Elliara simply gave me a knowing smile as she cradled her belly. Evanuel told me the why. They wanted their child, if anything were to happen to them, to be raised by a Librarian, so she'd never want for knowledge without knowing where to start looking for it. They mentioned their hiatus from investigating potential incursion nodes to care for their child, and how they wanted to leave something behind in case they couldn't be *here* for their end.
How do you even respond to such a sentiment, knowing your true calling and your line of work will inevitably lead your best friend's child to walk a similar road to their parents without interference? I offered them a change of occupation in an attempt to interject, but Elliara shook her head. "Our gifts were given to help the people. If they lead to our deaths, then we will die for a cause of our own choosing. We choose using our gifts the only way we know how, Arduen, but this child… she doesn't have to bear The Curse of Our Gifts."
She. So it was a girl, and they were deadset. The Curse of Their Gifts was something Traversers often referred to as their interpreted Obligation to the people and the Incursions that threatened them. They weren't forcibly relocated to the sites of Incursion Nodes, but they were beckoned by the sensation of disquiet in space-time fabric of certain localities; like an inquisitive intuition… and curiosity so often kills the cat. For their 172 decades of service in leading charges against Incursions, I'd wager they had more than their fill of death… In those who came home only in body, those who came back in spirit, and those who never made it back.
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It was three years from that night Tess was dropped at my doorstep by a friend of their family in a basket with a letter on it. I never saw Elliria or Evanuel ever again, and haven't heard from or of them since.
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Over the years, I raised their child Tess, as a book-keeper and a magus. At the age of 12, we discovered she had an aptitude for spatiomancy. I think in the moment she discovered her talents, we knew she would follow a path that would end in conflict…
I would never dared to dream such a nightmare as the day she died because she followed in my footsteps unwittingly tracing her parents path.
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{Segment_Render_Hash_Number_2787_Complete/Recurring_to_Main-Lined_Sequence}
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[POV-Shift: Arginold]
'I'm sorry Tess, Arduen… I'm so sorry that I couldn't be stronger… strong enough to keep you two safe… But you've bought me enough time to bring this to a close.'
I opened my eyes and saw strands of causality and possibility converge into a twine thread at the grip of Illumo-Terra, with a scarlet imprint running its width in an orthogonal vertical-ness, folded in the confines of a singular physical dimension running the breath of a second. I rose from my position on the ground to my feet. Everything was filtered through a transcendental sense of clarity. I was… enraptured, but entranced, and above all… Lucid.
"DO YOU BEHOLD, ARIUS VON X'EL?"
There was a sound like the jangling and straining of chains that echoed across the atmosphere as the ground buckled beneath us, but did not give. A break formed in the crimson skies directly above the edge of the Forests surrounding Kariagua, and the Three Moons of Sybelia radiated their glory in Purest Silver, Richest Crimson, and Deepest Black. The First Paragons of The Ideal Hope were watching with Bated Breath.
I brought my right hand above my head, with 'Etch' braced in it with a singular purpose in mind.
"OUR FATES, IN YOUR HANDS!"
The world froze as I brought Etch down with force I'd never made use of before. This was it, if I brought Etch down upon Illumo-Terra, I'd create a Breach in Causality, leading me directly to the Cornerstone of this universe… to Nobody, to Arius. All it would cost me…
[Etch made contact with Illumo-Terra at the vertical crimson streak, and split it clean in two.]
… Is Everything.
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I was pulled through information, ideas, concepts and physical space at impossible rates of accelaration beyond the brink of the heavens, and an eternity/yet-an-instant beyond that moment, I was lying on my back in an impossible container of records and memory.
"You have some fucking nerve."
I know that voice.
"Yeah, I hope you would; I had to chase you out of the Greater Archives more than once you ungrateful little-."
I sensed a presence irradiating the fury of a magnetar, but there was a sorrow in it that was buried under the surface out of a sense of purpose.
"Why did you make me watch you do that to yourself and your other half, Arginold?"
My mind raced with a deluge of rampant, half-compiled thoughts. Such was the pressure on beings within Arius' Archives.
"You don't have the time to let your mind be clouded. I know of what is going on. Seems I need to run some diagnostics on the Pattern Anchor."
"More pressing at the moment," Nobody interjected, "Is the Strata pertaining to his last location."
"Indeed… It's not an issue to recontain It, but what would be the best-suited Avatar for its purposes?"
