//------------------------------//
// 115 - Song of the Spheres 
// Story: Songs of the Spheres 
// by GMBlackjack 
//------------------------------//

Songs of the Spheres. 

Songs. Plural. There’s more than one melodious tune that pulls us through existence, an innumerable number of stories that have been told through the cosmic entanglement that is the multiverse.

And yet, everything is also related. Every song has twisted the pages it calls home in one way or another. Some songs scream to be noticed, drawing thousands to flock towards them and praise them. Others resonate within the simple, beautiful act of a family dinner. But every last one, no matter how significant, ties to all the others somehow. 

For better or for worse, everything’s connected. 

But as I’ve come to realize, there is also a singular song. The Song. The Song that leads to the Choice, the Song that leads to a Climax. The Song. 

As the end of the Tower’s Testament tells us, it is twofold. And yet… it is the same, because one leads to the other, and the foundations of the other lead to the one. 

Naturally, the singular story of the multiverse would be far too expansive for any entity to see in its entirety. No one could see every twist and turn through the innumerable years. Not even I can lay it all out at once. 

But I have seen much in my time as the bearer of the Eye of Rhyme. I can see the keys. 

…I can’t see what’s coming anymore. I’ve had my last true vision. All that remains is… guesswork. Educated guesswork, admittedly, but still guesswork. 

Now that I’m here, in this final moment at the edge of the cliff, I can piece most of it together. What all of existence has been trying to tell us all this time. 

Come with me. Let’s take a look back before we jump into the great unknown. I hope you're ready, this story is massive and complicated. Get yourself some snacks and turn that brain on, you’re gonna be here a while as the multiverse unfolds itself before you.

My only hope is that, in prompting what’s happened to be written down, I don’t become its cause. 


~Tower~


It was impossible to tell if it was the screams of ka or the howls of the blizzard. 

Admittedly, the two could have been one and the same, considering. 

Two men marched through the bitter cold, barely noticing its deathly temperature against the deeper pain they carried within themselves. Some of this pain was physical – the elder man was missing a few fingers on one of his hands, making the empty digits of his glove hang loose. The younger – more a boy than a man – was clearly malnourished and pale, clutching a notebook to his chest like it was his lifeline. 

These physical maladies were nothing compared to their suffering. The boy’s eyes betrayed someone haunted by extended trauma, only some unnatural inner strength keeping him moving forward – his eyes fixated on the older man. 

The leader of the duo was much more adapted to the situation. His features were hard and stoic, much of his face shrouded by his vaguely cowboyish hat. He wore thick clothing, well-worn boots, and held his full hand on a gun holster; always ready to fight, even this far along. His eyes betrayed a man who had seen too much, a man who had lost everything, a man who was pushing on only because he was so close to the end. Because he was called forward. He moved with heavy, certain motions, watching everything closely even though he couldn’t see two feet in front of him. He glanced behind him regularly, making sure his last remaining companion was still behind him. 

Will he fall as well?

He could have pushed the thought out of his mind – but he didn’t. He accepted the possibility that he would finish this journey completely alone. He would prefer it didn’t end that way, but in the end the wheel of ka would lead him on. 

Are we still on the Beam?

This gave the man pause. He didn’t stop moving, but he scanned the blizzard with his eyes once again. If they were still on the Beam, he would be able to see the pattern that all served. It took a moment, but he was able to note the prevailing direction of the snowflakes twisted away along a single path. 

The direction they were headed. 

Right along the Beam. To the center of everything. 

He kept moving, the boy following behind. Neither said a word. There was nothing to be said at this point. 

That, in many ways, was what had the man worried. There should be nothing left. They should just move along, get to their destination, and have the final confrontation. So why was there a blizzard? He refused to believe it was just random misfortune. Nothing had been random misfortune for a long, long time. At least not for him. 

Doubt crept into his mind when the blizzard started to lessen. They were getting through it… and besides being cold, nothing of interest had happened. Nothing…

“Be on your guard, Patrick,” he said, his voice gruff and dry despite the heavy moisture around them. 

Patrick’s grip on his notebook tightened, as if it could be a shield for him. 

The monster attacked. It was not something any of them had ever seen before – but this was not surprising, considering how deep into End-world they were. As far as they were concerned, any sort of creature from any existence could appear here, and it wouldn’t be something to marvel at. 

It was seemingly made entirely of ice, though the man knew better. It was a crystal being with two deformed legs, three bladelike arms, and a flat head covered in glowing lights that may have been eyes, or just whatever was visible of a brain through its bodily lattice. 

It made no noise when it moved. It leaped forward and swung at the man’s neck. The man leaned back, dodging the blow and drawing a gun at the same time. The oversized pistol was of exceptionally fine craftsmanship and anyone with a sense for the value of things would know the sandalwood gun was a weapon of great power and legend. He pulled the trigger with trained, automatic precision, launching forth a single bullet right into the creature’s glowing head. The lights went out in an instant as the bullet shattered the ‘skull’ into three pieces. 

He didn’t have to look behind him to know there was another one there. He whirled his gun, finger pulling down on the trigger before the creature was even in his sights. It fell as well. 

But there were more. 

He fired two more bullets, taking two more out. He had no idea why they were attacking. Perhaps they were ravenous beasts that only understood violence. Maybe they were simply lost and afraid in this cold, alien world. Maybe they sensed who he was and knew he was a threat. 

Either way, he didn’t let his uncertainty weigh on him. They were in the way. They needed to be removed. 

Patrick had begun furiously scribbling on his notepad the moment the first bullet had gone off. The gunslinger wasn’t going to bank on him being able to help before he ran through his six bullets. He’d need to set up time to reload, but with how fast the monsters were coming… 

A fifth shot rang out, piercing the bodies of two at once. The first one died instantly as its head was shattered, but the second merely lost its legs and writhed on the ground silently. 

The gunslinger performed a roll in the snow, ducking under a crystalline assault. As a creature raised its arms to slice him in half, he shot it – allowing the dead form to fall onto him. It provided only a scant amount of cover, but it made the creatures pause in their relentless assault. 

The pause was only about a second, but that was enough for a trained gunslinger to reload his weapon. Six more shots. He counted seven creatures with all his senses. He didn’t like those numbers – if these beings were smart, they would know not to let him reload again. 

So he dragged it out. Instead of filling their skulls with lead in rapid succession, which he could do somewhat easily, he focused on dodging, only unleashing a bullet when it was the only way to survive. 

They were fixated on him. Despite their silence, he knew they were livid at him for what he’d done to the rest of them. Body language, even from beings that were nothing like man, was enough to go on. 

It took only twenty-three seconds for him to run through four bullets. Two shells left. Three creatures. 

The problem was the three remaining ones were the smartest, so he couldn’t bank on taking advantage of their numbers. Two moved as a team, attacking him from two directions at once. He jumped to the side, but one of their blades cut through his pants, drawing blood. It wasn’t a serious cut, but the sudden exposure of inner skin to deep cold was jarring. 

He fired his fifth bullet without aiming as well as he should have – but it was more than enough to disable one of the creatures. He realized a second later there was a way he could have used one shot to take two out there - he could have solved his problem. But he had slipped up. 

And he didn’t see the remaining two lining up to take him on.

He ducked under two blades and had to hobble over a third. Before another one could hit him, he used his last bullet. 

As expected, the last creature wouldn’t let him reload. It focused intently on his gun, trying to knock it out of his hands, making enough of a fuss to keep the gunslinger from even thinking of popping it open to reload, no matter how fast a trained gunslinger could do it. 

And then the gunslinger stepped into the snow and found a rock hidden beneath it. He slipped, falling onto his back. 

He had no choice but to try to reload, hoping the sudden movement had startled the creature enough. If he didn’t get a shot off, he was a goner. 

The creature did not give him an opportunity. It drove its sword-arm right to his chest. …Except his arm vanished before it pierced the gunslinger’s skin. 

Roland reloaded while it stared at its missing arm in shock. The creature’s glowing interior was blown out, and it fell to the ground, dead. All of them were now taken care of. 

The gunslinger let out a sigh of relief. “Good work, Patrick.”

Patrick smiled, continuing to erase the sketch of the creature he had made in his notebook. Slowly, the rest of the creature’s body began to vanish as well. 

As far as the world was concerned, that creature didn’t exist. 

The gunslinger used the rest of his bullets to kill off any creatures that were down, but not dead. He didn’t want to take any chances. “Anything hurt?”

Patrick shook his head. 

The gunslinger nodded, turning back to the path of the Beam. It took him a moment to find it – but he soon realized the bodies of the creatures had all fallen in a particular direction, pointing them forward along the snowy expanse. 

The blizzard was mostly gone now, even though it had been barely two minutes since the battle had begun. He still couldn’t see all the way to their destination, but he could see a fair distance. 

Enough to see the door standing in the middle of their path. 

“…Did you do that?” he asked Patrick.

Patrick looked at the door with curiosity and shook his head. 

“Hmm…” 

The two of them walked up to the door and examined it. The gunslinger had seen a few doors like this during their journey, doors that led elsewhere.

None of them had been made of metal, though. And the engraving on this one was different. 


|||


The three parallel lines didn’t mean anything to the gunslinger. 

He looked past the door – ahead of them was the Dark Tower, the goal of the gunslinger Roland’s long, seemingly endless journey. So close. He could almost smell the roses in the Field of Can’Ka No Rey.  

But ka had given them this door, like it had given them so many other things. In theory, he could just walk past the door and never think of it again. 

But he couldn’t not open it. 

He reached his hand out and clasped the knob. He pushed it open…


~Theater~


…the door to the theater flung outward, a single man in dark clothing walking up the aisle into the seats. The projector was running, displaying a preview he couldn’t care less about – some stupid action flick just like all the billions of others. 

He had a giant barrel of popcorn under one arm and a jumbo soda under the other. He was going to enjoy himself today and nobody was going to tell him otherwise. Not that people could, and that wasn’t just because he was the only person in the theater. That would be best. 

He plopped himself down in one of the forward-middle rows for the optimal viewing experience. The seats to his sides were soon to be occupied by his drink and his barrel of popcorn. He sat back, kicked his feet up on the seat below, and prepared himself to have a nice day. 

The theater screen faded to black. “Today’s feature is about to begin. Please silence your cell phones.”

The man who was the audience let out a laugh. There was nobody here. Who cared? Even the projector was automated. 

He was alone. 

The film began. An old, gravelly voice came from the speakers and met the man’s ears. “What you are about to witness really happened, albeit in a capacity we are not able to understand.” The previously black image faded into a background of stars that began to recede from view, eventually coming to form a galaxy while the main actor credits began to flash onscreen. “It is a tale of such size and history that the people involved stretch the definition of what we think it means to exist.” 

The galaxies pulled back further and further until they were all encompassed in a slightly blue marble, representing a universe. Other marbles filed into the field of view, each representing their own point on the Sea of Infinite Possibility. The man noticed a few inaccuracies – notably, this representation of the multiverse opted not to show the Spheres, but kept a ‘globe-like’ appearance for the multiverse as a whole. He supposed this was effectively a foreign film, so they may have simplified the appearance for what the creators believed were simple monkey-brains. 

“It is the story of why existence is the way it is today. This is the story of… the Downstreamers.”

Overtop of the entire multiverse the title card for the film appeared – simply ‘Downstreamers’. 

“It is impossible to show their experience as it was – filled with loops of time, tangles of universal manipulation, and emotions the likes of which we could never understand. But they started as humans once, and they contained a kernel of humanity with them for eternity. In order for us to understand, we will look at that humanity…”

The multiverse’s image zoomed in rapidly to a single universe, then quickly to a single Earth. Then the view zoomed into a large, metallic structure – clearly nothing like what the actual Downstreamer structures would have looked like, but futuristic enough to appeal to the audience. That’s what the filmmakers had hoped, anyway. 

Frankly, the man found it amusing they were trying to tell this story as a human one. It was clearly beyond even the filmmakers, but they were trying to anyway. 

Inside the building, a group of humans in long, silvery robes sat around a table. In the center of the table was a holographic ring with time-signatures littered all around the display. 

“We have done it,” one of the women said. “The universe has bent to our whim – time is now eternal. We are our own creation.”

“We can now move to other matters,” a man said, folding his hands together. 

“What other matters?” a younger woman asked. “That was the great Work, was it not?”

“It occurs to me that you have forgotten the existence of other realms. There is more for us to shape, councilor. Just because we have fulfilled our self-existence does not mean we have reached the highest we can. The multiverse awaits.”

There were a series of nods and noises of agreement. 

The man munched on some popcorn and shook his head. That was so, so wrong. Granted, they did come from a universe where they were responsible for their own creation, but the idea of that council? One of them forgetting something? Laughable. Just laughable. 

This bizarre documentary-adventure film was going to be a barrel of laughs…


~Harlequin~


“…and then I said, what pasta?” 

Dimitri’s parents stared at him from across the dinner table. None of them were human – rather, they were a dark-purple-skinned race of humanoids whose yellow eyes had no pupils. 

“…Dimitri,” his father said. “What was the point of that anecdote?”

“It was funny,” Dimitri said, refusing to let his smile falter. “Examine, if you will, my plate. There is a complete lack of pasta in it, and, aha, I just told a long extended story about pasta! Draw the connection… Draw the connection…”

“…Did you dump your pasta out so you wouldn’t have to eat it?”

Dimitri kept up his smile. “C’mon dad, you know that’s not how humor works. There’s clearly another use for the pasta. See, there was supposed to be a big laugh there and then I w-”

“Dimitri, stop,” his mother said, putting a hand to the bridge of her nose. “You’re a grown man. It’s time to stop with this ‘humor’ thing. I mean it.”

Dimitri raised an eyebrow and folded his arms. “It’s not like it’s hurting anyone.”

“It’s an embarrassment,” his father said, glaring. “We are not supposed to devote our mental efforts to making each other laugh.”

“Oh? Then what else are we supposed to do on the farms?”

“FARM!” his father shouted, smashing his fist into the table. 

“Yeah. You and I both know I can farm just fine while thinking about other things.”

“And you could be using that effort you put in pointless things to farm better than everyone. And here you are, squandering your gifts!”

Dimitri rolled his eyes. “Right. Look, I don’t think that’s possible, and you know damn well why.”

His father stood up, looked like he wanted to say something, but instead just walked away. 

His mother sighed. “Look, Dimitri…”

“Mom, please don’t.”

She didn’t listen to his wishes. “I know your mind is troubled. I know it’s hard. I’m not asking you to focus on the farm. I’m asking you to stop your childish games. All the others left them behind years ago.”

“They don’t know what’s good for them.”

“I don’t care if you think maintaining childish amusements is ‘better’ or not. It’s not acceptable.”

Dimitri looked at her with a hurt expression. “You know I’m not going to change.”

“…I’m not allowed to ask you anymore,” she said. For the first time, she looked away from him, ashamed herself. 

Dimitri’s stomach fell. “Mom, what is it?”

She sighed. “I just… The Chief called us in. She didn’t give us any orders but…”

“What the hell is wrong with that woman? I do my work! Why does she hate me?”

“The children, Dimitri.”

Dimitri let out a pained sigh. “…So I have to stop.”

“Yes. You do. I don’t know what the Chief will do if you don’t, but I know a threatening tone when I hear one.”

“Do I have to stop having the dreams too, then?” Dimitri said, standing up suddenly. 

“She didn’t say anything about that.” His mother shook her head. “Dimitri… it’s time to grow up.”

An image of darkness flashed through Dimitri’s mind. He turned around and stormed out of the house.

“Dimitri!”

“Don’t you dare follow me!” he called back. “Got it?”

His mother held out a hand to him – and then put it down. The life in her posture drained as she shuffled back into the house.

Dimitri walked, hands in his pockets. It was night, and the stars were visible alongside the glowing megaliths. The tremendous metal ovoids stuck out of the ground, small sections of them glowing with soft blue energy. Other than those structures, everything was simple farmland. Usually, everything was green and bright, but in the night air the scenery was dark and lonely. 

He walked along the dirt road, knowing exactly where he was going. 

That stupid Chief… She was going to get a piece of his mind. 

Telling him to stop enjoying himself? That was like telling him to lie down and die. 

He forced the smile back – it was all he had. 

All he had against… it. Them. Or whatever. He didn’t know. 

That wasn’t for him to worry about tonight. He walked across the dirt road, past a couple of fields belonging to other families, and arrived at the Chief’s house. She was the only one of them who lived alone – and was also the only one who lived in a house made from scavenged megalith metal. 

Dimitri pounded on the door. “Hey hey hey, late-night-o-gram! Come on out and get your righteous talking-to, despot!”

The Chief opened the door. Her expression was flat and emotionless. She was also younger than Dimitri’s mother, having only been the Chief for six years. “Noira was never good at keeping things from you.”

“I’m just here to clear a few things up. I’m not going to lose this smile just because you say so. That’d be like… Oh, to use a simile you’d understand, like planting corn and getting pumpkins. It’s not possible!”

“Then you’re exiled. Goodbye.” The Chief slammed the door in his face.

Dimitri twitched. “You can’t just exile me in the middle of the night! Nobody will believe you did it! And don’t you think some people will be a taaaaaad upset you’re so gung-ho to use that power of yours?”

The Chief opened the door again. “I have absolute authority. If you will not change, you are not allowed here. I cannot accept a man-child. Even if this is all due to your mental difficulties, I cannot allow anyone with your attitude to persist within this society. Maybe the children you are influencing will grow out of it. But maybe they won’t.”

“Screw you, life’s more worth living like this! I don’t see hardly any of you smile anymore! But I bet you remember what it was like!”

The Chief leaned in. “You’re supposedly smart, Dimitri. Tell me, does the average person have the ability to do what you do? Or will they accomplish less and make us all starve?”

“Oh look at you, jumping to the worst-case scenario.”

“We never have more than a single percent of extra food every winter. There are only two hundred of us. If even a handful of us don’t put our all into the work, we will starve. Children who were supposed to start work have proven to be disappointments because of your influence. We’re already going to be cutting it close this year because of you!”

Dimitri shrugged in a mocking matter. “Yeesh, maybe it’s because you’re such a hard case.”

“The empire isn’t coming back. We have to survive the freeze on our own.”

“Ahahahaha-”

The noise was offensive enough to the Chief that she punched Dimitri across the face. “Get out of my tribe.”

“Oh, you’ll let me starve?”

“Yes. Ciao.”

She slammed the door in his face. 

He forced the smile to remain. Okay, coming over here was probably a bad idea. Buuuuut I can totally show her up if I can figure out how to produce more food… He facepalmed. “Crafty little pixie…” 

He felt a chill in the air. 

“Welp! Guess I’m going into exile! Sayonara Chief! Time for me to die in the wilderness with the first snow! Or, wait, maybe I won’t! Maybe I’ll survive just fine on my own! I’ll make… Ha! I’ll find out how to make a car! What do you think of that!? I’ll bring back the stuff of the empire! See those megaliths? I’m going to climb them!”

There was no response. 

“Ahahahaha – you’ll see! You’ll all see!” He spread his arms wide and laughed harder. “It’ll all come together. And you’ll all pay for this idiocy.” He looked at the nearest megalith and set off on his journey. He didn’t care that he was moving through a cornfield, destroying precious food. Stupid. It was all stupid. 

In the past they didn’t need to focus everything on the farm. 

He’d be the hero! Yeah! Th-

A sharp pain went through his brain. He grabbed his head – but kept moving. 

He tried not to think about the image of intense fire that had just burned itself into his thoughts. He instead focused on the ancient history of the empire…


~Historian~


…it occurs to me that I am a historian and that I should perhaps do more than simply reaffirm what is already known to the children in the overly simplified education system. This notebook is going to be devoted to my thoughts on the whole history of our people, from our origins to our modern day. Our origins are quite a mystery, and it will require much consultation with the seers, but with diligence, I shall prevail and raise the new generation to appreciate the sheer scope of our existence. 

I can only hope my son will appreciate this work once it is complete. Perhaps it will serve as his gateway into the true beauty of historic research… 

…The origin of our people can be traced back to a single universe. The location of this universe has been lost to us, but we can say for certain that it was a version of Earth. (Certain? The seers agreed but perhaps ‘certain’ is too strong of a word. Consider revising.) This world is not known as an Earth to the denizens of the multiverse, however, but Xeelee. For it is the home universe of the great, scoping Xeelee. As my research has shown, their history is very intertwined with our own. We, on the other hand, were the humans of that world. (First-person. Remove later). 

In the origin universe, it was clear that we were not the masters – it was the Xeelee, always and forever. They shaped the universe and made grand pieces of technology that spanned multiple galaxies, almost always keeping to themselves, leaving abandoned ships for lesser races to discover and reverse-engineer. As mankind, we were one of the races who benefited most from their loose technology, becoming dominant over most other races. But always leagues below the Xeelee. 

Humanity tried to fight the Xeelee in a war. It was a war we thought we could win, but as always, the Xeelee were just holding back what they thought was important. (They were digital. They probably didn’t lose a single real Xeelee intelligence the entire war. Research further.) They essentially were the universe. And unlike most universe-controlling races, they did it not through magic, but pure technology, for the original universe was not a magical one. (Though not mundane. No mundane universe allows FTL. Check.) We never stood a chance.

However, there was an evil secret in the universe. A race of beings known as the Photino Birds made out of dark matter were able to meet the Xeelee at their level. How they did this is unknown. (Dark matter can’t interact with regular matter?) Soon, it became evident to the Xeelee that the universe was dying because of the Photino Birds. So they devoted their resources to creating a great Ring that would allow them to enter another universe, uncovering the multiverse…


~Grand Tour~


…Ahem. This is ‘Captain’ Nanoha Takamachi, acting in command of the Time Space Administration Bureau ship Horizon. This is the first of what I will expect to be many, many logs I make about our Grand Tour through the multiverse. 

Even though this is more of a personal journal than an official report, I guess I should still start with what we’re doing out here. Two months ago, one of my personal teams uncovered the remains of a Lost Logia Civilization unlike anything we had ever seen before. In the abandoned computerized structures, we found information. Most of it was inaccessible or complete gibberish, but some of it contained valuable information about the multiverse itself. 

It was a lot bigger than we previously thought. But now we have a map of the entire thing. A map that shows us no individual universes, but one that shows us the general shape of the ‘Spheres’. We’ve been able to deduce that we’re in the middle of the largest Sphere, but the exact relations beyond that are a big mystery. 

That map wasn’t the only thing we found. We discovered the name of the civilization that had made the technology – the Xeelee. We also found some ancient multiversal teleportation technology. We tried to use it to go somewhere, but it didn’t work. Instead, it dragged someone here from a distant part of the multiverse. We now know her name was Rarity, though it did take a while to learn her language. And get her to trust us. 

I told her I would get her home. That’s probably the main reason this Grand Tour is happening, though I had to convince the rest of command that it would be useful for the TSAB to learn as much as we could about places far, far away. Had to pull a lot of strings, but sometimes it helps to be the ‘White Devil’. It didn’t take long to get the Horizon fresh off the assembly line, already equipped with the best dimensional drive in the fleet. It took a couple of weeks to retrofit it for an extended journey, but in that time I got the crew together. 

I would have chosen Fate or Hayate as my commander, but it wouldn’t be good for two of us to be gone – it does pain me to leave Fate like this… …I did choose Signum for my commander, and she brought Vita along with her. I look forward to working with the two of them again, just like old times. 

I also have an alternate version of myself on board! We call her Nano. She’s adorable. Every bit as plucky and powerful as I was back then, though perhaps a bit optimistic. I think Vita will be able to whip her into shape easily enough, and her crewmates will be able to show her how things are done. 

It’s still weird to think of alternate versions of ourselves being out in the multiverse. To think we only discovered this recently! 

Oh, both Nakajima sisters are here as well, Subaru and Ginga. I expect great things from them working as a team. I hope their skills won’t be required, but there’s always going to be a need for a fight. They need to be here as much as anyone.

Rarity is part of the crew as well, I wouldn’t discount her as just a ‘passenger’. She’s going to be a bit of a specialist in diplomacy as well as non-standard magic. Her horn is so fascinating. The trouble I had to go through to keep the scientists off her was… more than I would have expected. 

I’ve gotten to know her well over the past two months. I’m glad I’m finally taking her on this journey to find her home, wherever it may be…


~Twilence~


…Rarity ran up the entry ramp to the Orchid. “I’m sorry! I can’t come along!”

I looked up from the controls. “Huh? Why n-” I suddenly became aware that my Awareness was being blocked. This realization shocked me into stopping the sentence. 

Creek spoke up – she was an aging woman in a simple brown getup, but with an amazing smile despite it all. “What’s happened, Rarity?”

“The Empress needs me to watch a world undergoing a major plague,” Rarity said, lighting her horn and running through some white magic warmups. “You can go without me today. I won’t mind.”

“Hey, ever think if we mind!?” Vriska asked.

“No,” Rarity deadpanned.

“Savage,” a synthetic voice said – one that couldn’t be seen. It wasn’t the voice of the ship though; it was the voice of Mite, a nanobot who was as much a part of the team as anyone else. 

I rolled my eyes. “I would say have fun, but that sounds like it’s going to be dreadful.”

Rarity laughed nervously. “You’ve got that right… I do have to go.”

“Come?” Mite asked.

“No, you shouldn’t come, I need to be a healing Mage, not a bringer of desolation. No offense, but you’re all very distracting magnets for trouble. ”

“That’s not offending, that’s exactly what I fucking want to be!” Vriska said, leaning back in her chair. “Check it.”

“…Check it?” Creek asked.

“Check it!”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “See you when you get back. Or not. I have no idea how long this will take.” She galloped out of the Orchid to the rest of the Void, running to her mission. 

I tapped my hoof on the controls. “So, everyone? Something’s up. Something in my vision is being blocked.”

“The adventure we’re about to go on?” Creek asked.

“Hm? Oh, no. I’ve got that, know exactly where we’re going. What I don’t have is the narrative we’re in. We are being watched right now, but the sequence of words is being shrouded from me. And that never happens unless…”

“Unless…?” Mite asked.

“Well, me from the metafuture exerts her influence.” I blinked, pondering this. “I suppose the rest of the story could be something happening in the future rather than simultaneously with us, so I didn’t want to spoil myself to the neighboring stories.”

“You never cease to amaze me,” Vriska said. “Seriously, just able to ‘know’ things you don’t ‘know’. Wish I could do that.”

“Work on your reasoning skills,” I suggested.

“Savage!” Mite beeped.

“I sense a redundant robot,” Vriska ribbed.

“Quiet.”

“Did you just tell me to shut up?”

“Yes.”

“Calm down,” Creek said, shaking her head slowly.

I smiled warmly. “You know it’s just how they work.”

Creek nodded. “Still…”

Vriska smirked. “Still what? Still think we should have stopped this by now? News flash, lady, we like fucking with each other.”

“Interesting.”

“Don’t you get started on my word choice.”

“Starting…”

Vriska facepalmed. “Twilence, I call treason.”

“I call amusing,” I said, pressing a few of Orchid’s buttons. “Setting off. Creek?”

“Opening random portal,” Creek said laying her hand on the screen. The Orchid shifted through several different colors on its display, settling on a blue-green. The dimensional drive activated, taking us into orbit around a nice, green planet with a single large city. 

We, of course, didn’t go right to the city. We set down in the area we were directly above. Some jungle in the middle of nowhere. 

I felt importance here. 

This would definitely mean something to the Twilence of the future…


~Merodi~


Year 76


…Twilence is missing.”

Corona looked up from her work on the Shaping Mechanism – currently, she was experimenting with an empty universe, trying to get it to connect to other universes in a ‘natura-physical’ manner. “So? Doesn’t she vanish a lot?”

Eve nodded. “Yeah, she does, except she said she was going to talk to me today. So either she didn’t know she was going to be caught up in something, or she wanted me to notice when she didn’t show up.”

Corona blinked. “Ahh… right, of course she would do that. Totally fits her modus operandi.”

Eve groaned. “But if she didn’t know, that’s worse. She said she could only partially see the final chapter before the ‘uncertainty’ and…” She put a hoof to her face “Right, calm down Evening, you’re better than this now.”

“Debatable,” Corona said with a smirk, reaching into her battle-dress.

“Hey! I deal with wars of lesser worlds on an almost daily basis. I think I’ve made progress.”

“Progress, yes,” Corona admitted, not continuing the conversation further. “Sai, ka scan.”

“I’ve been checking already…”

The Sombra AI flashed purple. “Ka energy detected. We’re being watched, amigas.”

Eve blinked. “But I’ve been checking ever since Twilence vanished!” She pulled out her own ka sensor – which also gave a reading in the positive. “…The Dark Tower sure has a sense of humor.”

“It took you a few centuries to figure that out?”

“It’s only been one!.”

“Are you counting time loops, time dilation, time spent in simulations, and other extra time?” Corona asked.

Eve blinked. “Okay, fine, I’ve probably been out in the multiverse longer than a few centuries. Point?”

