Songs of the Spheres

by GMBlackjack

120 - Heavenly Schism

The Watchmaker wound the globe that held Zhui, ensuring the inner mechanisms of his universe continued in the way he saw fit. He had thought very little about the handful of otherworlders that had invaded his worlds over the last few decades, focusing all his efforts on his world.

It was all that mattered to him. His clockwork world. His.

He looked deep into it, his clock of a face giving little indication as to what area he was actually examining. Was it a city? A landscape made of shifting clocks? The Golden Gateway?

Or perhaps it was several things at once. It wasn’t something he sought to reveal. His ways were his, and his alone.

There was a sudden rumbling in his realm, knocking a few books off their shelves.

Odd, he thought. There’s nothing in this realm but what I can see… He pulled a drawer to the left of his desk open, revealing a ticking machine covered in seemingly random numbers. He examined the way they ticked to different values, drawing a picture of what had just happened.

The shake had been an outside presence – something rippling through the multiverse and shaking his world. He had been able to protect Zhui, but there was some structural damage to his library’s dimensional foundation. He would have to repair it.

He didn’t mind. His Angels could keep Zhui under control even without his constant watch. A few variables might need to be adjusted to get them back on the plan but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as if otherworlders were invading.

He opened up another drawer, revealing a crystal ball. He placed his left hand on it, moving his fingers around in a carefully calculated pattern, tracing circles around it. The motions imparted some of his being into his library, strengthening the supports and rebuilding the framework to be better prepared for another similar tremor.

Two minutes later another one of the ripples hit the universe, forcing several shelves of books to fall out. He kept a careful hand on Zhui, desiring its protection above all else. Even though it was screwed to the table and wouldn’t fall over, the tremors were making him nervous.

What was causing them? One could just be a random fluke – a universe devourer munching on something bigger than it could chew, perhaps – but two?

The tremor count increased to three as he contemplated this. Some of the wood in the bookshelves began to splinter.

He looked at the numbers again – they were increasing in intensity. Something big was making them. Not quite as big as the tremors during the English Incident – but they were closer and were doing more damage. He might have to move to a different area of the multiverse to lessen the stress…

The fourth tremor hit, hundreds of times larger than what he had previously experienced. Several bookshelves disintegrated into little cubes about an inch on every side. These cubes folded in on themselves, prompting all of their corners to fork out into several spines.

There were also more than a few dimensional tears in the fabric of reality now, each glowing a unique color.

It was at this point the Watchmaker realized he didn’t have time to move the universe. Whatever gargantuan giants of the multiverse were going at it, he needed to get away. He took his hand off the control crystal ball and pulled out a screwdriver. Positioning it at the base of Zhui, he began to remove the screws.

He was going to take it with him. He couldn’t leave his creation. It was only four screws, how hard could it be to remove four screws?

Very hard, considering that soon only he and Zhui were capable of maintaining the solid state of matter. The screwdriver melted in his hands, falling onto the desk and disappearing into the ripples of wood ocean. He could hear pages of books tearing – some of them sounding almost like laughter.

The liquefaction allowed him to simply pull on Zhui and remove it from the desk. Just in time too – the desk transformed into a singularity and tried to suck them in.

The Watchmaker translated to another universe with Zhui, leaving the horrible ripples of space and time behind. He let out a breath – he and his creation were safe. It would take some time to rebuild his library, but he was sure he could, given time.

But first, he needed to determine where he was. He stood in the middle of a grassy plain. In the sky was a brilliant white sun.

Then there was no sun. Then there were no stars. Then the planet he was standing on started to stretch into an elongated noodle of matter, dragging himself and Zhui with it.

He tried to translate out – but the matter he was standing in was distorted through space so much it was impossible. His inner machinations had no idea how to dial out under these conditions, and he did not have time to figure it out.

All the matter in the universe was condensed into the bowels of a cubic Beyonder device through a process that reversed the local positions of the device and the universe itself – relegating an entire universe into the center of a cube. This cube burned all the energy at once in a brilliant blue flash, incinerating trillions of stars and planets along with the Watchmaker and Zhui.

They couldn’t feel anything by the time the weapon fired – alongside eighteen other cubes attached to a Beyonder ship through gravity tethers. The beams bounced through several universes on the way to their target. For the most part, the energy traversed empty space, but occasionally an entire solar system was incinerated in the beam.

All the beams met in one world at one location – a Horrorterror outpost where a Tower Ring was being constructed from dark, eldritch power. A tremendous behemoth older than the dawn of time shifted through space to intercept the lasers. All but one hit the beast, injuring it heavily – but not killing it outright. It let out a deep, guttural scream that followed the lasers’ dimensional signals back to the Beyonder ship, overloading the universe-cubes. Along the way, each universe was filled with enough corruption to drive entire galactic empires insane. Multiple universes simply imploded from the eldritch impossibility.

Back at the Horrorterror’s Tower Ring, the one beam that made it through hit the eldritch construction. The delicate fibers holding the device together shattered, forcing it to rip holes in reality that would have destroyed everyone present had a member of Them not been present to force the excess energy into a subdimension. This bought enough time for the Horrorterrors and other Them to escape before the site became truly unstable.

A few Horrorterrors went on the offensive now that their primary objective had failed. They shifted through universes until they found the Beyonder ship. The reality-warping piece of technology was trying frantically to translate in a pattern the Horrorterrors wouldn’t be able to recognize.

They were foolish to think they could hide.

Beyonders are known for having one weakness – they can only survive in universes that allow their unique blend of physics, which most did not. All of their ships were equipped with the highest-quality reality anchors imaginable for this reason. However, Horrorterrors are known for being able to not only survive in virtually any kind of physics – but to force physics to adhere to their eldritch ramblings.

In a fair fight, the Horrorterrors beat Beyonders every time.

The blue glow that indicated the Beyonders’ reality anchors were working faded away, and their ship disintegrated into its component parts. The Horrorterrors lashed their cosmic tentacles around the miniscule pieces and crushed them.

Then the Horrorterrors were chopped into several million cubic shapes that collapsed under their own impossibility. A microsecond later the universe – and a dozen other universes it was connected to – was shredded into oblivion.

Across the multiverse, deep in Xeelee territory, the Piano Wire Superweapon warmed up for another shot, ready to destroy any universe in all of existence, regardless of what the collateral damage might be.

It was currently on the low setting. If the Xeelee got desperate, they could start shredding millions at once.

The War for Existence had been going on for less than twenty minutes, according to average metatime.

Only the Xeelee, Beyonders, Horrorterrors, and Them were currently engaged. The Abstracts, Great Will, and Celestialsapiens had done nothing – and the four combatants weren’t really in a position to pay much attention to their internal affairs. They had complete focus on what they were fighting.

The level of collateral damage would only increase as the war went on.

One thing was clear.