Recontain? Is that to say… Arius… You were SLEEPING ATOP that abomination?
"You're thinking too loudly. You always do, it's why you were always such a slow Exception."
I felt a tear fall down my cheek.
"Always, you always took whatever you pleased, without asking…"
A sad smile seemed to worm its way onto Arius' face.
"You were made in my image, after all. I'm proud of you for making it this far, Arginold; I'm devastated of what you had to do to get here; I will set what I can right."
"And on that Note," Nobody interjected once again, "back to the matter at hand, what Avatar do we enact to drive it out of Sybelia? We don't have long before it ruptures the Veil Membrane."
"I have a few ideas, but do you?"
"There is one Proposal… we could… augment, I guess?"
"That one? Nobody, are you positive that-?"
"IF we were to infuse its sword with pertinent entanglements, I see no reason why it shouldn't cut through The Wretch. It will return to the Pattern Anchor the moment it is struck down."
"You're finally giving Clef his due, then?"
Nobody sighed wearily.
"It would seem as though I am giving that lying sack of shit a modicium of respect. I have to warn you though, the strain on 'The Warden of Eden's Garden' will still not be minute. There will be some time before we can inject him into the Narrative again."
I couldn't make anything of what they were saying. Who was… Clef, and the sword of what?
"It's not important, Arginold." Arius directed his voice at me, then turned to Nobody. "It won't matter, so long as The Wretch is recontained, and it has nowhere else to come back to if it is banished. This isn't its universe anymore, and it refuses to acknowledge that. It Will Return. I am surprised that you would recommend entangling 'The Light of God', but at the moment, that actually comes across better than what I had in mind."
I knew nothing about 'The Light of God,' but… was 'The Wretch' that… thing Arduen saw?
"That would be correct, Arginold. Nobody has fought it twice, and it has been at our mercy ever since the beginning of this universe. It exploited an unforseen weakness in the Pattern Anchor this Archive uses as a Foundation. Functioning in tandem with the Archive's contents, my being, Nobody as a Warden, and the Proto-Stars as witness… the Pattern Anchor becomes a Conceptual Sarcophagus. The Grey Star tried to look inside, and now your world is facing the consequences of his ill actions."
Arius blinked from his position to my side.
"I truly am proud of you, my Child, but I must request you rise one last time… That the Angel may descend, and cleave The Black Moon in Two."
The Angel? What Angel?
"Nobody, Enact Proposal 001, subset J-Clef; Output: ---------."
I felt a tug of gravity at the back of my mind, and fell back through the Breach and into my strata as I heard Arius say one last thing.
"Uriel… Guide his Convictions to Fruition, and Deliver him to your Father in peace for his service to this world. I humbly request this from One Father to Another."
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[POV-Shift: Arduen]
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Arginold's last words distracted me from the immediate shock value; I grabbed Tess's body on reflex, just as Arginold brought that knife down against his staff, and cleaved it in two. The very next second, all of our field spells were disarmed, the daemonic fliers dispersed back to the skies, and we were cast adrift by a divine wind. I ragdolled with my God-daughter in my arms as a pillar of pure incandescent light descended from the sky, rushing to meet our friend.
"LIGHT OF GOD, WARDEN OF EDEN'S GARDEN, DEFEND YOUR CROP! I ENACT MY DEUS EX MACHINA; URIEL, DESCEND!"
The moment he shouted his last, Arginold's form melted in the light and a colossus of truly divine lineage erupted from the center. One hundred eight luminous wings erupted from its back, obscuring the forest canopy behind and underneath its hundred meter height. Its right arm manifested in the blink of an eye, spanning almost half its height, and produced an equally titanic sword. It seemed to… excite the atoms in its immediate vicinity.
A sword that could cleave through the atomic structure of creation…
I heard a voice in my head, a mix of Arginold's… and whatever he was serving as a vessel for… utter a single word into my mind.
"Shelter."
We were, hopelessly compelled to oblige. Myself, Number One and Number Two did not waste any time and began running as soon as we had gotten back on our feet. I had not forgotten Tess, but she was fading fast. We had run a solid 200 meters into the coverage of the forest before we dared to turn back and look. The fliers had regrouped in formation and were charging at the Archangel Uriel. He simply raised his sword, and the charge broke upon it. A spray of atoms spewed outwardly from the edge of Uriel's blade which the daemons had broken upon.