“None. Just an observation. Frankly, I should probably be concerned that we are being watched. That means we’re in ‘the last thing’ she can see, right?”

Eve nodded. “Right. After this, Twilence’s visions go blank - or somewhere in the middle of this. Though ‘this’ chapter, for all I know, could last a few years or something. Or might not even involve us! We could just be comic relief!”

“Eve, calm down, you’re stressing out too much.”

“I know, I know…” Eve shook her head.

“Why did you come here?”

“I uh…” Eve blinked. “Ponyfeathers, I don’t think I thought about that. I just… felt like coming.”

“So you didn’t check anywhere before coming here?”

“I checked the system for her. She has a very distinctive magic signature, so we’d be able to see her unless she was trying to hide. …If she was in Merodi Universalis space. I didn’t try anything else though.” 

“Guess that means I have to be involved then,” Corona said, pulling out a phone. “I’m calling Starbeat.”

“Why would I come here?” Eve muttered. “What even was my thought process?”

Corona shrugged. “I guess the Tower decided that, since you were aware of tropes, you didn’t need to have any sort of internal reasoning for doing what needed to happen.”

Eve blinked. “Huh.”

“Yep, par for the course. Us being cosmic playthings and all.” Corona’s phone finally finished dialing Starbeat. “Hey, Starbea-”

“It was fated that I would not be at the phone when you called. Please leave a message.”

Corona blinked. “...Funny.”

“Eh…” Eve held out a wing and tipped it side to side. 

“Right. So. Find Twilence.” Corona folded her arms. “Any ideas?”

“I came to you, didn’t I?”

“You weren’t allowed to think. You can think now.”

“I think finding Twilence is like following a roadrunner moving backwards through time.”

Corona pondered this. “That’s actually a good metaphor.”

Eve chuckled. “Regardless, we can always try the Pinkies. They might have some idea. Or Vriska.”

“Both good options.” Corona twirled her phone. 

“Our Pinkie is running the Austraeoh around the multiverse right now, so she’s probably not available.”

“Why’s she doing that?”

“I’m not sure. Renee’s having the rest of her team run a mission while she is, so I don’t think it’s anything major. She might just be having some fun while O’Neill’s not in command.”

“Gotcha.” Corona dialed Scooter’s number. “Hey, Scoote-”

“The script says I’m supposed to say I can’t talk to you.” She hung up. 

Corona stared at her phone. “…Great.”

“And Vriska’s out adventuring. Calling her right now might not be the best idea. So…”

“Detective work time,” Corona said, clapping her hands together. “Where was she last seen?”

“She walked into a bathroom. She didn’t come out. No, there were not any teleportation signatures, I wasn’t that absent-minded.”

Corona sighed. “Okay then… to the Void?”

“Oh, right! Their Rarity might know where she is!”

“Or have some way to track her or something.” She held up her phone again. “Okay, third time’s the charm…”

Eve’s phone started ringing. Slowly, she levitated it in front of her face and answered, turning on her ears and putting it on speakerphone. “…Hello?”

Eve’s Second – no longer Cessera, but a sirnight called Evin – responded. “Just got a report you might want to hear. About the same time Twilence vanished, Arceus did as well.”

Eve stared at the phone. “Arceus?! What could make him disappear?”

“Don’t know. He was on Celestia City at the time.”

“I’ll head right over,” Eve said. “Give me all the files you have.” She hung up and turned her ears back off. “Guess we know where we’re going.”

Corona nodded. “To our great city!”


~Mother~


A mother with white hair walked through the city, trotting along the sidewalk. Hovercars of all shapes and designs moved swiftly across the street, causing a significant surge of wind, but not enough to make the mother uncomfortable. Her dress ruffled from the air currents, causing the bow on her back to flap like wings. The smile on her face brightened even further as she felt the wind on her face.

Today was a good day. 

She walked out of the city proper, a small bag in her hand. It held within it an ancient record she couldn’t wait to get home and play. Something from beyond a long time ago. So far in the past nobody could comprehend. It gave her chills just thinking about it. Something ancient that so few people had heard… just found recently. 

She hoped her family loved it – her husband was the one who had introduced her to music, after all. Her daughter didn’t have the taste her parents had, but she was known to enjoy older tunes from time to time. Though she was in her rebellious phase, so that might put a dampener on the evening…

The mother decided not to let herself worry about that. If her daughter decided to throw one of her fits, well, she would be dealt with. She didn’t have to make backup plans ahead of time. Because that would just be a bit excessive for something as innocuous as an ancient record. 

She stopped a moment to smell some roses growing in a public garden – the fragrance was simply divine. It was also an indication that she was leaving the center of the city, heading toward the more ‘rural’ areas, even though such a description wasn’t exactly apt for a settlement such as this. 

The buildings and cars gave way to emptier roads and natural greenery of mostly undeveloped ‘country’. Without the structures in the way, she could see much of the beauty of her world. The trees in the forest tangled together in a wild web alongside the road, the sound of chirping birds, and she swore she could hear young children playing in the distance.

She took a moment to look up at the sky – a truly unique sight. There was no sun, there was no moon – it wasn’t even blue. Instead, she saw a complex mesh of swirling spheres. Some of the more distant ones glowed like stars, providing light to the world. Others were dim and rocky, while still others were blue and green and covered in clouds. Some were close, while others were so far away they blended into a static pattern of sorts. 

Always beautiful. She wondered if the blue-green world she was looking up at was one of the settled ones. Since the nested spheres always rearranged themselves in largely unpredictable patterns, there wasn’t really any way she could tell without a telescope. 

She shrugged. She could try to find out which planet she was looking at another day. It wasn’t like there was any rush around here. 

She eventually arrived at her chosen home – a simple cottage settled into the forest. Sure, it had all the modern conveniences – electricity, internet, magic teleporter to the city proper – but it still seemed rustic. Plus, she liked the scenery and the walks. She opened the door, walking into a nicely furnished living room/entryway combination. Her daughter was sitting on the couch, watching the holographic television. The teenage girl wore a black dress, sharp green lipstick, and had pale hair tipped with green dye. She barely noticed her mother come in. 

The mother walked up to the countertop, taking out the ancient record. 

Cloud Atlas. The words spoke to her with power. It was an Earth symphony, she knew, but not one that had existed in most Earths. It was a rare one. Which made it all the more special. 

She rummaged around through several drawers, looking for the old record player. Eventually, she found the device and set it next to the Cloud Atlas symphony. She prepared the needle and placed the record down, bringing the instruments of old back to life. The notes filled the mother with emotion – a strange feeling of loneliness and struggle in a complicated life. 

Turning to her daughter, a frown crossed her features. The girl looked so alone there, staring at the hologram, eyes nearly lifeless…

She had friends, her mother knew, but… well, they weren’t the closest.

Maybe she needed siblings. …It’s a bit late, but I wonder what that would have done for her…


~Grand Tour~


…This is Ginga Nakajima!”

“And this is Subaru Nakajima!”

“And we’re here to give a double report about the mission undertook for the Horizon.”

“You mean to give a double report about how awesome we were!?”

“…Yes, Subaru, that might work.”

“Right, so, get this, Rarity, Ginga and I were exploring a new universe that was absolutely covered in donuts.”

“There were some bagels.”

“Yeah, yeah, bagels, I know, but mostly donuts.”

“And donut holes.”

“Ginga, you’re ruining the tape!”

“We must strive for accuracy.”

“Accuracy does not mean awesome.”

“It can in this case. I saved you with accuracy.”

“A-psh, let’s not worry about that. Let’s talk about the world of donuts. Which was inhabited by little sprinkle-people. Who were adorable. Almost as adorable as Nano. …Actually, are we allowed to call her adorable anymore? She’s going through that teenage phase, right?”

“I don’t know. She spends most of her time with Vita. You’d have to ask her.”

“Aaaaanyway, adorable sprinkle people, check. People who love Rarity, check. Endless amounts of food, holy check. It had all the signs of a mission that would go great. We could be back on the Horizon in time for lunch and not even need lunch!”

“Well, we did get back before lunch and not need lunch.”

“Remember what I said about accuracy?”

“It makes you look silly?”

“…Right, that’s fair. Really fair, actually. Ouch.”

“Ahem. As should be pretty clear by Subaru’s lead-in, we did not have a simple easy time. The sprinkle-people turned out to be cannibals and thought we would be the best-tasting sprinkles of all time. So they led us into a trap. They took Rarity captive first, because she had demonstrated great magical power. We, of course, a-”

“We were awesome. Our Devices activated and WHOOSH the light bridges knocked the sprinkle-people over and PCHOOO we picked up Rarity and ran off!”

“At which point it turned out that the donuts were living creatures and didn’t like all the commotion. Not by any stretch of the imagination. We were devoured by a Klein-bottle effect – passing through a hole and ending up inside a donut.”

“Of course we broke out.”

“I broke out. I found the point at which the inner spatial distortion worked in reverse and threw us out the other end. Covered in donut jelly, but alive.”

“Then there were the sprinkle fighter pilots. They approached us from all sides, firing their adorable little colored bullets.”

“Adorable, but still dangerous enough to break the skin. I was in the medical pod for a wound to the stomach until just a little while ago.”

“Yeah, it was colorful, but deadly. And how did we escape you ask? What amazing thing did we do to get the three of us out of the sprinkle death-zone? What possibly could have been done…?”

“We opened a portal back to the Horizon and fell at Nanoha’s feet.”

“Ginga…”


~Tower~


Patrick tripped on the bottom part of the metallic doorframe as he followed Roland of Gilead, gunslinger, through the ‘|||’ door. He managed to keep enough of his wits about him to avoid falling over. 

He glanced behind him. The door hadn’t closed. There was still a chill coming from the snowy lands on the other side, but he already felt warm in this new place. 

Roland noticed less the temperature and more the place he was in. It wasn’t anything like what he had seen his entire journey across multiple worlds. Not Mid-World, not Keystone Earth, not any of the others that had been glimpsed along the way. 

The floor was made entirely out of a smooth, amber-like substance that, upon closer inspection, was riddled with a hexagon pattern. This floor turned slowly upward to create the walls of a lengthy hallway, sloped in such a way that one couldn’t call the hall a square, but couldn’t call it a circle either. Something in between. 

Along these walls were any number of technological devices. Roland had seen more than a few instances of higher technology on his journeys, including a bullet train equipped with full artificial intelligence, but he somehow knew that what he saw now was beyond even that. Some shapes he could recognize – metallic, artificial arms, legs, bodies, and heads. Some were simply alien. Crystals that floated in the air, affixed to nothing. Weapons that seemed to be made of clouds. Images projected in midair, glowing softly, changing with every minute shift in the world around them. 

He was positive one of those images was watching him. Whenever he moved his arm, an area of it changed color. 

There were also the truly inscrutable items. Objects that folded in and out of existence. Words that flew across a screen in complete gibberish that somehow put Roland on edge. A fruit that made Roland certain there was a skull inside of it, rather than a pit. Strands of light tied together into webs… 

He could tell this was either a laboratory or treasure trove. He wasn’t sure which was better. Laboratory suggested the person who had made these things was still around. Treasure trove indicated there was probably a guardian of some kind. 

He glanced behind them. The door they had come out of was affixed to a wall composed of the same amber-material. Above the metal door was a word Roland couldn’t read, but he somehow knew it said Mid-world. 

The snow had started to blow in the door, melting along the amber floor. 

He knew the Dark Tower would wait. Time meant nothing to it. It was still calling to him, demanding that he come – but it was also calling him into this hall. This hall of experimentation. 

Roland moved forward, boots making dull sounds against the almost rubbery floor. He moved slowly, always ready for one of the esoteric devices to reveal itself to be an automatic weapon. He knew, deep down, that if any of these constructions truly wanted to kill him, there would be little he could do. No amount of reality-bending sketching and legendary pistols would do anything against weapons of this magnitude. It would be blink and then dead in an instant. 

Nothing turned to attack them. There were a few things that reacted to their presence, but only in such a way that updated information. Nothing lashed out with the intent to dismember. Their silent journey was accompanied only by the occasional interested beep or magical sparkling noise. 

Roland stopped short. He turned to his left, looking closely at a singular projection of seemingly magical energy. It contained three different sized spheres, in the center of which was a bright white point of energy. Bright white wires went to and from the Spheres in the middle, and a single, long wire snaked around the outside of the Spheres. In the center was a brilliant, holy pinprick of light that drew Roland’s attention. 

Roland didn’t know why, but he was struck by how small it was. Even though he knew it represented something beyond tremendous. 

“…Every ‘atom’…” he said.

Patrick looked at him quizzically.

“The man in black once told me that, in every blade of grass, there are countless worlds… It looked almost like that… In some way.”

Patrick glanced at the image. He lifted his pencil.

“Don’t,” Roland said, holding up a hand. He wasn’t sure how far Patrick’s powers went, but he didn’t think testing them like that would be wise. 

Roland stared at the image a little longer. The Tower is the center of Creation. The Tower is connected to all. ...This is its domain.

“Let’s go,” Roland said, continuing down the hall. Patrick took a moment to stare at the image, but quickly scrambled after the gunslinger. 

The hall was long, but not endless. They eventually came to an arch that led into a wide, domed area. There were no experimental devices on the walls of this room – they were adorned with mathematical designs intertwined together to form beautiful art. Circles upon circles twisted together in thousands of different intricate patterns. 

Patrick stared at the beautiful cycles with awe. As an artist, he quickly felt a deep connection to the visual stimuli. 

Roland was never one for aesthetics, but even he could understand the effort that must have gone into the designs. 

The center of the room was a column of white energy. It was flickering, clearly low on the energy it needed to perpetuate itself, but it stood despite the difficulty. All around it were floating, substanceless ‘screens’ displaying numbers Roland couldn’t read. 

For a moment, Roland thought he saw a tower form in the white light. …A Bright Tower…? No. Maybe that was what it was intended to be, but it was nothing compared to the might of the Dark Tower. It was just the center of this place, not everything. Not even close to everything. 

“You’ve become very in-tune with the Tower, gunslinger.”

The voice came from everywhere at once. It wasn’t aggressive; rather, it was quite friendly. This did not stop Roland from drawing his gun and Patrick raising his pencil. 

“Do not worry, I have no intention of harming you. I doubt the Dark Tower would let me.”

“Who are you?” Roland demanded.

“…My name is not pronounceable by your tongue. You can call me Weaver...”


~Historian~


…Like the Weavers of old, the Xeelee were builders of great cosmic structures. They were able to manipulate stars and galaxies with relative ease even before they found the greater multiverse. After they had uncovered a few different realms, they found themselves already at the power of a Class 2 civilization, far beyond most of the other multiversal societies they ran across. They found more efficient ways to bend physics, more ways to loop time through several universes, and more ways to fight the Photino Birds. They eventually destroyed their home universe to end the Photino Bird threat once and for all. And they kept growing – growing stronger, better, more… (Find a better way to phrase this. They’re powerful, everyone gets it, needs to be less ham-fisted.) 

They ascended to Class 1 faster than any other society in recorded history. They had the technology, the infrastructure, and the power – they just happened to discover and use dimensional travel last of all. They currently sit among the other Class 1 societies as the newest member, and the only one to have reached that position by technological prowess alone. (Possibly others in the deeper past? Hard to confirm, Class 1 documents from before this point are hard to find.) 

We are not the Xeelee. We are the descendants of the humans that lived in their universe. We escaped with them and were protected by them. For the longest time, we simply moved on the whims of the dimensional currents, in whatever universe the Xeelee decided to open portals to. There was no contact. However, while the Xeelee ignored our ancestors’ presence, they also ignored magic. (Ignored… No, they didn’t ignore it, they just decided they didn’t need to use it.) To them, technology was always the only way. They took (and still take) great pride in their ability to climb to the highest rank without resorting to ‘cheating’. (This entire thing is going to need a hacksaw taken to it to get it professional.)

The ancestors did not ignore magic. They took it as their own, using it as a way to separate themselves from the Xeelee’s shadow. They became known as simply the Arcane Tribe. They developed a much lesser multiversal society within the shadow of the Xeelee, using their magic to create their own methods of dimensional travel. The first world they took was called Alomomola, the details of which are…

…The Arcane Tribe developed much over several generations. (Best guess is 120 years, but there were a lack of historians among the early ancestors, making my job just THIS much more difficult.) They honed their magic craft, studying dimensional connections and the relations between emotions and reality. (Scientific anecdote should go here. Perhaps I should talk to one of the professors to get a better idea of what this actually means.) 

The society was structured based on an elder council system, the oldest and wisest calling all the shots. Different sub-tribes acted mostly independently, and over the years they diverged into their own groups…

…and this sub-tribe is the one that found the Prognosticus, that ancient book of fate itself that changed the course of history. Within were secrets of metatime, of the future of all worlds, and of deep secrets on the nature of physics itself. The sub-tribe now had access to a powerful tool none had ever seen before. A source of reliable information about what they didn’t know.

(If only the stupid book wasn’t so vague all the time. They would have been able to see it coming…)


~Merodi~


“…you think he would have seen it coming,” Corona said as she and Eve walked onto the scene of Arceus’ disappearance in Celestia City – the back alley behind Burgerbelle’s Bradburger establishment. The Flat in question was talking with Allure while Celestia City’s normal cops and investigators combed the area. 

“He does have a lot of awareness and power, but he’s still physical in a sense,” Eve said. “He probably just wanted a bradburger.”

“He doesn’t have a mouth,” Corona pointed out.

“He could have a mouth, if he wanted.”

Allure noticed them. She nodded curtly to Burgerbelle and jumped over. “So, is the political pressure enough that you two got sent in?”

Eve blinked. “Actually, no, we’re just here because his disappearance coincides curiously with that of Twilence.”

“Oh, a regular conspiracy then?” Allure rolled her eyes. “Fun times.” She levitated a data pad out and handed it to them, her metal horn sparking slightly. “Need to get this thing tuned up…”

“Sooner rather than later is better,” Eve said, glancing at the pad. It showed a single video feed. Arceus was walking down the back alley, alone, and then he was just gone. No sign of a dimensional portal, wormhole, or anything. Not visually, anyway. “What do the scanners have to say?”

“Dimensional translation,” Corona said, sifting through the data using Raging Sights. “Why hasn’t it been followed?”

“Because the universe doesn’t exist or has been moved,” Allure said. “It was the first thing anyone did once they realized he was gone. Tried to follow the signature. But no, poof, gone.”

“And we’ve got nothing else?”

Allure shook her head. “Don’t even recognize the method that took him.”

“It has to be something powerful,” Corona said. “He has the most raw power of any single entity in Merodi Universalis. Even the Class 1s would probably face more damage than they’d like taking him out without outright destroying the universe he’s in.”

“Maybe that’s what they did. Dragged him to a universe with less people and destroyed it,” Eve suggested.

“Who would want to do that though?”

“It’s not exactly a secret that he’s responsible for sending Ash on that path of war.” Eve furrowed her brow. “But there’s nobody in Merodi Universalis or around it that would have that complaint against him and be able to do something about it. Even you would have difficulty doing anything to him with the Shaping Mechanism.”

Corona nodded slowly. “It could be done though. Wouldn’t look like this, but it could be done.” 

Eve furrowed her brow. “We need more information. Allure, who’s the lead investigator here?”

“Uh, me?” Allure raised an incredulous eyebrow. “What, do I not look like a detective to you?”

Eve flushed. “Ah. Sorry. I just…”

“Relax,” Allure said. “So, what do you need the lead investigator for?”

“More information. Specifically, what Arceus was doing here.”

“Exploring Celestia City,” Allure said. “He doesn’t exactly rule his world directly, you know. He has free time.”

“I’m well aware of Arceus’ relation to his people,” Eve said. “I mean, I find it weird that they all agree to let someone represent them when that someone doesn’t actually rule any of their governments, but to each their own. I just need to know what was happening while he was here.”

“He was talking to Burgerbelle. He was apparently curious about the history and origin of Flats. And let’s be honest here, who isn’t once they figure out Flats exist?”

“It is a rather jarring realization,” Corona admitted. 

“Do we know why he was in Celestia City?”

“Sightseeing,” Allure said with a shrug. “Sorry, the guy just wanders around when he’s not busy, which is a lot of the time. Different worlds and cultures interest him. This is not the first time we’ve seen him around – though it is the first time he just vanished.”

“And why was he in the alley?”

Allure blinked. “It was just the way he ended up walking? Burgerbelle just said he walked that way after talking to her for a while. Could have been random.”

“Or ka,” Eve said.

“Always ka…” Corona muttered. “I’m growing to hate it more and more as time goes on.”

“Eh, yeah, it causes its problems. But it is what it is.”

Corona looked like she wanted to object to this, but decided it wasn’t the time for that. “So we have no information about where Arceus went or what happened to him, all we know for certain is that he vanished about the same time as Twilence. So we know we’re onto something, but we have no real leads.”

“Yeah, and Blumiere’s breathing down my back to figure something out about this,” Allure said, scratching the back of her head.

“Blumiere is also standing right behind you,” Blumiere said.

Allure facehooved. “Gotta love it when that happens. Hi! I don’t have anything for you.”

“I figured as much…” Blumiere said, tapping his fingers on his cane. “Pokèrin Anima found out.”

“…Ponyfeathers,” Allure muttered.

“They’re not likely to resort to violence or take it out on us, but there is going to be a deep turmoil within their society.” He adjusted his hat. “We need to solve this quickly.”

“Well, no leads, besides a curious interconnectivity,” Corona said. “I think we need to get a hold of Starbeat or another ka expert.”

“Or just use the scanners,” Blumiere said. “We have advanced computers on the subject. Or, if that’s obfuscated, just manipulate fate slightly.”

“That could work,” Eve admitted. “But it’s also just as likely to backfire. I’d rather have an expert on board before doing that, if you don’t mind. Unless some new information comes to light…” She lit her eye with the symbol of Light, smirking. 

She’d played her cards right. At that moment, Jade appeared from a dimensional portal, the reality-anchor bracelet on her arm. “John’s missing.”

Allure gasped. “Oh no!”

“That’s… That’s really bad,” Corona said. “Twilence, Arceus, John…”

“There’s a pattern here,” Eve said. “Powerful individuals with abilities relating to the alteration of reality on large scales. …A new Collector?”

“The Collector wouldn’t be able to pull this one off.”

“A bigger, badder one?”

“Whatever it is, they have John,” Allure said. “Not only is he our friend, but if anyone uses him, everything could die.”

“Suddenly risking ka manipulation consequences doesn’t seem so bad,” Eve said. “Right, charter a ship with full ka capabilities. Advanced, but also as soon as possible.”

“The Austraeoh is docked,” Blumiere pointed out. 

Eve didn’t let the ‘coincidence’ give her pause. “Then let’s take it. Hope Pinkie won’t mind.”

“I’m sure she’ll want nothing more than to help us find where they’ve gone,” Allure asserted…


~Mother~


…where have you been, Osanna?” the mother asked her daughter.

Osanna froze in her tracks. “M-mom!” She whirled around, putting on an innocent smile. Her mother was leaning on the counter, the record player having long since finished Cloud Atlas and now just making scratching noises. “Y-you’re awake!”

“Decided to get some reading done while listening to the symphony. Realized the time a bit too late – too engrossed in the book, you understand – and I noticed you weren’t here. I figured you’d come back soon. But then you didn’t show.”

“Ah, well, guess since we don’t have a day-night cycle here I ju-”

“You’ve never been in a place with a day-night cycle, Osanna.”

Osanna nodded slowly. “Riiiight, but biologically speaking it should still be ingrained into m-”

“Where were you, Osanna?”

“Y’know, shopping.”

“You don’t have any shopping bags.”

“Window shopping.”

“You’re not one to window shop. Or to go on random shopping sprees.” 

“Why do you have to know where I’ve been anyway?”

“I don’t, but the fact that you don’t want to tell me is very very suspicious.”

Osanna opted to stop looking flustered and instead get angry. “Who cares if I’m suspicious? I can do what I want?”

“You’re fifteen.”

“Nala’s four.”

“Nala is an artificial intelligence born with the experiences of her predecessors. You are not.” The mother folded her arms. “If you’re doing something I wouldn’t approve of, it’s my job to find out what it is and make you stop.”

“Like you could stop me.”

“I could resort to tracking you. You wouldn’t even know.”

“That’s an invasion of privacy!”

“I agree, but there’s no law against it. If you’re not going to tell me what’s happening I’ll have to find out other ways.”

“Why not just let me do whatever I want, huh? Ever think about that?”

“If I let you do whatever you wanted you would have cut your arm off at the factory.”

“I was a kid.”

“You were thirteen.”

“So? Thirteen’s still a kid.”

“And fifteen isn’t?”

“No! In most human cultures I’d b-”

“Put to backbreaking labor.”

“Stop interrupting me!”

The mother folded her hands and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe if you had a point that wasn’t spoken in anger, I’d let you finish.”

Osanna ground her teeth. “How am I not supposed to be angry?”

“Well, I’m livid that you’re basically lying to me through your teeth, and that you’re clearly out doing something wrong, but you don’t see me shouting at you, do you?”

“Oh don’t you pull the high and mighty card. You raise your voice too! All those biting little jabs are anger as well.”

“True,” the mother admitted. “Who do you think looks better in this conversation?”

Osanna twitched. “Why do you always have to be the right one, huh?”

“Because I know a lot more than you about life.”

“Ha! You don’t even know what I’ve bee-!”

“Jadan.”

Osanna paled. “W-wh…”

“I was hoping you’d just tell me, prove to me that you’d at least own up and think you could defend him to me, but no.”

“How did you find out!?”

“I got worried when you weren’t coming back, so I tracked down some of your friends, asked them where you were. Had to get one of their mothers involved to get any information, but I found it. Or, rather, him.”

“Why can’t I j-”

“You can have a boyfriend, and in fact I encourage it. What is not okay is not telling me about it. And then hiding what you’re doing. I know very little about Jadan – I know his family is complete trash, but that’s it. And were this another situation I’d love to meet him. But you’ve turned this into something that isn’t about him. It’s about you being dishonest.” She took a step forward, glaring. 

“You would never have said he was okay!”

“Maybe not. But by trying to hide him, you’ve made sure of that.”

Osanna’s features twisted into surprise, then deep sorrow, then rage. “FUCK YOU!”

“And we’ve devolved into swears. Brilliant. How a-”

Osanna ran out the door, leaving her mother’s once-confident face suddenly one of deep uncertainty and fear. 

“Osanna!”

Osanna didn’t look back. She just ran…


~Harlequin~


…Dimitri ran through the wilds of his world, approaching the megalith. 

The tremendous metallic structure glowed blue near the top, but the bottom was completely dead as far as he knew. Granted, his people never went near these things; all the metal material they had was from the remnants they found while farming – fragments buried deep within the earth over the eons. They were all too busy to explore.

They came from a time when the empire was still around. Dimitri didn’t even know how long ago that was. 

What he did know was that he was exiled and he had something to prove. 

Images flashed through his mind, making him stumble across the grassy hills. He saw the terrors of his mind screaming, telling him to stay away from the megalith. To avoid the fire. 

He wasn’t going to do any such thing. Screw the nightmares. They were just his brain tormenting him, as it always had. Always. 

Always.

He ran inside the megalith. At the ground level, there were holes in the shell easily large enough for him to walk through. The interior’s floor was made of dirt similar to that outside – though for all he knew this was just an eternity’s-worth of dust on top of the real floor of the megalith. The walls were metal, and the only things inside were large pieces of scaffolding. This far down, virtually everything was broken – but he could see blue lights far above him. 

He did some quick calculations, looking for the optimum path to the top. The pieces of scaffolding were at steep angles in many places, and not all of them connected properly… It would be a long climb, and if he fell he would easily die. 

Really, though, who cared about that? Not the Chief, not the town, not his father. Maybe his mother. Maybe. 

She still found him an embarrassment. 

Only the children would really care, and they would be taught to forget he ever existed: the man with the broken mind. 

He didn’t deliberate anymore. He grabbed hold of one of the broken railings, pulling himself up a steep metal slope. He put all the strength he could into his arms, pulling himself higher and higher. He had been prepared for the scaffolding to slip from his motion, but it was made of sterner stuff than that. No matter what he did, he couldn’t budge the scaffolding anymore than it already was.

It made him wonder what had managed to break these things. There were few sharp edges, mostly bends in the metallic substance, with perhaps a few pieces missing. As if the lower levels had been run through some sort of pasta maker and then allowed to dry wherever they ended up. 

As he got higher and higher – a feat which took multiple hours of climbing, though given his lifestyle this wasn’t that much of a strain on him – the lights got closer and the scaffoldings became less and less warped. He was soon able to climb up actual ladders instead of walking on them awkwardly, and found that he no longer had to pull himself up angled walkways. Everything was leveling out. 

Some of the blue lights came from mechanical devices in the wall that were beyond Dimitri’s knowledge. Flashes of inspiration may have flickered in his mind – lightning, wires, and tremendous spheres of white light – but he ignored them. 

