Lucifer’s eidolon, William, and Mr. Wink all appeared back in the abyssal citadel in less time than it took to blink, the spiffy dressed eidolon removing his hand from William’s shoulder and sauntering off. William looked over at Lucifer… at the oleum that had taken his body with sadness in his heart. After seeing Lucifer properly, hearing his words of encouragement, given the task of killing his eidolon, it hurt all the more to see him like this.

  “Well! I must be going. Things to do, cathedrals to stop, you know how it is,” Time and Change stated absentmindedly. He had returned the top hat onto his head and was busying himself fussing over a cuff link on his jacket.

  “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t have just dealt with this yourself. You could kill Darkness’ eidolon right now. It’d be easy. There’s nothing it to do to stop you,” Twilight pointed out wearily.

  “Oh, yes, absolutely, but, ew! No! Touching that thing? Dirtying my hands with it’s amniotic fluid, as our mutual friend Discovery described it? Do you think I dress like this for the fun of it?” Mr. Wink flashed that Cheshire grin at William again. They both knew he did.

  “Ever after the cause, never the symptoms,” Choice echoed glumly.

  “Correct. Now, really, I must be going. I’ve done my part in facilitating Darkness and Discovery’s chat with you, now you know the full scale of what it is you’re dealing with, have fun with it! Go nuts! Shred these things into a million little pieces and use them as confetti for all I care! Just get it done. Darkness believed in you, so believe that you can do this! I’m rooting for you!”

  Mr. Wink turned to leave but was stopped as William asked one more question: “What are you even doing, Time? What could possibly be so important as to forsake the rest of us to scramble around, fighting these things, on top of trying to stop Cathedral Terra? What makes you so exempt from the same duty as the rest of us?”

  “Big questions! And wouldn’t you know it? No time for big answers, aw! So sad! But, rest assured, Twilight and Choice, we’ll see each other again in very short order. Once you deal with this, bane, I believe Darkness referred to it? A bane of progress… Ooh! That’s fun, let’s call this one that, shall we? Yes, do let’s! The Bane of Progress! Snappy name, eh? Anyway, assuming you survive, we’ll meet again before this cycle is over with. May it be the last! Ta-ta! Ta-ta! Goodbye!” Mr. Wink said with a wave of his hand, and then he vanished.

  A full second after his departure, time began to move again and the oleum struck down into the dark where William had been an instant before from its perspective, only to strike at air and dark matter. William watched this from where he stood, steeling his resolve as he took a moment to speak.

  “I know what you are, now,” he said, his words alerting the oleum to his presence behind it. It’s head snapped around with an audible pop, unblinking orange eyes staring at where William stood.

  “I talked with Darkness about you, and he gave me a mission. A mission I plan to fulfill on his behalf for everything you’ve done to him, for everything you could have done.”

  The oleum straightened up slowly, raising the obsidian sword that did not belong to it in a high ox stance. Seeing the light of the fire flickering off of Darkness and Discovery’s sword angered Twilight and Choice. It did not belong to this creature.

  “When I’m through with you, not so much as a single drop of you will remain, and when I’m done, for the rest of this cycle, or any other that comes after, however long it takes to stop Cathedral Terra, we will never allow you to take root on this, or any other world, ever again.”

  The oleum lunged forward, lashing out at William with it’s blade but struck nothing. Twilight wasn’t there anymore. He had moved his body outside of the citadel where the light of dusk still shown – where he already was – and looked upon the dark walls of the fortress as though he were looking into the gentle face of Lucifer again, smiling warmly back at him. “I promise. Not so much as a single drop will be left.”

  An exhaustion deeper than the most abyssal oceanic trench set into Twilight. His shoulders sagged as he stood alone among the chrysanthemum light of desert dusk. Off in the distance, out of eyesight, he heard the struggle of brave souls fighting cosmic cancer without knowing it and without knowing why. His vision blurred. He wished he couldn’t hear their suffering. He considered going and helping them directly – more than he currently was, anyways, still passively selecting choices for each of them he could that would insure the survival of the greatest number possible. It would be… easier than confronting the oleum wearing Darkness’ skin.