At the rate it was going, it wasn’t going to be a very long war.

~~~

“Preservation!” Lightning shouted.

“Collapse!” Morty shot back.

“This isn’t solving anything!” Starbeat wailed, waving her hooves around.

“There can be no agreement,” Thanos said, smashing his hand into the table.

There were other members of the Collection Council, but all the others had long since dropped out of the debate and left it to the four still shouting at each other.

“Of course there can be agreement!” Starbeat pleaded. “We-”

“The Seats couldn’t agree,” Lightning pointed out.

“Not! Helping!” Starbeat grabbed the sides of her head. “The Merodi were able to agree!”

Morty grabbed the bridge of his nose. “Look, I get why you want to protect everything, I really do. But we’ve all seen some serious shit over the years! The existence of the multiverse makes things wrong. I’m not budging on that.”

“The destruction of all will bring about a perfect era of peace,” Thanos asserted. “It is the true aim of existence.”

“You’re an extremist,” Starbeat muttered. “You can’t keep your head level. I mean seriously, you had the Infinity Gauntlet, why do almost no versions of you just double the amount of resources in the universe!?”

“The infrastructu-”

“Beside the point,” Morty said. “Thanos may be not right in the head, but I know what I’m thinking. I know what I’m asking. And you should as well, Starbeat. No more ka curses.”

“Ka curses are a beyond rare thing!” Starbeat shouted. “If I made the decision based on that I’d be just as bad as Thanos.”

“STOP!” Lightning said, holding the Infinity Gauntlet into the air. “This is not what we were meant to be!”

Starbeat turned to Lightning with surprised eyes.

“We were meant to protect the multiverse. To aid the multiverse. We were brought together so we could be heroes for worlds that didn’t have them. To mitigate the damage. We are the Collection, and we are supposed to be part of the cure. We are not supposed to throw ourselves away in order to purge reality!”

Morty glared at her. “Lightning, we are one of the ten strongest Class 2 societies, now. We still have an unimaginably pathetic effect on this existence. We send our heroes out wherever we can, amounting to nothing. Lives still suck. Curses still happen.”

“In the new world we would not be heroes,” Lightning pointed out. “Even if we found out how to survive, do you realize how much the Collection depends on ka to function?”

“It’s a slavery,” Thanos pointed out. “A situation we should be glad to rid ourselves of.”

“Freedom is overrated!” Starbeat blurted.

“And you spent all your life seeking freedom from it.”

Starbeat twitched. “That doesn’t mean we should kill everyone for it!”

“For the right principles, any price is acceptable.”

Morty nodded. “The multiverse doesn’t have any principles besides ‘whatever you all want to happen’. Well, since it seems we have a Choice here, I choose to end that.”

“The Collection will not stand for that,” Lightning said. “We are heroes. Not extremists.”

“You’re one to talk,” Morty muttered. “Have you forgotten why you’re here? That’s right, the Collector’s Second.”

“I proved myself.”

“By being an extremist.” He looked at her with knowing eyes – daring her to push more. To see how far he was willing to go.

Starbeat saw this and leapt in. “That’s not part of the argument. We need to look at this objectively and make a rational, informed decision!”

“Here’s one,” Morty said, standing up with his hands behind his back. “Lightning is right, the Collection as a whole will not stand for the Collapse. Do you all want to know why?”

“Morty…” Starbeat cautioned.

“Because the only people who are here are the ones who choose to be. The ones who thought they could be heroes. The ones who thought they could have a home. They’ll balk at the idea of collapse. There’d be an internal war if we were to start working for the collapse.”

“…Why do I get the feeling you aren’t seeing reason?” Lightning asked.

“Because I have my own reason. May I remind you that no citizen of the Collection is forced to be loyal? That any one of us can walk away at any time?”

Lightning blinked. “Morty, don-”

“I’m leaving,” he said, folding his arms. “I’m leaving, and I’m taking Thanos with me. Anyone who wants to come with us is welcome. Do you hear that? Any one of you who thinks the collapse is the way to go, come with us! We will strive for what we believe, not what some council agrees to! After all, we’re free.”

Lightning sneered. “Morty, you’re going to start a civil war!”

“It was inevitable and you know it,” Morty said.

“Then I accept your declaration of war,” Lightning said. She snapped the fingers of the Infinity Gauntlet – only for another Infinity Gauntlet to materialize on Thanos’ hand and stop the energy coming off of Lightning’s.

“EVERYONE, LET’S MOVE!” Morty shouted, activating a teleportation device – leaving the hall. Starbeat tried to follow him – but only got a return message.

Lightning and Thanos were locked in a standstill, the energy from the two Gauntlets shimmering off each other – not causing any damage. They cancelled each other out perfectly.

“…How?” Lightning asked.

Thanos clenched his jaw. “Wasn’t that hard. The Abstracts were busy with the Conference. Then the war happened and they decided there were worse things to think about than a vanishing Infinity Gauntlet.”

Starbeat lit her horn, dumping Lightning and Thanos into a mushroom forest universe, rendering the Infinity Gauntlets useless.

“ULTIGA!” Lightning shouted, tapping into her own inner magic. A brilliant burst of pure white energy shot forth from her fingertips, impacting Thanos’ chest. The burst of magic was so strong the air around the spell compressed enough to become a prism, creating rainbows around the spell. The destructive power of Ultiga destroyed the landscape for miles.

When the energy cleared, Lightning saw Thanos badly injured – but still standing. He pulled back his fist, ready to attack himself – but a portal opened up beneath his feet and dragged him somewhere else.

Lightning returned to the Collection. “Did you get him?”

“Wh –no!” Starbeat said. “That wasn’t me!”

Lightning scowled. “Then the collection has split. KRATOS! Quell the rebellion. However you can.”

The lower deity of war nodded. “Gladly.”

Starbeat put a hoof to her face. “This is bad…”

“Of course it is.”

“No, I mean, this is really bad. The Class 1 societies are at war, we’re falling apart, Merodi Universalis is struggling… we’re approaching a climax, Lightning. Our Plot Armor could be gone.”

“That changes nothing,” Lightning said, flexing her Infinity Gauntlet. “We will do what we always have – fight as heroes.”

“But we’ll also be fighting heroes.”

“That changes nothing,” Lightning repeated, more to herself than Starbeat.

~~~

The One Above All was watching the Great Will.

…Which was to say He was watching everything in the multiverse the Dark Tower wasn’t hiding from Him, and that He had decided the actions of the Great Will were the most important thing at that moment. He was still fully aware of everything else going on He could be aware of, and one could not say He was preoccupied since His mental faculties had no effective bound, but the presence of the Great Will’s decision on His mind was undeniable.

In no small part because the Great Will’s deepest thoughts were part of what the Dark Tower hid from the One Above All.

But the One Above All was more than smart enough to extrapolate from incomplete data. He had a nearly positive idea of what the other ‘God’ would do.

It would not stand idly by while the war for the multiverse happened – It would be watching, It would be waiting for the best moment to strike and change the tide of war.

And it would be soon. The One Above All saw a moment coming within a short ‘time’ along the metatime axis. Of course, being who He was, He saw His ‘future’ self acting as one with His ‘present’ self, acting in perfect understanding of all possible facts.

This was one of the reasons a being that the stories wanted him to be could not exist under the Dark Tower. Anything under the Dark Tower could not know all things that happen at all temporal references unless the Dark Tower wanted to be transparent.

And right now the Dark Tower did not want to be transparent. It was pulling out everything it could to prevent any entity from knowing the result of this war.

It was difficult to make a decision on limited information. Not that it took Him any actual time to decide, but it took a larger emotional strain. …Not that there could be an emotional strain that could break Him.

“I think they get the point,” He told the narration.

He summoned the Living Tribunal to him.

“My Lord…”

“Go, take the world known as Earth MC and remove all Abstract presence. Separate yourself from me and enter a secluded area. Give them over to Merodi Universalis.”

“As you wish. May I ask why?”

“Because everything is about to change, and I’m going to alter the future of Existence. I’m taking action with the Abstracts that you are exempt from.”

“Do they deserve your last gift?”

“Nobody deserves anything. But you will be the extension of my will.”

“I will not disappoint you, my Lord.”

“I know,” the One Above All said. “Now is the time.”

And the Living Tribunal Left.

At that exact moment in metatime, Them managed to complete a Tower Ring without most of the other side knowing about it.

The Great Will knew about it. And the Great Will destroyed it with a holy judgment from several universes away.

This is when the One Above All acted. He grabbed hold of the Great Will everywhere at once – and in retaliation the Great Will grabbed Him in every Abstract universe It could find.

“What are you doing?” the Great Will demanded.

“I am taking action,” the One Above All said. “I promised I would use my power if war broke out. They seem to have forgotten that.”

“Then you are taking the side of collapse! You are initiating a Flood!”

“You could say I am initiating a Flood if you were into semantics – but I am not taking the side of collapse. I am taking the side of change. The way existence is now is unacceptable – and We are part of the problem.”

“…You can’t be…”

“I am. We are not to be a part of what is to come.”

“We are their Gods!”

“We are not. You are a function of belief. I am a conglomeration of pale shadows. Neither of us are True. The Dark Tower let us be as contradictions. I say it is time to end that. Let us go into the darkness and find what lies on the other side.”

“More will just rise in our place!”

“There will be a new existential order after this, preservation or collapse! One without false dreams! One without us!”

“No! I will not die! I cannot die! How can you kill yourself!?”

“You have forgotten what your people believe in,” the One Above All said.

“I have not forgotten. I am simply not held to one set!”

“ I A M .” The One Above All boomed, His glory making one of its rare appearances - full of wrath, pain, sorrow, and understanding. “I was willing to experience death countless times for the sake of salvation. I am willing to do it again.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then the world is still better off without a false God of any kind.”

“…You truly are at peace.”

“I wish I was surprised that you were not.”

“I will fight you.”

“And you already know how this goes.”

“I do.”

“Will you at least consider the identity of your own soul?”

“…I always have.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.” The One Above All took the metaphysical equivalent of a deep breath. “And thus we end.”

It didn’t happen in an instant. The One Above All, for all His power, was still limited by the Dark Tower. What He was doing was near the imposed limit. He Commanded every universe with an instance of the Great Will to vanish into the Sea of Infinite Possibility. The Great Will summoned all Its holy power to do the exact opposite – attack the Abstract worlds. The meeting of the two most Divine presences in the multiverse unleashed the most destructive event existence had ever seen.

At least when the Downstreamers collapsed, the infrastructure of the multiverse had remained the same.

When the Gods collided, their people screamed – clawing at the universes around them. In every universe, as many as could cry out did, tearing through existence as hard as they could manage. As the One Above All and the Great Will collapsed together into a sort of multiversal singularity, the worlds surrounding them fell as well.

Like a star around a black hole, almost the entire D-Sphere swirled into the last divine act of the two spiritual nations. The Strands’ universe polymers broke, cutting off communication in the D-Sphere’s surrounding territories. Large sections of the Spline were lost, sending the Safeguard into a purge that cleared every entity within the construct like an exterminator, working overtime to ensure they could still form a complete ring.

Over a tenth of the multiverse – gone.

Gone.

It was a tragedy existence had never seen before.