But he did see something that really caught his eye. Near the top of the megalith there was a platform swirling with blue energy. He felt it call to him. 

He walked up a small flight of stairs toward the swirl. He was breathing heavily, but he barely noticed. All he saw was the light. The energy. 

Inwardly, he screamed. He shoved that out of his mind. 

He pressed his hand into the vortex. 

DOWN. DOWN. DOWN. DOWN. DOWN. 

“SHUT UP!” He shouted. It reacted to his deep, passionate emotion – and he was flooded with the power within. His hands sparkled with quadrilateral shapes, sparkling like he was part of some digitized environment. 

Not that he understood this. He just thought they were squares and rectangles flowing all over his body. 

A normal person would have screamed. Dimitri laughed. He had no idea what any of this was, but he already loved it. It felt… right.

Also wrong, but he hadn’t gone through much in life without feeling both. 

The strange power shot forth from his hands and tore a square hole in reality. On the other side, he saw a world where the grass was blue, the sky was a dull rust-red, and there were two moons. 

There was also a purple-haired woman with dark brown skin trying in vain to fight off a strange monster made of shadow and bone. It gnashed its teeth at her, ready to devour another meal. 

Dimitri acted without thinking. He snapped his fingers, prompting a black wireframe box to appear around the shadowy beast. The box seemed to twirl before compressing the beast into a two-dimensional image. The beast couldn’t comprehend its new existence – it tried to run away, but tripped on an object that had depth it couldn’t see. It fell down, flat against the ground. 

With another finger snap, Dimitri crumpled the beast into nothing. “Voila!” He noticed the woman looking at him. He made a quick bow. “And you have been saved by my… magic.” 

The woman looked at him and smiled. “Thank you.”

“Ah, it is but another day in the life of Dimitri. Perhaps not the most normal of days, but every day is another day is it not? By definition.”

The woman chuckled. 

Dimitri stared at her in disbelief. Even if she wasn’t a member of his race, she clearly was fully grown. “This is quite unexpected. Someone who finds me amusing?”

“You’ve got the gusto of a performer, of course I do,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m Thea.”

Dimitri eagerly grabbed her hand in his own. “It’s great to meet you! You wouldn’t believe the life I’ve had.”

“Oh, wanna swap stories? I’ve got a lot! Not to mention I’m very curious about that square thing behind you.”

“A portal. A way to travel from one realm to another…”


~Twilence~


“…can’t establish a portal back,” Creek said, tapping buttons on the Orchid. “But we knew that was going to happen.”

“Sure,” Mite said. 

I spread my wings out and cracked them like they were knuckles. “Prepare for combat the moment we open the hatch.”

“What should I expect?” Creek asked. 

I tossed her a laser gun. “Don’t get close.”

“Translation: let Vriska handle it,” Vriska said, generating her fluorite octet. “They won’t know what hit them.”

“Neither of those answer my question.”

“Monsters. Expect monsters,” I added, twirling my hoof around.

“For about three seconds,” Vriska said.

“Betting,” Mite added.

“Oh you’re on!”

“I’m betting against Vriska,” I said. 

“And now I’m dropping the bet,” Vriska muttered. “Just open the fucking hatch.”

Creek readied the gun with one hand and opened the back hatch with the other. The back of the Orchid slid open, revealing a jungle filled with an astounding variety of trees – a clear indication that this forest was made of species from dozens, if not hundreds, of different universes. 

Waiting outside were a dozen creatures made out of sackcloth and sharp metal. The majority were scarecrow-like creatures, with knives instead of fingers and mouths that were sewn shut. Others resembled animals, one in particular looked like a small dragon crossed with a cobra and a crab. 

They didn’t wait – they attacked. 

Vriska had the same idea. She stole one’s luck with ease and drove her blade through another. The blade prompted cotton to burst through the seams of the sackcloth creature. It lost some of its mobility, but it kept moving – though the one who had its luck stolen crumpled into a lifeless blob. 

The fluorite octet flew, landing on the ground and producing a ghostly viper that removed the head of another sackcloth creature. 

Creek fired her weapon at one of the creatures before it made it to Vriska. Her aging hand was shaking as she did so, but she hit it nonetheless, burning one of its arms into nothing. She let out a soft sigh of relief before aiming once more. 

Then I unleashed my spell. It was a quick one focused on only the horrendous creatures I knew would still be standing after my friends did their next attacks. Every last one of them got cut in half by a magical construct blade that existed just barely long enough to do the job. They fell to the ground like candy – Vriska taking care of two more with Creek shooting the most distant one. 

The unique dragon-chimera one didn’t even get the opportunity to show us its special abilities. Which I found acceptable, seeing as we weren’t anywhere close to the really interesting enemies yet. 

Plus, I wasn’t exactly in the mood for fun at the moment. The parts of the story above and below that were blocked off… well, they were concerning me. This event was apparently deeply connected to other events I wasn’t allowed to see. …Or perhaps I did see them, and just didn’t know what they were. 

Regardless, that had me worried. Because nothing I saw about this world made it particularly worthwhile. …The Dark Tower existed here in a physical form, yes, I knew that, but it did that in many other universes as well. I couldn’t see our actions here interfering with the nature of the story too much. 

Perhaps it was a tangential length of ka? Or maybe a-

“Sleeping?” Mite asked.

I shook my head. “Oh, sorry. No, just distracted by the winds of fate. Nothing new.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious! I don’t know anything new yet!”

Creek looked to me. “You’re worried.”

“A little,” I admitted. “There’s something I’m not seeing. I bet we change something major without realizing it on our little journey here. Can’t figure out what it is though.”

“You just see the story as normal.”

I nodded. “Can’t find the tangential story. I’m sure there is one. Maybe I should stop digging for it, though, it doesn’t appear to matter to us at this point in time.”

“Analysis!” Mite piped up, funneling information into the Orchid’s computer and putting an end to the conversation. We looked at the data Mite had harvested from the corpses of the sackcloth monsters, not all that surprised by what we found.

“Transformed beings,” Vriska said, folding her arms.

“All of them were once human…” Creek said, shaking her head. “How horrible…”

“Not all,” I said. “Look, that was only the ‘scarecrow’ ones. The others had evidence of simple animals on them.”

“Not a disease though.”

I nodded. “Definitely not.”

“Can you tell us what it is?” Vriska asked.

“Yeah, but I’m not going to. There’s a place we can stop for information to deduce that.” I trotted outside and took in a breath of fresh air. “So, where do you think we should go?”

Creek pursed her lips. “Mite, closest sign of civilization?”

“Northwest,” he responded.

“Then that’s where we’ll go.”

Vriska shrugged. “Eh, I don’t see why not. We’re taking the Orchid this time. I’m not going to have her get locked up in a government bunker again.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, just cloak her. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it.”

We closed the back hatch of the Orchid and moved across the land toward the nearest civilization Mite had been aware of. We entered an area with a deep fog…

I sensed that we had missed something. A cottage with a nice couple waiting for new travelers. But their story wasn’t to intersect with ours. Our destiny was within the gray mist…


~Theater~


…the gray static dissipated from the theater screen, revealing a man in a top hat and cliché steampunk goggles. “By Renthalia, we’ve done it!” 

What even IS Renthalia? the man who was the audience wondered. 

“We have twisted the very multiverse we find ourselves in!” the man declared – his name eluding the audience. “The Downstreamers have moved their finite multiverse into a truly infinite one! Everything everywhere in every possible reality is at our disposal! Nothing matters! Nothing! Ahahaha!”

And then the theater screen revealed that the steampunk man was talking from a holographic television screen. The video paused and zoomed out, showing a much more ‘futuristic’ setting with a trio of women who represented Downstreamers. 

“Huh. Meta,” the man said through the noises of popcorn. 

“They were wrong,” the lead woman said. “We did not create a truly infinite multiverse.”

“We didn’t? Then… what did we do?”

“Found the foundation of all reality,” she responded walking gracefully around the holographic screen. “No offense to our originators in metatime, but they made a major mistake. They assumed that they were finding universes when they put more and more energy into it. They were not. They were creating them.”

“How do you create a universe without knowing it!?”

“The Sea of Infinite Possibility,” she said, holding up a hand to the sky. “The chance of anything to exist. Drive the proper prerequisites and energy into the nothingness, and a universe is created. Any universe is created. We had utter mastery over our multiversal cluster, but a poor understanding of the true scope of the Sea. We thought the energy was a transformation. It was just a foolish mistake. The multiverse is still finite, we’ve just created any universe we wanted to encounter.”

“Well if it’s that big of a problem, how did we figure out we were wrong?”

“We ran into another dimensional society.”

The other women gasped. “We would have known about this!”

Yeah, they would have. Time was pretty meaningless to them. As were secrets.

“It is extremely recent. They are called the Chousin, and what they are is not important. We far outclass them in every way, even though they are apparently one of the higher races in the ‘multiverse’. What is important is what we learned from them. The multiverse is finite. We have been confined to our ‘local’ multiverse purely by a chance lottery in the multiversal connection game. And there is a controlling artifact of the multiverse. The Dark Tower.”

“The Dark Tower?”

“A structure built in metatime immemorial that treats existence like a story.”

“A story? What does that even mean?”

“It means we need to know more,” the third woman said. “We need to spread out into this new multiverse and uncover everything we can.”

The first woman nodded. “Of course. Expansion is expected to be easy, especially since we have uncovered simpler methods of multiversal travel. There are some rumors of higher societies that will take issue to our rapid expansion, but the Chousin have indicated nothing close to our level of domination over our universes.”

“We must be ready for anything,” the second said.

“Of course.”

“Now, we have uncovered a relative map of the multiverse from the Chousin…”

The man groaned. Was this recap of a conversation ever going to end…?


~Mother~


…It never ends!” the mother blurted, venting to her husband.

He put his hands together and adjusted his glasses. “Dear, everything ends.”

“I know that. I know that. I know that.”

He raised an eyebrow. 

She sighed, slumping into the couch next to him. “What are we going to do with her?”

“Let everything cool off for a while, actually meet this Jadan guy, an-”

“Actually meet him!?”

“For all we know he’s a nice guy and she’s been telling him we’ll take her away from him. That’s basically how my first relationship went.” 

The mother looked at the ceiling. “I suppose I just don’t have anything to go off of…”

“You are right to be mad. She needed to know that. And she’s not going to get off without any scratches. Lying, yelling, disrespect, swearing, deception, oo-ee she’s made a long list for us. But if we ruin something that might actually be good for her, that’s on us.”

“Yeah. You’re right. That would be on us. But what are we going to do to her that doesn’t interfere with her relationship? …Assuming he’s a decent person.”

“She’s still young enough to be grounded. You had a point about that whole tracker thing. Show disrespect, get disrespect in return.”

“I don’t feel comfortable doing that. It… reminds me too much of the past.”

He sighed. “…I know.”

“We are parents and sometimes we have to do things that hurt us to help them. I know.” She fidgeted with her fingers. “Is that why she’s so scared of us?”

“Literally any teenager would be scared of their parents’ response to a relationship,” he pointed out. “We have the power to end it. Any chance of her happiness being taken away is met with the largest NO any human being has to offer. Even if it’s not really happiness, she thinks it is.” 

“And so comes the problem. If we have to stop it, she hates us.”

“And since she’s a teenager she doesn’t really see how we can agree with her on just about anything.”

“Rebelllllion,” the mother said, holding onto the ‘l’ as long as she could to make a point she hadn’t formed clearly. “I’d prefer it if she was scared because of my eyes.”

“Your eyes are beautiful.”

“My eyes are soulless black pits into nothingness.”

He rolled his eyes. “She’s grown up with them. She’s used to it.”

The mother nodded, biting her lip.

“She’s really gotten to you, hasn’t she?”

“Of course she has. I don’t know how to deal with this.”

“Here’s a secret. I don’t really know what to do either.”

“What was that thing your dad told us? That parenting’s one of those things you never get to practice before it happens?”

“Something like that.” 

“Everyone has to just figure it out…” she mused. “I think we need to go find her.” 

“I think we need to give her some time before we jump to that.”

“I’m worried.”

“As much as you may not want to hear this, she did prove she could take care of herself.”

The mother put a hand to her face. “Oh. I guess she did come home safe… and had a network to protect her… from us. It’s just… she didn’t want to involve us.”

“A lot of her life won’t involve us.” 

“Is that always how it works?”

“Hm? No, I was rather mild-mannered. But if you’d had a normal childhood you would have definitely done what she’s doing.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He smirked. “Rebelliousness is attractive.”

She let out a snort.

“What?”

“That was dumb.”

He shrugged. “I have to be dumb sometimes. Balances the scales of existence.”

“Balance…” the mother shook her head. “She resents us for what we are.”

“When someone has control over you and you have no choice in the matter, well, most people will take issue with that…”


~Theater~


“…we, the Class 1 societies of the multiverse, have had enough of the Downstreamers!”  a ‘Scion of the Chousin’ said, slamming his staff into the ground. 

The inaccuracies in this scene are incredible. 

Most of the individuals in the room didn’t need names. The one-man audience knew who they were supposed to represent anyway – Witches’ Senate, Hadou, the Watchers, Yggdrasil, the Abstracts, the Fey Web, and the Chousin. Going through them in his head, the Witches’ Senate was pointless, the Hadou were living universe-concepts with a tendency for drama, the Watchers were known to ‘watch time’ and not do much else, Yggdrasil was a horrendous mess of various gods of polytheistic sorts who were known for breaking their area of the multiverse something fierce, the Abstracts were deified ideals from their home universes, the Fay Web was so hateful of definition they changed their entire “society” every few weeks, and the Chousin… 

Well, they were a trio of gods in reality. Apparently the makers of Downstreamers hadn’t managed to figure that out. Instead they were represented by an indeterminate number of people in fancy red robes. The only one they had gotten right was the Abstracts. But that made sense – the Abstracts were the only ones still around in any significant capacity. 

He shook his head – focusing back on the deliberation. The ‘Chousin’s’ declaration had sent the Seats into an uproar. Seven Class 1s, two Class 2s that were basically worthless, and an empty seat because the Downstreamers weren’t invited to this meeting. Not that the ‘multiversal overlords’ would have cared if they were asked to come. 

“I SAY WE BAND TOGETHER AND OVERTHROW THEM!” a Hadou shouted. “They control everything. It is only a matter of time before they decide we need to be brushed aside!”

“Think for a moment, idiot,” a Yggdrasil god spoke – probably supposed to be Zeus. “Even if we banded together, what can we do? They’ve made the Spline bend to their will, reinforced the Strands, and indicated an ability to know everything happening in every universe live as it happens. They’ve achieved mastery of psychohistory and other esoteric sciences, blending them with the powers spirit, arcane, and eldritch. The only thing they have not demonstrated control over is the Dark Tower itself! Even together, we do not have that capability!”

“There are those among us who do,” a Watcher said. “The Chousin and Abstracts have among them beings worthy of the title ‘God’.”

This caused an uproar among Yggdrasil and the Hadou, since they liked to be considered deities as well. 

“Silence,” a ‘Chousin’ said. “You may speak the truth. But have you considered what the cost would be to remove them from us?”

“IT WOULD ALL BE WORTH IT!” the Hadou blurted.

“It would not,” the Living Tribunal said. The man watching was impressed that the film company had gone out of the way to remove his neck from all shots – at least that was accurate. “Destroying all that life would be against all we stand for. The Downstreamers are not brutal. They are simply indifferent.”

“We should just live our lives,” one of the nameless Class 2s said. “They may have a presence in every universe, but what does that even mean to us? There’s a little beacon that constantly takes readings and gives them omnipotent knowledge. They could shape universes and destroy all life within, but they make universes with such ease and precision they will just create whatever they want to use themselves. They’ve never conquered any of us.”

“But they own almost every universe in existence,” a Hadou pointed out – this one portrayed by a muscular man with a handlebar mustache. “But we own our universes.”

The Living Tribunal sighed. “There can be joint ownership. The Downstreamers, for all their power, only want their omnipotence machines to work. They could care less what we do so long as we don’t try to remove them. The only reason you have such a bad history with them is because you were willing to go to the brink of extinction to keep survey equipment out of your worlds.”

“They are a threat,” a Watcher said. “Do not discount them. They may have a regard for life and a modicum of respect for our existence, but they will soon run out of ways to expand their knowledge. There will come a point where their omnipotence is absolute. At which point they will ask themselves how they can progress further, much like the Builders themselves.”

“The One Above All has true omnipotence,” a Chousin said.

“Limited by the Dark Tower!” a Yggdrasil god retorted – Sleipnir, given the horse-like appearance. “Neither He nor the Downstreamers can see what it blots out.”

“Which brings me to my point,” the Watcher continued. “They will come to the point where the Dark Tower is the only obstacle in their way. They will try to control it. One of the only reasons we tolerate the Dark Tower’s power over us is due to its truly neutral nature – none control it. If the Downstreamers were to uncover its secrets…”

“The paradox would prevent that,” a Chousin pointed out. “There is no power that can override the paradox of Roland.”

The man munched on his popcorn. That’s right, at least. I would know if it wasn’t the case. 

“I did not say they would destroy it. I said control it. Find out how to get to the room at the top and stay there.” 

“A danger!” Hadou said. “A tremendous danger! No one should have that power!”

“The Tower was built to be controlled by no one,” the Watcher said. “If one were to try and succeed… it would be disastrous.”

The Living Tribunal folded his arms. “Let us say you are right. Realistically, what can we do?”

“FIGHT!”

“You are the most militaristic of all of our worlds, and you lost your war with them,” the Living Tribunal pointed out. 

“Your Gods,” the Watcher said. 

The Chousin nodded. “We are ready to devote ourselves to the fight.”

“I AM NOT.”

The man facepalmed – they gave the One Above All a stupidly big and self-important voice. Then they had gone all super-special-effects on His body, making Him nearly impossible to look at. And they made Him the center of attention. That was definitely not how He worked.

“I TELL YOU RIGHT NOW, THERE WILL BE NO WAR AGAINST THE DOWNSTREAMERS,” the One Above All continued. “IT IS NOT JUST.”

“Says who!?”

“ME,” the One Above All Said. “YOU MAY FIGHT THEM AS YOU WISH. BUT THE AID OF THE ABSTRACTS WILL NOT BE BESTOWED TO YOU. IT WOULD NOT BE A HOLY WAR.”

“Then you will be taken out after the Downstreamers.”

“YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT THE DOWNSTREAMERS. EVEN IF I ASSISTED YOU, IT WOULD NOT HAPPEN.”

There was silence in the room. 

“…There’s really nothing we can do?” a Class 2 asked.

“NO, MY CHILD. THERE IS NOT.”

“But what do we do if they go the way of the Builders? What i-”

“THEN WE STRIVE TO DO WHAT THE WEAVERS COULD NOT – ADAPT AND SURVIVE…”


~Tower~


“…Weaver? Is that suppos’t mean something to me?” Roland asked. 

“Not to you. Others, perhaps,” the voice said. 

“Then explain what it means.”

Weaver sighed. “Already jumping to threats and violence against an ‘opponent’ you can’t even see. I thought you were better than that, gunslinger.”

“Forgive me if I’m not very trusting at the moment.”

“You are certainly forgiven. As is Patrick, who is furiously trying to think of what I might look like so he can use his abilities on me. The white pillar in the center of this room would prevent that from working even if you could see me.”

Patrick twitched, taking a few steps back. 

Roland pointed his gun at the pillar. 

“That won’t do anything.” 

“Ka might have other plans.”

“…Perhaps. Failing to take that into consideration was always our weakness…” He paused. “An explanation. You know who built the Tower?”

“Gan,” Roland replied.

“Yes. Gan. He was a member of a society known as the Builders. He was simply the leader in charge of the project.”

Roland didn’t find this necessarily surprising, but he wasn’t sure if it was accurate. He didn’t particularly care. “And what does that have to do with you?”

“I was part of a society that was the Builders’ neighbors. The Weavers. Or the Weaver, now. I am the last.”

Roland’s expression tightened. 

He was certainly the last as well. 

“Your world moved on?” Roland asked.

“Worlds didn’t ‘move on’ before the Tower,” Weaver said. “And when they started to… We didn’t know how to compensate. We fell because of the Tower’s new control. Despite all our power; all our love for tying worlds together into brilliant art… We could not understand existence under the new rules. I still do not get the ‘heroes’, the ‘villains’, or the ‘Prophets’. Nothing. It’s all alien. I only survive by luck and ingenuity of friends long gone.”

Roland lowered the gun. “This… white thing?”

“It is our attempt to create our own Tower. Since you are here, it is clearly ineffective. I had wished to avoid your entire quest.”

“Your door had other plans.”

There was soft laughter. “The door is an inanimate object, Roland of Gilead. It cannot have plans.”

“Ka,” was all Roland said.

Weaver paused. Then he sighed. “Maybe it can… Maybe it can… It’s been eternity since the Tower was built. And still, still, I am fooled by what I am sure are the simplest of ‘narrative puzzles’.”

Roland holstered his gun. “Do you know enough that you understand we are here for a reason?”

“Yes. Though for what reason I do not know. I could supply you with weapons, but in a conflict against the Crimson King I doubt that would do much good. You already have your real weapon with you.”

Roland glanced at Patrick and nodded in understanding. The boy was drawing something fiercely. Roland looked at the pad, finding it to be nothing but gibberish.

“Do you wonder what he sees?” Weaver asked.

“You can see?”

“Minds are open books to me,” Weaver said. 

This was no surprise to Roland – it was how Weaver had introduced himself. “What goes on in there?”

“Flashes of reality. Images of things far away. Memories of the trauma. His mind is undergoing many flashes right now. He sees… I think the reason you are here. But I cannot decipher that image. I am uncertain if he can either.”

Roland furrowed his brow. “Maybe we’re here to talk to you. To know you. The last of your kind, a ghost from before existence.”

“…Possibly.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Or perhaps you are just meant to get back on your quest.”

Roland shook his head. “It can wait.”

“The Dark Tower isn’t going anywhere.”

“It never does. We’ll return when called…”


~Harlequin~


…Dimitri and Thea returned from their latest escapade, appearing in the top floor of the megalith. Dimitri picked Thea up in a swirl and kissed her, the two unable to stop laughing. Thea looked much like she had when Dimitri first found her, but Dimitri had swapped out his farmer’s getup for slick performer’s gloves and a purple-black hat with three tassels. 

“You’re mad!” Thea told Dimitri, punching him in the shoulder. “You could have gotten us killed!”

“Ah, but like a bear in the winter, it was all a ruse! A plot to obtain the Alamala!”

“And we didn’t get the Alamala. We ran.”

Dimitri opened up his gloved hand and revealed a golden handle. “Voila.”

“…No. Way.”

“Ahahahahaha!” Dimitri used his dimension-bending powers to teleport the handle into the air so he could catch it dramatically in his other hand. With a thought, the handle became a glowing golden sword. Then a shovel. Then a chainsaw. Then a mishmash of broken bones. A pattern of rectangles. And, finally, a seeder.

“…What’s that?”

Dimitri tapped the ground with the tool. “A farming tool. One designed to be run across the ground and deposit seeds.” He shifted it to a miniature plow. “And this also provides a plow…”

“Dimitri, what devilish plan are you coming up with?”

“You still have the Orb of Orbona, correct?”

Thea nodded, pulling out an orb of green magic. “Right here.”

“Good.” He looked down. “It’s time to show them what I’ve been doing with my banishment.”

Thea smirked. “Are you sure it’s time?”

“It’s definitely time. I’m going to save them all. And then they’ll see.

“They’ll all see.”

He didn’t bother walking down the megalith. With a snap of his fingers, the two of them were at ground level. “Have I ever said how much I love the megalith’s power?”

“Only every day.”

“It seems as though I am a parrot – woe is me!” Dimitri said, chuckling. He took her outside, showing her the rolling hills and blue sky of his world.

“Huh.”

“Yeah, it’s boring,” Dimitri said. His face twitched as everything flashed dark for a moment. “But it’s not going to be for much longer. Everyone should be hard at work in the fields. Time to blow their miniscule minds.” He let out a laugh.

With a quick teleport, he was at the edge of his parents’ farm. He transformed the Alamala into the miniature plow and started plowing perfect lines in soil that hadn’t ever been treated before. Thea began to use the orb to generate seeds from an apple she had in her pocket.

Every time Dimitri finished a row, he teleported back to the front and started cutting more lines into the ground. He decided ten furrows in the earth would be enough to get his point across. 

He teleported the seeds from Thea and began depositing them in the ground. The Alamala made a several-hour job take all of three minutes. Soon, all the seeds were in the ground, ready to be grown at Thea’s command. 

Dimitri looked up. He could see his parents glancing at him nervously – but they continued working endlessly on the farm, refusing to give away any of their work. 

The only true audience he had was the Chief. She must have known something was up, somehow.

“Why are you back?” she demanded.

“I’m going to put on a little show, if you don’t mind,” Dimitri said, grinning.

“I do mind.”

“Don’t care. And, technically, I’m not even on your land! Look at this! BORDER field! Skirting the line as a skimmer does water. I have not set a single toe back in my father’s field.”

“Woo!” Thea said.

The Chief glanced at Thea with a confused expression, but decided not to worry about it. “I don’t want you in my sight. Get out.”

“But, Chief! I’ve figured out how to solve your hunger problem!” With a snap of his fingers, he summoned a megaphone into existence. “DID YOU HEAR THAT!? I, DIMITRI, HAVE SOLVED YOUR HUNGER PROBLEM!”

The Chief stared at the sudden existence of the megaphone, concern crossing her features.

Good. She’s already beginning to realize how wrong she was. Having her grovel will just be icing on the cake of this amazing day. 

“DO ANY OF YOU WANT TO SEE IT!? DO YOU!?” Dimitri shouted. “COME ON, DON’T BE SHY! IF I DON’T PRODUCE THE FOOD I’LL DO ALL THE WORK YOU MISSED FOR YOU!”

This got a small crowd to start forming. A couple dozen – mostly the children who had looked up to Dimitri.

He grinned. “I’m going to show all of you what I’ve done.”

The Chief stepped forward. “You have interfered in th-”

“Thea? If you will.”

Thea lifted the Orb of Orbona into the air. It covered the field in green light – and in five seconds fully grown apple trees popped out of the ground, all ripe with rich red fruit. He took one off the tree, ate it, and grinned. “I could make an infinite number of these. I used my mind to find these powers in the megalith. I, the one you shunned, have solved all your problems!”

He grinned holding the apple high. 

All of them – the Chief, his parents, the adults, and the children – stared at him with blank expressions…


~Merodi~


…Pinkie Pie stared into nothingness – which was basically all she could stare into these days.

“Oh, so we’re doing odd synchronicities today? Fun.”

The current pilot of the Austraeoh turned back to look at her. “Uh… Captain?”

“We’ve been added to the story. Well, I have, you’re still just the pilot. Sorry, they don’t even know your name.”

“…Oh.”

“It’s Nora, by the way, dear readers.”

“Thanks,” the pilot told Pinkie.

“Eh, if you saw what had just happened, you wouldn’t thank me.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway… Four… Three… Two… One…”

Corona, Eve, and Allure teleported onto the bridge. Pinkie unleashed her party cannon. “WELCOME ABOARD the S. S. PINKIE EXPRESS! Journeying across the multiverse in the Austraeoh since last month! Going out for one more jaunt to the D-Sphere before wrapping it up and giving O’Neill his ship back!” she winked. “Though that’s been put on hold for your very important mission.”

Eve nodded. “Right. Do you know?”

“Read it all!” Pinkie said with a salute. “Shame that you didn’t come to me first.”

“I assumed tha-”

“Shhhh, it’s all good! This means Allure gets to come along!” Pinkie pulled the small unicorn into the hug. “All four of us are here!”

“Four?” Allure blinked. “Why four?”

“The main focuses of most chapters,” Pinkie explained. “I mean, there’s been a few O’Neill and Starbeat chapters, plus people in my team, but mostly us. We are the protagonists! All together on a single mission!” She squeed. “Kinda wish I could see what my team and Pidge are up to right now, but eh, guess that’s just gonna be a mystery.” 

“Anything we should know?” Corona asked. “About the story so far.”

Pinkie rubbed the back of her head. “Well… There’s a bit of a mess here. See, we’re just one of eight stories being thrown around all willy-nilly this time around. One’s about the gunslinger, the other’s a theater production about the Downstreamers, the third’s about some guy named Dimitri I have no clue about, the fourth’s some historian related to the Xeelee, the fifth’s about Nanoha’s original journey, the sixth’s about Twilence’s journey on the Nexus, and the eighth… I can’t place it.”

“So we’re the seventh?” Eve asked. “There’s a story in the relative future!?”

Pinkie nodded. “Yep. And it wants to be really vague. The protagonist is only called ‘the mother!’ I mean, who does that!? For all I know it’s one of us! Nah, it’s not, but I have no idea where to place it or how it relates to us.”

“Eight stories…” Allure thought. “Is that number… significant?”