  Choice had an explanation for that funny feeling that he’d been feeling since almost the moment he arrived in this time. If he was honest with himself, an Old Dead One being responsible for it wasn’t terribly surprising. If he had been cynical about it, he might have jumped to that conclusion much earlier. Perhaps that was what Time wanted him to do and why he had deposited him when he had rather than setting him directly in front of what had once been a friend and colleague and telling him to end their suffering. Who could say? He didn’t even know Mr. Wink on a personal level anymore. Just a cosmic one. The funny feeling, he was just now realizing, had been with him since well before they entered the mirrored forest. He’d just been so focused on the end result to recognize it for what it was.

  Twilight sighed and tilted his head up towards the sky as the alienation began to creep in again. His sword wrist flexed and curled in a physical gesture of dismissal. ‘Not now… not now…’ he thought to himself. Feeling alone in the world could come later. There was a cancer to excise here and now. Not just here, even, but much further south as well. The Black Isle… that hadn’t existed three thousand years ago. He’d never heard of it until Lucifer told him about it. It must have been ancient history for everyone around him, something not worth knowing unless you were a scholar of history. Not relevant to their day to day lives. It was almost funny, in that grimdark sense, how wrong that was and all the more alienating that he was one of the few who knew it, and, perhaps, the only being in this time and place who did. He needed to purge the oleum here, then head south, do it there, and after that it was back to trying to do what he could to avert Cathedral Terra. One crucial choice after another after another, from then on until the end, the beginning, and back again, and beyond. The prospect was so exhausting to even think about…

  “Could I tempt you with a sweet before you jump back into the fray?”

  The Dandy Man stood not far away from William behind him and to the left. His cane was tucked underneath his right arm and his hands were clasped together, dressed in white, same as always, and smiling not unlike his master. Twilight sighed and turned to look at the tall herald, knowing full well that the sudden buzzing in his ears was his doing for slowing things down while they spoke. “What are you doing here?” William asked wearily, his eyes feeling heavy

  “I was instructed by Mr. Wink long ago to meet you at this place and time in order to aid you in your endeavor. He made it clear to me that you may well need the assistance and, from the looks of you, I would say his assessment was spot on! You look rather dreadful, Twilight,” the Dandy Man explained with empathy in his voice, though the smile remained.

  “I’m just tired is all… Let me guess: Mr. Wink wouldn’t help himself because…?”

  “He has matters to attend to elsewhere, yes,” The Dandy Man finished.

  William sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “You know, as one of the two eidolons who can feasibly be omnipresent, those sorts of excuses don’t hold up to actual scrutiny.”

  “I know, but it is better than saying ‘he doesn’t want to’, isn’t it?” the Dandy Man posited.

  “It’s politer. Doesn’t make it better,” William said firmly, turning to look back and up at the dark citadel before him. “I’d appreciate the help. How much of it are you willing to offer?”

  “As much as you need, which is to say, very little. While my instructions were to help you in the endeavor of slaying the corrupted eidolon of Darkness and Discovery, I feel it is best to not intervene too much, as you are now aware that there is much more to do than achieve a victory here, and I, like Mr. Wink, am a busy man, and will not be around to help you always. Schedules to keep, you understand,” the Dandy Man explained as he pulled out his pocket watch and swung it by it’s chain momentarily before snatching it up again.

  “So exactly how much are you going to help?” William asked, annoyance perplexingly peaking in despite how exhausted he felt.

  “Let us say that I shall aid you at a singular opportune moment, not including this one where I might help you in knowing how to proceed forward. Why don’t you inform me as to the situation at hand, and I may be able to provide you valuable third party insight?”

  Twilight sighed, running a hand through his hair multiple times to try and center his focus on doing what needed to be done instead of how much he disliked how indirect the Dandy Man was. “Did Mr. Wink tell you about my conversation with Darkness?” William asked.

  “Only vaguely,” the Dandy Man admitted. “I do apologize, but, for me, this was, in fact, some time ago. I cannot recall the specifics of what your fellow Ultimatum said on the matter.”

  “Towards the end he said that I was more powerful than he was during dusk, that I should think creatively and find a way to force the light inside of the citadel… I think I’m going to take that pretty literally,” Twilight said, looking back to the Dandy Man. “How slow can you make time move?”