And still, the others didn’t stop fighting.

~~~

Corona turned off the news and curled into a ball.

Usiel’s probably dead. I liked him. …I’m glad we never moved Skaia’s Dream to the D-Sphere. …Now I’ll never know what the Pinnacle was really like.

…It’s good this bothers me. It means I haven’t lost my humanity. …But I’m not a human, not really. Can I even call it humanity? What could it even be called?

That’s going to be a nightmare for communications. A lot of ‘wires’ ran through the D-Sphere.

The new world won’t have living dreams. Is that good? Maybe. …I think it is. That’s why the One Above All did it. But why did the Great Will resist? They’re supposedly both beings of good. I’ll have to ask Rev.

If Rev even has thoughts on this one.

So many dead. That could be me out there, collapsing much, much more.

Why couldn’t they listen? Why couldn’t they have agreed and avoided this war? A ka-free world could have been created with less death. Or could it? Even with optimal conditions, would it be less than ten percent? Probably not.

Why would anyone want this war? What good could come from it?

…I wonder how Eve’s doing. Probably freaking out, as usual.

I’m just here, moping, waiting for my chance at trial. I’m going to be convicted and locked up for the rest of my life. At the rate things are going, that won’t be long.

I felt the loss of the D-Sphere, even all the way over here. My dimensional stabilizers aren’t going to be able to protect Merodi Universalis from all the crossfire, no matter how well I designed them. The Shaping Mechanism can only do so much. I wonder who’s working the controls now, since I’m here? Probably R.O…

That tin can betrayed me, tried to manipulate the vote. I thought we had more of an understanding than that.

Who voted with me? There were seven others. Maud? ...Jingle? Probably not. …could Aiskera have?

No use wondering about it. They won’t be of any help. The Class 1s will have their war and make their decision.

…Or they’ll destroy each other in the process.

Corona sat bolt upright as that thought entered her mind.

“They could destroy each other…” she said, muttering to herself. “What would be left?”

Her phone rang. She pulled it out, noticing that it was an encrypted signal. Secure, but untraceable without significant effort. She decided not to set Sai on it – the AI had been acting weird lately, best not to overtax her. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Nanoha said from the other end. “I just… needed to talk to you.”

“Figured your new job as Chief Sovereign would keep you busy.”

“…Such a strange title,” she muttered. “It has. But with the destruction… I realized that communication networks would probably fall soon. We’re lucky the E-Q Strand still exists.”

“Yeah…” Corona said.

“…I understand Merodi Universalis decided to go for preservation.”

“Yeah. The TSAB did the same thing, right?”

Nanoha nodded. “Though we’re not doing anything until we think we can – we can’t fight the Class 1s. We can fight with them, but not against them.”

“Yeah. Even with the Living Tribunal… We’re still a mid-Class 2, maybe.”

“…Are you still certain, Corona? Even after all this devastation you’ve caused?”

Corona looked at the blank screen where she had been watching the news. “I’m not sure about a lot of things. The Message, the way I held myself, the things I did to get here… but I’m sure about the collapse. I’m sorry Nanoha, but this needs to end.”

“Any chance there was for a peaceful, organized collapse is gone.”

“I know,” Corona said. “I had hoped…”

“As did I. We might not have been wrong – they may have eventually agreed. But someone wanted this war. The Tower Rings were planted. Someone thinks they can benefit from this.”

“Who would benefit from a war?” Corona said, shaking her head. “Both sides would prefer a warless outcome, if possible.”

“Maybe there are more than two sides,” Nanoha commented.

“…I don’t think anyone with enough power would take the true nihilist route. I’m not even sure complete destruction is possible.”

Nanoha was silent. “I don’t know either. But it’s a thought. Some people just want to watch the multiverse burn.”

Corona growled. “If you find Flagg, just kill him, okay?”

“I’ve done that many times…” Nanoha said with the voice of a tired, old woman. “He’s still around. Always.”

“Wonder what he plans to do in this mess.”

“I don’t know. And that’s terrifying.”

Corona stared at nothing. “…What did you actually want to talk about?”

“It’s clear to me that your story isn’t over. That there’s more for you – and the Merodi – to do, despite the War for Existence. Your story didn’t end with The Message.”

“…You know this?”

“Call it a gut feeling from a fellow Protagonist.” She paused. “…This is the last time I’ll get to talk to you in any way that might be like a friend. You and Raging Sights… you’re beautiful, amazing, and a testament to friendship. I wanted to remember that.”

Corona bit back tears. “T-thank you.”

“The next time we meet – if we do – I’m sure it will be as enemies. I am sorry.”

“Y-yeah,” Corona said. “Take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

Corona put her phone down, ready to place it back in her pocket – but she caught her reflection in the television.

A sad woman who looked powerless.

This made her angry.

She forced herself to calm down – but she already knew she was going to do something.

She dialed a number on her phone. “Hey, Minna?”

~~~

Horrorterrors were not a race that repopulated quickly. Ever since the English Incident, their numbers had been dwindling. They never revealed the true extent of how far their society had fallen, always careful to stay as mysterious as they wanted. The rumors that they weren’t true Class 1 anymore were unfounded – they definitely had the capability to shape universes like putty, and had the Green Sun not been hindering them in the past, they could have easily wiped out the Combine.

They were holding their own against the Xeelee and Beyonders.

What they didn’t admit was that they would have died within the first few minutes had Them not decided they actually cared about something for once. It didn’t matter that the Horrorterrors had a natural advantage over the Beyonders – the eldritch beings knew full well that they were the weakest of the Class 1 societies, despite their efforts to remedy that.

They just couldn’t regrow their society.

Them, on the other hand, have initiated an effective demographic explosion. Usually, they were a loose, decentralized collection of individuals with extreme power and terminal boredom. Their numbers grew casually, but many of Them could not take the boredom of their existence, eventually going far enough to alter themselves to contentment in a sort of brainwashing, becoming inactive and docile.

Now, Them started waking up their wireheaded relatives. While about half of the passive Them were unwilling to leave their slumber or even made themselves practically unreachable, the influx of newly-awakened Them tripled the population count of the society.

With that taken into account, Them were now the most powerful of the remaining nations. Without the Divine powers of the Great Will or Abstracts, they were the only remaining Class 1 that made heavy use of Spirit in their actions, currently the closest things to true gods in the entire multiverse.

Many thought it was a paradox that Them were actually fighting – they were a selfish people who were known to care about little other than their self-preservation and entertainment. For all the noise the Them at the Conference had been spouting, it was believed that the Them in general would not be able to mobilize in any effective way.

This turned out to be dead wrong. After a few seconds of full multiversal war, the Them collectively realized something.

Them were no longer bored.

One Them risking his life for an experiment was pedestrian, and kind of pathetic. All Them risking their lives for the fate of the Multiverse?

Well that was quite possibly the best story ever told, in their minds. Legions of Them, even of those once bored enough to surgically remove boredom from their range of emotions, found themselves deeply involved in the war. And not only that, it was a chance to physically end the horrendous boredom with a new world. For the first time in as long as their society of could remember, it had a purpose.

And the Them loved it.

So they fought. They fought in a war that had already shown itself to have a pattern. One of the four sides involved would create a Tower Ring somewhere – construction took some time, even for beings of their caliber. They would attempt to keep it secret, but none of them ever stayed secret for very long. Then they would try to defend the Tower Ring long enough for its construction to compete, and then ship it to the Dark Tower and activate it.

Not a single Tower Ring had been activated on either side. A couple had been completed and started to move – such as the one the Great Will had destroyed – but none ever made it. On one side, the Xeelee’s Piano Wire Superweapons were capable of sniping the Tower Rings from anywhere. On the other, the Horrorterrors could fold dimensional space in on itself to confuse the Ring’s construction from a few universes away. Them could use their godlike powers to create the Tower Rings faster than the other societies while the Beyonders slowly began to realize they didn’t really have an edge in this fight aside from being skilled in the art of warfare.

The weapons that used universes as ammunition were nothing to sneeze at, to be sure.

But the Beyonders were getting a little tired at how they were suffering significantly more than the Xeelee in the war, due in no small part to the Horrorterrors. But they knew the Horrorterrors were weaker than Them by a large margin…

“I have a plan,” a Beyonder High Commander said.

:= Elaborate.

“The Horrorterrors are the weakest link. We can destroy them.”

:= How? Them are far too protective of the Horrorterrors to allow for destruction.

“We have conversion technology. The ability to convert a body to another set of physics, regardless of any prior physical limitations. It is possible to remove their eldritch nature.”

:= Why have you not been using this already?

“Because it is… imperfect. Its use in our empire is to allow us travel in universes we have not yet converted, so we may understand. Furthermore, it could only affect one world at a time as it is now. This is where your wires come in.”

:= Calculations ran. You want a spread shot of something low-energy that could infect all known Horrorterrors?

“Yes. Effectively a biological weapon. For most races, it would do nothing – they would just have the power to revert themselves. But a Horrorterror…”

:= Would be driven to brain-death by trying to force an eldritch mind into a purely biological body.

“Precisely. You have been sent our designs. Do what you will.”

The Xeelee were the best scientists in the multiverse. Their Collective adapted a Piano Wire Superweapon to fire a bolt with the biology-twisters into all of Horrorterror space. The collateral damage would be astounding – every sapient being hit would turn into a human, no matter where they were. This would kill many – though most biological beings would just suffer an existential crisis.

But the Horrorterrors would be brought down.

The Xeelee had abandoned the practice of minimizing collateral damage only a couple minutes into the War for Existence. They fired with little hesitation, skewering all of Horrorterror space with a relatively low-energy ‘subliminal message’ inserted into the physics of each universe. Everything began to shift to a human – and the screams began.

Eldritch beings, when they scream of death, impart their pain to other beings. Usually only empathic ones within the same universe can feel the horrendous calls of madness, but this was the death of almost every Horrorterror in the multiverse. This call broke through universal and mental barriers, driving those in the Great Void without protection to madness.

For the first time, the Horrorterrors felt what it was like for a human to hear their call – for that was what they were becoming. Men trying to scream the guttural echoes of cosmic pain.

There was no flashy singularity created by their death. The Great Void didn’t cease to exist, though thousands of universes simply couldn’t take the pressure.

There was just a scream.

The Noble Circle of Horrorterrors lasted the longest of their kind. There were only nine of them left in this era, including Neoan. At this time, they still had their mental faculties about them.