“Largest number GM could stick in without feeling overwhelmed?” Pinkie suggested with a shrug. “I have no idea. It’s still happening and I don’t have any idea about the future. I’m just making guesses. By the way, I just need some authorizations to activate the ka-twister-device-thingies and we can be on our way.”

Eve and Corona nodded, using their authority as Relations Overhead and Research Second to remove the restrictions of the Austraeoh’s ka-manipulating systems.

A million warnings spread across every screen on the ship. Despite this, Corona told Raging Sights to feed the information into the Austraeoh’s database. 

Allure bit her lip. “O’Neill’s not going to be happy about us using his ship like this, is he?”

“Nope!” Pinkie said with a giggle. “But now we have an advantage – we can twist our luck to find the untraceable!”

“What Alushy would call ‘complete bullshit’,” Corona said. “And what the Flowers would call ‘primitive’.”

“Isn’t this basically what they did to find the Collector?” Allure asked.

Corona nodded. “More or less. Though if there’s as much of a maze of universes to get through as the Collector had, this is going to be a pain.”

“Let’s see!” Pinkie said, pointing a hoof forward. “Oh great computer, where to?”

The computer spat out a set of coordinates to a universe they had never been to. Or had even discovered. Completely new territory.

“Onward!” Pinkie declared.

The Austraeoh jumped universes to another Q-Sphere universe not all that far away. The computer ran the numbers again, processing where to go next. 

“Aaaand this isn’t going to be instant,” Pinkie said, leaning back in the Captain’s chair. “Guess it’s going to take a while.”

Corona shrugged. “No problem. We’ve got time.”

Allure simply nodded. 

“Wow. Guess we really have to go on this one, huh?” Pinkie asked. “Wonder what’s at the end of this rainbow…”

“Whatever it is, it’s not in the Q-Sphere,” Corona said, pointing at the multiversal map. They had jumped two more universes, and were already on the border with the Strands. “A Strand Outpost conspiracy, maybe?”

“A trap?” Allure wondered.

“If it was a trap they could just take us,” Eve muttered. “If they can get Arceus, they can get us.”

“Ka may be on our side,” Corona pointed out.

Eve shook her head. “Twilence would be able to defend against that. …Unless she wanted to be captured.” She rubbed the base of her horn. “…I don’t think I realized how much I depend on being able to talk to her about herself. She’s never really… consistent. Or sensical.”

“And there we are,” Corona said. “Out of the Q-Sphere…”


~Grand Tour~


…and the Horizon is finally in the ‘Q-Sphere’. The crew is ecstatic – though none more than Rarity herself. I may be glad that I’ll get to fulfill my promise soon, but she’s going to be home soon.

I can only hope it hasn’t been too long for her world. We’ve been flying for years… and the extreme levels of time dilation we have seen in this journey make us all worried. Will the TSAB be anything like we remember when we return? What about our families? 

…These are not questions I like asking. I have already promised that, once we find Rarity’s home, we will cut across the Strands the ‘standard’ way to get home quickly. The Horizon was not designed for portal-based travel, but it will be significantly faster to take a highway than slowly drift through the Sea. 

But we have to find her home first. We have barely entered the Q-Sphere and haven’t even found any pony worlds yet! That must come first. …Raising Heart has just informed me the first pony world we find could be hers, but somehow I doubt that. Until then, we’ll just keep moving on. 

Now would be a good time to look back at our journey this far, I think. We’ve made a lot of friends along the way, telling them how to get to the TSAB. We could never stay long, but I’m certain many of them have made it back to the TSAB and started forming together. There’s even talk of forming a Q-Sphere ‘chapter’ of the TSAB separate from our home so our new friends will have a place to go. The crew is split on this – it’ll inevitably create an entity separate from our TSAB, but I don’t mind that. We don’t have to all be under one power, so long as we all share an ideal. 

I think it’ll be great. It remains to be seen if we’ll do it. 

But that’s the future, not the past! The past has been great too! We spent a lot of the time in what we now know is the E-Sphere, getting completely lost. But we made friends, established relations with a few multiversal societies, and got some idea of where we were going. Not enough to take the Strands highways the short way, but we got to see a lot more by taking the long route. We spent only a short time in the Cosmic Heavens – the Abstracts were kind enough to guide us through to the D-Sphere. Great people, even if they could squash us like bugs. ...We didn’t leave the ship much while we traveled through the D-Sphere, since we didn’t develop physics-anchoring magitech until near the end of our time there. And then there was Outer Existence.

I…

…Well it was interesting to see how magic in many different universes was made! It was not nice to be told we were basically worthless mages, though. I got to show a few of them what I was capable of, but I was dismissed as a ‘hero’. 

…Expect another report on what that means later. …Much later. Because the conclusions I’m coming to are making me think I’m going crazy. No matter what Raising Sights tells me, I’m still going to question it. 

Regardless, we’ve picked up many new crew members over the years. We’ve lost a few people, but gained many more. Nano has grown into quite the capable young woman. I now see what my superiors felt when they saw me. She’s simultaneously a great weapon… but also a human being. A human being who, because of this journey, did not retain her innocence as long as I did. It’s interesting to see a slightly harsher version of myself wandering around. How much of that is due to my presence I’m not sure. It is hard on her, but she enjoys her life. 

Subaru and Ginga are good as always. Vita hasn’t changed at all this entire journey. Signum actually got married. I still can’t believe that. Takes forever to process… 

I wonder if Hayate’s gotten married? If she has a family? 

…I wonder how Fate’s doing. 

I’ve been here a long time. I may be surrounded by friends, but there is something to be said for home. The Horizon has never been a home for me. It’s just a vessel. A vessel with a great mission – a mission to return someone home. 

I think that this journey has allowed me to truly understand what Rarity has gone through. The feeling of such extreme distance from home. It’s a horrible feeling, even when you know you’ll get back…

What if we couldn’t get back…


~Twilence~


“…how long have you been trapped here in this Nexus again?” Creek asked. 

Rev sat under the main altar of her church, looking up with a forlorn expression, silent. We were in the town of Lest, a ghost village filled with a misty haunted aura. The only inhabitants were Rev, the members of her church, and the undead skeleton David. Vriska was currently outside, talking to David while Creek and I talked to Rev. 

I saw great importance in Rev. I saw her become part of that which I would be part of some day, Songs of the Spheres. She would be the spiritual component. One to bring up topics that normally wouldn’t. A traveler of a different sort.

“Twelve years,” Rev said, finally. “I was taken from my Equestria twelve years ago. Ended up here when it was a fully fledged civilization. Father Berton took me in and showed me the Light of the Word. And then…” She looked through the windows at the fog, imagining the sackcloth monsters prowling around outside. “…and then they came. The sackcloth puppets, a plague on the whole world. Destroying everything. Killing everything. …I have been in charge of this church for seven of those years.”

“A terrible story, Reverend,” I said, bowing my head in respect. “Why do you not go to the city?”

“To Rome? …This place is too important to me. To us.” She lit her horn. “I have the power to keep everything running, and the monsters never attack the church. I can keep us alive. I just…” her eternally sad face deepened considerably. “I just wish he was still around. There are so many things I would have liked to ask him.”

Creek put a hand on her. “We all have things we want to ask our mentors that… we don’t get to. There’s always lost time somewhere.”

Rev nodded. “Life is short. We are but grains of sand on an eternal beach.”

Creek nodded. “Exactly.”

“I am truly sorry you’ve ended up here. You should head to Rome. There’s nothing for you here. You can enjoy your lives. Being stuck in this universe isn’t as bad as most people who come through here think it’ll be.”

I smiled. “I know that.” I also know that you’ll leave once the demons are gone, find the Dark Tower, and escape. You’ll work through your personal difficulties first – slowly. But you’ll come out of this stronger than ever before. 

“Where did the sackcloth monsters come from?” Creek asked.

Rev shrugged. “I do not know. They appeared, the mist came in, Father Berton…”

“They got him? I’m sorry…”

“I don’t know. He… he just vanished one day. I always knew it could happen, given the danger of what he did – demon expulsion – but it was so sudden.”

Creek pulled Rev into a hug. “You’ll get to see him again one day, right?”

Rev smiled sadly. “Yes. But you don’t believe that.”

“You do. You can use it as a comfort.”

Rev nodded. “…Thanks.” The two of them left the embrace. “You’re welcome to stay the night. I can give you food and supplies for your journey.”

I smiled. “Thanks. But we have our own supplies. We can make it to Rome.”

“You certainly have the power to fend the beasts off. Maybe you could replace Rome’s defense towers.”

“Defense towers?” Creek asked.

Rev nodded. “There’s tall towers all around Rome, from what I hear. They shoot any monster that gets close, keeping them out of the city. Even the dinosaur ones.”

Creek blinked. “Dinosaur?”

“Dinosaur.”

“Dinosaur,” I affirmed. “Don’t worry, I can take care of them. And so can Vriska.”

Rev forced a smile. “Well… I wish you luck.”

I glanced at Vriska. “We’ll take it.”

Creek shook her head in mild disapproval. We went outside to Vriska and David. 

“I do a lot of thinking out here, you know?” David was saying.

Vriska blinked, glazed over. “Uh-huh…”

“So, you see, there’s a b- oh HELLO!”

“Oh thank gog,” Vriska said, leaping up to Creek and myself. “So what are we doing?”

I smiled at David. “Sorry, private conversation.”

“No issue, no issue,” David said, tipping his hat. “I’ll just get back to my pacing…”

I waved friendly at him.

“What’s the conspiracy in Rome with those towers and the demons?” Creek asked me.

“Not even prefacing it this time?” I ribbed.

“It’s clear that’s what’s going on.”

“Crystal,” Mite interjected. 

I stretched my wings. “Well, yeah. It’s somewhat simple, actually. Father Berton was exorcising demons, and one in particular was proving to be difficult. He failed to get rid of it completely, and it took him over – discovering its power as a true puppetmaster creature. It had the ability to transform life into horrendous sackcloth monsters. Simple enough, right?”

“There’s something with Rome.”

“Rome’s a lie,” I said. “It’s not a safe haven. The demon runs the place from the sidelines, advertising the city as a safe haven. He really just wants power.”

Vriska smirked. “Ah, so we’ve found out who we need to beat up.”

“Bingo. We take the demon out, free this world of its sackcloth plague, and tell the world of the lie of Rome. It could be a great mystery that took eons to solve – but I would kinda like to not leave Rarity hanging. So we’re going to dust through this one.”

Creek smiled. “I suppose I can go one adventure without doing any actual detective work. I won’t be very helpful with the guns-blazing approach, though…”

“Psh, you sell yourself short. You’re going to be the one who takes him out! I can see it!”

“Amazing,” Mite said.

“It’s the benefit of forbidden knowledge,” Vriska said…


~Historian~


….the Prognosticus contained a lot of forbidden knowledge. The first indication the sub-tribe had was with the creation of Pixls. (I need a name for the sub-tribe in this era, even though they don’t have one. Perhaps I should name it after myself. Or would that be too arrogant?) A scientist known to us as Narvarim created the magitek entities with information from the Prognosticus involving souls, magic, and purpose. These Pixls allowed the sub-tribe to create vast cities, becoming the tools of the physically weak people. (Quite a time it must have been when we were physically weak. So glad this isn’t the current era.) 

This was the height of our people’s power, but there was a fatal flaw in the system. The first Pixl, the Queen Pixl, eventually became horrified with the way her people were treated as tools with no rights. So she led a rebellion. The Pixl Uprising was a horrid part of our history, spanning several worlds…

…the war ended with all but one of the original Pixl wielders dead. Most Pixls had fallen as well. This last Pixl wielder was known as Desan. After the final battle with the Queen Pixl where he lost almost all of his friends and family, he met with the creator of this whole problem, Navarim. (Problem? Word choice.) Navarim revealed what Pixls actually were – the souls of the dying transformed into another state, used as components in the creations. Desan was understandably horrified by this revelation. (Reasonably). 

Navarim claimed that he had never taken a life to make a Pixl, merely taken advantage of those who were already lost. Desan didn’t care. Navarim was executed on the spot for crimes against the tribes. (Serves the bastard right.) Desan took the Prognosticus and hid it away so none would ever be able to use the words inside it for such horrible things again. He didn’t tell anyone – the worlds believed the book had just vanished after the events. There were many angered that the book could not be used to uncover new secrets, but all accepted it with time. 

This was the beginning of the division within the sub-tribe. As their power was suddenly taken away from them in the Pixl Uprising, two distinct patterns of thought began to emerge. There were those who held to ideals of harmony and nature, refusing to strengthen themselves to make up for the loss of Pixls. The other sought power for themselves to adapt – led by Desan. 

Thus the divisions we all know today were created. The Tribe of Ancients and the Tribe of Darkness. They existed alongside each other for some five hundred years. It slowly became a tense standoff, but there was no chance of violence or hatred. Only idealistic division. 

And then the Tribe of Darkness discovered something horrendous within the Prognosticus, a prophecy that set the clock ticking for all their worlds…


~Mother~


“…time’s up,” the mother said, standing up. “I’m going to find her.”

Her husband nodded. “…It has been too long. Good luck.”

She pecked him on the cheek. “I’ll need it.” 

She walked out of the house and tried to call Osanna. Of course, she didn’t pick up. That wasn’t surprising, but it had been worth a shot. As she walked along the trees and toward the city proper, she made several calls – first to Osanna’s friends, asking them if they knew where she was. They were annoyingly unhelpful...

“She’s not at home?”

“I’ve been trying to reach her all day.”

“I think I saw her in town at the Grover Mall? Not sure though.”

“I… I… I don’t know! Please don’t bring my mom into this again!”

“Psh, I’m not her keeper. Who cares where she is?”

“I would say she’s with Jadan, but I haven’t exactly seen him around either…”

“This is Jadan. Please leave a message after the beep.”

“Oh, so the sea witch is calling me about her daughter? Funny. Real funny.”

“…I saw her.”

The mother almost hung up by reflex. “Wait, what? Susan, you did?”

“Yeah. Seventh marketplace. She was with some guy I didn’t recognize. I was a bit busy wrangling my kids, so by the time I looked back…”

“Thanks. That’s all I need.” The mother hung up and looked around. She was in the city now. The seventh marketplace was a fair distance away…

Who cared if she always walked everywhere? For all she knew, time could be of the essence. She stepped onto a public teleporter terminal and appeared right in the middle of the marketplace. This particular one had been going for a natural aesthetic –  trees seemingly growing out of the brown brick ground, the entire square surrounded by a red ring of roses. As usual for a marketplace there were a ton of stands and people shouting everywhere. 

She ignored them all. She walked up to a pair of stands she knew. One contained a raptor who sold boots of all shapes and sizes, while the other was Seskii’s potion shop.

“Mr. Raven,” the mother said. “Have you seen Osanna?”

Mr. Raven blinked his reptilian eyes, putting a claw to his chin. “Hrm… I can’t say I have.”

Seskii coughed. “I have. She was here with Jadan. He tried to buy what I’m going to call an ‘enjoyment brew’. I of course told him no – he’d misuse it – then he blows his lid and takes her off that direction.”

“Thanks.” She moved to follow the trail.

“You won’t be able to find him like that. This is a big city. You’ll just lose them.”

The mother clenched her fingers. “What do you recommend then? That’s the only lead I have!”

Mr. Raven chuckled. “Seskii has more sources than just memory. I find it surprising that you don’t know about that.”

Seskii tapped her head. “I can still see the story.”

The mother stared at her. “Right… Seskii. Where are they?”

“You’ll have to go talk to Jadan’s family to find that one out,” Seskii said. 

A sinking feeling hit the mother like a rock in her stomach. “The Emersons…” She put a hand to the bridge of her nose and sighed. “They’re not going to help…”

“They will. If you can put up with them.”

“They’re not going to put up with me.”

Seskii leaned in on her potion stand and raised an eyebrow.

“I know, I know, I’ll do it. But can’t you just tell me where she is?”

Seskii shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not Twilence. But I know that’s where you have to go. So shuffle off to Buffalo, seize the day!”

The mother nodded – then ran off. Toward the Emerson residence. 

She began to go over exactly how she was going to give them a piece of her mind…


~Harlequin~


“…what evil have you brought us, Dimitri!?” his father shouted.

Dmitri forced his smile to hold. “EVIL!?”

“You have brought back the bane of the empire!” he shouted.

“Old man, how do we have any idea what actually destroyed the empire!?”

“Records,” the Chief said. “Records that aren’t important to our life but tell us never to chance it again.”

“You build your house out of remnants you hypocrite!”

“And you are no longer Dimitri,” his father said, holding his spade like a weapon. 

Thea twitched. “Hey! He’s still your son, judgmental ass!”

“And you…” the Chief looked at her with a steeled expression. “You are not one of us. You are not welcome.”

“Screw that, he’s one of you! He’s been out exploring, looking for a way to save you all!”

“We work on our own!”

“You idiots!” Dimitri shouted. “Winter gets worse and worse every year. You’re struggling to produce enough crops. To keep your way of life sacred and sanctified, you blame the lower yield on the ‘immature’ who ‘don’t work like they should’. That has nothing to do with it! No matter how hard you work, eventually the winter will destroy you!” He held his hand wide. “I’m giving you a way to save yourselves!”

“At the price of total destruction!” 

Dimitri tossed the Alamala away. “Even if you were right about this tool, that green orb over there? It only knows how to grow! It is a seed of beauty in a midst of destruction. It makes life.”

“You could grow a tree in someone’s house and kill them instantly,” the Chief said. “It is but a small taste of the horrors that eventually brought the empire down! All because people got creative with how they used their tools.”

“Oh, is that it!?” Dimitri shouted. “Ahahahaha – oh if only I’d known it was my creativity that set me apart! That would have made so much sense!” He hit himself in the head and rolled his eyes. “It’s like a fish falling from the sky. Behold, the natural order!”

“You are not the natural order,” his father spat. “You are a mutant who should never have been born.”

“Ahahahaha if I had a nickel for every time I’d heard that!”

They looked at him in confusion, no idea what a nickel was. 

Dimitri smirked. “Look at that, they don’t understand. They don’t see. You imbeciles. It’s either this, or a slow painful death over the next generation!”

The children had begun to look frightened. The Chief decided this meant enough was enough. She drew her sword – one of the few real weapons in the settlement. “Dimitri, or whatever you’ve become, leave. Or we will be forced to remove you.”

Thea laughed. “Oh wow, they think they can take you.”

“How unfortunate.” Dimitri snapped his fingers and the Chief’s sword broke in half. 

Dimitri’s father charged him with a shovel, leading a charge of several other adults. Dimitri snapped his other fingers, removing all of their weapons from their hands. He specifically had his father’s shovel smack him in the head, knocking him to the ground. 

“You can’t make me leave,” Dimitri said with a smirk. “I’m going to show you how wrong you all are and you can’t do anything about it.”

“What have you done with my son!?” his mother shouted.

This was the first thing that actually cut Dimitri. His eternal smile faltered. “…Mom…”

“Dimitri would never do this! Dimitri would never give in to the dr-”

“My dreams have nothing to do with this!” Dimitri spat. Images of fire, the megaliths joined together with harmonious light, and the Tower pushed through his mind. He ignored every last one of them. A splitting headache formed. “This is my choice!”

His mother backed away from him, afraid. “Dimitri… If it is still your choice. Leave. Don’t come back. Don’t destroy us.”

That did it. Something snapped inside Dimitri. “Heh… Heheheh…. HeheheehheHAH!” He slung his arm around Thea and pointed a joking finger at all of them. “Guess what? I choose to stay. I choose to give you everything you need. You don’t get a choice in the matter.”

The Chief glared at Dimitri. “You think you bring us aid. But you only taint the water.”

“You know what, everyone but you gets to experience my boon. I know a world with giant shadow monsters. Thea’s actually from there, you know? Horrid place.” He snapped his fingers, giving the Chief back a fully-repaired sword. “Ciao.” With a second snap, he sent her to the other world. 

Everyone gasped.

“I’m the chief now! And I say that you all can stop working!” He tossed apples at them. “We’ve got food for eternity. We are now birds in the sky, free of our shackles!” He spread his arms wide, grinning.

No one smiled back. Most were trembling in fear. The children were crying. 

Dimitri shrugged. “You’ll learn to accept this in time. Come, Thea, let’s explore our new house.”

Thea clapped her hands. “Great!”

The two of them vanished, taking over the now-empty house of the Chief. Dimitri walked up to the big chair the Chief had used to listen to complaints, sitting down on it. 

“How’s it feel to be king?” Thea asked.

“Like it’s how things should be… I can shape this world to the way of perfection. Perhaps I can become even more than a king, with time…”


~Tower~


“…the Crimson King is your last enemy,” Weaver said. 

Roland nodded, finding that no words were needed in his response. 

“Do you know what he is?”

“…Son of Arthur Eld and the Crimson Queen.”

“True. But it doesn’t truly encapsulate what he is. Tell me, what do you think his goal is?”

“Destroy the Dark Tower and unleash the demons of Prim kept at bay. Weaver, why the questions?”

“I’m getting your mind into the right place. You are mostly correct in what you know, but you don’t know the whole story. Think of what you have learned here. If I come from before the Dark Tower, and the demons of Prim are often cited as coming from ‘outside’ the creation, what does that mean they are?”

Roland didn’t dignify that with a response.

“…I see you already understand. The demons of Prim are simply beings like myself, though even less capable of coping with the change. Ones shifted to tell stories of unfathomable cosmic horror. A truly detestable fate.”

Roland raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to tell me he has pure motives?”

“Oh, no, his goal of destroying the Dark Tower would not return them to the way of old, they would simply be able to unleash their horror without the Tower’s limitations. They would be able to devour most everything, no matter what the Weaver creations have to say about it. There’s nothing that could stop them, now.”

Roland nodded. “But that’s not a problem anymore.”

“No. You stopped his destruction of the beams. And when you ascend the Dark Tower, the mistakes of the Imperium will be rectified.”

“I thought you didn’t understand ka?”

“I can understand what your purpose is,” Weaver said. “I can see readings on you other than ka. Time bends around you in a unique way, unlike all others. I know h-”

“Don’t say,” Roland said. “I’m not meant to know.”

“…If that is what you believe. Perhaps what happens in the Tower is private. I have considered entering it myself, you understand. It is possible I will try once my work is complete. Perhaps not.”

“If you’re askin’ me, I say don’t do it. The journey does things to you.”

“There have been many who have sought out the Dark Tower, Roland. Not all suffer as you do.”

Roland had no response to this.

Weaver didn’t say anything either.

Patrick continued scribbling in his book. 

“Weaver, what is your work? What are you doing as the last of your kind?”

“You could say I have my own Tower to get to – but it is less of a physical journey and more the task of a manager. …Bad metaphor. I need to stop trying to take ka into account…


~Twilence~


…I made a huge mistake. I had forgotten the possibility of ka manipulation shrouding my vision. 

We knew exactly who the enemy was – a demon by the name of Polymarchus who had founded Rome right after the sackcloth demons appeared. We knew he was using the body of Father Berton and hiding behind an army of carefully controlled puppets. So we broke into his private residence with the plans of taking him on directly. 

I saw him falling to our hands easily. He was just a demon in an old man’s body with a few sackcloth monsters doing his bidding. It would take a couple minutes, but he would fall, we would free the city, and we would end the sackcloth plague. 

That’s not what happened. 

Because one of the beings he had turned into a sackcloth monster was a Flower. 

And since I hadn’t been aware of that until this very moment, that ruined everything. 

The four of us had walked into Polymarchus’ ‘estate’, ready for anything except him knowing we were coming. 

We broke through the doors to his central room. His estate had a dark aesthetic due to the deep blue material the building was made of and the sharp spires adorning the building, giving it a mixture of futuristic and gothic elements. This particular room was circular and had screens all along every wall, showing many different locations across the planet. 

The bus-sized flower was suspended in midair in the center of the room. Its leaves and petals were made entirely of sackcloth and numerous wires snaked out from its body and into nearby screens, where several lines of ‘story’ were written at a time, feeding off the Flower’s power. No doubt it had a Flower ka-shaping device inside of it somewhere. 

Polymarchus was standing right under the flower. He wore a hat made of white straw and a robe of similar materials. I knew his body wasn’t fully organic, but from this angle nobody could tell that there was cotton and stuffing mixed with his blood. 

Mite and Creek were captured instantly. The Flower had known exactly where they would appear. Mite was encased in a power-draining field. “DANGER!” he shouted. “RUuuuuun-n-n-n___” his voice glitched out as he reverted to his dormant state. Creek was encased in a pair of black, magical bands. She gasped in sharp pain and fell to her knees – trembling. 

Vriska readied her dice. “Fucking assho-”

“Don’t!” I said, holding up a wing. “Creek has death bracelets!”

“Good horn,” Polymarchus said, smirking. “I see you’ve uncovered the little trap I’ve put you in. At any moment, with a mere thought, Mite and Creek will be dead. For now, they live. And they will stay that way if you do what I want. And you know I’m telling the truth.”

“You can have your Flower alter that truth at any moment,” I said, grinding my teeth. 

“True. And Vriska? Stop trying to steal my luck. There is a laser gun trained on the back of your head. It may not hit you, but it can easily ensure this is a very, very Heroic death.”

Vriska blinked. “Wha…”

“I’ve been prepared for you to come since you first arrived,” Polymarchus said. “The Flower is a great source of information. Most of you are completely useless, but one of you…” he looked at me. “One of you is something worthwhile…”

I glared at him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Work for me not as a mindless slave like this Flower, but put true creativity into your storytelling. As much as the Flower is able to manipulate events over a small span of time, I need grander things. The city of Rome needs to expand!” He threw his arms wide. “The stars of the Nexus call! And no one can stop my rampage. Nobody who comes into this universe ever leaves!”

I said nothing to correct his false assumption. “What makes you think I’ll let you?”

“Because you can’t let them die.”

“Yes I can,” I asserted. I wasn’t bluffing either – I could do it, if it needed to be done.

“No, you can’t. Because you know Vriska and yourself have to continue on to greater things.” He grinned. “You’re trapped in your own sights, Twilence.”

I realized he was right. It was a fact that Vriska and I couldn’t die here, no matter what the Flower did. The problem was, that didn’t mean I could be careless. We might only survive because I agreed to do what Polymarchus wanted.

“I can see the gears turning in your mind, Twilence… Like a rat lost in a maze. The only way out is in the mousetrap.”

“How right is he?” Vriska asked.

“Very,” I said. “He’s very very right. If I fight, there’s a high chance you die. And that’s impossible. So I can’t take that course of action.”

“But, if you listen to me, everyone lives!” Polymarchus said with a grin. “And I’m sure you and Vriska will live on to do… whatever it is you need to do eons from now. After you’ve given Rome its power over the stars.”

“We could try to stop you after that,” Vriska spat. “Sword to the head.”

“Ah, but the same rule will apply! I’ll have an insta-kill on Twilence. She knows she can’t die. So she won’t be able to fight back.” Polymarchus laughed. “A twist of fate you can’t escape! Defy me, death will come!”

He’s too arrogant. He will be defeated, there’s no way he won’t be. Maybe not by us, but someone else. I’ll just have to play the waiting game… I bit my lip. “All right. I’ll write what you want.”

“I knew you would,” Polymarchus said. “Please, come along. Let us discuss how Rome will take to the stars…


 ~Merodi~


…the Austraeoh flew through the stars of numerous universes within the Strands. Normally, navigating the Strands would be fast. Unfortunately the Austraeoh’s ka-devices weren’t taking them in a straight line from point A to B, so it was a mess. Clearly the technology wasn’t perfect. 

Pinkie had set up a ping-pong table on the bridge. Currently, Allure and Corona were using it. The constant ping and pong of the ball was a calming, rhythmic presence to the bridge crew. 

The ping-pong rules were simple – no using levitation magic. The diminutive Allure was at a clear disadvantage, but Corona was out of practice in the coordinated sports department. The game was tied ten to ten. 

“Get ready for this one, it’s going to be mean,” Corona said, twirling the ball across her fingers. 

Allure craned her neck. “Bring i-”

The ball flew past her while she was in the middle of her sentence.  

Allure twitched. “…Eleven to ten, your lead.”

Corona winked. “One more point and I win. Think you can take me down?”

Allure nodded. “I’m not giving up yet.”

“And you sho-”

Allure pinged the ball, only for Corona to catch it with her paddle and send it back. Allure caught it near the edge of the table, batting it far to the side. Corona tossed it just barely over the net, making Allure dive for it. The shot went wild – and Corona hit it back, taking the point as Allure struggled to get it. 

“Yes!” Corona said, throwing her hands into the air and spreading her wings. “Victory!”

“Ladies and gentleponies, the champion of ping-pong!” Pinkie declared, showering Corona with confetti. 

Corona walked up to Allure. “Good game.”

Allure chuckled. “I almost had you.”

“Almost.”

“Yeah. You and your lanky human arms.”

“The fingers probably help too.”

