Hazahnahkah snapped awake—he was a sword again—back in his own body. A hand had picked him up. It was Zalahak’s. He was dueling Yurreth and Ysan! Hazahnahkah had been asleep, and he had not realized. Whatever the methostone had done to him, Zalahak had taken advantage of it. He should have known better. Vrast’s memories were a trick. A distraction. Zalahak had used him to parry Ysan and counter Yurreth just before the sword seized himself back. Usually, he did not directly attack his wielder. Such would be a gross display of dishonor and betrayal, but what of a bond fashioned from these same materials? Zalahak was a plague. Hazahnahkah was not going to serve this man. This man was a plague. By his complacency, how many people had died? The Keeper of the Ramble was no keeper at all. He was a spectator. He had no right. Hazzahnahkah used his Third Terror to slash at the man’s wrist. Zalahkah gasped and spun away, grabbing at his arm. “So you would truly unleash Yurreth upon the world. Lahahm! I need you!”

  Then, suddenly, Lahahm zoomed into his hand, as quick as a spearbird and as loud as cannonfire. The wind blew many back. He thrust towards Yurreth and sent her hurling backward, but all he could do was keep her at bay.

  Hazahnahkah was being stalled again. Ysan tumbled towards him. The same sphere from earlier came to Zalahak’s side, blocking attacks from Yurreth’s followers with an electrical field while hurling itself into Ysan’s ribcage. A snap cracked through the air. It began to spin, its two sides grinding through the woman’s flesh. Hazahnahkah tried to use his Third Terror to unmake this event. This didn’t work. A second sphere had appeared and was preventing him. Then four more spheres joined in. Hazahnahkah shouted for Lahahm to come to his senses, but the spear said nothing. He had made up his mind, or had fallen deeply into sleep. Yurreth’s company was quickly being overwhelmed. There was so much reality manipulation, Hazahnahkah could not tell what the in The Serpent Itself was going on. Explosions released and inverted. Things from the ceiling crashed into them, only to be restored as if they never were. People’s limbs were sliced clean off, and Yurreth would use her own endless flesh to regenerate them. Both sides were playing on the defensive. The spheres were trying to protect the space station more than they were trying to protect Zalahak. Hazahnahkah used his Third Terror to remove a space over the space station. Sure enough, two spheres clanged towards him, preventing this completely. It was enough to let September 6th sweep him up into the air and cull at Zalahak. He sidestepped skillfully, but he did not see Ysan. She impaled him cleanly with her water arm. A clean rift opened up in the floor in front of him. His eyes widened. He knelt and spewed up blood, but the blood evaporated almost instantly. He was evaporating with it. He sputtered, chuckling.

  “If it means preventing you from waking the gate, then yes, Haz, I’ll die for this!”

  This could only be seen as selfish, harmful, and maddening to all the people of Serpent’s Ramble. Why give them this technology, as Vikushak had gifted The Fawn Cities? Why not tell people the truth? Even if Serpent’s Ramble was a prison, clearly no one knew. It made no sense to imprison people ignorant of the purpose, or even the imprisonment. Hazahnahkah felt like he was going insane. He did not want to kill a man who believed he was doing the right thing. A man who had spent millennia serving what he thought was a just cause by himself.

  Hazahnahkah shouted. “Zalahak! The Harvester! What makes you so confident that this is for the good of all people?!”

  “Because you don’t know all people. Everything I do is for the greater good.”

  “And is it for the greater good that you lie to us? To all the people of Serpent’s Ramble?”

  Zalahak’s eyes shut. He whispered. “Again, you separate the people and their prison. I make no distinction between them. If I were to, say, bring all The Serpent’s Children aboard this Waker Station, what do you think would happen?”

  “Starvation would starve, illness would succumb, violence would know peace.” It wasn’t difficult for Hazahnahkah to say these things. He knew them.

  “And so why is it that you never utilized your Terrors to solve these blemishes?”

  This sucker punched Hazahnahkah. He tried to grasp the question. “You are asking why I didn’t intervene?”

  “That’s what you’re asking me,” Zalahak muttered. “You’re asking why we exert our free will upon the free will of Serpent’s Ramble. We have no right.”

  Hazahnahkah snarled at this. “I’ve tried to help. I—”

  “Your wielder. You’ve only tried to help your wielder. Why is that?”

  “It’s—”

  “It’s discrimination. You discriminate, Hazahnahkah. You save only what you understand. And who can blame you? Your Terrors are as great as they are terrible. That is why they are called Terrors. You are afraid of doing more damage than good. And do you not think that we Angels are also afraid of our potentiality? Of our own creations?” Zalahak seemed satisfied with Hazahnahkah’s silence. He twisted to Zalaster, still stern and slightly red-faced. “Bankanzaku and Yurreth… they are just the beginning. None of you understand what you will release upon the worlds. If you unlock the waking gate, you’ll doom more than just us; you’ll doom more than just ours.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  September 6th impaled Zalahak through his chest. “You call responsibility discrimination, you conflate good with evil and light with dark. If what you said was true, so too is Bankanzaku’s heart!”