  “I’m unable to entirely freeze it as Mr. Wink can, if that is what you’re asking. Time did not see fit to bestow me with such a gift,” the Dandy Man replied candidly. “I don’t believe I have ever accurately taken a measurement, if I’m being honest, but, if I were to guess, I would say somewhere in the range of… a second of our relative time being between a nanosecond and a picosecond of real time, give or take a few billionths of a second.”

  “Do it then,” Twilight commanded, holding his sword straight up into the air above him. Immediately it began to glow.

  “As you like, a good host provides for his guests,” the Dandy man said, tapping his cane several times as the sword of Twilight and Choice continued to glow brighter with warm, soft light. “May I ask what it is you are doing?” Mr. Wink’s assistant asked curiously.

  “I’m gathering all of the light of twilight that’s available to me right now, from here and from as far beyond the bounds of this planet as I can reasonably draw upon,” Twilight answered plainly. He was trying to concentrate as much as he could without losing consciousness or his ego. He’d released his tyrannic hold over the choices of others for the moment to focus solely on accumulating light.

  “To what purpose, if I may?” the Dandy Man inquired.

  “I’m going to make a kugelblitz to destroy this wall and let the light inside where I can use it,” William explained as simply as he could, closing his eyes and regulating his breathing. He needed to concentrate on this one singular task. His sword grew more luminescent by the second.

  “Oh, my! How inventive! I dare say, we’re going to be here for a while, then. I might as well make myself comfortable and give you your time to work…” the Dandy Man commented, mostly to himself, as he turned his smiling face about to look for a place to sit while he waited. He settled on a mirrored tree root not far away and squatted upon it, his knees bent up and his cane resting across them as he watched Twilight and Choice do his work. Truth be told he didn’t find the position very comfortable, but he grinned and bore it, as that was what good hosts did.

  Forming the kugelblitz was time consuming for Twilight, who only held sway over a specific set of wave lengths of light. Were it not for the assistance of Time, via proxy of the Dandy Man, he wouldn’t have been able to do this. As he stood there pulling all of the light that he could to his blade, it occurred to him that Time and Change was probably aware of this and had sent the Dandy Man here specifically for that purpose, having looked ahead to see how William might resolve this conflict. Despite the immensity of his task, the eidolon still had enough presence of mind to be extremely annoyed at the both of them for not being straight forward with their reasoning.

  With time slowed as it was light was almost entirely frozen, the photons moving agonizingly slow compared to what they normally would have. That small agony made pulling all of the light of longer wave lengths which formed the colors of twilight all the easier since no new ones were being sent quickly enough from the closest star to match the rate at which Twilight drew them to himself. The world around them began to shift in color strangely as the light which forced their perception was robbed. The fires which had erupted and were now all but entirely frozen shifted from reds and oranges and yellows to blues and whites as the eidolon took from them all other colors, same as he did the volunteers fighting valiantly in their near stasis state. All colors shifted and changed as the light was pulled away from them.

  The sky began to grow darker as the ring of twilight around the planet in that fraction of a billionth or trillionth of a second was pulled to a singular location, giving way to night on this hemisphere and robbing dawn of its arrival in the opposite. What sun remained over the distant horizon vanished from sight entirely. Distant stars, galaxies, and the local nebula became gradually more and more visible as William’s blade became impossibly bright.

  Then he drew from even further. Trapped in this moment in time, the light of the nebula, the stars beyond them, and the galaxies beyond those all were forced to contribute their long form wavelengths to this singular goal. As below, so above did the colors of the night sky unnaturally change to brighter, colder hues.

  The Dandy Man quietly marveled at all of this happening, watching as the world changed in appearance so dramatically with an approving smile on his lips.

  The further away the lights were, the longer it took to gather them and so, naturally, by the time that the stars in the sky were beginning to change color, William had been stood still for quite a while and the Dandy Man’s dandy behind had grown quite sore of sitting on the glass root. He stood up with a soft groan, looking down at his white suit which had been reduced to a cyan color, his dark skin turned more a shade of yellow-green than anything else. “I don’t mean to be rude or impatient, or to disrupt your concentration, but it has been approximately…” the Dandy Man paused, opening his discolored pocket watch and glancing at the immobile hands within before finishing his sentence, “… an hour, relative to our local time, and 0.0000036 seconds in real time. While such a wait does not affect me as much, I am drawing upon the power of Time in order to maintain this frame of relativity for us, and I must imagine that it is roughly as equivalent in strain on Mr. Wink as this collection of twilight is to you, Twilight. That said, might I ask how much longer you believe this will be?”