“Hoof traction is an amazing concept,” Eve said from her seat in the captain’s chair. She turned back to a conspiracy diagram on the main screen, trying to find out what Arceus, John, and Twilence could do together. The main problem was so many different things could be done. Creation of a new universe… Alteration of the songs of everything… “Hmm…”

“Any new thoughts?” Corona asked.

“I can’t think of anything new. Nothing special. They’re just powerful, but I know there’s something… Something about the Eye of Rhyme, a god, and the Heir of Breath…”

Allure’s ears pricked up. “…Heir… …God…” 

“What is it?” Corona asked, being sure to direct Eve’s attention to the white unicorn. 

“One side says the story is thus: 
The Lord, the Muse, the Heir
Are gathered together to make a tear
The God, the Prophet, the ancient
Are needed to fulfill a lost tenet,” Allure said. 

Pinkie gasped. “Flagg’s cryptic message!”

“The end of the Tower’s Testament…” Eve said, scratching her chin. “That would make some sense. So… John is the Heir, and Arceus is the God? What does that make Twilence?”

“Muse,” Pinkie said. “Vriska told me about all the ‘classes’ and ‘aspect’ descriptions in SBURB. The Muse has passive mastery over their ability, kinda like a force of nature. The Lord has active mastery over their ability – full control. Twilence calls herself the one who understands right? She’s regularly held back by the ka she knows so well, but she’s able to do small things to make great change.”

“So the Lord would be...?” Eve asked.

“Monika,” Corona said. “She’s the opposite of Twilence. Has no idea what she’s doing, but almost complete control over her ka.”

“And the Prophet… could be any Prophet,” Allure pointed out.

“Probably GM,” Pinkie said. “Last major chapter was about us finding him. So that’s a good point.”

Eve furrowed her brow. “Which just leaves the ancient…”

“Which is vague as mist on the water,” Pinkie said, smirking. “Could be anyone. Blumiere. Nanoha. The Tree of Harmony. A Star. Someone we haven’t even met.” She shrugged. 

“So, chances are Monika and GM have been taken as well,” Corona said. “What does that tell us?”

“That this is a ka-based plan,” Eve asserted. “Two masters of ka, and our Prophet? Too much of a coincidence. Plus it’s related to that ancient prophecy. ‘gathered together to make a tear’ ‘needed to fulfill a lost tenet’. Unhelpfully vague, but indicative of destruction.”

“Probably something we need to stop,” Corona said.

“Deeeefinitely!” Pinkie chirped. 

“But how would we do that if we know nothing?” Eve asked.

“I can tell you something,” Allure said, pointing at the map. “We’re heading for the Dark Tower…”


~Theater~


“…the Tower or Infinity?” the actor representing the Downstreamer ‘High Commander’ asked. The man sitting in the theater found the idea of a Downstreamer High Commander hilarious, and laughed every time the man spoke. It was just so stupid.

“What do you mean?” his ‘aide’ asked. 

“We’ve completed most of our goals. Only two things remain – the Tower or Infinity. With the Chousin no longer an issue and the rest letting us do what we want, we need to make something of that.”

“Why? Can we not be content with where we are?”

“NO!” 

“Geez, the ham,” the audience said, rolling his eyes. “Tone down the drama!”

The aide backed up a few steps from her commander. “But what about the others…”

“Downstreamers act as one.”

“YOU AREN’T DOING A VERY GOOD JOB OF SHOWING THAT!” the viewer blurted. 

Neither of them responded to the complaints of a man with too much popcorn. They simply continued their argument. 

“Infinity or the Tower?” the commander posed once again. “If we accomplish true Infinity, we will break the multiverse into what we originally wanted it to be. Create every existence. But we can also take on the Tower itself, gain control over the story of existence. Both come with complications. How does Infinity exist when the Sea means Possibility, not existence? Are attempts to control the Dark Tower inherently foolish and doomed to fail?”

“Sir, which one will benefit the Downstreamers more?”

“I do not know,” he said, folding his arms. “We are already above everything else. None of us have perished in an eternity of memory. There is nothing to threaten us.”

“…What do we do once we’ve controlled the Dark Tower and Infinity?”

“Control Infinity?” he laughed. “My dear, if we create Infinity, that means we can never control it all. That’s the point. It gives us more and more to strive for. There will be no power ceiling for us anymore.”

“Could the Tower exert its control over Infinity…?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not…” 

The man blinked – these were actually some good questions that he didn’t have the answer for. What would Infinity be like? True Infinity, not functional infinity. There were seemingly endless examples of functional infinity in the multiverse, but everything had a limit. Metatime would go on forever, yes, but there was always a finite amount of it. The Multiverse had a beginning. 

Very curious. 

Almost made him wish the Downstreamers were still around so he could ask them…


~Historian~


…The Prognosticus told of a future where all worlds would perish. The Tribe of Darkness had finally convinced themselves this was true, having forgotten the teachings of Desan to never use the book for anything. They were not completely unfaithful, for they did nothing with this information besides keep it hidden. This secrecy prompted a greater divide between the Tribe of Ancients and the Tribe of Darkness. It was at this time the purity doctrine formed within the Tribe of Darkness. (And we can say that was when we finally became the people we were meant to be!) The Tribe of Darkness didn’t allow outside blood into the bloodline anymore. There could be no tainting of our way. 

This turned out to be even better than expected. Because the Tribe of Ancients did not have the purity doctrine, they began to stagnate and dilute. They lost their powers of magic over the generations and slowly lost control over their many worlds while the Tribe of Darkness maintained a powerful presence in their secret abodes. 

The last project the Tribes worked together on was the dual-reality of Flipside and Flopside. Two cities were plastered together in a reflective pattern, each mirroring the other, providing two sides of the same coin. It came to exist as the last great construct of the sub-tribe of Pixls. It still stands to this day, though not in the control of either Tribe, but rather the remnants and descendants of the Tribe of Ancients and a handful of stray descendants of our Dark Tribe. (Traitors to our way!) 

After Flipside and Flopside were created, what many consider a disaster struck – the Tribe of Ancients discovered that our Tribe had the Prognosticus, and knew about the end of the worlds. (I could not find out how they discovered this. Likely a traitor). However, this was the final straw for the Tribe of Darkness. We entered a complete isolation from all worlds, completing our journey to become what we are today. Departed from our origins, building our Darkness up for eternity. A true beautiful separation…


~Grand Tour~


…it’s disgusting. Its… it’s horrible, it’s wrong, it’s… What the hell is wrong with existence!?

Master, you need to give the report.

I don’t want to give the stupid report, Raising Heart! I want to burn that Watchmaker to cinders!

You know we can’t do that.

Aaaaaaaaa! Just… She’s dead! Ginga is dead! I don’t even have her body! Subaru’s broken, the entire team’s in tatters, and I’ve just realized what a cruel joke all of this is! We’re ‘heroes!’ We’re part of some story! Some story written by some Watchmaker-like thing. I can’t save him. I can’t talk to him. And I can’t stop him. He’s going to keep driving that world into… into… Well it’s not as bad as it could be but…

Master, you need to cool down. Come back to this later.

Right, right… 

…Ginga’s dead. My sister is gone. 

…

End report…

…This is Nanoha Takamachi of the TSAB Horizon. I have just come from the funeral for Ginga Nakajima. There was no body. There wasn’t anything. Just a reminder that she was lost on Zhui. 

Ginga was one of the best mages I had. She worked excellently with her sister and her team, and she was one of Rarity’s closest friends. And-

That’s for another report. I said all that at the service. Now… Now it’s time to say what this means. 

I’m confident the crew will move on. As a whole. Rarity has been damaged, but she’ll recover. Subaru… I’m not sure Subaru will. She’s been so close with her sister for so long. She’s going to be changed permanently, and not for the better. 

As for me… Normally, I think I’d be able to move through it. She isn’t the first one we’ve lost on this journey, merely the one I knew best. But it’s how it happened. It’s… the power the Watchmaker wields. The fate. The ka. The power of stories. 

We’re all just stories. Stories controlled by that Tower we kept hearing about but never got any details on. 

We are little toys for some ‘Prophet’ somewhere who may not even know what they’re doing!

They’re innocent… We suffer by the fault of no one. We fight and die not even at the beck and call of God, but random imagination! That’s… that’s so wrong I can’t even put it into words. 

The Watchmaker deserves my wrath. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he won’t change. But most of them know nothing. They’re just people with creativity. People chosen to alter reality. 

Nobody deserves that power. But we’re just a minnow in this river. We can’t do anything about it. Even the Watchmaker only holds one world in his grasp. Just one. And he turned us away. 

I… I need to stop getting so angry. It’s not like me. 

…What am I even angry at? It’s like being angry at the world for having disease, or for a planet to be overrun with natural predators. I shouldn’t be angry. I should be sad. 

I should be sad. 

Existence is a tragedy. 

We just have to accept it, don’t we?

We’ll never be able to change anything major. We’re just a group of people on a ship from a faraway nation that’s barely Class 3. We’re nothing. 

And that’s… You know what? That’s okay. It’s okay to be nothing. We don’t have to be special. We don’t have to save all of existence. We don’t have to change it. We just have to do what we can to make the world a better place. Sometimes that means having a tragedy. Sometimes that means complete failure. Sometimes that means great sacrifice. 

But we keep moving. We keep striving. 

Striving to find what is best for everyone we can. Even those who may not agree or want help…


~Harlequin~


…Dimitri woke up to find his father holding a sickle above his chest. 

The nightmares still raged in his mind. The fire. The Tower. The Screams. 

He screamed. A burst of energy shot forth from his hand, knocking his father straight through the wall and out into a nearby field. The man caught on fire, brushing the leaves of the crops with his flames. 

Thea woke up from the loud noise. “Wh-wha?”

“They just tried to kill me!” Dimitri shouted, a twisted smile appearing on his face. He held out his hands and laughed. “They think they still have a choice!” 

BURN. BURN. BURN. BURN. BURN. BURN.

Dimitri kicked down the metal door of his new house. The fire in the field had already started raging, providing plenty of light to see the small crowd who had gathered there. Gathered to take him on should it be required. Gathered to see if his father had managed to take him out. 

Led by his own mother. 

“Like a pack of wolves, you have revealed your true colors…” Dimitri said, clenching his fist. “You were willing to kill me?”

They charged him.

“IMBECILES!” Dimitri shouted, lighting the entire field aflame. “I will burn every last crop!”

There was no more talking – just the entire village charging at him. He snapped his fingers, torching more fields. Destroying all their work. “You have no choice! You will die!”

His mother looked right at him with a livid expression. “I choose death over your horror.”

Dimitri’s smile faltered – and then forced itself back to full. “As you wish.”

She suddenly had no head. She fell back, dead. “AhahahaahahahaHAHahaha!”

They rushed him, determined to save what they could from his terror. He made it impossible. They were pathetic whelps compared to the power he had obtained in the megalith. Power beyond their wildest dreams. Power they couldn’t see the benefit of. 

They deserved what was happening to them. 

“Like lemmings on a cliff, you throw yourselves into the ocean! Why do you do this to yourselves!? Is it to amuse me? Not the best joke, you know – or the greatest show.” He snapped his fingers, spicing up the slaughter of his home a bit with flashing lights, dimensional twists, and teleporting. 

His vision of fire bled with the vision of reality. Everything was ablaze. 

I should have listened to the dreams years ago! 

“This is what I am! This is what you squandered! You drove this power away because you were afraid of it!” He thrust his hand out, tearing cracks in the earth. “And because you could not move past your fear the very thing you feared has come to pass! Isn’t that ironic!?”

They made no response. There were none willing to fight left. They had all run away or surrendered. 

“Ahaha! You think my promise to help you still stands?! You treated me like an unwanted rabid animal. You had your chance. Now get what you deserv-”

The Alamala took the form of a sword and swung directly at him. He managed to dodge the life-threatening blow to his neck – but his face took the brunt of it. “AUGH!”

Thea didn’t waste another moment – she drove the Alamala blade toward Dimitri’s chest. 

Dimitri reversed the Alamala’s direction and drove it into Thea’s chest. “Even you!?” 

“This… isn’t right…” Thea said, still standing despite the blade in her stomach. 

The images of the dreams were more vivid in his mind than ever before. He saw worlds. He saw fire. He saw destruction. He saw a book. He saw the Tower. The Tower. The Tower. 

“You’re nothing,” Dimitri concluded. “You were just here to provide a catalyst.”

Thea stared at him. “You’re… a monster.”

Dimitri smirked. “I’m a performer. All the world’s a stage, my Thea.” He forced her into a kiss that she wasn’t in any position to resist. “Your act has drawn to an end.”

“Don’t you care!?”

Dimitri smiled. “You’ll never know for sure.”

He knocked her over, and she was gone. 

His face was ruined – but his smile could still be seen. His eternal smile. 

They could hear him laughing as he burned all the farms. All the farms. Nothing would live here ever again if he had anything to say about it. 

The dreams spoke to him. As he burned the place to the ground the way he had seen in his derams so many times, they told him much else. Of words on a page… Of the actual source of his power… The origin…

TOWER. TOWER. TOWER. TOWER. TOWER. TOWER.

Dimitri knew what needed to happen next. 

He left…


~Mother~


…the mother arrived at the Emerson household. The city was a place where there was virtually no poverty, so when you saw a house that looked like it was in shambles that generally spoke volumes of the sort of people who lived there. 

The mother happened to know some of the people who lived in this house. Mrs. Emerson, Mr. Emerson, and their eldest daughter Claire were… a special sort of people, to say the least. 

She knocked on the door. 

Mrs. Emerson opened it. She was human, but easily the size of three women, had wrinkle lines everywhere on her face despite only being middle aged, and had a pointed pair of glasses that were clearly too small for her face. “Ah. You.”

“Yes. Me. May I come in?”

“No,” Mrs. Emerson said, slamming the door. 

“I know people! I can get law enforcement down here on suspicion of kidnapping!”

Mrs. Emerson pulled the door back open. “Oh, has little Osanna run away? Boo hoo, let me get a tissue.” She slammed the door again. 

The mother pulled out her phone. “Ahem. Chief? Ah, nice to hear your voice. See, I can’t find Osanna. She’s been missing for a while, and I think I may have traced her to the Emerson residence, but they aren’t letting me inside. You’ll send someone over right away? Aw, thanks, you’re such a lifesaver. Remind m-”

Mrs. Emerson opened the door. “She wasn’t bluffing Harold!”

“FUCK.”

“You can come in, I guess,” Mrs. Emerson muttered. “You hear that Chief? We’re letting her in!”

The mother smiled. “All’s fine Chief. Thanks for being there.” She hung up and put her phone into her pocket. She followed Mrs. Emerson into a house that was clearly never cleaned or tidied up in any way. Trash was everywhere, the place smelled horrendous, and there were a lot of magazines littered around that could be described as ‘questionable’ at best. At best.  

Mr. Emerson was a tremendously muscular man who somehow managed to maintain that physique despite a lifestyle of watching TV most of the time. The mother suspected steroids. 

Claire was a truly beautiful girl in her early twenties who the mother had met once. Once. She was such a foulmouthed piece of garbage who spoke in long extended sentences and never really said anything at all…

The place was just filled with bad memories and people. But the mother put on a smile and tried to be courteous.

“Hey,” Mr. Emerson said. “Look, I want you out of my house, so just take anything you see and go.”

“Sorry!” the mother trilled. “I’m not going until you either tell me where your son is or where my daughter is.”

Mrs. Emerson laughed. “Like we’d have any idea where our son is!”

“I can tell you where he is,” Mr. Emerson said. “He’s giving that scrawny little thing of yours the best time of her life, that’s what.”

The mother twitched. “That’s what, not where.”

“Hm. Guess I mixed that up.” A Stand came out of the man, grabbed a beer can, and let Mr. Emerson drink it while he used his hands to make obscene gestures at the mother. “Guess I’m kinda stupid sometimes. Heh.”

“You mean to tell me you never have any idea where your son is? Ever?”

“He was gone for a month once. Thought he was dead,” Mrs. Emerson said dismissively. “Then he came back and ruined that little daydream.”

“Heh,” Mr. Emerson said. “Nice one.”

“If you dare butter me up I will run you through the meat grinder, Harold.”

“Bah. Whatever.” He leaned back and stretched his arms. 

“Well I’m not leaving until you give me something,” the mother said, folding her arms. “I’ll cramp your style for as long as necessary. Maybe even until your son comes back a month from now.”

Mr. Emerson seemed to find this prospect horrifying. “Uh… Fuck.”

Mrs. Emerson shook her head. “She doesn’t have the willpo-”

The mother twitched. “I DON’T KNOW WHERE MY DAUGHTER IS AND THIS IS MY LAST LEAD! I HAVE MORE THAN ENOUGH WILLPOWER, BITCH!”

“Oh no you didn’t!”

The mother twitched. Her pupils pulsated. Mrs. Emerson fell over backward, out cold. 

“And now I can charge you with assault,” Mr. Emerson muttered, almost apathetically. 

“And getting law enforcement in here would be great for you, I’m sure.” 

“Ugh… Look, I don’t know where the fuck he is. I don’t keep tabs on the little shit. I do know he thinks the Inner Foundry is cool. So he might be there.”

“Good. I would say thank you but this has been truly unpleasant.”

“Fuck you too,” he muttered. “Now get out of my house.”

The mother didn’t need to be told twice. She completely ignored the sudden stream of meaningless words coming out of Claire’s mouth from upstairs…


~Twilence~


…I could only wish the words I put on paper were meaningless, but they had a true power. Here I was, in a dungeon, forced to go against my code of honor and use my powers as an Aware Prophet to twist the fate of a city for evil. Evil. 

It disgusted me more than anything I had ever done. And I had destroyed entire universes in fits of rage. I had destroyed many lives. 

But I had not written a race of conquerors into existence just because I could. And now I was being forced to. 

The cellar wasn’t even comfortable. It was cold, damp, and dark – without windows. I was chained to a desk with a large book open on it. Several stacks of paper were placed to my sides and I had been provided an endless amount of pens. 

My only company was Vriska. Mite was on a nearby shelf, out of power, not to be reactivated for… I didn’t know how long. Creek currently wasn’t in the room, likely being questioned by Polymarchus for whatever reason. So it was just me and the Thief of Light, alone. 

I had freedom to use my telekinesis and a modicum of magic. She didn’t. Her eyes were covered with sunglasses and all her limbs were tied to the wall. 

“So. This is a pretty bad pickle,” she said.

“Understatement,” I said.

“We have been captured before. You’re not always perfect.”

“I know,” I muttered. “But at least I always know we will get out. I don’t know what in my visions I can believe anymore. Not while that Flower is still around. Not while it’s also writing things to keep me in check…” I shook my head.

“We live though, right?”

“You and I do. For sure.” I stared into nothing. “I can’t say the same for the others.”

“Rarity will come get us eventually.”

“Does she actually know where we went?”

Vriska paled. “Oh…”

“Exactly.”

“Well, shit, we’ve got to think of something.”

“As long as you’re here and he has that gun plastered to the back of your neck, I don’t think we can.”

“…What I wouldn’t give for an infinite-sided die right about now…”

“What I wouldn’t give for a rescue operation. Or a decent meal.”

“What I wouldn’t give to just get home already.”

“What I wouldn’t give to stop being so sure of myself…” I sighed, placing my pen to the paper again. “He’s even ruining the enjoyment I can get out of writing. I’m creating a hero, who certainly thinks he’s doing good, and the story does as well. But he isn’t. …All the joy is gone. It’s wrong.”

“He’ll get what’s coming to him.”

“…Maybe,” I admitted. “But we don’t know that.”

“Shut the fuck up and listen. You may not be able to see shit right now, but I can. Because I’m the best thing since sliced bread and I pay attention to the things you say. We’re in a story right now, one that’s messing with your abilities. So stop thinking of yourself as an all-powerful surveyor of fate and instead of a regular joe. You are locked in this cellar with me. Polymarchus is the antagonist. We have a set of powers and are in a big predicament. But we’re going to struggle and prevail eventually.”

“…That may or may not be how this works.”

“For the love of gog… Get a hold of yourself. We can do this.”

I smiled. “…You’re right. But I don’t exactly have a plan right now.”

“Screw the plan, just think of something. Get your mind out of the swirl of ‘this is horrible’ and out into kicking ass! You’re really fucking smart. Take advantage of that.”

“Yeah… Yeah! I will! I will get up a-”

The door to the cellar opened. Only one person walked in – Creek. Without an escort. I looked at her and froze, unable to form words. 

“Hey,” Creek said. 

Vriska smiled. “Oh, sweet, Creek’s back! We were just talking ab-”

“That’s not Creek,” I told Vriska. 

‘Creek’ smirked. Her body was no longer old, but rather young. Her veins coursed with both blood and cotton. On her head she wore a straw hat. “Good eye.”

“You said you wouldn’t kill her!” I shouted.

Polymarchus shrugged with his – her – new body. “I didn’t. I could leave her at any time, and she would remember none of it. Not even her mind would be affected.” She touched my horn with her finger. “This is to just ensure your loyalty. If you have some plan to defeat me, it will require going against her. Probably even killing her. And you wouldn’t be able to kill her with your own hooves, would you?”

I blinked in horror. 

No. No I would not be able to do that. Not with my own hooves…

“I thought not. Whatever crazy plan you were thinking of, it ends here. I have her. I am her. And you must protect her…”


~Theater~


“…I have to protect you!” the Downstreamer ‘aide’ said. Her name had been spoken enough times by now for the man who was the audience to know it was ‘F-something’, but that was about it. 

The girl, playing F-something’s ‘daughter’ Winona, looked up at her. “Protect me from what?”

“From the insanity of our commander!”

The viewer put a hand in front of his face. “Ugh… They were united, they didn’t have children as we understand them, and this didn’t even happen! You’ve just gone and added fiction to your already dubious history! What is your problem?”

As usual, the film had nothing to say to him. 

Winona blinked. “What’s our commander doing, mom?”

F-something shook her head. “He’s… He’s trying to make true Infinity. The one fact of existence that shouldn’t be messed with.”

“Didn’t the ancient people say that about death? We’re fine, right?”

“…We may be fine, but we are not safe. We have changed because of it. Perhaps for the worse.”

The man threw a piece of popcorn. “They would never have thought that. They wouldn’t be able to remember what existence was like without folded time! The things you do to make a ‘relatable’ story…”

“I thought you said to always trust him?” Winona asked.

“Yes, yes, he doesn’t mean you harm, but…” F-something bit her lip. “But he might be biting off more than he can chew. Than any of us can chew.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I… am going to protect you.”

“How?”

“I am… I will… I…” F-something grabbed her forehead. “I don’t know! I don’t even know what I would protect you against until it happens! I don’t even…” She pulled Winona close. “I’ll have to protect you when it happens. However it happens. As fast as I can.”

“BOO!” the man said. He was almost surprised to see the two of them respond to him – except they weren’t. They were responding to a news alert. 

“BREAKING NEWS: THE INFINITY MECHANISMS HAVE FINALLY BEEN COMPLETED!” the projector displayed a television – on which was an image of the Infinity Mechanisms. Tremendously tall metallic ovoids that were glowing blue throughout, the lights on top of them shining brightest of all. 

At least they got the appearance of those right. 

It was a bright, almost holy light that shone on the Downstreamers…


~Historian~


…The Tribe of Ancients turned their ideals to Light – they found the prophecy of the Prognosticus distasteful, so they decided to change it. (I do hate writing this part of the history, but it’s still important to us.) They saw themselves as warriors defying the eternal death brought upon existence by fate. Since they could not find the Tribe of Darkness, they would defy the prophecy we had shown them. 

They claimed that the Prognosticus was a ‘Dark’ view of reality, so they would create a ‘Light Prognosticus’ to counter it and show that words could have multiple meanings. They used the remnants of their great magic and power to create what they believed to be a counter-prophecy to the destruction of their worlds in the ‘Dark’ Prognosticus. 

As far as they were concerned, they succeeded. The results of their efforts were a white book known as the Light Prognosticus that contained great holy power, prophecies of heroes in the future, and speech involving a dual prophecy that could go one way or the other. 

But they didn’t realize what they had really done. By combining all their powers, they had tapped into the energy of the real Prognosticus. That day, the Tribe of Darkness recorded a change in the Prognosticus – it became smaller, darker, and lost some of the language it had prior. 

The Tribe of Ancients, in their quest to create something separate from the dark book, had only divided it in two. They didn’t even know it. The Prognosticus was no more – now there was only the Light Prognosticus and the Dark Prognosticus. Two half-prophecies of the future. The knowledge contained within each of the two was incomplete without the other, but our tribe decided it did not matter. The Dark Prognosticus could no longer be used for as much evil as it once had, and now that it was filled with only the ‘dark’ side of things, it had much less use for our tribe. (We had already completely mastered Darkness. Why would we risk insanity delving deeper into half a book?) 

And so years passed, and the prophecy was forgotten. (It said roughly five-hundred years until the worlds of the Tribes were destroyed. By my calculations it has been four-hundred and sixty, give or take ten. Perhaps I should take it upon myself to remind our Tribe about this prophecy.)…

…The most notable event of the recent years was the rebellion of the Shadow Queen. The most influential member of the Tribe of Darkness rose up and claimed our obsession with purity and division from the rest of the multiverse was foolish. She attempted to usurp complete control over the Council of Darkness. (I myself was not a councilmember at the time, but I certainly remember the event). She attempted to turn the Tribe of Darkness into an army to conquer the multiverse. 

Her rebellion was squashed. She and her three children were banished to a random realm and sealed away within that realm’s time. (It’s more complicated than that, but I can’t put that in a history book, classified and all.) There have been no uprisings since. 

(I do feel sorry for her youngest, Vivian. She never even got to know her true home…


~Grand Tour~


…we’ve finally found Rarity’s home. After all these long years… We’ve found it. 

There’s been a lot of pain on this journey, but it’s finally done. We did what we set out to do. 

It’s not exactly what we expected it would be. Only twelve years have passed on her world, while over thirty have passed for us. She’s much older than her friends. But I saw them together once again. I saw her reuniting with her sister. It was… It was truly beautiful. 

I want to say that makes it all worth it. I really do. I’m not certain I can though. 

…We accomplished much more. Gave the TSAB so many allies. Improved the Horizon’s systems in every way imaginable. Started a Q-Sphere chapter of the TSAB – though the paradoxical nature around that entire thing has made more of a mess than I was anticipating. At least they’re friendly. 

What I’m not sure about is the Stars. They’re the powerful Class 2 Society that lives in this area of the multiverse – apparently the third strongest Class 2 in the entire multiverse. Rarity’s world – and a lot of other worlds – are within their space. And these Stars… They don’t seem to care about the people they have control over. For the most part, the control is all about space. The ponies are free to live on the planets as they choose, and the Stars will only sometimes do anything. They’re more like distant gods to them than anything. 

I’ve only talked to a few of them. They’re very dismissive and cryptic. And arrogant. I’ve told Rarity not to worry, but given our experiences on our journey, I don’t think she’s going to take very well to living under something, even if it is just indirectly. 

At least they aren’t malevolent. 

We’ll stick around a few weeks to make sure everything’s going smoothly, but then we’ll take the Strand highway back to the E-Sphere, on a path given to us by the Stars. It’ll take maybe a day to get back to the E-Sphere with the upgrades to the drive. It’ll take a long time to move through the E-Sphere, but we should be back home in a few months. 

Back home in a few months… 

I really want to see Fate again. I hope she hasn’t forgotten what I look like! 

…But part of me also wants to keep exploring. There’s so much we haven’t seen out here. We’ll be skipping most of the Great Void, won’t even touch the Unrealities… We found a Wishing World, but I’m not about to waste that on traveling longer. I’m sure we’ll be back, but I did want to ride the Spline…


~Tower~


“…the Mihipte Spline,” Weaver said. “It is one of the last creations of my people, and the one I am working to protect.”

Roland and Patrick stared ahead with blank expressions.

“To put it simply, the Dark Tower is the center of the multiverse, the Spline is the outside. Even though worlds can exist outside the Spline, it does a relatively decent job of ringing the edge of everything. It was part of our great multiversal highway project, allowing quick and easy travel to any world with ease. The central part of the system, the Strands, were completed before the Dark Tower was. But the Spline was still under construction when ka was thrown into the mix… and all Weavers began to die out.”

“So you’ve been trying to finish it?”

“I don’t have the time or the resources,” Weaver said solemnly. “What I do have is the ability to protect it. To create a… Safeguard. You saw the humanoid machines near the door you entered, yes?”

Roland nodded.

“Those are the Safeguard prototypes. The defenders of the Spline. Most of them are already active – ready to defend the still-visible construction structures of the Spline. To keep any society, no matter how great they ever rise, from taking advantage of the Spline – or destroying it. To keep it open for everyone to use. Something to give a little organization to this chaos that ka churns up.”

“Building roads is a great purpose,” Roland said. “Pave the ground so others may walk freely. It’ll keep the worlds from moving on.”