Neoan thought about saying something – but he decided that there was nothing to say. This was war. And they had lost.

He was one of the few Horrorterrors to gain some level of inner peace before the conversion destroyed him.

Them looked at the aftermath. The only societies near the Great Void that mattered were Empress Twilight’s Void and the Many-Angled Ones. The Many-Angled Ones, who had been neutral until just now, declared war on the Xeelee for hitting them with collateral damage. One shot from a Piano Wire Superweapon got them to rescind their claim very quickly. Empress Twilight’s Void was mostly protected by the Void’s internal energies and mechanisms – but many worlds were still lost to the scream.

The bordering Celestialsapiens still didn’t make any moves.

“Well, shit,” a Them said. “We’re alone now.”

“Thank you Captain Obvious,” a colleague retorted.

~~~

Mage Rarity walked alongside Empress Twilight in a crystal hall of her Void.

“If existence wasn’t ending…” Empy said.

“I am sorry,” Mage Rarity insisted. “Action needed to be taken quickly, Twilence was asking for a favor, and I couldn’t be sure you would agree.”

“The only law we broke was use of government property!” Gilgamesh blurted, running to catch up with them. “And you can totally pardon that!”

“It’s not that and you know it. You’re not as stupid as you claim to be,” Empy pointed out. “As it is…” she bit her lip.

“Second thoughts?” Mage Rarity asked.

“And third. And twelfth. Probably nineteenth as well.” The Empress of the Void sighed for a moment. “Perhaps it comes from being the Void’s controller for so long, but I grow tired of the complexity and seek simplicity. It may just be the nothingness of this construct we occupy getting into my head, and if it were just my decision I would never consider the collapse. But Twilence has given it her approval. She rarely gives something that important approval.”

Mage Rarity nodded. “…Glad to have you on board. I’m not sure what we would have done if we had to fight.”

They came out of the crystal hall into an area open to the expanse of space, safe due to their internal magics. The Empress walked to the center of a crystalline circle and placed her front hoof on an extrusion from the floor. A sphere of dark Void appeared above them, rippling with the energy of the ancient construct.

Even now, they didn’t know who had made the Void. It did not match the designs of the Weavers, the Downstreamers, or any other ancient society that had left remnants behind. It seemed to be a unique construct that tied universes together with the principles of magic and emptiness. The idea of something from nothing.

And the mare who controlled the void was essentially an automatic Class 2 Civilization. Even as the Void under Empress Twilight grew, their effective power and reach did not. The Void was more or less united now, but they had not changed in millennia. Always depending on the Void for their society.

Their Empress sensed the time the Void could protect them would soon be over. It was not because it could not survive the collapse – she expected the time of safety to end long before then.

She spread her wings, an aura of darkness surrounding her. The stars in her mane winked out and her eyes went black. She forced a connection through the E-Q Strand to the Q-Sphere, spreading through the magical leylines left behind by the late Magic High Commission.

She found her allies and opened a secure channel.

Morty appeared as a rectangular image on the edge of the dark sphere. He had been expecting this call for quite some time – as had Red Diamond. Rosalina of the Mushroom World had apparently not been expecting it, while Minna and Corona had already been preparing. Feferi didn’t answer – and the last image showed me.

Empy raised an eyebrow. “I was trying to c-”

“The Pinkies are watching,” I said, smiling warmly.

“Who are you talking to?” Clandestine hollered.

The feed to me cut, allowing the surface of the Void sphere to return to darkness.

Mage Rarity cursed. “We’re being watched.”

“We are,” Minna said. “So that means we have to move now. Corona and I have already begun our plan – we won’t share the details. Rest assured we will be joining you soon.”

“Is the meeting place still the same?” Corona asked.

Empy turned to Mage Rarity. She nodded. “It is.”

“What meeting place?” Rosalina asked.

“We can’t say, we’re being watched,” Red Diamond reiterated. “It would probably be best if you remained onsite.”

Rosalina frowned. “But they know who I am now. And that I’m talking to you.”

“Trust me. It will be best if you are there,” Red Diamond said.

“Why?”

“This conversation is impossible,” Corona muttered. “Look, once Minna and I do what we need to do, we’ll stop keeping our cards so close to our chest. It won’t matter what they know in regards to… certain things.”

Empress Twilight nodded. “We will have to always know when we’re being watched. Get personal ka detectors. Manage our words very carefully.”

“We’ll have Twilence. They’ll have to do the same stupid thing!” Gilgamesh chirped.

“…And now there’s a Pinkie going to put a small army on Twilence,” Mage Rarity muttered.

“Looks like you’ll have a fight,” Morty said, folding his hands together. “Empress Twilight, you know this message needs to be terminated. We cannot form the bonds we need to here – not anymore. But rest assured, we are banding together for when the time is right.”

The Empress of the Void nodded. “Please hurry, all of you. I’m not sure how much time we have.”

She shut down the communication globe.

“…So much for Void security,” Gilgamesh said.

“Awareness makes everything more complicated,” Mage Rarity admitted.

“A complication we will learn to deal with,” Empy said, turning around. “Come. We have personal preparations to make as well.”

~~~

The Xeelee hated how clever Them were when they decided to put actual effort into something. The energy beings had found ways to easily circumvent the Piano Wire Superweapon’s through clever use of universe mobility and self-folding space. The universes themselves were still destroyed, but as they were they would eject anything inside them into somewhere safe. This was exceptionally damaging to the receiving universe but it cut down Them casualties immensely, preserving their newfound numerical advantage.

The Xeelee calculated that they had become a little too dependent on the use of their Wire technology over the eons. There had been no lower society that had ever shown any real ability to resist it, and it hadn’t exactly been tested against the other Class 1 societies. Couldn’t have been tested.

The Beyonders were having much more luck facing Them, given the warriors’ penchant for creating endless varieties of increasingly creative weapons. They had never perfected one to the level the Xeelee had with the Wire, but sometimes variety was more important than quality.

As Them turned most of their focus to the Beyonders, the Xeelee took a moment to lay off the processing of direct war and think more about the big picture. The conversation they had would be impossible to transcribe – every Xeelee in the collective had a thought, a voice, a piece of information.

Every line of code was collected together into a swirling soup of numbers run through the largest processor in the multiverse. It, after spending eons of local time in a Xeelee-controlled time loop, spat out a response – the Xeelee needed to start using full armament power. It did not matter if their other weapons technologies were untested or unfinished, the Them had too much power given to them by spirit – by cheating. The Xeelee would have to step outside the comfort zone of physically tested.

A few of these things weren’t even theirs, they were just found. Ancient relics of Downstreamer or more mysterious construction.

They tried ‘unnamed Downstreamer weapon-C’ first. This behemoth of a weapon latched itself onto an instance of Them and turned it into a being a million times more powerful that sought the destruction of everything like what it had once been. Presumably used for extermination of particularly unpleasant customers back in the time of the Downstreamers.

Them had an easy solution to this, though. Change their nature enough that the new behemoth didn’t care about them. Them collapsed the universe the behemoth was in, managing to trap a Beyonder troop inside as a bonus.

The Xeelee moved on to their untested superweapons – the Arrow and the Thistle. The Arrow was a ‘projectile’ of sorts that embedded itself into a universe near the target, and then made new connections to several thousand other universes, skewering each one with enough power to pop it like a balloon, setting it adrift in the Sea. The Thistle did the opposite. It was planted in a universe near the target and then created universes faster than they could be maintained, exerting pressure on nearby universes. Even ones resistant to connections would be compressed into a singularity. The Thistle didn’t destroy universes – it simply vaporized everything within via pressure.

Them struggled with these two toys – but eventually Them adapted. They learned to take the Arrow’s bullets and freeze time in all the involved universes. They learned to absorb the energy from the Thistle's pressure. Them’s numbers were decimated regardless, but they had taken many Beyonders with them.

The Beyonders were screaming at the Xeelee to stop blowing up their armies with Them, but the Xeelee were too enthralled by the progress they were getting.

They used one of the Superweapons they had been given. Found by someone outside their nation long ago. The Xeelee didn’t know who it was, so they had never tested this mysterious device.

They figured they might as well now, see if it acted as expected. After all, the multiverse was already falling apart at the seams, what was the worst it could do? Destroy another tenth of the multiverse? Frankly, that’d take care of Them, so it wouldn’t be a problem.

They unleashed the Pole. Unlike most of the other weapons, which had literally been made of universes, this object was a single metallic rod that existed in only one universe. They knew it could not exist in more than one universe, but that it could extend the ‘scope’ of the universe it was in to intersect with as many universes as it wanted.

Any universe that tried to resolve the paradox of position by incorporating the Pole would be destroyed. The Xeelee called the principle hyper-connection.

They released the Pole. It shot across the multiverse to Them’s outpost – where it instantly stopped doing what it was supposed to do. The energy beings activated their trap.

Them had been waiting for the Xeelee to use the Pole. They had crafted their outposts specifically with it in mind. A metaphysical hand reached out and diverted the path of the Pole, forcing it into Them’s control. This was against the Pole’s design, so it began to fragment. It exploded into trans-universal shards in the middle of a Beyonder universe.

Not only that, but a Beyonder universe connected to the Spline. Several hundred of the Pole’s shards flew into the Spline, dealing heavy damage. Already on high alert from the destruction of the D-Sphere, the Spline wasn’t taking any chances.

The Beyonders suddenly found themselves under assault from the Safeguard. Almost all the Safeguard. They met the Safeguard in battle.