  “I’m almost finished,” William replied, his eyes still closed, his black hair having shifted in color to that of an ordinary flame as it reflected the light emanating from his sword which now shone infinity blue in the blade itself and radiated all other colors of dusk and dawn like a miniature, oblong sun. “I’ve gathered about as much as I can from our position in space in a reasonable amount of time. Now I just need to focus and direct it…”

  “What size will this kugelblitz be, and how long will it last in real time once I relieve us of this relativity?” the Dandy Man asked as William turned his blade in his grip, sending all of the gathered light from his sword to a carefully selected point at the base of the wall of darkness, penetrating through the forbidding bricks and implanting it within the wall itself as though angling a magnifying glass to concentrate daylight.

  “I’m not certain. Numbers and Infinity would know better than me, I’ve never done this before since it normally wouldn’t be possible without a lot of maneuverability on my part that wouldn’t make it worth doing under normal circumstances… but, if I’m estimating correctly? Maybe a few nanometers in size, and it should only last for about a second?” William guessed, as close to an honest answer as he could provide as the light drained from his sword bit by bit.

  “And you believe that will be sufficient to destroy the wall?” the Dandy Man asked, apparently only able to keep to himself for about an hour at a time before needing to speak again.

  Twilight sighed and opened his eyes. The hard part was over. He had some questions for the Dandy Man, anyways. “Sufficient enough to disrupt the structural integrity and make it come crashing down on itself, yeah. Light and Limitation could pull this off better and easier than I ever could, but they’re not here right now, so Sufficient is going to have to be enough. More importantly,” he said, changing the subject as he looked over his shoulder at the off color Dandy Man, “was this whole charade really necessary? You’ve known all along that what I was dealing with was an Old Dead One.”

  “That’s correct,” the Dandy Man confirmed, idly swinging his cane back and forth as he stood perfectly straight.

  “And you don’t think that it might have been more efficient to just tell me that when you first encountered me in Mirage? Instead of sending me on a wild goose chase to figure it out for myself? Are you seriously so devoted to Time and Change’s way of doing things that you can’t see how inefficient that was?” William demanded.

  “Efficiency is not a universal constant and is as relative as this span of time I have put us in,” the Dandy Man retorted. “What is most efficient for you and your aims is simply not for ours. Mr. Wink and I agreed that it was important that you were motivated to pursue this yourself, in your own way and your own time.”

  “Do you seriously believe that I wouldn’t put everything on hold to deal with this… Bane of Progress?” Choice asked.

  “Do you believe you would not have asked – demanded, even – that Mr. Wink return you from whence you were plucked, so that you might have stopped the cancer in its cradle, so to speak, while still pursuing your way of doing things which, I remind you, Mr. Wink knew in advance would already lead to failure? That you wouldn’t have tried to be clever to avoid an outcome which was, by all metrics, unavoidable to begin with?” the Dandy Man threw back at him.

  William turned and looked back to the forming kugelblitz, disliking intensely that the Dandy Man was right.

  “You are here, now, by design, and, although the design was not yours, it is, ultimately, where you are best served in being! Much like a well played bishop, our mutual colleague simply needed to move you on the board to keep the enemy in check.”

  “This has never been a game, and if Time is treating it like one then he’s seriously lost sight of the point of all of this,” Twilight grumbled. The light from his sword had been gradually growing dimmer and dimmer as the two of them spoke and now it had been reduced from the infinity blue to a glowing red hot as the metal retained some heat from holding the light for so long. Now all of the gathered twilight was a tightly compacted ball near the base of the Bane of Progress’ citadel, ready to become a kugleblitz as its gathered mass reached criticality and became a black hole. William lowered his arm and passed his sword into his other hand, rolling his aching shoulder. He planted the hot blade into the dry ground and rubbed on his arm as pins and needles ran through it.

  “Finished, I take it?” the Dandy Man asked.

  “More or less. Just give me a minute for my arm to stop hurting so I can go kill these things…” William replied, flexing his fingers and encouraging blood flow. It took a few more minutes for his arm to normalize, and once it had, the heat from his sword had dissipated. He plucked it from the ground and gathered himself. This was it. The final step in saving Lucifer so that he could reincarnate. He tried not to consider the possibility that it would not be possible. Such pessimism wasn’t useful in this moment.