  Somehow, Zalahak completely ignored being run through. His skin was becoming glassy; bits and pieces of the color that filled him flaked off, melted, like an oil painting washed with water. “It was the free will of yourself and Bankanzaku’s previous wives that have landed you where you are today. You could be standing here, where I am, but you are not… Don’t conflate the petty personal squabbles of your ex-husband with the good for all the world.”

  “I don’t speak for myself! I certainly don’t speak for the world! I speak for its children! You have a responsibility to the Children of the Ramble!”

  Zalahak drew his face closer to hers. He lifted her off the floor. She raked him across the face with her nails, but there was no blood—the colors of his body faded off like fairy cinder. He was burning into nothing. He was burning into nothing and smiling.

  “My, you people are like pitbulls.”

  Hazahnahkah did not like this man. Death to him would be a service to all. He may feel bad about this later, but it was better to keep everyone safe. The sword used his Third Terror and erased a chunk out of his face. It worked.

  Zalahak still stood, however, turning his head and revealing a strange geometrical pattern of unfinished colors. There was no blood inside him. Not even a brain. The one eyebrow he had left raised.

  “What are you?” Hazahnahkah asked.

  Zalahak frowned. “Wow. Vrast was right. The Incarnate Methos is merciless.”

  “What?”

  “I’m just so surprised you’re so willing to attack me, old friend.”

  “Because nothing about you is friendly,” Hazahnahkah snapped. “Even if I knew you long ago, you are a terrible person.”

  “Friendly or not, the reason we made you the key to the Waker Station was because of your strong sense of purpose and stronger sense of reason. Labeling people good or terrible does not suit you. Has The Garden done its Gardener so wrong?”

  “You take innocents hostage. There are Orphanspawn back there. Children who are barely adults. Mothers who are barely mothers, and mothers who would be. If you have an issue with Yurreth or myself then raise it, but you must release the innocents.”

  Zalahak leaned deeper in a whisper.

  “The Garden has no innocents.”

  Zalahak dropped September 6th to her feet and walked through her. Like a ghost. He looked up at the sphere at the center of all spheres. It spun rapidly. Its top and bottom side winding oppositely with fractals, rays, and hums. It sucked up all the colors he bled into. It stirred him till nothing was left. Hazahnahkah couldn’t tell what he was watching until he saw a second Zalahak just below it. He was bloody, barely breathing, and all sorts of scrapes and punctures were overtaking him. His eye swelled to a kiwi’s size. This was his real body. He had thrust the fake Hazahnahkah—the copy he had shown him earlier—through his own chest…. Hours ago perhaps… It was ritualistic. Purposeful. Sepuku. The other Zalahak that they had been fighting must have been his soul. Whatever strange phenomenon Hazahnahkah was bearing witness to, he couldn’t stop it. The spheres were protecting the central one until it finished its process. The alien automated voice without a soul had been replaced by Zalahak’s.

  “One last duel for our Father in Fire!”

  When the sphere stopped spinning, so did the room. It quaked, roared, and crashed upon itself as parts of it broke free. The sphere slid into a sword-shaped slot, and all the channels in the chamber pulsed platinum. Wings peeled forth, a neck craned down, and its spherical heart was so blinding that even Yurreth’s best had to turn away.

  Zalahak had become an Incarnate.

  A dragon Incarnate of awful technological alienage.

  Zalahak’s voice—distant, metallic—rolled out of the machine’s mouth like underwater thunder.

  “For the past ten thousand years, I haven’t changed. I think that’s proof enough. Only suffering brings change. If people suffer enough, should they befriend guilt instead of shame, then The Ramble may yet be cast aside. Isn’t that what you wanted, Hazahnahkah?! A garden where suffering didn’t matter, so that people can learn what suffering is! At the end, we all wake up, and all that matters is that nothing was ever real, and we would all change because of it. And so, finally, I too can change to face you. I’ve been waiting for this. Witness the pinnacle of neuratech! The grandchild of Vrast’s dreams!”

  The next moment, they were engulfed. Hazahnahkah did all he could to protect Ysan, September 6th, and the people of Serpent’s Ramble.

  He had to. Who else would?

  Zalahak’s new form was truly a monster:

  Health (source of vitality and abilities): 11,857,000,000,000

  Energy (source of stamina and abilities): 11,857,000,000,000

  Agility (speed of actions): 25,000

  Regeneration (rate of recovery per hour for Health and Energy): 1,000,000

  Tenacity (resistance to unwanted effects): 100,000,000,000,000

  Strength (physical or mental reality manipulation potency): 10,000,000,000

  [Zalahak’s Abilities]

  Unobservable.

  [Zalahak’s Conditions]

  Attuned: Has a reciprocal relationship with several devices, controlling them through feelings and thoughts.