“…I guess it will, won’t it? In a way, at least. The Safeguard isn’t quite complete, sadly. Almost – they’re ready to defend against anything the Crimson King could throw at them, for instance – but there are a few possible weaknesses I haven’t covered yet. Nothing that would mean anything to you, I’m afraid.”

Roland’s lips quivered. Was that his equivalent of a smile? Weaver couldn’t actually tell – his thoughts weren’t very useful in determining the gunslinger’s emotional state. “I understand, you don’t need to explain.”

Weaver sighed. “I only wish that I had enough time to complete my work.”

“How long until you die?” Roland asked.

“A direct question.”

“Your false Tower’s light isn’t steady. You are the last of your kind. You’re dying.”

“I… I don’t know. All I can say for certain is that my lifespan is tied in to your journey.”

Roland nodded. “When it is finished, so are you.”

“…Is that what it means?”

Roland didn’t need to respond to tell Weaver he was right. 

“Then perhaps it was good we had this discussion. It allowed me to get more work done. …I need to hurry.”

“Do we need to slow our journey so you may complete your road?”

“It should be done long before you arrive at the Tower, given your speed.”

“Time is not… the same.”

Weaver paused. “No. I suppose not.”

“You will either finish your roads the moment before my journey ends, or…”

“Or I would have right after,” Weaver grunted. “And no amount of us talking will change that, will it? It’s all up to the Tower…


~Merodi~


…I stared at the Dark Tower, dominating the view of our little sub-universal bubble. We technically weren’t in the same realm as the Dark Tower, but a secluded bubble that existed within the same physical space that we could look out of and see it. 

Our universe consisted of a single disc of pure white magic adorned with vaguely alchemical designs. There were five circles around the outside, and one in the middle. The five outer ones clearly were meant for the five of us – myself, Monika, John, Arceus, and GM – but the identity of the center perpetrator eluded us much as it had eluded those trying to find us. 

“Good news that might also be bad news,” I said. “The story’s finally focused on us.”

“Big news,” Monika droned, hands on her hips. 

“It is,” Arceus said. “Not all of us are gifted with the sight you two have.”

Monika rolled her eyes. “That’s because you’d just mess it up.”

“Well, it didn’t seem to help you all that much…” John said, adjusting his glasses.

“You can shut up, windy boy,” Monika spat. 

“H-hey, stop,” GM said. “We’re all in this together, we don’t need to fight.”

“No offense man, but you just spent the last ten minutes crying in the corner over there,” John said. 

I glared at John. “Monika gave him his memories back. Which I still assert was a bad idea, but  what’s done is done. You shouldn’t be surprised that it drove him to semi-madness.”

“I am never writing again…” GM muttered.

“Yes you are. You write this, eventually,” Monika muttered. “What number are you on now?”

“I just blinded Pinkie…” GM muttered. “I… I’m a horrible person.”

“Uh, you didn’t know,” John pointed out.

“Who cares!?”

Monika facepalmed. “This was much more endearing the first time. Now it’s basically just a rerun of the first.”

“Perhaps you should not have given him his memories back, then,” Arceus said.

“He would already freak out at seeing all of us,” Monika pointed out.

“Yes, but it might have been a bit different,” I commented. “We could have worked together to get out of here instead of having mild cases of insanity.”

“…‘Mild’?” John interjected with an amused smile. 

“Point taken,” I admitted. “At least it doesn’t appear that anything happened while the five of us were having our own personal series of neuroses.”

“We need more information,” Arceus said.

“Uh, yeah, where are we gonna get that?” John asked.

I tapped the Eye of Rhyme. “I can still see the story folding around us. Granted, my view of the future of these stories is a little muddled, since this is the very edge of my perceptions, but it’s enough to work some things out.”

“…Stories? Plural?” GM said, blinking. 

“Yes. Eight separate stories are unfolding before our eyes.”

“…I actually did it,” GM said. “I made Cloud Atlas a movie chapter.”

“Wait, you know this one!?” Monika blurted.

“Yeah… Well no, not really, I haven’t planned it out at all, but I know I want the movie of Arc 9 to be a story that ties together all the lore of the multiverse before I enter the actual climax. Tell some stories that couldn’t be told before. That sort of thing. I have no idea which ones I chose or which ones I made up… Or will make up.” He nervously rubbed his knuckles together. “Gaaaaaaaah this is confusing, why did I have to make it this way?”

“You likely did not have a choice in the matter,” Arceus said, gesturing at the Tower. 

“I’ll talk about the stories so far,” I said, clearing my throat. “There’s one with Roland talking to the last Weaver, relating him to the Spline. Probably just there to make sense of a lot of the Dark Tower lore that was glossed over.”

“Probably,” GM admitted. “Guess I did find a place for the Spline after all. Neat. …But also horrible.”

“Then there’s one with a guy… watching a movie… about the Downstreamers.”

GM blinked. “…I went crazy enough to include the Downstreamers!? What’s wrong with me!?”

John blinked. “Uh, I think you need to find some chill pills.”

“I’m chill! I’m perfectly chill!”

“No, you’re not,” Monika said, blowing some hair out of her face. 

I continued. “Then there’s the story of a guy named Dimitri who’s going mad and destroying everything… honestly I have no idea what that one’s about.”

GM shrugged. “Yeah, drawing a blank there too.”

“Then a Historian of the Tribe of Darkness’ journal.”

“Guess I wanted to explain the Prognostici?”

“Prog-what now?” Arceus now.

GM blinked. “Crap, none of you are supposed to know about those. Actually, wait, it might be better if you do.”

“Let’s not tempt fate,” I suggested. “After that we have Nanoha’s journey through the Q-Sphere, probably there just to show how the TSAB came to be. I already know that entire story, it doesn’t help us here. Then there’s my story about the last adventure I had with my original group.”

“I… I’m sorry,” GM said.

“I know. I know. Let’s not worry about it now. The seventh story is this one, which had been focusing on Songs of the Spheres’ four protagonists, but just switched to us right now so we could have this conversation. They’re currently trying to find us.”

“…Didn’t you say eight stories?” Arceus asked.

“…Yeah. Uh, for the first time in my life I’m seeing something from past the point of uncertainty.” My face became visibly nervous. “It has to be beyond important. It has to. The future exists at least, but the only important person I’ve recognized so far is Seskii. I don’t recognize the universe and the main character is being made very vague on purpose.”

“Uh. Sorry,” GM said.

“You haven’t written it yet. Also, stop apologizing for everything.”

“Uh… Kay. Sure. Caaaan do.”

I facehooved at the sudden sarcasm. “Oh boy… Anyway, that’s what’s going on. These eight stories are combined together somehow. But we haven’t reached the ends of them yet, so I can’t tell you how. They’re all tied together through odd synchronicities, and most of them have mentioned the Dark Tower at least once. But the Dark Tower is a given connecting influence. There has to be some sort of story here, the Song of the Spheres, and I don’t see it. Wanna know the best part? I see a preface I’ll write in the future.”

“Ouch,” John winced. “That has to burn your brain.”

“Yes. It does.” I rubbed my head. 

“We don’t need to find out the story, though,” Monika said. “We just need to figure out what’s happening with us. The four protagonists of Songs of the Spheres and the five most powerful beings-”

“Debatable,” Arceus pointed out.

Monika twitched. “-are all together in this story. What’s the point?”

“The four of them are pretty sure it’s part of the Tower’s Testament,” I said. “I’m the Muse, then there’s the Lord, the Heir, the Prophet, the God… and the ancient. Who’s the ancient?”

Monika blinked. “Oh, that’s easy. Just think about it for five seconds.”

“I…” I blinked. I thought back to all the other stories, and some of the things that had been said. Then I laughed. “Oh. That makes perfect sense. It’s…”


~Harlequin~


“…time,” Dimitri said. 

He stood in a field of roses.

The dreams had led him here across time and space. It felt like it had been no time since he had burned everything he’d ever known and loved, but for all he knew it had been eons. 

Along the way, he had picked up a mask to hide his disfigured face. A mask that smiled. It might well have been his face, now. 

“Ahahaha! So I have come at last to the tip of the iceberg, the pinnacle of all knowledge, the library with all answers!” he spread his arms wide, capturing the Dark Tower in his field of view. “You are my goal! You are my center! You… you are me! You are the dreams!” 

He shifted to the door of the Dark Tower and entered. His demented laughter slowly died off as he felt the inner turmoil of his mind calm for the first time in eternity. 

He felt… at peace. Like this was where he belonged. 

He began to walk up the staircase – and he was going to open every door he came across. The first one showed him as an infant in a crib. 

“Don’t let yourself go,” he said, closing the door. He walked upward, opening the next one, and the next. Occasionally a door he opened would lead to another world, but those were useless to him. He only cared about the ones he was in. He saw his life. As a child, playing with the other children. Laughing. Always laughing, even when nobody else was. He saw the nightmares that had tormented his mind.

“If only I hadn’t been afraid of you…” he said, continuing on. “This realization would have come sooner…”

He moved higher. More recent memories of his embarrassment. His joy that they wanted to squander. They hadn’t succeeded. “You deserved every last spike of pain…” he growled. He moved higher. He saw Thea. 

Thea…

He slammed that door. The sight of her face made him angry. 

“I will never be that foolish again…” he promised himself. He moved higher. He saw the world burning. He saw himself pick up the mask and put it on. He saw himself standing outside the Dark Tower. He opened a door where he was looking at himself.

He grinned. “And now… the future.”

He almost ran up the stairs, purposefully looking at his entire life. He saw himself laughing, a book in his hands. A powerful book…

...He saw himself watching others’ lives burn…

…He saw himself talking to a man in black. 

“Do you even know what this is!?” he asked, pointing at the book. 

“Flagg, you mock me!” the Dimitri through the door laughed. “I know perfectly well what this is. It is you who doesn’t. Ciao!”

…He saw his future self guide many to destruction. Work in the shadows. Watch and laugh at everything he could…

…He saw himself sitting in a chair, looking right through the Dark Tower’s door.

“We will find perfection, one day,” future-Dimitri said.

“Really?”

“Really. This existence is like a fleck of gold in a pile of elephant feces. We can make it all gold.”

“Yes… yes we can!”

The door closed…

…He saw himself living life to the fullest. Unending, unrelenting joy. It was a rare moment when he saw a frown on his future…

Dimitri neared the top. It seemed like everything was coming together. He opened a door…

“BLEH HEH HEH HEH BLECK! All worlds will fall! And be replaced with one of perfection!”

Behind him, future-Dimitri laughed. 

Dimitri closed the door, cackling. “The fool doesn’t understand the hammer that he has become! It will lead to…”

Dimitri opened the third-to-last door and beheld himself having ascended to a being of true, immense power. He existed in multiple dimensions at once, taking control of the world around him – making the platforms smile! Making everything laugh! “IT IS THE ULTIMATE SHOW!” 

He moved to open the second-to-last door – but something made him stop. It was not the thought that, behind this door, lay his death. The thought didn’t even occur to his demented mind. 

It was the name on the final door that drew his attention. 


DIMENTIO


He had never heard it before. But he knew it was his name.

“Dimentio…” Dimentio said, mulling the sound over in his mouth. “I like it... The master of dimensions…”

He opened the door, hand barely registering the jester’s mask engraved in the doorknob. He saw the inside. 

He saw the spirograph of the Source.

He saw the Clock with the spirograph on it.

He saw all the symbols.

He moved to walk into it – and then stopped. He pulled back, narrowing his eyes.

This was a trick… 

…He’d know a trick anywhere. Once he walked through there, he would be sent away. He could feel it. It would end his journey. 

Knowledge of his future wasn’t enough. He needed to know more. 

He needed to touch the Source. 

So he teleported himself through the doorway. The Tower creaked and groaned – detecting that someone had entered the final room. It could have sent him away in an instant.

It didn’t. He was allowed in. 

It didn’t look all that different from the inside. The Source was still there, glowing, while the clock sat there motionless. 

He walked up to the Source and touched it.

He got his answers about creation…


~Theater~


“…and with the creation of Infinity, we will no longer know all the answers! There will be no limit to how we can grow!”

The man who was the audience found himself wishing they could go back to the drama between F-something and Winona, because this ham-fisted stupidity was grating against him in ways that few people ever had. He felt like his time was being wasted.

But the film had to be over soon. They were building up to a climax here. All centered around those Infinity Mechanisms and the creation of true Infinity.

He knew exactly what was about to happen. Nobody who watched this movie would have any illusions that it wouldn’t end in tragedy. But he did wonder exactly how they would handle it. They had shown some cleverness in the writing of this script – maybe they could salvage a good ending from the heap of garbage. 

The film cut to F-something and Winona. Winona sat in a capsule clearly designed off the whole ‘Superman fell from space’ idea while F-something worked tirelessly at a computer. Winona looked at peace through the glass. 

F-something bit her nails. She was praying. 

“The Downstreamers were the closest thing to God that ever existed,” the man muttered.

The scene shifted once again. It showed the ‘high commander’ standing in front of one of the several ovoids of the Infinity Mechanism. He performed some last minute checks. “It is time for us to create something beyond. Let everything exist!”

“Yes sir!”

The sections of the Infinity Mechanism all began to glow an intense blue, shooting energy beams into the sky. They tore at the fabric of space above them.

The viewer didn’t care how inaccurate this was, they had devoted so much of the special effects budget to it that it became true eye candy. As pleasing as anything possibly could be. A treat for kids and adults of all ages… True art. 

The scene shifted away from the amazing special effects to a map of the multiverse the ‘high commander’ was watching. New dots formed rapidly as new universes were created. The rate at which these universes kept increasing – faster and faster, on a scale beyond exponential. 

“The supertask is completing as expected!” a scientist declared. “In one hour of metatime, the multiverse should be Infinite!”

The high commander laughed. “Yes! Yes! We’ve done it! We’ve shown existence that it can truly have no limit!”

The man who was the audience chuckled. “Three… two… one.”

A red light started blaring on the screen. “What is that?”

“Something at the edge of the multiverse…”


~Tower~


…Weaver decided it was time. “You need to go, Roland. There is nothing more for you here. I hope I provided something for you.”

“A reminder that there are other worlds than these,” the gunslinger said. 

Weaver let out a soft, somewhat bitter chuckle. “Go, Roland, return to your quest. The Dark Tower awaits.”

Roland tipped his hat. “C’mon Patrick.” 

Patrick silently followed Roland. He tore a sheet of paper off his notebook and left it on the ground. 

“It was good talkin’ to you, Weaver-sai. May ka look finely upon you.”

“And may your journey finally reach its well-deserved end,” Weaver said. 

Roland and Patrick walked down the wet hallway in silence, leaving through the same door they had come in. They returned to their snowy home. The door closed behind them.

The first thing Weaver did was disconnect the door from Mid-World. No one else would come through that door. No one would ever be able to go to Mid-World again. It was sealed now. For eternity.

Weaver was once again alone. So he threw himself into his work and time bled into nothing. 

He finalized the security preferences on the Safeguard. They would respond only to each other, and not outsiders. He would be very impressed if any society ever figured out how to get past the firewalls of the Safeguard. But he wasn’t a fool – the Safeguard would also know how to interact with those who wanted to travel through the Spline. They would be able to understand what the Spline was for, how to use it, and not to attack it. 

He tweaked the connections so they would stay strong even as the multiverse continued to grow with time. The Spline would always connect the outer edges, and the Safeguard would maintain it to ensure it stayed that way. It was to be a true highway. 

And then… he was done.  

The Spline was ready to defend itself against anything existence threw at it, from now into eternity. When the multiverse became too big to manage, the Spline would be there to help. 

Weaver found himself wishing he had time to create a connection between the Strands and the Spline… but he was just one Weaver. One dying Weaver. He barely had enough time to complete the work already set out.

The multiverse would just have to make do with a little chaos. He did what he could. 

He suddenly remembered that Patrick had left a sketch on the ground. Weaver scanned it – beautiful. An intertwining series of shapes clearly based on the designs in the central room. It was perfect.

If only he could figure out why the cycles made an overall shape of an eight of all things. Why eight? Eight wasn’t important. The number was nineteen and ninety-nine, right? But he didn’t understand how that worked, so for all he knew eight was secretly nineteen or something…

His thoughts were distracted when another door opened. Charging from a completely different hallway was none other than the man in black himself, Randall Flagg. He wordlessly marched across the Weaver’s world until he came to the door to Mid-world. He pulled it open, revealing only a wall behind it. 

“…What?”

“It’s been disabled,” Weaver said.

“I need to get back there,” Flagg said, curling his fists. 

“…Weren’t you eaten by a were-spider last time?”

Flagg raised an eyebrow. “You seem to have a death wish.”

“I’m already dying. It’s not like I have anything to lose.”

Flagg paused a moment – and grinned. “Ah. In that case, maybe I can help you to an appropriate end…”


~Grand Tour~


…this is Rarity Belle, and here’s the last report I will make as a member of the Horizon crew. My journey has come to an end. The Horizon is returning home tomorrow. All of the friends I’ve gotten to know over the past few decades will be gone. 

They likely won’t be back for a long time. Coming out this far is certainly difficult, and funding another mission will take a while given all the things Nanoha is certainly going to have to deal with when she gets back. All the friendships she made, all the alliances she forged without anyone back at the TSAB even knowing. 

I hope Subaru does well. 

I learned so much on this journey about friendship, about hardship, about how to fight, about how to care… about how to suffer. Now that I’m finally home, I know I’m not the same mare. But none of my old friends are the same either. It evens out, in a way. Already our bonds are strengthening once again. 

Sweetie Belle… She makes me so proud. She’s gone on not to become a singer, or a therapist, but a business mare. She’d been trying to find me this entire time. It’s… good to see her so happy. 

My world’s changed a lot, and I have no plans to stop that change now that I’m back. I think it’s great to see ponykind strive to understand more about the worlds around them. More about the Stars…

The Stars…

I don’t believe they are what Nanoha says they are. I don’t think they’re really as impassive as everyone claims. I think they’re controlling us. I can’t be sure, of course, and I’ll have to do some research to learn more. 

But I do know I don’t like their attitude towards existence. It’s despicable. It’s nothing like what I’ve learned all these years. 

The Star in my world, Algol, might be the source of the answers I need. He seems different than all the others. But that could just be my wishful thinking – I can’t know for certain what he’s really like, after all.

Nanoha, if you listen to this – if anyone reads this among the thousands upon thousands of Horizon logs – please know that I am sad to see you go. I wish our worlds weren’t so far apart and that we could continue on our adventures until the end of our lives. Or, well, end of my life I suppose, considering your attitude toward aging. 

Even though I missed so much of the life I was supposed to have, I wouldn’t go back and prevent myself from leaving. There was too much we did out there among existence, to consider removing it all. We saved each others’ lives more times than I can count. We were there for each other when we lost someone. 

I know I’ll say this when you finally leave in person, but I want to say it here anyway. Goodbye. I’ll never forget everything that happened. May we run into each other again. 

This is Rarity ‘Scarce’ Belle, signing off for the last time. It’s been an honor. Take care of yourselves.

[END RECORDING]

Rarity took a step back from the recording device and sent the report up to the Horizon. She smiled, looking out the window of her home with bright, happy eyes. 

“Well, I suppose it won’t do to put it off. Time for a talk with a Star…”


~Twilence~


“…we should talk about something,” I said, suddenly.

Vriska raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Because… because this is the end. Of our group.”

“…You sure?”

“It has to be,” I said, scribbling notes in my book. “It’s the only way this works.”

“Oh.”

“So. What have you always wanted to ask me and never gotten to?”

Vriska smirked. “Biggest crush.”

I facehooved. “Can we avoid the stupid questions?”

“Fine, fine. …You see lots of things I can’t. Is there anything about me you know?”

“You’re a hero, Vriska. You’ll be one of the main ones.”

“Yeah, but you’ve already said that. Are there, like, any secrets I don’t know about? Something about my past? A lie I believe? I – geez I’m not sure what I’m asking about here.”

I closed my eyes. “I know what you’re asking. There are a few things in your journey with the Doctor…”

“Don’t care about that ass. SBURB?”

“SBURB… Yeah, there’s a thing or two you don’t know.”

“Oh?”

“Do you ever wonder why the Xeelee or the Flowers or the other higher civilizations didn’t try to stop Lord English?”

“Uh… You know, I do. Why didn’t they do something?”

“They tried,” I said, taking a deep breath in preparation for an unseen story of the relatively ‘recent’ past…

Horrorterrors have the most interesting death throes. As their impossible limbs are torn from them in ways incomprehensible to the vast majority of minds, they scream. It is a similarity they share with ma; agonizing panicked screams upon deathly torment. The difference is that their screams cross the boundaries between universes: entering those existences separate and apart, forcing children in galaxies to frown for eternity, driving universes to suicide, and creating the worst of monsters and heroes. It was a madness, a part of the Horrorterrors’ nature, and it had to go somewhere when the being died.

And yet, even in its final throes, the elder god still wouldn’t tell its tormentor what he wanted to know. Where he should be. Where he should go. Where his enemy was. She eluded him still.

Lord English stood as the only thing in this universe - he might as well have BEEN the universe. Were one to translate to this place they would die by his hand. The moment he left, there was no more universe - but he tied all the connections together into a chaos knot, straining the other planes of Paradox Space; cracking their realities, making their realities approach nothing.

Lord English reformed himself into a more familiar form - humanoid, green, and tremendous. His eyes flickered with the colors of a cruel game; his face the visage of death, and his horrendous roars driving the vast Honk to all who listened and some who didn't. He took a ‘step’ with his peg leg, damning the plane to the Sea and nonexistence. He punched his way through a few empty planes, cracking the darkness of paradoxes all around. He came across a dream-bubble microverse. 

Time for some fun, he thought.

He shot out of the dreaming-ground, spraying sand everywhere in a shower that never reached the ground, frozen in time from the cracks in the nature of the dream. A half-dozen ghosts - mostly trolls - took one look at him and tried to flee.

Fools. He was already there. They ran face-first into his claws like the idiots they were, expunging their spirits. Lord English let out a deep Honk, signifying laughter. Pathetic puny whelps. There was never anything to challenge him, even the Horrorterrors were becoming easy killings, despite all their attempts to wrap him in their paradoxes. They were morons, thinking they could stop what had exceeded them...

“MOTION CARRIED!”

Lord English paused - he didn’t recognize the presence that voice came from. He was aware of a tall, humanoid being composed entirely of stars and darkness, female by the look of it. Her hand was outstretched, and her eyes were narrowed in determination. Lord English was hit with something he couldn't see or predict, a lattice of pure universal energy that drove his entire body into the Sea-

-or, rather, it tried to. The stellar humanoid’s expression shifted to confusion when Lord English bounced off the Sea. She took a moment to ponder her next action, and this was her doom. He drove his scepter through her, discovering her to have the energy of a universe contained within her visage. No matter, he just needed to put a little extra effort into it - roaring mad, he sliced her visage in half, spreading her energies across nothingness. Then he destroyed the universe he was in for good measure.

That was interesting... Lord English had never encountered one of them before. It didn’t take him long to realize that he was probably causing enough damage to draw the attention of powerful entities from beyond Paradox Space. Beings from the larger multiverse. He grinned - that meant things were about to get fun, didn’t it?

Something punched him - he knew what it was the moment it made contact. A personification of pure rage and violence, feeding off Lord English’s own emotions to empower itself. Lord English flipped his scepter into a gun and fired at Rage, bullets tearing through spacetime and Dream Bubbles like they were cobwebs. He roared, metaphysical manifestations of pool balls appearing all around Rage, flying into the Abstract, damaging him, but also making him stronger.

How annoying.

Two more of the stellar humanoids appeared behind him, brandishing weapons that cleaved through universe polymers. Between them was a sort of energy being who had formed himself into a strange zodiac symbol. English was pierced by the two weapons, and the energy being drew him into the circle, surrounding him in sealing energies.

Lord English found this amusing. He punched out of reality, tossing the energy being into a Dream Bubble where nightmares became real, allowing nature to devour it. He then grabbed one of the stellar creatures in each of his hands and smashed them together like pancakes. Rage flew at Lord English once again, but this time Lord English skewered the Abstract with a peg leg. Rage roared - but found that his stability was shattering. His essence exploded.

A tremendous golden mask appeared, accompanied by several dozen beings in reality-adhering armor, forcing their physics upon Paradox Space permanently. The mask spoke.

“LORD ENGLISH! YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED GUILTY BY THE GREAT WILL OF GOD! YOU ARE TO BE DAMNED TO THE SEA FOR YOUR HEINOUS ACTS!”

Lord English found this amusing. He punched through the several dozen beings from all sides at once, beaning the god-mask in the nose. Evidently, the god was more than just a floating face - he appeared everywhere around Lord English, in all nearby universes several thousand times.

“YOUR JUDGEMENT COMES, ENGLISH.”

English took the full brunt of the attack head-on - it actually hurt a little. Dozens of stellar, energy, and mechanical-suited beings appeared, bashing him from all sizes with toys that shredded everything around them, creating a starburst on his pattern of destruction. The Green Sun shifted its position within Paradox Space from the sheer force.

Lord English lashed out with a powerful burst of energy going in all directions, taking out most of the god’s essence, only for the personifications of Eternity and Energy appear, throwing him into more universes, having them act as a series of brick walls. He smashed them together - but Energy only grew stronger from this action. A celestial being in armor appeared, driving his hand into English’s head - only for English to drive his claw into him. Lord English grabbed the essence of the stars and used them to banish Energy into the Green Sun to be devoured. Then English clapped, shattering a hundred universes in a single instant. He walked out, making sure to strut like a badass.

“YOU ARE CHILDISH.” the yellow god said, a few more masks appearing - some of different colors, presumably different gods, or different aspects of the same god. “YOUR HUBRIS WILL BE YOUR DOWNFAL-”

Lord English decided he was done listening to that guy talk. He simultaneously appeared in all locations and punched every last golden smug face into oblivion. He twisted his wrist, smirking.

Then the energy beings tried something again, though Them seemed to know it was a far-fetched idea. They were attempting once again to seal his powers, but that was stupid, they were stupid, the idiots. He grabbed onto the connections they were forming and smashed them into a personification of Wisdom. Lord English bounded after them, following their connections, tearing their energetic powers to nothing, tossing them aside like toys, following them further and further away...

He appeared in a cluster of universes, pounding more and more of the energy beings into the ground, getting more and more joy out of it the more he killed. They actually fought back a little; he didn’t have to hold back at all! He didn't have to toy with them! What fun!

Then he realized that someone was severing the last connection to this section of universes.

They were trying to dump him into the sea alongside dozens of other planes of existence.

He growled - for the first time he wondered if they actually had the means to kill him. But he wouldn’t go out that easily. As the universe fell into nothingness around him, he punched out, forming a brand new connection. The universes restabilized, though only half of their energies existed. He destroyed the large energy-construct that had been snipping universe connections left and right.

He was no longer toying around - he was going to face these gods head on and take them out. He punched through them - and they decided to start throwing entire universes at him. Such things were just ammunition to them, both places to exist within and places to use as cannon balls. Already the death count had exceeded the trillions of trillions of lesser beings.

They really were willing to kill him weren’t they, with no qualms?

Good. Worthy opponents-

And then the universe he existed within was torn FAR from Paradox space, shoved somewhere Lord English wasn’t even aware existed. He was suddenly inside a ring of universes, all containing galaxy-sized Rings of strings, all aimed right at him. They tore into his flesh not only from all directions but from all times. He roared in pain - that should have, should have, killed him, if he was only the sum of his parts.

But oh, he was so, so much more than that.

He rose up, empowered from the substance that defined the multiverse. Images of his Prophet, the terrible structure at the center of everything, of words on a page, of a fourth wall...

He wrote himself alive.

He punched out of his universe, into the new universes - brilliant universes filled with stars and structures of time that flowed from universe to universe. He took notes - in his future empire, he'd love something like this. The entire multiverse, one huge temporal clusterfuck.

Apparently, the inhabitants of these universes knew how to navigate the complex annals of time, for Lord English saw his past, present, and future timelines attacked from all sides by tremendous machines - he felt what it was like to be torn apart by piano wire devices. But he reconstituted himself through time, punching thousands of universes occupied by these megastructure-builders into nothing.

They got the message. Lord English was moved back to Paradox Space in a single instant. He could tell they were running out of plans - they hit him with everything they had, time, space, magic, spirit, eldritch...

Some Flowery creature had been called in, weaving Narrative around them in some sort of home.

Lord English found this amusing - that was the best they could do? THAT? Oh, if only they understood what the Tower truly meant, idiots...

He pounded the plant into the ground, as well as all past and future versions of it the time shenanigans were trying to create. The universe-bending gods had brought in a lesser being. They must have been desperate. Good. Very good.

They tried a few things again, but Lord English was expecting them. He would not fall for any of their tricks - he grabbed the universe-composed weapons and drove them into their creators. He raged across Paradox Space in a glee.

Armies of lesser races began to appear. Stellar constructions forged with biological material. Ships that existed in universes separate from his own. 

…A holy mage attempting to wire magic all around through every being here. 