  “Ready?” the Dandy Man hurried.

  William nodded solemnly.

  “Remember; one crucial moment is all I can afford to help you with. Choose it well, and call for me when you have need! I’ll be watching with rapt interest! Now, off you go in three… two…”

  The Dandy Man didn’t finish his countdown as he vanished and the world began to move as it normally did when time was functioning the same for all.

  For a brief, imperceptible moment, all of the world around the planet in the narrow ring that constituted dusk and dawn was darkness. Then light rushed in to replace what had been stolen, seamlessly returning the evening light to the world and all of the lights in the heavens regained their natural colors as new photons replaced those which had been taken. At nearly the same infinitesimally small amount of time, the kugelblitz formed, the mass of gathered light flashing blinding, infinite blue before collapsing in on itself, forming a nanoscopic hole in the universe that rapidly sucked in as much matter, dark or otherwise, that it could before blinking out of existence roughly a second later. The result was the toppling of the wall as it collapsed under its own weight, like so many dominos, a significant portion of the wall and the ground on which it stood being annihilated in that moment of birth of death of a black hole made with light.

  Dust and debris filled the area around William where he stood as the obsidian-like bricks fell atop each other with a thunderous sound that all who were present heard but none paid attention to. Choice had once again gripped their actions and were keeping those who remained fighting the oleum with the animunculi. It was significantly easier than forming the kugelblitz had been.

  The light of dusk invaded the citadel the Bane of Progress had made. The instant that it passed over the pile of moldering bricks Twilight stood atop it, sword in hand, staring down into the abyss where the oleum dwelt, his shadow stretching long in the violet light.

  The Bane of Progress capitalized on this, appearing out of William’s shadow and launching itself upwards through it, black sword in hand, aimed to impale the eidolon, its orange eyes burning bright!

  It never got close. Beneath it, William’s shadow rose and gripped onto it’s sword wrist, arms of shadow wrapping themselves around and arresnting its movement.

  The oleum looked down at itself, at the ephemeral arms that grasped it, finding there were now faces in the dark with twilight in their eyes.

  “I already told you,” Twilight menaced from atop the rubble, drawing the wrathful gaze of the oleum back to him as shadows of the eidolon rose up from the core one they originated from, each with their own shaded versions of William’s crescent cut sword. “Darkness gave me a mission to destroy you in your entirety, and he told me that I’m stronger than he is during my time.” As he spoke, he once again gathered the now ever flowing light of dusk to his blade, making it glow once more with autumnal hues. “That means for the next twenty minutes or so, anything that isn’t true darkness belongs to me, not you. I know you’re not Darkness and Discovery now. I don’t have to hold back to try and save you.”

  Just then, each of the shades William had conjured thrust their swords into the body of the oleum – only to strike thin air! It had vanished into the dark, in much the same way that Twilight had moved himself outside of the citadel into the dying light.

  “Don’t you run away from me!” Choice roared, swinging his blade and sending the gathered light as a wave down into the dark. It flashed forth and illuminated the emaciated form of Lucifer’s stolen eidolon with blinding splendor!

  Immediately Twilight was behind it, pulling the gathered light back into his sword and swiping it in an upward arc!

  The Bane managed to turn in time to block William’s sword. Anger and frustration were as visible and empty on its face as its mirthless joy had been when it struck first and began this chaos.

  Shadows arose from behind William, copies of him all, and rushed the oleum, their blades as real and solid as the dark floor on which they trod. The Bane disengaged from Twilight and back stepped, parrying, blocking, deflecting the multitude of strikes that came from each of the silhouettes of the eidolon of Twilight and Choice.

  Twilight himself stayed back, the dying light in his hand, watching, waiting for the right moment, pacing.

  There! He swung his sword, the light blitzing forth again and in that instant it passed through the shadows, vanquishing them and giving him and opportunity to slash at his foe as it passed by and over it – a slash which was blocked, orange eyes locking with gray as they passed each other.