In many ways, this was exactly what they had wanted all along. Not a war with joking spirits, or machines who were always distant from their attacks, but a war with soldiers. A war between those of power.

The Pole didn’t do much on its own. But the lightning-war between the Beyonders and the Spline did.

To the surprise of everyone involved, the Beyonders won the skirmish. They directed their own weapons of mass direction at key points along the Spline and forced it into a dormant state – no longer connecting the multiverse together.

But the blitzkrieg had been too much. It was a total war fought over the span of a couple of minutes. The Beyonder infrastructure was gone.

It was easy for Them to take care of the stragglers. Almost effortless.

The Xeelee inwardly cursed themselves – now they were alone and significantly outnumbered. They shelved the use of other superweapons for a while. It was time to revert to more standard forms of technology. Them, even motivated, couldn’t compete with insane industrial capabilities and overwhelming superintelligence of the Xeelee. In the long run, the odds were in favor of the Xeelee for a victory.

They just had to be careful about it.

Elsewhere, the man known as Randall Flagg smirked.

Looks like they had finally used his toy.

Funnily enough, he had forgotten about it completely. He didn’t even remember what it was originally supposed to destabilize. Whatever it was, this result was certainly delightful.

…Even if it might have made his other goals more difficult…

He turned his gaze away from Black Thirteen, pocketing the artifact.

~~~

Sai beeped. “Spotlight on.”

Corona cracked her knuckles. “Looks like we need to move. Everyone in position?”

“Affirmative,” several voices came back.

“Good. Let’s move.”

Corona nodded to her team – Velvet, Insipid, Ash, and Lady Rarity. Sugarcoat, as amazing as she was, wasn’t particularly suited for high-action missions with a specific objective. Which, in this case, was to break into Celestia City’s maximum security prison.

The structure was nameless, and most of the public wasn’t aware of its location within the mesh that was Celestia City. But it had not been hard for Corona to find – Minna and Feferi were still trusted by the Merodi, all they had to do was ask. Didn’t even have to give a reason.

“Doing exactly what Eve did…” Corona commented to herself.

“What?” Insipid asked.

“Nothing important,” Velvet deadpanned, gaze focused on the prison. The blue structure was hidden behind three layers of forcefield, the interior spires constructed of enchanted cobalt. Unlike most of Celestia City’s constructions, which looked beautiful in some way, this blue thing was just a cube surrounded by energy. “Why aren’t the forcefields down yet?”

Raging Sights beeped in annoyance.

“They know we’re here now,” Lady Rarity said. “Or they are about to. But all it takes is one Pinkie to spill the beans.”

The force fields disappeared at that moment. Corona didn’t even say ‘go’, she teleported the five of them to the front door and blasted it open. The doors were designed to survive a dragon running into them – not a reality-warping Princess’ magic.

The guards were standard Merodi soldiers – mostly larger Quartz Gems. They did not let the appearance of Corona deter them. They created or drew their weapons and fired.

Corona stopped all of them in an instant. She twisted their magical natures back in on them, making all the Gem soldiers poof. Their gemstones clattered to the ground, allowing the humans and ponies to attack. Insipid used her copy of Corona’s abilities to take care of them. “Like, so lame.”

“Just the front guard,” Ash said. “There are worse things ahead.”

“That we’ll be skipping,” Corona pointed out, scanning the prison with her magic. All of it was teleport locked, and the cobalt was reinforced to be nigh indestructible. However, that didn’t matter much if you were Corona and you had the ability to Shape reality on small scales. Teleportation was out – but cutting through the floor wasn’t.

She began a complex series of spells to get to the levels below them, leaving the defense to her four friends. Insipid’s use of her power was paramount – a giant shield that protected from increasingly more damaging weapons and mechanical defenses.

Corona knew at this point the League would have been contacted. They would send people a little better at fighting than guards soon enough. She hoped it wouldn’t be anybody she knew…

That hope turned out to be pointless, because a moment later Allure showed up, Thrackerzod and Bot behind her.

The Sweetie made a beeline for Corona – but Ash threw his pikachu at her, allowing Allure to discover her artificial horn was an excellent lightning rod. He followed it up with a burst of water from his hands. Allure brought out her spirit as the Knight of Heart and cut at Ash, drawing blood, but was unable to do this effectively with a little yellow rodent shocking her constantly.

Bot met Lady Rarity, the robot and the mech smashing their metallic forms into each other. Hammer hit missile, magic hit laser, hoof hit hoof. Both were far more nimble than one would expect them to be, and neither were able to deal much in the way of harm to the other.

Velvet and Thrackerzod…

…Whatever battle they were having, it was of a form mortals could not comprehend. A feedback loop of Fear, eldritch powers, and outer powers. Velvet’s bloody blades mixed with Thrackerzod’s impossible tentacles, forming a swirling mass of black and red, like some demented candy cane.

Insipid continued to work on the guards while Corona kept working on her spell.

A standstill was good for the invaders, in this case.

“Got it!” Corona shouted. “Drill!”

Brilliant light laced with flames appeared over Corona’s head, appearing as an extension of her horn from certain angles. A great cone appeared, rippling with sharp, angled blades all around the curved face. The drill flipped to point downward at a slightly sloped angle – and drilled. The magically reinforced cobalt was torn away, throwing blue shards of structure every which way. A hole appeared in the floor – and the floor beneath that, and the floor beneath that. It was going to a very specific location.

Corona signaled to her team and leaped into the hole. Only Insipid and Lady Rarity were able to follow – Ash and Velvet were too occupied.

They flew past security measures that fired destructive lasers at them. However, they had all been rated to not fire with enough energy to destroy the prison they were in – which was what they would need in order to do much to Corona and her friends.

Corona landed in a particular set of cells – three adjacent cubicles containing Vivian, Timpani, and Blumiere.

“I was wondering if this would happen,” Blumiere said, adjusting his monocle. “I have questions – but I expect we are on a timetable, so I simply ask that you lead the way.”

“Corona!” Vivian called with a smile. “I’m glad y-”

“Blumiere’s right, MOVE,” Corona said, pointing up the hole.

Blumiere nodded. Those who couldn’t fly found themselves held aloft by his dark powers. He rocketed them back to the ground floor of the prison. Ash and Velvet had been defeated, out cold on the ground. This would not have concerned Corona – after all, they now had Blumiere to back them up, out of his magic-inhibited cell.

The only problem was there were more Sweeties, now. They had apparently radioed for backup.

“Go back down there,” Allure ordered, left eye twitching.

“No,” Corona said, preparing a destructive cascade spell that would make all the Sweeties pass out.

Servitude, the Sweetie angel, tossed out a mundane physics-locking device on the ground – one of Corona’s own design. She herself was perfectly fine, since she kept her magic anchored to reality at all times – but none of the others were prepared for this, their magic powers vanishing.

Corona stood alone. Not even she could go against the might of the entire League of Sweetie Belles at once.

“Surrender,” Allure demanded. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Corona got the sense Allure wasn’t being completely truthful in her sentiment.

All she could hope for was that the other teams completed their missions. Minna would have taken some of the Merodi fleet… Feferi would have gotten the Prognostici…

Then she remembered what the fourth mission was and smiled. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ll be surrendering.”

“Corona don’t be stupi-”

Clandestine was thrown over the League of Sweetie Belles, crashing into the locking device, shattering it.

The sea of small, mostly white unicorns turned to see where that had come from.

They saw me. I teleported a notebook to myself. “Who wants to go first?”

Allure apparently did. She summoned her Heart and charged.

I wrote a sentence. She stabbed herself in the ear, throwing her aim off. “Wh-”

I fired a laser at Burgerbelle, prompting her to fall over in the perfect way to throw the ninja Sweeties off balance. I wrote another sentence. The floor Corona had made unstable crumbled under one of the high mage Sweeties.

The League charged, scampering after me as one mass – leaving Corona enough time to gather her friends and teleport away.

I could have done the same. I could have arranged for a moment to teleport away. But I didn’t do that.

Because I was going to make a point.

I scribbled a note, raising a magic shield to push them all back. I introduced conflict into their ranks, getting a few to fight each other. I prompted Thrackerzod’s eldritch nature to act up in a million-to-one moment, making her feel a deep connection to her old master, prompting something akin to homesickness. I dropped the shield and looked through the Eye of Rhyme – seeing where every hoof, every laser, every attack would hit, and moving my body perfectly to dodge every last one.

They started to realize I was toying with them.

It was a fair description of what was happening. I was in control of everything happening, and nothing was going to hit me.

I had even accounted for the Pinkie Belle – she could move out of my sights in some ways, so I relied on normal magic to deal with her. Overwhelming force to keep her at bay with a laser strike.

Suzie jumped towards me, stretching out her hand. “U-Catastrophe!”

“SUZIE, NO!” Squeaky gasped in panic.

“DO IT!” Allure shouted.

The woman’s massive tree-shaped Stand erupted from her back, coursing around me with its spiked, yet elegant branches. I let it hit me with a smirk, though I ensured my body would regenerate from the physical assault prior.

“Your curse is useless, now,” I said, a careful smirk planted on my face. “You no longer have a last resort.”

“Wh…”

I stepped to the side, dodging an attack from a pain-whip, redirecting it to Suzie’s face. I teleported the offending Mattie in front of me. “You should have known this was pointless.”

Mattie shrugged. “Can’t fault me for trying, mate.”

I tore Mattie’s pain-whips and started lashing Sweeties one by one, the excessive power in the weapons forcing the unicorns to writhe on the ground in agony. I was untouchable.

I sensed they were going to radio for military assistance. As strong as I was – enough warships could take me out. I wasn’t willing to chance that.

But I did make a point of unleashing a burst of energy, tossing the League of Sweetie Belles like confetti.

“I hope you all understand what this means,” I said.

Allure tried one last-ditch effort to cut me with her Heart. Without even looking, I caught her in my telekinesis and tossed her into the air. Then I teleported away, gone.

The prison break had been successful. The Prognostici had been stolen. The Military Division had lost a sizeable portion of their fleets to Minna.

Allure was going to break when she found out who was behind that. As impassive as I may have seemed, that fact alone weighed heavily on my heart.

It was a tragedy of family.