He decided that was interesting enough to punch. The pathetic human died in an instant, her powerful magics doing nothing to protect her frail body. She was dead. 

“HAYATE!” a feminine voice rang out. Lord English felt powerful ka from this voice. But she was just a human woman, no real power in there. 

“FULL POWER…”

Oh? What was this?

“…STARLIGHT…”

Lord English shot at her with his gun – best take care of her before she became annoying.

“...BREAKER!”

It was then that Lord English realized he was facing someone who was more than just power and ka – she was, in many ways, a force of nature. 

Her attack spiraled out into Lord English’s universe, attacking him, but also the space-time he occupied. The energy levels reached such a level that the underlying nature of the reality tore apart at the seams, and the universe collapsed in on itself, vanishing in a puff of energy. 

She fell to a knee, exhausted. She had put everything into that.

It hadn’t done anything to Lord English besides impress him. She was a true warrior. 

Too bad she had to die. 

Then the other societies attacked him again, making Lord English forget all about Nanoha Takamachi. He was thrown aside, but he was not damaged beyond repair. He never was. He could not be.

Could even the Downstreamers of old have done anything to him!? He doubted it!

He let out a vast Honk, letting them know he wasn’t done. He would take them all out! And they would all fall to him easily enough!

And then a being appeared in front of him that made everyone stop in their tracks. He was a golden being of light that was vaguely humanoid. His arms were behind his back, and he looked at Lord English with a stern expression.

Lord English could sense the power coming off this god - no, this God.

Lord English wasn't sure he could defeat Him. He didn’t know. He couldn't see.

He was scared.

“...I see,” the One Above All said.

Lord English growled - he was going to slap this God around, damn it. He’d win, he knew it.

“Oh, you’re right, I believe,” the One Above All nodded. “I don't think I can be the one to defeat you.”

Lord English paused.

“You are a being of Narrative. By nature, we cannot do anything. You must be defeated by something connected to you, by one who deserves to send you to the void. Or by many who deserve to send you into nothing, to trap you. It is something that must not come at our hand, at least not directly.” He shrugged. “In theory, I should be able to snuff you out with a thought and be done with it.”

“THEN TRY IT!” Lord English bellowed.

The One Above all let a smirk come across His face. “You’d like that,  wouldn’t you?” He looked English right in his impossible eyes. “I'm afraid I can't give you what you want.”

And then He was gone. The remaining energy beings, celestials, machines, and others decided to follow suit, retreating into the multiverse.

Lord English stood there for the longest time. He supposed he could go hunt them down - destroy them. But he had a mission to accomplish. He needed to destroy that one who was connected to him... Before she did anything.

He needed to find her. Now more than ever.

For whatever reason, he knew that God was being completely honest.

He punched into a new universe, ignoring the dream bubbles. He couldn’t afford to waste time now. Not anymore. He had to find her.

He had to find his ‘sister’ before she did anything.

I completed the story, letting out a breath. 

“So what you’re telling me is big-G decided to trick Lord English, with a sentence, into falling for the whole ghost army thing?”

“Lord English might have done it anyway,” I said. “But it might have been the rage that built up in him that did him in.”

“Huh…” Vriska said. “…Yeah, anger was his primary flaw, wasn’t it…”


~Historian~


…my disrespectful son! He’s… 

He’s gone and destroyed the most sacred of all our laws! The purity doctrine! He’s gone and found himself a human girl – not even a member of one of the offshoot tribes or a remnant of the Ancients! A truly ordinary human girl from a backwater dimension! 

While I must be begrudgingly grateful that she nursed him back to health after a dimensional mishap, this is going against everything we hold dear.

I have kept this information from the other elders so they will not take it out on him…

…This book is not a diary, why is the above there? I can no longer submit this as the manuscript. It must be adjusted…

…In recent history, it has been revealed that

[Indecipherable]

I know he’s still seeing her. He claims he isn’t, but I have records of the dimensional portals. He pretends that I have no idea who he’s talking about. 

Does he not realize that he is not only destroying himself, but the tribe as well? 

What will we do if the purity is broken!?...

…The art of marriage in the Tribe of Darkness is always presided over by the father of the groom and the mother of the bride, if they are available. The procedure is a very solemn one marked with deep, thoughtful promises and has the beauty of making both parties realize this isn’t a game. 

Unfortunately my son doesn’t seem to understand that. He thought he could hop off to the middle of nowhere and marry this girl in her way. There was no sanctity there! There was no proper

[Indecipherable]

I have taken her. Placed her with a curse. She will wander the multiverse until the day she dies. She will live her life, I am not a cruel man, but no one will ever be able to find her and no one will ever be able to stay with her for very long. She will continue like that for eternity. 

My son was livid, which is understandable, but at least we have avoided a disaster. None of the Tribe knows of her existence. It was an embarrassment that will be brushed under the rug, never to be spoken of again…

…He is gone. 

No doubt to search for her.

He won’t find her. But I worry for him. He could end up somewhere dangerous. 

I just want him to come back home safe…


~Mother~


…just let her be safe…” the mother said, running through the horribly named Inner Foundry. It was one of the furthest areas that could still be considered part of the City, and it was built into a mountain. It was once a place for mining expected to be transformed into a factory district, but the second part of that plan hadn’t panned out. It was now an abandoned metal scaffolding built into a mountain. 

It was also huge. She doubted she would ever find anything or anyone in here. 

Also, she had no cell service in here. She cursed herself for not getting the better phone, but no, she never thought she would need to be in a mountain and need to talk to her husband. Far from it. 

She ran across a metal railing, looking for signs of human habitation. She found a few recent pieces of graffiti, but ‘recent’ could be ‘any time within the last few weeks’. It was no help to her at all. Plus, if there was graffiti of theirs, it wasn’t like she would recognize Jadan’s signature and she knew Osanna wasn’t the best at art. She liked the way things looked and could never tell you why. 

The mother grew increasingly convinced that she had no idea where she was going and would get lost in this mountain of rails and metal. It was almost a fact to her at this point. Could she retrace her steps? Would anyone be able to find her?

“OSANNA!” She called. 

Unlike all the other times, this time there was a response. On a rail a fair distance below her, she saw a human boy book it in fear. 

He no doubt thought she couldn’t get down there. 

He was wrong. She jumped off her railing and landed on his with a loud clank. 

“What the fuck!?” he shouted, glancing behind him. 

She ran after him, murder in her eyes. 

“Why aren’t your legs broken!?”

“I’m not your average mother,” she muttered, jumping after him. He didn’t have any combat sense whatsoever and was pinned to the ground in less than a second. “Where. Is. Osanna!?”

“She’s up the ladder back there! At the surface! Please don’t kill me!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” the mother muttered, standing back up. “Why aren’t you up there with her?”

“Maybe I just wanted to go walk around, did you ever think of that!?” He shouted, standing back up. “Or maybe I-”

“Son, if you’re going to talk to me and have any chance, you’re going to drop the teenage attitude.”

His face twitched. “You think I fucking care?”

“Not particularly, but I had hoped.”

“Hoped what?”

“That you weren’t a piece of garbage like the rest of your family.”

His expression darkened. “I’m nothing like them.”

“Well, you left my daughter alone, a-”

“FUCK HER!” Jandan shouted. “Fuck you, fuck everyone involved in this whole mess!”

The mother was about to chide him again – but she saw something in his eyes. 

Had he been crying?

“…Jandan, what-”

“Your daughter is an absolute piece of shit who fucking took advantage of me! She’s a heartless bitch! She… She…” Sensing he was about to lose complete control of his emotional faculties, he ran off. 

The mother heard sobbing as he left. 

As usual, it’s never just that simple, is it?

Her near panic replaced with a solemn feeling, she crawled up the ladder to the top of the Inner Foundry. It took her a couple minutes to get all the way up the ladder, but she wasn’t in a rush. She climbed out into the light of day, standing atop a great mountain with evergreen trees all around. 

The wind whipped in her silky hair. 

She saw Osanna sitting on a rock, heaving with deep, painful sobs…


~Merodi~


“…are you crying again?” Monika asked.

GM had nothing to say. 

“Back off,” I said. “He is just a normal human being. Why is that so hard to get?”

“…When was the last time any of us encountered a normal human being?” John asked.

“Even he doesn’t count!” Monika said, holding her hands out. 

“You’re all a great team,” GM grunted. 

“Watch i-”

I slapped Monika in the face. “Shut up. The camera is on us again. I’ve got new information – much like the updates I used to get a long, long time ago. I know more about the situation, and it i-”

“Yeah, no!” A cheery voice said. “You don’t get to have that conversation because I’m about done!”

I glared at the small white pixie that had appeared in the middle of the disc. ‘Her’ hair was short, her form pale, and her eyes a deep, endless black. “White Nettle. You finally show yourself.”

“Yes! I do!” White Nettle said with a smile. “And you’re all about to witness the greatest moment in the history of the multiverse! Do any of you know why we’re here?”

“The Lord, the Muse, the Heir
Are gathered together to make a tear
The God, the Prophet, the ancient
Are needed to fulfill a lost tenet,” Arceus recited. “We are here to make a tear in what I presume is reality and fulfill a lost tenet.”

“Which is probably something your Downunder people didn’t do,” John said with a dorky smile.

“Downstreamer,” GM corrected, forcing a smile on his face so he didn’t freak out at White Nettle’s presence. It only partially worked – he was still trembling considerably.

Nettle leaned in. “Close. But what is really going to be accomplished?”

“Are you going to try to create Infinity again?” I asked. “I know your people failed. It’s not something that was a secret to me. Even your existence wasn’t a secret to me, even though it was to a few others.”

Nettle looked at her. “Ooh, so so close. But look outside this little pocket dimension I have you all imprisoned in! What is out there?”

“The Dark Tower, of course it’s o-” a lightbulb went off in my head. “You’re insane.”

“…What am I missing?” Monika asked. “I’m missing something.”

“Uh… She’s going to make us paint the Dark Tower?” John suggested.

“I’m going to die next to this guy,” GM realized. “I’m not sure how I feel about this.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Nettle asked, shaking her head. “Nope! I’m just going to-”

“-attempt to control the Dark Tower,” Arceus said. “Your people had a choice in the past – Infinity or the Dark Tower. They chose Infinity. You think that was the wrong choice.”

“And the ‘God’ finally understands,” Nettle said, smiling innocently. “I’m here to take control of the Dark Tower, using the power contained in you five to complete the ancient prophecy and end this era of existence. We tried letting stories and Prophets define existence, it’s time for something new.”

“No single person should control reality,” I said. “You can’t claim to be the right choice.”

“Oh, no. But I can bring back the Downstreamers with this power and, as a whole, we could decide what happens to existence!” White Nettle smirked. “You should probably thank us, it’ll make ka a lot less of a problem for you to deal with.”

“I have a question,” John said. “How does kidnapping the five of us do that?”

“Simple, really,” Nettle said, snapping her fingers. Suddenly the five of us were immobilized – but we were in the same universe as the Dark Tower now. We were spread around it in a pentagon shape. Spheres of white energy appeared around us, channeled through the full power of Nettle’s multiversal-jellyfish body. Myself, Monika, John, and GM had no powers to speak of right now, kept docile through limitations in our physical bodies. 

Arceus had no such limitations. He let out a roar, trying to shatter everything – but a flash of red light stopped him. “How?” he asked.

Nettle smirked, generating a small red-white ball in her hand. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a full Creator god with an easily exploitable weakness? And yet, you. You, the god of your world, are hard-coded to be capturable. This little ball the humans created? I can use the energies within it to capture you wherever I want. Because that’s part of who you are.”

Arceus roared – but he knew she was right. He couldn’t do anything. His powers were sealed away with him. 

“So, here’s how this works. I take the abilities of a Creator to start a new existence around the Dark Tower. Of course, it will fight back, but I have a Muse and a Lord of ka itself whose powers can tangle around that mess. Of course, the Dark Towers self-defense mechanism will come into place – the paradox. Which is why John is here. He can break that paradox with his retcon. Allow the Tower to open to me like an egg. And GM…” she floated down to the cowering man. “You’re telling the Song. This is what you’ll write. I’ll just implant it in your mind so that, when I put you back, you will write it. Don’t worry, I’ll allow your connection to the Tower to exist long enough for you to write to here.”

I wanted to yell at her – but I couldn’t. She had me frozen. 

“Oh, you want to say something?” Nettle said, smiling. “Is it perhaps that I’m too arrogant? That I shouldn’t be playing God? That I’m just going to bring doom, just like the Downstreamers did before me?”

Maybe. Maybe this destruction is what keeps me from seeing further.

“But what about that eighth story I see in your head? There’s something in the future. Maybe that world you see… Maybe that world is because of me. Because of the new Downstreamers.” She smiled warmly. “Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to die, or even be hurt. I’m just going to channel all your powers through myself in an exceedingly complex universal polymer circuit. And the vaguely alchemical bonds will focus all energy into the center, into me.”

“…The Tower is in the Center,” Arceus pointed out. 

“And this universe is currently inside my brain,” Nettle countered. “So the Tower and my consciousness are the center here. It paradoxically works.” She drifted back.

You don’t have to do this. I thought to her. 

“It’s not like this is an evil plan, or anything,” Nettle pointed out. “I just want my people to have their power back. This is the way to do it. And if you look into your sights, you know this will work.”

She had me there. It would work. It would bring the Downstreamers back and allow them to have complete dominion over the multiverse. And they wouldn’t be evil. They’d be just like they were in the past. 

“Can you give me any reason why I shouldn’t?” Nettle asked me directly. “You don’t have anything left to see, Twilence. There is no future that needs to happen. This is the climax.”

It would cause great unrest.

“…So do half the things you do.”

It would remove freedom. It would… I… I have nothing, Nettle. All I know is that this feels wrong. That what you’re doing is not meant to be. 

“Of course not. The Tower doesn’t want to be replaced. But what’s it going to do?”

The Austraeoh appeared in the universe.

“…Frick….”


~Tower~


…Flagg walked into the main room of the Weaver’s construct, rubbing his fingers over everything. “Are you ready?”

The central white pillar flickered. “I’ve been ready ever since the power reserves dwindled.”

Flagg shrugged and shook his head. “You’re making this a lot less enjoyable. Have a bit of a dejected spirit! Or an excited one.”

“I’ve come to terms with it, Flagg. I am an ancient being.”

“Yes, yes, of the Prim,” he said dismissively. “If only you had a resurrection matrix like me.”

Weaver didn’t dignify this with a response. 

Flagg strode through the room, putting a hand to his head. “I can still see Mid-World, you know. I can see the Tower.”

“Upset you can’t do anything about it?”

Flagg turned around, clicking his heels. “In some ways. In others, not.”

“You don’t have to be cryptic here.”

“You can’t see into my mind,” Flagg said with a psychotic grin.

“No,” Weaver confirmed.

“Then I can be as cryptic as I want. What I can do is show you what’s happening there! You’ll be glad to know you missed all the action. The Crimson King is already mostly written out of existence. I would have liked to have been the one to do that, but I won’t be fussy.” He strode around, picking up something from one of the Weaver’s hallways. “…A record?”

“Perhaps one of the travelers through here left it,” Weaver suggested.

Flagg took it out of its cover. “Cloud Atlas… that’s important, but not in a fundamental or impactful way…”

“If you say so.”

Flagg ran his finger across it, playing the tune through his sharp nail somehow. “An ending that folds in on itself and becomes false. A climax of uncertainty. All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. Curious.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Flagg didn’t respond to that. “Roland’s walking up to the door of the Dark Tower, entering! Patrick’s becoming well acquainted with the power of the Roses when used for art, swirling them onto his page. He’s just drawn a record and he…” Flagg blinked, glancing at the record he was holding. It was the same record.

“You have no idea why he would draw that, would you?” Weaver asked.

Flagg ignored this, focusing on one was happening in Mid-World. He suddenly felt like he was being watched instead of the other way around.

Patrick looked up to where Randall Flagg’s ‘eye’ was. The boy waved. 

Flagg growled. “I will hunt him to the ends of the earth…”

Patrick shook his head. He simply sat down and kept drawing while Cloud Atlas played. 

“What is he doing!?”

“Would it have something to do with eight?” Weaver asked, suddenly just as curious as Flagg was.

“Why eight!?”

Weaver shone a light on the piece of paper Patrick had left. Flagg lifted it up and stared at it. “This isn’t an eight. This is the symbol for infinity.”

Weaver’s mental faculties stopped short. “…I forgot something.”

Flagg grinned. “Make a mistake, did you? Suddenly wish you had more life?”

Weaver ignored him – he ran to the Safeguard’s control schemes. He needed to put in a new security measure fast. He knew he was almost out of time. 

In Mid-World, Patrick drew Roland ascending the staircase of the Dark Tower, opening doors and looking at his life…

Flagg held up a hand, pointing at Weaver’s white pillar. He grinned, prepared to give a command to kill the ancient being. 

Weaver scrambled the security protocols of the Spline. Who cared if that ruined some of its perfection? If he didn’t put this in, everything was done for. 

Within the Dark Tower, Roland laid his hand on the final door, the one with his name. 

Patrick put down his notebook and closed his eyes, looking not at Flagg’s vision, but at the Dark Tower. 

Cloud Atlas played. 

Flagg chuckled. “Stop living.”

Weaver got the last-minute change in – but it left a mess in the code. The Spline would not be as perfect as he had envisioned it to be. But he knew it was safe. 

Roland stepped through the final door. He did not get to glimpse the room at the top; he was simply sent directly to where he needed to go. The start of his journey. So he could be the gunslinger, again and again. 

Mid-World reset. A tear rolled down Patrick’s cheek as he vanished, Flagg’s view replaced with that of a desert, rather than the field of Roses. 

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. 

Flagg stood inside the now-dark hall of the Weaver, only a few of the machines operating on their own power. 

He could feel his connection to Mid-World disappearing. But he already knew what was happening. The Dark Tower had created a true paradox. A world where time travel was not allowed… But one that kept looping anyway. Looping to repair the beams of the Dark Tower. 

There would be another Flagg in there – but when he died in every loop, he would not be reborn. 

Every time, Roland would climb up the Dark Tower – and reset everything. 

The Dark Tower had won. Nothing would ever be able to threaten it again. 

Flagg, for once in his life, was speechless. 

He left. There was nothing left for him here. This story was at its end. ■


~Theater~


…the one-man audience watched the actors panic. 

“The Spline!” one of them told the commander. “It’s the Spline! We… we activated the largest Safeguard response I’ve ever seen!”

“We can take them,” the high commander said. “It’s just a bunch of mindless robots!”

“It’s not just the robots! It’s… They’re compressing the universes together! Keeping the multiverse from expanding past a certain volume!”

The high commander stared at him. “…And what is that going to do to us?”

“…It’s going to destroy us. Completely.”

“Why would the Weavers program this in!?” the high commander shouted. “Did they want to kill whoever dared defy them!?”

“They wanted to stop infinity,” F-something said on a video call. “I can see it easily. They realized that, if the multiverse was truly infinite, there could be no meaning. It would defy the purpose of the Dark Tower. If we made an infinite multiverse, we would make an infinite number of ourselves, the Downstreamers. There would be no more battles for the multiverse. No more big questions about existence. But there would be all things possible. That would destroy the organization the Weavers tried to impose on the world.”

“Is it so wrong to want everything to exist!?” the high commander asked.

“I don’t know,” F-something said. “All I know is they didn’t want it. And we’re going to pay the price for daring to defy their wishes for existence. Goodbye, high commander.” The feed cut off. The film switched to show F-something furiously typing away at a computer. “All right Winona, I’m going to cut through the universes as they explode around us… You’ll be stuck in there a long, long time, but I’ve got your fate covered. You will awake one day. When you do… remember us.”

Winona couldn’t say anything since she was sealed away – but her expression shifted, indicated she’d heard.

“Goodbye,” F-something said, tears in her eyes. She pressed a button and Winona vanished. 

And then the universe exploded. 

The greatest cataclysm the multiverse had ever seen rippled throughout. The Infinity Mechanisms tried to make Infinity as the Spline contracted to do just the opposite. Cosmic energies clashed into each other. Every universe was hit – every. Single. One. New, old, it didn’t matter. Planets were fused, physics were thrown into each other, and the Unrealities raged. 

The viewer stared at the effects. “Neat.”

The bottoms of the Infinity Mechanisms exploded, their nearly indestructible interiors falling apart as they could no longer try to do what they were meant to. Downstreamers everywhere lost their mental connections with each other, time itself shifting just enough everywhere to write almost all of them out of existence. The high commander screamed as his body was torn to shreds. 

But, eventually, the Spline relented. The Infinity Mechanisms could work no more; there was no longer a threat. 

The view panned out to show the One Above All floating in nothingness, watching the remnants of destruction – and shaking his head. 

The view zoomed out to the entire multiverse. It looked broken, jarred, and empty in many places. But it was still there – and still finite. 

The narrator from the start of the movie came back. “The remaining Downstreamers were hunted down by the few gods who still had grudges against them. Their culture was wiped clean. Every society that existed at the time was damaged beyond repair – only the Abstracts were able to reform afterward. This cataclysm of attempted Infinity is the reason all the Downstreamer remnants shape the multiverse. Why there are universe eaters, universe generators, nexus universes, and other bizarre things. Most of them come from the Downstreamers. Now, no one remembers where all of them are, or how all of them work. Even the Class 1 societies, who can control such things, cannot master them all. The remnant of the Downstreamers is a permanent mark on the multiverse we cannot hide from, and yet most of us forget.”

The man who was the audience stretched his arms, feeling like it was definitely time for the film to be over. 

“Perhaps… there is a remnant.” An image of Winona’s capsule passed across the screen. “Perhaps there is one out there who can help us remember.”

The credits started rolling over the top of Winona’s pod.

“Give me a break,” the man said, grunting. “There’s no Downstreamer remnant kid thing. I would know about it.” He grinned like a maniac. “I’m the reason they’re gone, after all.”

The man in black adjusted his coat. “It only took one powerful voice in favor of Infinity to get them to go there.” Randall Flagg snapped his fingers, setting the theater ablaze. He nonchalantly walked out as the fire alarms started to blare. 

All in all, the film had been interesting – woefully inaccurate, especially to someone who had been there during the events, but he understood that he wasn’t exactly the target audience. It was very stupid and the story was a mess, but the special effects were decent. 

This world clearly had a few decades to go before it really understood how to make movies.

He doubted he would let civilization survive that long here… Even though they had reminded him of his greatest feat, they had also dared to suggest he missed one. 

There was no chance of that. ■


~Harlequin~


…Dimentio had created an office for him in the top of the megalith. 

Or, as he now knew it was called, the Infinity Mechanism remnant. 

It was a simple office. Just him, a table, an endless pen, and a book. 

The book. The book that had been calling to him from across time and space. The book he was destined to create. 

The book of the Source. 

He wrote down secrets. Endless secrets, secrets inserted in cryptic prophecies, secrets strewn about in cyphers, in drawings, in ramblings that seemed like madness. Who was he kidding, the ramblings were madness. Absolute madness. For that was what truth was. 

The book itself was completely mundane. But the secrets gave it life. The forbidden knowledge infused it with great, destructive power. It began to glow as he wrote more and more into it, to shimmer, to scream to reality that it existed. It wanted people to know the future it contained. It wanted to cause the future it contained. 

Dimentio wrote hundreds of thousands of words within the pages. Some frantically, some slow. But he wouldn’t sleep or eat until he was finished. 

He didn’t need to. 

He was Dimentio, master of dimensions! Performer extraordinaire! He had seen his life, and it was glorious. And this book… This book was his life. 

He laid down the pen when he was done and closed the book, looking at the cover. It was a dark silvery tone with a deep round crystal in the center of it. Tick marks surrounded the crystal like a clock, and a dark spirograph surrounded that. 

“Ahahahahahaha! Like a cicada, I emerge to find life complete!” He held up the book, laughing the entire time. “Behold! The Prognosticus!”

The book shifted. Dimentio saw images – but they were images he already knew. Images that no longer bothered him. 

He knew he could not use this book directly. That was not how the Dark Tower worked. The secrets within could not just be acted upon. No… no, they needed to be seeded. Seeded across time, space, history, existence, reality! Hundreds of people would own this book, and it would bring about destruction in every one of them!

All until Dimentio would be allowed to fulfill his life. 

All until Dimentio could create perfection. 

He just had to wait for that ‘Bleck’. ■


~Historian~


…and then the history of the Tribe of Darkness came to an abrupt, violent end. 

Blumiere took his father’s prized notebook in his hands and lit it on fire, torching all the historical data within. “This will never reach the light of day or the shade of night,” he said, face twisting in rage. “There is nothing.”

Nastasia adjusted her glasses. “Of course. What now?”

“Now? Now we go for what we came for.” He turned his back on his father’s study, walking through the dark, black halls the Tribe of Darkness loved so much. “The way to make everything right.”

Nastasia nodded, understanding exactly what he meant.

The two of them walked right into the Dark Vaults. There was only one person watching over the door to the darkest treasure of the Tribe of Darkness – Blumiere’s father. 

“Ah, Blumiere, you’ve finally returned. I am so glad t-” He saw Nastasia. “What have you done!?”

“She is simply my assistant, father,” Blumiere spat. “You saw to it that the purity was not destroyed.”

“You brought an outsider here!?”

“Yes. I did.” He nodded to Nastasia. She adjusted her glasses, shooting a sharp beam of light into the dark historian’s eyes. 

He grunted. “What… was that?”

“Hypnosis,” Nastasia said. “Surprised you’re still able to think.”

“I’m… stronger than you think…”

“You won’t be able to fight with your mind in that state, regardless.” Nastasia smoothed her sleeves out. “Blumiere?”

Blumiere pointed his staff at the vault door, blowing it up with a rend of spatial energy. Behind it was only one object – a dark purple-black book with a large blue crystal in the center. “The Dark Prognosticus…” Blumiere said, grinning. “If there is anything worthwhile anymore, it is in here.” 

“Blumiere, my son, don’t! Even your ancestors could not handle that dark book… If you open it… there’s no telling what might happen!”

“I do not care, father! A world without her is empty! A LIFE without her is empty. Speak, Dark Prognosticus! Teach your dark history!” He paused for a moment, smiling. “I await your command.”

The Dark Prognosticus flipped open to a particular page. Blumiere saw what it was instantly. Exactly what he was looking for. 

“BLEH HEH HEH! BLECK!”

Dark, purple energies shot out of the book, prompted by Blumiere’s will. The destructive magics shot out, shaking the very reality of the Tribe’s universe. 

“Blumiere… What have you done?”

“SILENCE!” Blumiere shouted. “The first prophecy beckons. I will erase every inch… of this blasted world!”

The historian’s expression became that of pure fear. “Blu-blumiere! Don’t do this! Blumiere!”

“Blumiere is no more!” he said, adjusting his monocle. “I am Count Bleck! And no one shall stand in my way! BLEH HEH HEH! BLECK!”

And the Tribe of Darkness was no more. 

Count Bleck and Nastasia appeared in a world of nothingness.

“This will do nicely for the center,” Bleck said. “The moment we can finally bring it about, of course.”

Nastasia adjusted her glasses. “Right. What should we do first?”

With a square-shaped shift in the fabric of reality, what looked like a purple and black jester appeared in front of them. “You should consider hiring some help!”

Count Bleck pointed his scepter at the jester. “Who are you?”

“I am Dimentio, master of dimensions, and the ripples of reality have told me you are the guy to talk to about wanton destruction of everything for the betterment of all!” He snapped his fingers, the smile on his mask seeming to widen with the motion. “Like koi under the moon, we are drawn together!”

“Begone,” Count Bleck declared.

“Oh, what, don’t trust me just popping in like this? Fine, fine… But you’ll find mention of me in that fancy book of yours, and you’ll come to realize you need me.” Dimentio chuckled. “But until then, I’ll heed your wishes. I wish you luck! Ciao!”

Dimentio was gone. 

Count Bleck narrowed his eyes. He used his hands to grab the Dark Prognosticus and start reading. “We do not hire help just yet. We study what secrets lie within this tome. Then act on them to destroy everything.”

“We aren’t replacing anything, are we?”

“No,” Bleck said. “Everything goes. And nothing remains.”

Dimentio chuckled from his hidden sub-dimension. Poor fool thought he had the ability to destroy all worlds in his hands. 

…Well, to be true, he had part of the secret to that. But even Dimentio knew destroying the entire multiverse was a foolish proposition. 

No, what Blumiere had was small. Localized. Just enough power to give him a taste… And then Dimentio would take it from him! 

“Ahahahahaha!”

The tragedy of Dimentio’s miscalculation, unfortunately, is another story entirely. ■


~Grand Tour~


…Nanoha got a sudden feeling in her gut that time had shifted backward, somehow. Like she was out of order…

This feeling quickly passed, because she saw where she was. 

She was back in the Q-Sphere, on a personal visit to see Rarity again after so many, many years. She really shouldn’t have waited as long as she did to come back, but that was behind her now. She was ready to see her friend again. 