"Pitiful."
Uriel's voice was externalized, and the fliers began to retreat, though Uriel was quicker. The beat of his wings launched him hundreds of meters into the air in an instant to give chase, and he swung his blade against the stream of daemons. This attack was different, as from the slash Uriel delivered, a stream of light worked through the hell-tide before erupting into a string of clean nuclear detonations with an area of effect minimized to mere tens of meters.
I set Tess down and Number One and Number Two immediately began applying first aide while I fished around in my satchel.
'Come on… there has to be something! I can't let this continue! I can't let their light be extinguished! Not like this!'
Tess weakly rose her left hand to my knelt knees.
"A...rdu...en."
"Don't speak! What were you thinking!? You idiot!"
A cascade of tears broke through my stubbornness and fell down my face. Numbers One and Two did their best to ignore me while continuing to apply first aide. It would appear as though… I was finally cracking like an egg.
"Hold on, I know I have something in here!"
Their aide had managed to stop her from choking on her own blood, but she still had a massive hole in her neck and she was bleeding from it quite heavily. We needed to close it, and repair the damage done…
My hand hit the bottom of my satchel, and my heart sank.
"No… No, I know I had something in here!"
I ruffled through it again with furious intent, beginning to pull out the contents of everything inside of my satchel.
'No, no, no! NO! NO! NO!!'
"Than...k… you…"
Her left hand fell lifeless from my knee, and she spoke no more. Number One and Number Two fell silent and somber. I…
I howled back at the skies as Uriel charged at the god-shaped Void, and he brought down his sword on the fell titan's arm. There was an ungodly wail as the cut it left erupted in a flash of divine light, and it was severed, the wound dripping with black quasi-tangible ichor that evaporated into nothingness before hitting Kariagua, and the dismembered arm fading into non-existence.
Uriel took a look at his sword. It was miniscule, but there was a crack in it.
________________________________
"Update Parameters from --------- to ----------."
"If we increase the strain further, it's going to-."
"AND IF WE DON'T, NOBODY, WE SUFFER AN OMEGA-SK CLASS FOURTH WALL DISOLLUTION EVENT. UPDATE THE FUCKING PARAMETERS! I KNOW THIS WILL WORK, BUT WE CAN'T CARE ABOUT THE COST IF THIS IS THE ALTERNATIVE! URIEL KNOWS!"
"I fucking hate this job, DAMN IT!" Nobody frustratedly typed into a console, and a small portion of the Proto-stars orbiting the Archives increased in luminosity, channeling their rays into a focal point at the Archive's Apex.
"ENGAGE IT!"
Nobody screamed as she slammed her index finger onto a key and the Archive fired *something* into the Universe beneath it from its apex.
________________________________
Uriel braced his sword, towering in the air high above Kariagua's citadel as The Wretch reached for it with its other hand.
"Cease."
The Wretch halted, for a moment. But it wasn't something that could be compelled. It was *barely* even something, closer to not-a-thing, but not wholly either. It resumed its approach, and Uriel responded with a vertical riposte. Now The Wretch was disarmed, but not stopped. There was a new crack in his sword, running parallel to the one made as a result of the previous cut.
It was trying to degenerate the sword.
But it had failed. Almost as quickly as he'd noticed it, the sword repaired itself. Uriel appeared almost… surprised, but only for an instant before he regained his composure. The Wretch also took notice and screamed in rage against Uriel, but he'd already taken action, and rose above it. Turning his sword to the ground, he prepared to dive and plunge the sword right through The Wretch's head.
"Foul Abomination," Uriel verbalized, and all creation listened in response. "I consign you from whence you came, and Sunder your Cause from Effect. In My Father's Name… BEGONE!"
Uriel became as a falling star, and hit his mark, as evidenced by the haunting death-throes of The Wretch as it was driven into the ground with such force outside the gates of Kariagua that a crater with a radius of ten kilometers was left in its wake. The Wretch began to dissipate, was drawn into a void, and Uriel blinked over to us.
The Moment the colossal Angel stepped foot on the ground, his scale reduced to 1:50. He was now roughly as tall as Arginold was. We beheld it, all of it. Then he spoke directly into my mind once more.
"Her Death is Not on your Hands. If you will permit it… she has been granted the right to rest in The Garden."