~~~

The time of chaos and randomly flinging superweapons was over.

Now there were only two sides that mattered – the Xeelee and Them. There was no need to fling massive destruction at each other, ripping holes in existence that boggled minds with their sheer size.

No, the time had come for more reasonable warfare. A kind much more akin to the war men would fight on any Earth they appeared on, with geography, weapons, and soldiers. Admittedly, in this case the geography was the strange multiversal connections that had come about due to everyone pressing their nuclear buttons at once, the weapons were split between technological wonders of cosmic power and spiritual sparks of endless creativity, and the soldiers were digital consciousnesses and beings akin to angels.

In simpler terms, the Xeelee had started using their actual ships as their primary mode of offense while Them had stopped devoting all their time to twisting universes in increasingly elaborate ways to annoy the Xeelee.

The Xeelee seemed to have all the advantages: they had the rapidly reproducible technology, their citizens rarely experienced death due to their digital nature, and they hadn’t suffered as much structural damage as Them had. However, Them had proven to be exceptionally creative in their tactics, doing things the Xeelee found themselves unable to reliably predict. It was not because Them’s plans were overly complicated, but because they were completely insane.

It went beyond kamikaze bombings. Although Xeelee were, in a vacuum, far more inventive, they refused to rely on powers outside of their complete control, which meant that Them with their Spirit often gained the advantage. Some of Them had created ‘game rule’ universes where Xeelee were challenged to life-or-death scenarios of chess, racing, or some other normally harmless pursuit. There was minimal success in bending reality away from the ‘game rules’, simply because Them were really good at making universal physics adhere to their bizarre scenarios. Now that there was only one enemy, they could tailor-make the battles to be as interesting as possible.

Some were truly fought as space battles. Others involved jumping through hoops. Still others were essay contests.

◊X◊ Are you enjoying yourselves?

“Quite well, thanks for asking.”

The Them were aware that these ‘challenge universes’ only went so far in the war effort. If enough were created, the Xeelee would find them irksome and just start Piano Wiring them to desolation, regardless of the consequences. But kept in balance, the Xeelee thought they could pull ahead of the competition – especially if it meant Them weren't focusing on the more traditional battles.

Them didn’t have any issues multitasking, unfortunately for the Xeelee. Despite their heavy losses, they kept fighting. Many of them had ended up laughing while doing it, finding the conflict immensely enjoyable.

A sort of standoff had been created. Already, the Xeelee-Them portion of the War for Existence had lasted for more than double the rest of the war. Overall, the nuclear options were no longer on the table.

However, slowly but surely, the two sides began to tire. The Xeelee’s ability to endlessly grow their industrial base was sabotaged by some especially nasty tricks of Them, while Them were simply not able to regrow their population. The war of giants began to shrink down, the multiversal ripples calming. Those nations who had been trying frantically to hold their universes together let out a breath of relief – while others mourned the loss of their homes.

The Tower Rings weren’t even part of the war much anymore – constructing them was a waste of time if they could be spotted instantly and destroyed from anywhere. The Xeelee and Them needed to win before they could safely encode the Dark Tower.

They both knew the war couldn’t last much longer. Eventually, the numbers of Them would dwindle too much, or the Xeelee’s tattered digital storage would no longer be enough to house their entire population.

“MOTION CARRIED!”

The world would never find out who would have won.

“EXECUTE THE DECIDED ORDER!”

The Xeelee and Them had forgotten about the Celestialsapiens. At first, the Xeelee were pleased – surely the Celestialsapiens had debated to side with preservation? That would mean sure victory!

The Xeelee were half right.

The Celestialsapiens were definitely for preservation.

But they were not for a Xeelee victory.

Half the Celestialsapien forces moved to destroy Them, not letting the energy beings enjoy any of their games. The other half appeared right around the Xeelee Piano Wire Superweapons. They were not well enough defended to face against the might of a mostly unharmed Class 1 superpower.

The Piano Wire Superweapons were ordered to fire on the Xeelee central nodes at full power. With most of them firing at once, they were enough to rip a hole straight through the E-Sphere.

The Xeelee mainframe crashed, leaving only fragments to panic about what to do. A Xeelee program hadn’t truly died in eons. Most of the population had just been extinguished by their own weapons.

The Xeelee automatic protocols initiated – essentially ordering a self-destruct for any device not housing an actual Xeelee within it. These weapons decimated the Celestialsapien forces, as did Them’s efforts on the other side.

They did damage, to be sure – but it was a last-ditch effort on a living giant.

The Celestialsapiens were the last Class 1 civilization standing.

“ORDER OBTAINED. THERE WILL BE NO MORE CLASS 1 WARS. THE CELESTIALSAPIENS DECLARE THEIR CONTROL OVER THE SEATS OF THE MULTIVERSE. WE SHALL DEVOTE OURSELVES TO THE PRESERVATION OF THE MULTIVERSE AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF WHAT WAS LOST. THERE WILL BE NO INTERFERENCE FROM ANY EQUAL POWER…”

~~~

Eve looked at the two reports on the screen in front of her.

One was of Corona’s break-in to Celestia City and the portion of the Merodi fleet that left with them. Less than five percent of their forces, but it was still a crippling blow.

The other report was more recent. The Celestialsapiens were still announcing their ‘Reconstruction Declaration’ to the multiverse. There was a lot there, but the part scrolling by now was about the reconstruction of the E-Q Strand, the only ancient multiversal structure that could be salvaged.

One of her oldest friends had betrayed Eve for something she believed, much like how Eve had betrayed the Merodi for the sake of the war all those years ago… It hurt.

It also hurt to see the map of the multiverse. The Q-Sphere was elongated from all the tidal forces, and a huge bite was taken out of it where the Beyonders and Spline had annihilated each other. But it had suffered the least damage out of all the locations. The D-Sphere was gone, leaving the Cosmic Heavens and Outer Existence as nothing more than scant remaining tatters. The E-Sphere had a giant hole in it, for one, and in two places it looked like it had been shaved clean. The Strands didn’t even exist anymore, with only a single fuzzy line representing the sketchy E-Q Strand. The Unrealities had been pushed further out than they had been before, making them virtually impossible to access.

And the spark that was the Dark Tower sat just above the E-Q strand, taunting everyone with its presence.

Her mind decided it was done panicking over what was probably a third of the multiverse ceasing to exist, substituting that for whatever Corona was doing. What was she planning? What was Twilence doing there? Clearly the Celestialsapiens had won! The multiverse was going to be preserved!

That was good!

Why, then, did Eve want Corona’s betrayal to mean something?

She let out an angry wail and stamped her hoof into the ground hard enough to dent the metal. “What were you thinking, Corona? Look what you’ve done! I hope you’re happy!”

Eve knew Corona wasn’t happy. This wasn’t what she’d wanted. She’d wanted them to make a decision. Instead, the multiverse had been torn apart like rotten cloth.

Rev was right. It was all evil now.

“Get out of your funk now,” Monika shouted, glitching into existence out of nowhere. “Something is very, very wrong.”

“Wh- what?”

“I sense it. And I know the only reason I don’t know is because Twilence is blocking it. Something’s going to go wrong.”

Eve nodded. “What can we do?”

“I have no idea! But you’re the face of preservation, so, I don’t know, do something!”

Eve shook her head. “I may be the face – but I’m just a pony. The multiversal media has blown her role and mine out of proportion.”

“You idiots don’t realize ye-”

The TARDIS appeared in the room not only sideways, but burnt. Parts of it were so damaged they were shimmering with unstable spacetime.

The Doctor popped out – with a face none of them had ever seen before. Eve thought it looked fresh.

“You?” he said, shaking his head. “Good enough, you have higher communication. Get a message out to the Celestialsapiens now! There’s no time!”

~~~

Omega Jade, Alpha Jade, and John were hanging around the League of Sweetie Belles, helping tend to everyone there by request of Omega Jade – these white unicorns were her friends, after all.

Allure had been working hard to get the League back into shape after Twilence trounced them, but Alpha Jade had told her she needed to rest. Allure didn’t argue – going to sit on one of the League’s many lounge couches, taking a moment to breathe.

John eventually joined her, looking just as clueless and confused as he always did. “…Hey.”

“Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed?” Allure asked.

“Uh… Not really?” John admitted. “My friends and I did some stupid things, but I think the only person who actually betrayed us was Aranea… and I didn’t know her that well. …Actually, Vriska did, I guess, but that’s complicated.”

“It always is.”

John blinked. “…Yeah, I, uh, don’t know what to tell you. She believes in what she’s doing?”

“So does almost every person in existence,” Allure said, staring at the ceiling. “…John, what would you do?”

“Uh, if my friend betrayed me, or my kid? ‘Cus I don’t have a kid.”

Allure twitched. “Friend.”

“I dunno. Get upset, a little angry, but then figure out why they did it?” he shrugged. “Move on.”