Except… 

Everything had changed. 

She was floating in a universe where the entire ‘sky’ was static, but there was still gravity. Where strange monolith creatures floated among black chunks of rock. Where eyes were visible directly above and directly below. A world that would become known, one day, as simply the Static. In that day, it would be empty. 

It was not empty now. It was filled with Stars – Stars fighting against gigantic feats of magitech stellar engineering.

A war was happening in front of her eyes as the cosmic balls of plasma fought against the technological behemoths. The Stars seemed to be protecting something Nanoha couldn’t see. 

“…Raising Heart…?”

“Rarity is on board the largest of the ships. There is an unusually high concentration of ka in the center of the Star’s defenses, likely artificial.”

“Artificial…” Nanoha furrowed her brow. “I’m… sure Rarity would love to explain what’s going on here.”

“Unlikely, master.”

Nanoha ignored her device. She teleported herself near the star-fighting ship – finding its shields blocked her entry. “Rarity!” she shouted. “Let me in!”

Nanoha could see the turrets on the ship look at her, think about firing, and then decide that was a bad idea. She was teleported onto what she assumed was the bridge, in front of Rarity sitting in the captain’s seat.

“What the hell are you doing here!?” Rarity shouted. “This is a warzone!”

“It is, is it?” Nanoha shouted. “What are you doing fighting a war!?”

“We’re overthrowing the Stars! What does it look like!?”

“Overthrowing?”

“They controlled everything, Nanoha. They would experiment on random worlds that everyone would forget about. They would torment us endlessly.”

“Rarity!”

“I’ve been living in this war long enough to have that proven to me! You have no right to waltz in here and question it!”

Nanoha narrowed her eyes. “I think I do.”

“How can you possibly know anything about this war you obviously only found out about a few minutes ago!?”

“I don’t. I know you.” Nanoha pointed Raising Heart at her. “And you’re not the pony I remember.”

“War is a brutal thing, Nanoha.”

“I know. I’ve been in a few. You should remember that.”

“Those weren’t true wars. This is a true war. A true war I brought about.”

Nanoha spread out her hands. “Why would you do that!? Why would you start a war!?”

“Because it was needed!”

“The Rarity I knew wouldn’t do that. “

“The Rarity you know died the moment she came home and realized the truth about it,” Rarity spat. “Algol told me much about the nature of his people. They needed to die.”

“I can’t stop your war,” Nanoha said. “But I can tell you, right now, that it’s wrong.”

This clearly hurt Rarity. “…Look, there’s proof right here in this world. This world they created specifically to fight us. Do you know what they’re guarding? Some kind of machine designed to twist fate so they can win. The codes call it a ‘Guarantee’. Many Stars have perished to make this thing, according to our intel. They’re sacrificing their own.”

“And you’re not?”

“We’re not so heartless as them,” Rarity said. “We don’t experiment on ponies.”

Nanoha glared. “And you’re going to grab the Guarantee yourself, aren’t you?”

Rarity saw what Nanoha was thinking. “Nonon-”

Nanoha reverse-teleported using the same spell they had used to bring her inside. Then she turned to the Stars and flew in.

A couple of them saw her. 

Time for a test. “Starlight Breaker!” She shouted, using a relatively low-power version of her attack to ‘break’ through the ‘starlight’ beams the Stars were shooting at her. It worked like a charm, allowing her to get closer to the center. 

They fired at her with their cosmic energies, but she was Nanoha Takamachi, the White Devil. It was going to take more than a few angry Stars to put her down. 

She had stood toe to toe against eldritch abominations the size of universes. This was nothing. 

She appeared in the center, finding the Guarantee. To her surprise, it was only about the size of her head, rather than something of cosmic importance. 

It was an eye composed mostly of a creamy white crystal lined in black metal, with a single slit from the top to bottom that served as a pupil. It shifted with power. 

Power that the Stars hadn’t been able to control just yet. 

Power that Rarity wanted to control to continue her reign of terror. 

For the briefest of moments, Nanoha wondered if she had acted hastily. She let herself think if she should just let this happen.

…But no. She couldn’t stand by. This thing, this Guarantee… It was too dangerous. Even outside the war, something that guaranteed victory? It was too powerful for anyone to have. 

She wasn’t taking the chance she’d regret this. She pointed Raising Sights at it. “Destroy,” she ordered.

A beam of bright energy hit the Eye. After two seconds of exposure, it was gone. 

The Stars stopped shooting at Nanoha, the stress on her shield fading away. Every Star hopped out of the universe.

Most of Rarity’s ships did as well – except the main one. 

Nanoha teleported back into it. “There. Now your little battle here is over, and nobody has that kind of power.”

Rarity twitched. “I should kill you where you stand.”

Nanoha gasped. 

“But I owe you too much for that. Get out of my sight. If the Starcross Society ever catches sight of you again, your life is forfeit.”

“Rarity! I just saved the lives of your ships and stopped them from using the device!”

“And you didn’t let us have it!”

“I don’t know the situation!”

“That’s right! You don’t! So you don’t get to interfere!”

“I know you.”

“No, you don’t. Now LEAVE!”

Nanoha glared. “No.”

“Kill her,” Rarity ordered. 

Nanoha hadn’t thought Rarity would do it. 

The White Devil returned to her ship with a heavy wound to the chest. 

“Nanoha!” Vita blurted. “Wh-”

“Just… turn the ship around and go home…” she muttered. “I’m going to the medical bay…” She limped away. 

She wasn’t sure what to make of this. She’d stopped a battle – but the war would still go on. She’d kept either side from getting a guaranteed victory, which at the moment was likely the best way to minimize the pain.

But in the long run, would it mean anything?

And what of that Eye?

…She hadn’t been able to destroy the Star-craft. She’d only been able to make it look like that. She’d just sent it to a random universe. 

She stumbled into the medical bay, her vision blurring. She flopped over, losing consciousness as the medical professionals ran to her. ■


~Twilence~


“…Twilence?” Vriska asked. 

“Huh?” I asked.

“You still there?”

“Yeah. I was just thinking about the origins of the Eye of Rhyme. It’s a… complicated device.”

“Forged by Stars, lost on your world. I know, you’ve told the story before.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Though in reality, there’s a bit more nuance than that. See, the ancient society of my world built much based on the secrets they found within the Eye a-”

“I have enough, Twilence,” Vriska said. 

“…Enough?”

“The small amounts of luck you’ve been feeding me over these last few months. I have enough. I can escape through the fabric of existence.”

I sighed. “Right… I knew that. But I didn’t want to know that.”

“When are you going to tell me to go?”

“I should have a few hours ago. I should have already started my plan. I should. But I don’t want to be alone. I’m going to be alone here for a while before it works. If it works.”

“I can stay.”

“We’ve been through this. You die if you stay. We can’t have that.”

“I’ll come back.”

“You’ll just get trapped again, and I’ll probably already be gone.”

Vriska sighed. “Okay, fine. I leave. And then what?”

“Then we meet up when the final story begins.” I looked right at her. “Vriska… Look for a version of me with metal lining on her ears. She’s the one.”

“…All right, got it. Twilight with freaky ears.”

I nodded slowly. “A-and… You’ll be alone for a while before that happens. I’ll have to be alone for longer. …Don’t be afraid of change.”

“…Okay…?”

“You’ll probably understand later.” I bit my lip. “…Goodbye, Vriska.”

There would be no chance for a hug. She was in chains, after all. She wasn’t going to be able to do anything before her luck sucked her to another reality. This talk was all they’d have. 

“…See you later. Take good care of Mite and Creek, okay?”

I gulped. “Okay.”

And then she vanished, leaving me alone.

No doubt Polymarchus noticed. He just didn’t care. He still had leverage in the form of his body, Creek. A ton of leverage. 

And I was about to call him out on it with my plan. 

I separated the piles of paper into two and focused. On one, I continued to write the story Polymarchus wanted me to say. The one of Rome growing and becoming powerful, ready to take on the stars of the Nexus. On the other, I wrote a different story. One that he wouldn’t be able to detect or deflect with his Flower. Why?

Because I wouldn’t be the only Prophet involved. I had been put in contact with several through the Eye of Rhyme over the years. I was going to choose a few of them and intertwine a tale of Prophets, Aware golems, creations, and nanobots… I would shunt a lot of work to the other Prophets, but I would guide them through to Polymarchus in a framework story. 

I would lead them from the forest to Blumiere’s cabin, where they would learn where they were. Then I would take them through Lest, where they could meet Rev and understand the backstory. Then they’d come to Rome, and be put on the quest of taking Polymarchus down. 

Then they would free me and escape as Rome experienced political collapse. 

I was going to out-Prophet the Flower. 

And I could see it working. I could see myself escaping in almost every possible outcome. I saw myself returning Mite to his homeworld, and then going to live in the basements of the Void… 

But I didn’t see Creek. 

I knew that if I went through with this the chances of the other Prophets playing their parts perfectly were almost zero. But that perfect run was the only way to get out of this with Creek. 

Was I willing to risk her life to end Polymarchus and usher in the next phase of the story?

…It turned out that I was. I kept scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, writing what was likely to be a declaration of death for more than a few people. 

There was a chance she would come out of this. A chance. 

I would hold onto that as long as I possibly could. ■


~Merodi~


“Told you it was White Nettle!” Pinkie blurted. 

“Fat lot of good that did,” Corona muttered, looking at all the Austraeoh’s sensors. “She’s frozen us while she does… whatever it is she’s doing to the Dark Tower.”

“Take control,” Pinkie offered. “She wants to take it over and then bring the Downstreamers back.”

“Aaaaand we can’t have that,” Corona said. 

“I don’t know,” Eve commented. “Would it really be that bad? Like Pinkie said, they’re not evil.”

“Do you want White Nettle or anyone in control of ka?” 

“…Good point.” Eve narrowed her eyes, looking outside as White Nettle’s ‘ritual’ began. “So, we’re clearly here to stop this. How do we do that?”

“Right now she’s only stopped the ship and seems to be ignoring us in favor of rushing along her ritual,” Allure said. “She might not know who exactly is here.”

Pinkie shook her head. “She has Twilence and Monika. Of course she knows.”

“I could throw this universe into the Sea,” Corona suggested. “The Tower won’t be harmed, this is just a manifestation after all.”

“Not an option,” Eve said. “Can’t get help here fast enough and the more we talk the closer she gets to just doing what she wants! Gah, think!” She activated her Light eye, examining everything she could. “If we could free Arceus… His seal seems the weakest. I think I could take it out.” 

“We’re not allowed outside the ship, how are we gonna do that?” Allure demanded.

Pinkie whistled innocently. 

“Nevermind, I forgot about the ‘Pink One’.”

The five orbs of captured power around the Dark Tower flashed with a brilliant light, letting the four of them know the time for deliberation was at an end. 

“Pinkie, get us out there,” Corona ordered. “We’ll… figure something out.”

Pinkie saluted. “Aye-aye, Secondorino.” She grabbed the three of them and ducked behind a console. With a rush of impossibility they appeared above Arceus. 

“I see the rescue party has arrived,” Arceus said telepathically from his prison. 

“Yeah,” Eve said, powering her magic up. “I hope you like dark magic.” Her cosmic mane lost most of its sparkle, the streak of orange soon being the only vibrant color within it. Her non-Light eye became an ominous blue-green, both ocular orbs surrounded in the haloes of Midnight. Her wings became sharp as magic circles swirled around her, prompting Seraphim to appear behind her. 

“…I’m going to be down there,” Corona said. She picked up Allure in her arms and flew down to the entrance of the Dark Tower, leaving Eve and Pinkie to Arceus’ orb. 

“I reject this reality and substitute my own!” Eve roared, ordering quasi-magical barriers to be impossible.

Of course it wasn’t that easy. The fields were being shunted through the universes of Nettle’s body. They could reject reality just as easily as Seraphim could. 

Pinkie started hitting the barrier with an ice pick.

“…Any day now,” Arceus deadpanned.

“Hold your horses,” Pinkie grunted, pulling out a chainsaw and breaking it on the orb’s barrier while Eve drove sharp wings of darkness into the forcefield, worming through it via spatial manipulation. The barrier noticed this and pushed her out. But her dark magics were already in the barrier, using their cruel nature to turn the barrier against itself. 

The barrier caught fire, the flames were a neon blue tinged with unsettling green highlights. The barrier didn’t budge. 

Pinkie furrowed her brow. “Y’know, I just realized. The last six stories didn’t really have a good ending…”

“Not the time…” Eve muttered. 

Down on the ground, Corona and Allure walked into the Dark Tower. 

It let them both in.

“This isn’t normal,” Allure said.

“It’s capable of self-defense, it may be capable of getting desperate,” Corona said, holding out her hands and her wings. Contrasting with Eve’s dark magic tinged with streaks of light, Corona’s was bright with only tinges of darkness from Sombra-style nanobots. Intricate magical circles sprang forth from her arms, wings, and horn, creating a complex matrix setup. “I’m trying to tap into Nettle’s connection. You climb the stairs.”

Allure nodded. She galloped up the steps, ignoring every door she came across. There were more important things right now than reminiscing on her lifetime. 

Corona glanced at the doors of the Dark Tower. They’re still open. Why is it letting time flow the same inside and out?

“Better question,” Pinkie told Eve as she threw a pie at Arceus. It bypassed the barrier and hit him in the face, but didn’t exactly help them get him out. “Why isn’t Nettle interfering with us?”

“Overconfidence? Distraction?” Eve suggested, trying to use raw power from a universe of pure energy on the barrier to no avail. “Amusement?”

Pinkie bounced over to me since she was pretty useless helping Eve. “Heeeey, what’s up with Nettle?”

I can’t speak.

“Doooesn’t matter at the moment!”

Convenient. I probably have to use my powers and write about this later.

“Eh, probably. Buuuut you can see Nettle, riiiiight?”

Sort of. Her body is not good for visual stimuli, but she’s trying to turn us into essences faster and faster. What she’s fighting is the Dark Tower’s self-defense paradox. She really doesn’t have time to deal with you right now. 

Pinkie glanced over at John – he was glowing with the power of retcon. “Hmmmm. Right. Oh! Idea~!” She bounced over to John. “Yo! John! Listen up! After this is over you need to retcon-zap right to this moment in spacetime! Got it?”

John apparently got it, because he did zap into existence right next to Pinkie. “Sup?”

Pinkie this is very dangerous, I thought.

Pinkie waved a hoof dismissively. “Yeah, but if he’s here, then Nettle probably succeeded in what she did.”

“Huh? Oh, no, she didn’t,” John said. “I just came back because you said so.”

Pinkie facehooved. “I’m an idiot…”

“Nah, I’m sure with me here again we can make it happen better! Faster. Or something.”

“Right. So. Uh… Honestly I didn’t have much of a plan and just wanted to know how Nettle’s plan worked. So… How did we stop her last time?”

“I have no idea. She just got really angry and we were released and then I came back here.”

This is what you get for choosing John as your reconnaissance agent.

“I didn’t have much of a choice, okay!?” Pinkie complained. 

“John!” Eve called. “You might be able to help with this barrier!”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a thing I could do!” He floated over, the winds of Breath flowing around him in a rush.

Inside the Tower, Allure reached the top. She pulled the door back – took a quick look at the room at the top of the Tower, made sure the Source and clock were there, then jumped through. It took her exactly where she needed to go – a world with lots of very fragile crystals that were flashing like synapses in a giant brain.

The copying universe within White Nettle that served as her mind. 

She tapped her hooves together. “Gooood…”

Corona felt White Nettle try to fuse the Tower to herself – but the alicorn-woman was in the center of the Tower, just like Nettle paradoxically was. She intercepted the connection and threw herself into Nettle’s mind. 

“Hello!” Corona said, smiling. “Normally this is the part where I talk, but let’s just light your mind on fire instead!”

She pushed her mental energy into Nettle… and nothing happened.

The psychic projection of Nettle’s body raised an eyebrow. “My mind is a universe. What are you going to do to it with just a mental connection? I see a possible reality-breaking spell doing something, but this?”

Corona pointed a finger at her. “Guess talking is good then.”

“I can easily talk to you and keep track of the Tower at the same time.”

“You sure?”

Nettle tried to ignore her. Corona didn’t let this work, sending an image of a flickering lightbulb directly into Nettle’s consciousness. 

“You’re the devil,” Nettle muttered.

Corona rolled her eyes. “I’m just doing what needs to be done.”

“Get out,” Nettle shouted, pointing a finger at Corona. Corona didn’t leave. “…What th-”

Nettle felt a sharp pain as Allure smashed another part of her subconsciousness regulation. “Gah!”

Allure chuckled as the crystals around her flashed red in anger. “Aaaand no Safeguard to protect you from little fillies like me. Woo!” She used her Heart to slice through several more of the thin pillar-like constructs. 

“Problem?” Corona asked.

“I… I have to deal with her… But I can’t…”

“You’re welcome.”

“You don’t understand th-”

The Dark Tower twisted ka again. Nettle fell back, horror dawning on her face. If she was going to go through with this, she was going to have to let Allure and Corona romp around her mind. The Tower was too strong otherwise. 

“…They can fix me later,” she said, devoting every defense to assaulting the Tower. 

“Crud,” Corona muttered, checking back with Raging Sights. “What do we have?”

She’s moving through our defenses. Cutting us out isn’t going to be difficult for her. I expect five seconds.

Allure smashed more and more crystals, but that only slowed Nettle by fractions of a quantum moment. 

The free John held out his hands on Arceus’ bubble, attempting to recton it away. It was encased in a white aura…

The five spheres pinged with a brilliant energy. They shot beams of energy into the Tower.

“YES!!!” They could all hear Nettle shouting. “THE TOWER IS MI-”

GM’s bubble stopped firing all of a sudden. 

“…What!? That doesn’t make any sense!”

John successfully retconned Arceus’ bubble into nonexistence before the god’s power could be used to create a new reality. This completely broke the ritual, and all the other bubbles popped in a flurry of sparkles. Only GM lacked the ability to float, prompting him to fall until Eve caught him. 

I acted next. “Monika, thing, now.”

Monika rolled her eyes. “I’ve got to do everything…” She walked up to the newly-freed John, accessed his character file, and edited it slightly. He vanished in a zap. “There we go, now he’ll become that John and we don’t have to deal with duplicates. You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” John said. “…I think.”

Nettle, now that her entire plan had basically fallen apart, took the opportunity to eject Allure from her mind, depositing her in the field of roses. Corona stepped out of the Dark Tower, glancing around. “Did we do it?”

“Yeah. You did it,” Nettle said, appearing in front of them with folded arms. “Cooongratulations…” I started scribbling in my notepad as the anger on her features kept twisting. “Guess I just have to try aga-”

“And done,” I said, placing a period on the sentence I had just written. John retconned away into some far distant universe. 

Nettle was now missing one of the five pieces she needed to complete her plan. And because retcon was so annoying, there was no way for her to find him. Quite a clever move, if I do say so myself.

“Arrogant, self-absorbed, little…” Nettle threw her hands into the air and vanished. 

Pinkie wiped her brow. “Wow! That was a close one! I was almost thinking we’d lose and begin some sort of major cataclysm! I mean, that did seem to be the running theme!”

“I don’t want to know about that one,” Allure decreed. “Please. Don’t taunt me.”

“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie said. “…Darnit, that really needs a wink.”

“Let’s go home and figure out how we can keep her from trying this again,” Eve said, stretching out her wings. 

“Agreed,” Allure said. 

“Ah, first things first…” Monika walked up to GM.

“Oh no you don’t,” GM said, “I’m not going to go back t-” He passed out, having the entire sequence of events shoved out of his mind once again. 

“For a ‘major prophet’ he sure is useless,” Monika muttered. “Now Hussie knows how to do things.”

“I thought you hated Hussie?” Pinkie asked.

“Oh. I do. He’s still good at what he does, though.”

“I won’t be coming back right away,” Corona said.

Eve cocked her head. “Huh? Why?”

“The Dark Tower rarely lets us this close to it. If we just leave we’re not going to be able to get back here in an instant. It’ll divert us. So I’m going to make the most of this opportunity and comb over the data I’ve gotten from this whole thing. I think there’s a lot I can learn about Nettle and how she operates from what happened here.”

“Need any help?” 

“Mmm… Arceus, want t-”

“I am not a scientist.”

“In that case, not really,” Corona said, rubbing the back of her head. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

“How long do you think you’ll be?” Eve asked. “I’m sure the Research Overhead would like to know.”

“Eh, few weeks this time, tops,” Corona said. “Calls should still work, I won’t be out of touch.”

Eve smiled. “Then good luck with SCIENCEing the center of existence. I’m curious to see what you find.”

Monika smirked. “Should be interesting…”

“You don’t have clearance.”

“And that’ll stop me why?” 

Eve blinked. “Yeah, no clue. Everyone, to the Austraeoh, let’s go home.” 

Just before the teleport, Allure and Pinkie waved at Corona. She waved back as they all left – everyone except me. 

“Hm? Twilence?”

I was staring at the Dark Tower. “I’m trying to figure out what this all meant.”

“Uh…”

“The eight stories. They were clearly all tied together to the overall history of the multiverse. If any of them had not happened, we would not have experienced this. Weaver destroyed the Downstreamers but created White Nettle and Dimentio, then there was what Nanoha did that directly set up our civilization, and my own story intertwined into all of this… But I’m just trying to figure out the point. Sure, it all led here, but what was it for?”

Corona blinked. “…You might need to talk to Starbeat about that one.”

“…Sadly, I am the expert on this. And I still don’t know. Yet.” I shook my head. “I don’t know if Nettle was even wrong for sure. It all happened so fast.”

Corona pursed her lips. “She tried to control the Tower. Even if she had a goal, once she accomplished it she wouldn’t just relinquish the power. There would be no telling what she would do. Given her previous escapades, I don’t have much faith in her heart.”

“Perhaps that is the tragic aspect to our story,” I mused. “Even though she was, for once, altruistic in her intentions… she was still wrong.” I furrowed my brow, blinking slowly. ”I… I need to go write something down. Good luck.”

“Same to you and your… story. Thing.”

I shifted to another reality, wishing for everything to come together. ■


~Mother~


…the mother scooped her daughter up in her arms and held her tightly. 

Osanna was confused at first. “Wh…”

“Shh… It’s okay. It’s all okay.”

“But I-”

“I know what you did. But this is not the time to talk about it.” She held Osanna out and looked her in the eyes. “I’m not your tormentor.”

Osanna, who had managed to gain some control over her emotional state over the last few moments, lost it all in a moment as tears came rushing down. 

“It’s okay…” the mother echoed. 

“I… I was horrible. How could it…?”

“I’m your mother.” She held Osanna tighter. “Love and forgiveness are unconditional. I can be mad, angry, upset, livid, outraged… but I can never forget who you are, Osanna.”

“You don’t know… I’ve done everything wrong. Snuck out, hid, deceived, manipulated, and… and I’m a horrible person!”

I may not have had the most normal of lives, but I remember this. “I know, Osanna.”

“How can you know?”

“I’ve been forgiven of things much, much worse than anything you’ve tried to pull. And I wasn’t even forgiven by my family. I was forgiven by the people I hurt.” She looked into the air wistfully. “I was a child with power meant for gods. I manipulated people to empower myself, I bullied others to control entire worlds, I put people in danger because I was greedy, and I attempted crimes against existence.”

Osanna stared at her mother in disbelief. 

“You’ve heard this before. My name is well known, I know.”

“I always thought they were exaggerating…”

“Most of the stories of White Nettle are true,” Nettle said, the wind blowing in her hair. “But when the time came… I was allowed back. If someone who’s done the things I have can be forgiven by people who barely know her, your mother can take you back.” She smiled. “You’re just a teenager, Osanna. I get mad, I may not understand, but it’s nothing new.”

Osanna sniffed. “…Okay. But… But what about him?”

“Jandan?”

“Yeah… I… I was using him. I…” She hung her head.

Nettle looked deep into Osanna. “I won’t lie. He doesn’t have to forgive you for whatever you did to him.”

Osanna was silent.

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t try.”

“But I thought y-”

“I ran into him on the way here. He was an angry young man, certainly. But he cared.”

Osanna stared at her in disbelief.

Nettle smirked. “Don’t take that as approval – I’ll still have to get to know him.”

“…And I’d have to actually…” she shook her head. “This entire thing is messed up.”

“What?”

“This situation.”

“Hm… So’s life. So, par for the course?”

Osanna snorted. The sharp motion irritated her throat considerably. “Agh…”

“Oh, I think I have some candies on me, hold on…” She pulled some mint gum out of her pocket and handed it to Osanna. Like a young child, she grabbed it and stuffed it into her mouth.

“Thanks.”

“It’s why I’m here.”

“…How did you get here anyway? It’s not exactly easy.”

“A little bit of this, a little bit of that. The body certainly helps a lot.”

“…When I say my mom’s a historian no one ever thinks she’s also an action hero.”

“Who said I was a hero?”

Osanna blushed. 

“Awww…”

Osanna looked like she thought for a moment about objecting – but instead she just moved closer to her mother. They put arms over each other and looked out. 

From the mountain, they could see the entire city. The forests bled into the residential areas, and then into the city proper filled with all number of constructions. And yet, the roses everywhere in the various parks managed to give the city a red color, their deep crimson shade winning over all the other colors of life. The spherical shells of planets within the sky wove a pattern for the eyes, one that was always ever-changing as they shifted above the horizon, yet somehow consistent. 

Dominating the view was the structure in the center of the city; far larger than all the others. It seemed to rise for infinity. It was somehow both ominous and comforting in its endless height, and its darkness was impossible in more ways than one. 

Their day ended with the two of them together, reconciled, but not with everything resolved. But as they set their gaze on the Dark Tower, they knew everything was going to be fine. ■


~~~


The end. 

That’s it. 

That’s all I can see. 

The Song of the Spheres has concluded. …Except it hasn’t. I know it hasn’t. 

As the Tower’s Testament said, that was only one side. 

I suppose it could have been considered an ending. An entity from the ancient eras of the multiverse that was also tied to the beginnings of all existence came back and tried to control the Dark Tower, simply to bring her family back. She would have made a good tragic villain, and an excellent way to bring the main heroes together. 

Except that clearly wasn't the focus here. It was just a thing that happened. Not to mention the existence of the eighth story… 

Was the point all about her? White Nettle? Is the Song her story?

I… I don’t think so. I believe this side was her story. The other side has to be something else. 

And I know when a story’s leading up to something. This wasn’t it; while White Nettle has been around for a while now, she’s relatively recent according to the chapters. She had little to do with the other major struggles of this endless multiversal Song. She was just another villain… Perhaps not villain. Perhaps simply antagonist. She wasn’t the culmination. 

But the flow of ka continues. It points forward, and it is increasing as I write this. Increasing exponentially. 

Something’s going to happen, and the snapshot I have seen of everything – including that all-too-shrouded vision of the future – is trying to key us in. Me, my friends, and even you. Trying to let us know. 

What was it leading up to? 

What is the Song of the entire multiverse? 

These eight stories tell it… From a Weaver who put restrictions on reality to a mother in the future remembering that she was forgiven… it’s all here. 

In all of these, I see a fight. A fight against existence. In some cases, like in ‘Mother’, that fight has already been overcome. In my story, I have to bow to it – lose Creek – to accomplish anything. In the ‘present’ story, the heroes fight for existence, but Nettle is certainly fighting against. Weaver… Dimentio… Blumiere… Scarcity… They fought hard. The Downstreamers didn’t fight; they just wanted more and were punished for it. 

A story of endless conflict, then. Existence is the way it is, and we have wanted nothing more than to change it. One could say that was the reason the Dark Tower was created. A reason, anyway. 

There is no end to the battles. To the conflicts. We aren’t even fighting God – we’re fighting everything. I would wonder why we have to fight… But I also can’t imagine us doing anything else. I don’t think we’re capable of making our existence perfect. 

Maybe, like Infinity, it simply cannot be reached. 

…But that’s just the theme. One side of the story. The one I see. 

What’s the other? I think… I think it’s what we’re all being led to. 

What I see here is a setup. I see a path of events that lead to here. Roland creating the Tower’s Paradox. The Downstreamers preparing the multiverse. Dimentio creating the Prognosticus – and then Blumiere acting upon it. I see Nanoha being responsible for me, for the Starcross Society, for Merodi Universalis, and for so much more – I see her representing humanity. I see me, being led along, crafted to be the one who understands ka for some deep purpose. I see the remnants of Nettle’s ploy laying around… And I see a future. 

All these events, objects, and people are poised for something. 

And the majority of them were results of the fight. The endless fight against existence. 

…A fight waged by faulty people with big plans.

…There it is. 

That’s what needs to happen. 

In the past, they all fought with impure motives. With destruction, conquest, sorrow, or loss on their minds. People who were suffering or who wanted to make others suffer. 

But what if someone with a pure heart thought about it? Actually thought about it?

What if they dared to ask the question? 


~~~



Year 77


Corona ‘Sunset’ Shimmer opened her eyes.