I was still in tears, my mind didn't want to comprehend what was being transmitted into it, but it forced me to recognize it. Tess was dead. I… had failed, even if it wasn't my fault. I reached to pick her up, and in my moment of grief, I told Uriel:
"She deserves nothing less. Handle her with care."
Beyond the blinding luminosity, I could swear I saw him nod solemnly before he took her in his embrace, and vanished in a flash of light. Leaving me alone, with my grief, as the other two took their own leave and grief with them, and went in separate directions.
_______________________
Kariagua's denizens had been spared, and our research would eventually be resumed, but the mental and emotional ravages of that night stuck with me. I began to become reclusive to all but Archatae and Rythie. I spent my days holed up in my Library, and kept beating myself up over the same question day after day, night after night, for years upon years: "What should I have done differently?" I stopped praying to Entaria, as on some level, I blamed her for allowing Tess to be weighed on my Fate's scales. I blamed Arginoth for being seconds too late. I blamed his attendants for not being able to do more. And above all of them…
I Hated Myself for blaming them.
So much so I deafened myself to the Archangel's message to me.
There's an empty grave right beneath my Library, that I dug 40 odd years ago.
It holds the Faith I once enshrined.
It's where I laid the charm I prayed upon to rest.
And it's also where I put my decency to death.
So I thought…
________________________
In time, I found myself in the company of other Peace Officers, who had also been present for Kariagua's direst hour, or other such Incursions. We were officiated by a Human woman by the name of Analia, who reformed our particular Division under the Code Name Damocles, and sharpened our skills to a razor's edge. Around my Library, she saw our research facility rebuilt and re-envisioned. When we first met, she looked at me with eyes that mirrored my own, cold and dead gaze, but what she said astounded me all the more.
"Your faith wasn't misplaced, we just met too late."
In that moment, I fell to my knees weeping as I felt the light behind my eyes return.
________________________
"The Wretch has been recontained in the Pattern Anchor."
"The Strain on the Warden was too great, Arius! I told you changing the parameters to your specifications would be-."
"It worked, did it not?"
"Yes, so well in fact, that you nearly BURNT IT OUT!"
"I knew that it wouldn't, Nobody."
"EVEN IF YOU DID, DO YOU WANT TO IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU HAD BEEN OFF BY A MICRO-IOTA OF A METRIC?"
"Do you?"
"I WOULD RATHER NOT, Thank you very much!"
"Well I have to be able to, in order to operate the Archive with precision. So be thankful that it doesn't fall into your scope of responsibility to worry about the parameters."
"Soooo very thankful…"
"Sarcasm is unbecoming of you."
"So what of Arginold?"
"What do you mean? He's gone."
"You spoil your children, you know that, right Arius?"
"Regardless of what he did in his past, he just saved millions upon millions of lives at the expense of his own existence. Whatever is left of him, he is among the Heavens now."
"You mean the planet ruled by the Spider thing, right?"
"No, though he didn't come from the world or time I did, the one he was drawn from did in fact have a type of theology virtually identical to Christianity. He was quite content as a Choir boy. He went to that heaven, not the planet of afterlife your old Foundation was so hostile towards."
"What, you have some sort of Afterlife Exchange Program? You're not blaming us now, are you?"
"Of a sort, and no, I am not. You would have done better to listen, however."
"Hindsight is always 20/20 Arius, even when you sit at the peak of reality."
"Only when you don't have the foresight to look down at where you tread, Nobody"
"And what does that mean?"
"You always asked yourselves if 'The ends justified the means,' but you never bothered to ask the other way around, if 'The Means Warrant the Ends'. Corbenic must have overflowed with your D-class many, many times over before I stepped in, and that's before we factor in your little societal reset button under Yellowstone. I can still… hear their screams, Nobody."
"… You mean the ones prior to when you doomed the 2nd Hytoth to annihilation? Or following?"
"All. Of Them."
. . .
"Regardless, Nobody. Uriel is damaged, but not Broken. I will begin tending to him, please continue with your charge."
"Understood, Arius."
__________________
Kariagua recovered with time, but Stelluo would dissolve within a decade, and be subsumed by other nations. I eventually softened up to a relative degree, and worked through my grief with the assistance of Daritz, Vivye, Lexo and Analia. It'd not be 30 years before my faith, however, was rekindled by a chance encounter with another Exception. And until that time would come…
My luck remained sour.