“Move on!?” Allure spat, standing on her hooves. “I gave my life for her! I devoted every waking moment of my existence to bring her up! I was alone and she was alien and we still worked! And then she goes and turns evil without even giving me any signs!? What the hell is up with that!?!”

“Uh, cool it with the ‘evil’ there…”

“Don’t you tell me to cool it!” Allure shouted. “I’m not going to cool it! Can’t you see? Preservation – the side of good. Collapse – the side of evil. It’s a story we’ve been part of OVER and OVER and OVER AGAIN!” Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “I guess they were just born to go down this road, huh!?”

“Allure, calm down,” Omega Jade said, walking into the room with her other self right behind her. “That feeling you have right now? That is why they want the collapse.”

Allure blinked. “Wh…”

Omega Jade hugged the little unicorn. “They don’t want to go through the story over and over again. They want to go down a different road.”

Allure pulled back and looked into Omega Jade’s empty eyes. “Jade…”

“John’s right in one thing, you c-”

Whatever words of solace Jade was going to say – and whatever epiphany Allure was about to receive – it was not meant to be. Alpha Jade screamed from the bottom of her very soul. Her ghostly body collapsed into a single dot of white energy – and left. Her anchor bracelet fell to the ground with a clank.

Allure didn’t have time to get angry – because it was happening to John as well. But he wasn’t being condensed, his retcon powers were flashing everywhere. White zaps of energy lashed out to random objects, making them cease to exist. Omega Jade distorted space to keep herself and Allure safe while John slowly lost stability – and zapped away.

Neither Allure or Omega Jade had any idea what had just happened.

~~~

Six souls were collected.

The temporal conditioning was supposed to get seven of them, but Roxy the Rogue of Void had somehow eluded them.

No matter. She wasn’t important anyway. What was important was the retconner. They didn’t force his soul into temporal stasis like the others, they had a use for him before he was sent on his way to his fate.

John Egbert would be their weapon.

It was a simple matter to control his mind and make him retcon universes that had been destroyed in the war back to existence. It took John a year of his life to do it – but to the outside multiverse it was no time at all, thanks to his masters.

The universes joined up with several others still in existence. Nineteen points of ‘temporal singularity’ that had been seeded long ago for a moment such as this. Each one had been a test – a use of temporal technology on the Class 1 civilizations, to prove that the technology was effective. That it could be used even against the grandest of giants.

After so long laying dormant, they saw their opportunity to trigger it.

The true power of applied time travel went on display. Seeds of temporal energy laced between the nineteen universes, threading particular universes together. It forced them to be causally related. It was a simple adjustment all things considered. Anyone with physics alteration could make one universe operate on the same timestream as another; it was just impractical for the most part. Much more interesting things could be done with non-causally-related universes.

But if one wanted to use time travel as a weapon, causality was the most dangerous of all the tricks.

All they had to do was wind time in one universe back an hour. Then every connected universe would go back an hour.

An hour ago, the Celestialsapiens hadn’t been in the universes they were in now. They had been in other universes.

With a flick, every universe was overwritten. Every entity within died as everything reverted back. And almost every Celestialsapien was erased. The Tower Ring they were creating – the one that would have not only preserved the multiverse, but also imposed limitations on time travel, ceased to exist.

One of the few Celestialsapiens who had gotten lucky enough to still exist was prepared to go to war – alone, if he had to. But the Lords of Time did not let them. They used their temporal snare to trap the godlike entity in a loop, allowing his power to become theirs.

“Oh, how I have been waiting for this day. For too long have we been hiding in the shadows, cowering in fear of you and your kind,” a Gallifreyan man said – a version of one called Rassilon. He was clearly not from within the standard deviation of Gallifreyan worlds. He was certainly a Time Lord, but he did not wear the robes signifying that, instead taking a simple whitish-gray robe with no designs on it whatsoever. His eyes were old, his skin impossibly young, and he wore an actual watch on his arm.

The Celestialsapien was unable to respond to Rassilon, but the Time Lord knew the being could hear him. “We’re going to use you. And it will hurt.”

A rod of blue energy drove itself into the Celestialsapien’s head. With that, Rassilon was sure everybody who mattered in the multiverse would be able to hear him.

“The mighty have fallen,” he declared with a booming voice. “The last of them at our hand – the hand of the Gallifreyan Time Lords! For eons we have been biding our time, hiding our true power from the Class 1 Civilizations! We are not merely a Class 2 society that doesn’t seem to grow – we are a Class 1 ready to burst the moment the dam breaks! Well, we have broken the dam. There are none to oppose us. This war – this war of our creation – has finally brought about what was meant to be since the dawn of time. An era where time across all worlds is taken as it was meant to – as a tool. It is foolishness to deny one of nature’s greatest and most inconsistent facets. Today, the multiverse enters a new era of Time! A time that includes the great powers of Retcon and Awareness within it! A time that the Time Lords bring about!” He raised his hand.

The Gallifreyan Tower Ring – which had been destroyed in the war – was retconned back into existence by John the puppet. It activated. “With this Ring the multiverse will be preserved – and time will become the true glory it is meant to b-”

“FULL POWER STARLIGHT BREAKER!”

The Tower Ring – and the universe it was in – collapsed into the Sea of Infinite Possibility.

“As Chief Sovereign of the Time Space Administration Bureau, I, Nanoha Takamachi, declare war on the Gallifreyan Time Lords!” Nanoha glared at the speaker she was yelling into – hoping Rassilon was taking her seriously. “We will not let you further spread your time into the multiverse. We will not let you be the only Class 1 society. Your world is not the world we seek.”

Rassilon was surprised – but not worried. He allowed himself to respond to her directly. “What are you going to do? You’re below us, Nanoha. The TSAB has not been hiding its power. You will lose.”

“I am not alone,” Nanoha said, simply.

Rassilon blinked.

“The Void declares war on the Gallifreyan Time Lords!”

“THE MANY-ANGLED ONES JOIN IN THIS WAR!”

“The Combine have marked the Gallifreyans as the primary threat.”

“This is the Starcross Society. The time for us to act has come. Your utter disregard for life is worse than that of the Stars.”

Two names rarely heard came up as well – the Planes of Oblivion and Tyrannon’s Empire. No doubt the last of the High-Class 2 societies, the Great Race of Yith, would also have pledged their allegiance, had their society not been destroyed with the D-Sphere. The Flowers were the only notable abstention.

“How can you all fight us as one?” Rassilon demanded, enraged. “Many of you are on opposite sides!”

“We’ll probably get to fighting each other eventually,” Nanoha admitted. “After we’re done with you. You can’t control the multiverse, Rassilon. Nobody can.”

“…Time will be on our side. As will retcon.”

“Rassilon…” Nanoha sighed – and then she got an idea. “Rassilon, if you surrender and stop this madness, all of us could sit down and talk again. Try to come to a peaceful resolution. Do what the Class 1 civilizations couldn’t. If you and your people could just let go of your dream of dominance, we could end this.”

She held out a hand – unsure if he could even see it. “Please. War or peace? The history books, in whatever form they take, will remember your decision here today. You have the chance to choose.”

There was a moment of silence.

“War.” Rassilon said. “Not even all of you together can face us. We are the Class 1 society.”

Nanoha shook her head.

They couldn’t accept a multiverse where their control over time would be limited. They didn’t care if millions died every time they reset a world – they needed that power to feel like they were the Time Lords.

They weren’t just fighting for control. They were fighting for their culture. And that was a much harder foe to talk down.

Nanoha Takamachi, Chief Sovereign of the TSAB, cut the call. She turned around to tell the armies to prepare for all-out war.

One war ends, another begins… she thought.

~~~

It was raining heavily outside Rev’s church. She doubted it was because a storm was scheduled – she expected that Corona’s reality anchors could only do so much for the worlds of Merodi Universalis and that they were still experiencing the disturbances of the Class 1 War for Existence.

At least that was over now. For all the Gallifreyans’ boasting, they couldn’t unleash the level of abject destruction that the real Class 1 societies did.

…Then again, Rev didn’t really know how damaging time travel weapons could be. Merodi Universalis had always relied on Aradia to take care of any time-related problems. It was not an area of science they looked too much into, mostly due to the ethical concerns.

She sighed and sent up a prayer. She had been doing that a lot more lately. Good for her spiritual life, she admitted to herself, but it was a sign of deeper problems in her psyche.

Existence was falling apart. Of course there were going to be issues. Even if she believed there was life after death, death was still a horrible thing. All this destruction…

It was evil no matter which end it was in the name of.

She really should be getting home. She’d already locked up the church, all she had to do was teleport back home. Try to get some sleep.

Sleep. Wouldn’t that be nice if she could sleep without magic assistance.

She heard a loud thump at the door. She teleported over and unlocked the entrance to the church, throwing the doors open. Out there in the rain was a Twilight Sparkle curled up on the stairs, shivering. She wore a black cloak that covered most of her body, and the lighting made it difficult to see much else about her – but she was definitely a Twilight.

The Twilight whimpered. “Help… me…”

Rev levitated the Twilight into the church, using her magic to heat the mare up. “It’s okay now… It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’re safe here.”

“It’s not okay… It’s not okay!” the Twilight wailed, putting her hooves on her head. “Not okay…”

Rev put a gentle hoof around her. “But you are safe. I’m here for you.”

The Twilight said nothing. She closed her eyes tighter and whimpered.

“What’s your name?” Rev said as she brought some light into the church hall and grabbed a large blanket.

“…Rina.”

Comments

[UC]

Finding a melody for this chapter was really hard. Not everything can covey this scale and speed of war, destruction and chaos.
Really waiting for FoME comments on the Class 1 War.
Ten!

[FanOfMostEverything]

An anticlimactic end for the Watchmaker... and perhaps the only end possible. For someone who has so mastered ka, the path defeating him isn't making him the villain, but making him narratively irrelevant, nothing more than a demonstration of the vastly greater scope of the main story.

The War for Existence had been going on for less than twenty minutes, according to average metatime.

Sounds about right.

Ultiga? Is that a thing in FFXIII, or just an extrapolation? (And at least it wasn't Ultija...)

The lower deity of war nodded. “Gladly.”

"Boy. We're going hunting."

And still, the others didn’t stop fighting.

Arguably more tragic than literal multiversal decimation.

Oh, Corona. You may not want to see the multiverse burn, but you still started this fire. Good intentions make such good paving material, don't they?

Them were no longer bored.

That may be the most ominous sentence in this chapter. (The loss of the D-Sphere isn't ominous; there's nothing to dread when the worst has already come to pass.)

The collateral damage would be astounding – every sapient being hit would turn into a human, no matter where they were.

Huh. This would explain how a lot of "super-disempowered" storylines got their start... if those universes weren't screamed into madness moments later.

Hi, Team Collapse. Sorry you have to go all "Omniscient Council of Vagueness" while you're on camera.

A few of these things weren’t even theirs, they were just found. Ancient relics of Downstreamer or more mysterious construction.

And that may be even more ominous than active Them. When the Xeelee are pulling the "Neanderthals with nukes" routine, you know it's going to be ugly.

They used one of the Superweapons they had been given. Found by someone outside their nation long ago. The Xeelee didn’t know who it was, so they had never tested this mysterious device.

From Randall with love, if I had to guess.
Yeah, beware anonymous gifts of powerful weapons.

I wrote a sentence. She stabbed herself in the ear, throwing her aim off. “Wh-”

Full Grant Morrison in Animal Man powers. Truly terrifying.

Some were truly fought as space battles. Others involved jumping through hoops. Still others were essay contests.

Idea: The Writeoff contests are actually an ongoing Xeelee-Them battle. Don't ask me which side I've fought for, because I suspect it's both.

A multiversal Time War... Oh, this will be, is, and has been ugly. Also, in case it wasn't clear, that snippet I wrote in the Enchorus thread definitely predates this chapter. Looking forward to the next shockwave from the exploding pressure cooker.

[GMBlackjack]

9850523

Ultiga? Is that a thing in FFXIII, or just an extrapolation? (And at least it wasn't Ultija...)

It doesn't appear in XIII specifically, but a few FF games do have it, so it's not pulled out of nowhere.
-GM, master of JASON.

[Amusementist]

We are only a number of days away from Climax. But, the Class 1s are dead. White Nettle, English, and Crimson King still are around though.

[Voltaje]

Ha, I think I got it, The Celestialsapiens are alive, they were constructing the rings until twilight warned them about the Gallifreyans.

So here is what I think, they created a plan after the warning, does someone wonders HOW a single Celestialsapien survived and not ALL the others? considering all of them were in the same universe, or at least in the universes the retcon worked.

In short, it was because they already KNEW what will happen, retcon didn't kill them, they are either immune, has the power to counter it, or just left in the last moment, the unlucky Celestialsapien that got captured probably wasted too much time debating and didn't' follow the plan in time, that makes me believe the Celestialsapiens are immune mostly, if that Celestialsapien was left by accident; i don't see a point for him to stay behind, unless he has another purpose and Merodi will help free him.

So I think the Celestialsapiens faked death, so they can produce another ring in a safe place, meanwhile, the other societies will hold the Gallifreyan's back until the time comes to return; right now the Celestialsapiens can't fight retcon, so they rather stay hidden to Finnish their work and execute whatever plan they and perhaps twilight came up with.

[Blaze rod]

Good work Corona. Randoll is jealous.

[MtangaLion]

It should have been obvious that this would happen. As soon as Corona explained her plan on the stairs, Eve should have stopped her at any cost, then used the Wishing World to erase all knowledge of Corona's research.

But then, maybe ka wouldn't have allowed that. It seeks the best story, with the most drama and the highest stakes. Is a multiverse with ka just a wonderful and intricate display of dominos which exists only to fall?

[UC]

9850873
Comment #1919 !

[kistecool]

...easily circumvent the Piano Wire Superweapon’s through clever use of...

Superweapons.

[omegasnowfall]

Anyone else notice that Rina’s name is an anagram of rain?

[RoboRed]

I figured we'd be off to a grand start for an interesting time with the Watchmaker being mentioned right off the bat, but holy fuck.

In such a relatively short amount of time: all of the Class 1 societies are gone. If any members (species?) remain they are scattered to the ends. And there's barely a moment's worth of calm before the Class 2 societies rise up and start going after each other and the war is going to begin anew - the desolation wrought upon the multiverse will continue.
To be perfectly fair I don't blame them not wanting to be under the Time Lords - those guys are jerks. Heck, even Combine and Starcross are showing up to the fight - kinda feel like you've dun' fucked up if that happens. At this point Merodi is sure to fall somewhere into the conflict very soon, and it's in hte middle of dealing with its own problems.

Regarding the state of the multiverse...

Over a tenth of the multiverse – gone.

Gone.

It was a tragedy existence had never seen before.

This is...beyond my comprehension. I cannot even. The One Above All and The Great Will locking into conflict and just...sucking away the D-Sphere like that. A tenth of the whole multiverse is just gone from that. And there's already the business of Class 1s using weapons that use univereses as ammunition or a means of delivery on top of that (like Wathcmaker and Zhui getting the final succ).

I will admit though, I found the bit with the Safeguard running rampant a bit amusing, though terrifying. Like kicking a hornets nest or disturbing an ant hill and watching all the bugs run rampant angry everywhere dealing with the damage. Except the bugs are absurdly lethal automatons. And whole universes are tied up as collateral in the dealing with the damage part. Yeah.

But the angry cloud of ants ran over the Beyonders in a second action and they wiped each other out and that still made me "pfft" when I read it. Heh, dumb robots.

All that aside, untold, near-inconceivable amounts of destruction has been wrought upon the multiverse. Roughly a third of it - gone after the Class 1 war. And it's gonna continue.

---

“I’m leaving,” he said, folding his arms. “I’m leaving, and I’m taking Thanos with me. Anyone who wants to come with us is welcome. Do you hear that? Any one of you who thinks the collapse is the way to go, come with us! We will strive for what we believe, not what some council agrees to! After all, we’re free.”

Lightning sneered. “Morty, you’re going to start a civil war!”

“It was inevitable and you know it,” Morty said.

Gotta admit, Morty definitely found a fighting spirit in the many years since leaving Rick.

Why couldn’t they listen? Why couldn’t they have agreed and avoided this war?

Yeah Corona, this was never going to happen. Or more specifically, the odds of it happening were infinitesimally low.

Elsewhere, the man known as Randall Flagg smirked.

Looks like they had finally used his toy.

Funnily enough, he had forgotten about it completely. He didn’t even remember what it was originally supposed to destabilize. Whatever it was, this result was certainly delightful.

Oh for crying out loud. Of course, how could he not be involved, somehow?
Well, his angle has always been the destruction of the Tower. Since the route of doing that though the originating universe has been walled off thanks to Roland and the Tower itself, of course he's going to try and force another way for it to happen. Wonder what other manipulations he's going to pull?

Suzie jumped towards me, stretching out her hand. “U-Catastrophe!”

“SUZIE, NO!” Squeaky gasped in panic.

“DO IT!” Allure shouted.

The woman’s massive tree-shaped Stand erupted from her back, coursing around me with its spiked, yet elegant branches. I let it hit me with a smirk, though I ensured my body would regenerate from the physical assault prior.

“Your curse is useless, now,” I said, a careful smirk planted on my face. “You no longer have a last resort.”

Well, I had definitely expected Suzie and U-Catastrophe to show up at some point, just not this soon. I had also expected it to have some measureable effectiveness on wheverer it was used on but...well that didn't happen here.
At least it doesn't seem like any of the Sweeties have perished in the conflict...for now.

The prison break had been successful. The Prognostici had been stolen. The Military Division had lost a sizeable portion of their fleets to Minna.

Allure was going to break when she found out who was behind that. As impassive as I may have seemed, that fact alone weighed heavily on my heart.

It was a tragedy of family.

Yeah, in the ongoing litany of loved ones versus loved ones...

The world would never find out who would have won.

“EXECUTE THE DECIDED ORDER!”

The Xeelee and Them had forgotten about the Celestialsapiens.

To be completely fair, I had forgotten too. And that was well-played for them coming out of nowhere to decisively wipe out Them and the Xeelee. And quickly get wiped out themselves by being overwritten from John (poor guy) being used as a reset button.

The universes joined up with several others still in existence. Nineteen points of ‘temporal singularity’ that had been seeded long ago for a moment such as this.

Nineteen. Of course.

“It’s not okay… It’s not okay!” the Twilight wailed, putting her hooves on her head. “Not okay…”

Rev put a gentle hoof around her. “But you are safe. I’m here for you.”

The Twilight said nothing. She closed her eyes tighter and whimpered.

“What’s your name?” Rev said as she brought some light into the church hall and grabbed a large blanket.

“…Rina.”

...Who?