  More silhouettes rushed forward from different angles as William recomposed himself and gathered the light again. The Bane of Progress was kept on the back foot. Every time it attempted to retreat, on foot or by teleporting to a new sector of darkness, Twilight would fling the light at it, creating and destroying more silhouettes with the swing of his arm and boxing it in. Overwhelming it with numbers and confusion, as it had attempted to do here and in Mirage.

  Even as it tried to adapt, Choice was there ready to counter it. The Bane tried to create its own dark shades from deeper within the citadel where the pouring light of dusk had not reached to counter William’s silhouettes. William simply took them for his own and added them to the number once they came within touching distance of the light, their empty eyes filling with a violet shine and dog-piling onto the Bane, forcing it to retreat once more.

  ‘You’re out of your league,’ William thought coldly to himself as he circled the struggling Bane, seeking a proper opening. With so many blades consistently attacking it, small cuts were mounting up on its extremities, the infectious black amniotic fluid harmlessly being drawn by swords of shade.

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  ‘You never should have tried to take one of us,’ he thought spitefully, flinging himself forward on another wave of thrown twilight and attempting, unsuccessfully, to deliver the finishing blow. For all of its disadvantages, the oleum was persistent and fought onward without tire.

  ‘Not a single drop! Not one drop!’ William practically yelled in his mind as the Bane of Progress passed through the shadows that encircled it with the aid of Darkness’ ability and lunged at the eidolon, who blocked the sword swipe with a high guard of his shining blade, circled around it in the bind and drove the tip of his sword into the shoulder of the oleum.

  ‘You don’t have the mastery Darkness has over his domain! You’re just a pale imitation!’ William once again locked eyes with his foe with raw, visceral hatred coursing through every adrenaline-fueled beat of his heart. The raw, primal anger that Twilight felt looking at this cruel mockery of his fellow eidolon was something that could only be matched by dealing with a different Old Dead One. Visceral disgust filled his being at the sight of this thing. An undeniable urge to see it purged from all of creation, to cleanse the universe of its abominable filth!

  Black ichor oozed out of the gums of the oleum as it grit its teeth in pain and frustration, silently struggling against Twilight’s hold on it. It only needed to get a drop of itself onto Twilight’s flesh, then…!

  It would never come. As the pair twisted and turned, pushing and pulling against each other to gain advantage in the bind, a silhouette rose from the oleum’s shadow.

  “NOW!” Twilight called, seeing his chance to end this. He grabbed onto Darkness’ blade with one hand, the other yanking the sword out from the oleum’s shoulder and pushing the crescent shaped indent neat the base of the blade against the front of its throat while the silhouette did the same in reverse to the back.

  Time slowed down to a crawl once more, the Dandy Man standing off to the left and clapping. “Wonderfully done, Twilight! Truly you have once more proven yourself the better of these cankerous freaks! It has been a genuine pleasure to play as your host in dealing with this most malignant of outcomes for our dear Darkness and Discovery! Now, if you’ll please – finish it.”

  “Gladly,” Choice growled, he and his silhouette scissoring their blades across from one another and decapitating the stolen eidolon’s head in one clean slice made two ways.

  As one the eidolon and his shadowy pair retracted their blades from the neck of the oleum, Twilight being especially careful to hold the sword away from himself. The Dandy Man walked forward, pulling out a handkerchief from within his white jacket and held it out to William. The initials “T.&.C” were embroidered on them. “For you,” he said.

  William took the cloth and used it to wipe his blade while the silhouette gripped the dirty hair of Darkness’ former eidolon and yanked the head away from the body. Once all of the ichor was removed from his sword he threw the soiled handkerchief down at the frozen feet of the oleum, walked over and took a hold of the obsidian sword and yanked it out of its foul, gray hands.

  “Do be careful not to let any of that nasty blood spurt on you when I depart from here. A final courteous warning. Are you certain that you won’t like some sweets?” the Dandy man offered again.

  William gave him a deadpan look. The Dandy Man tutted, shrugged. “Very well. Until we meet again, Twilight and Choice! Do enjoy the mission that Darkness and Discovery gave you, for it is truly in your hands alone, now!”

  And he was gone. Stood a safe distance away from the headless corpse with both his and Darkness’ swords in hand, Twilight breathed heavily through his nose as rage still flowed through him. The thud of the body hitting the floor prompted him to turn and look, making sure that the ichor did not spurt out towards him from the neck wound. Once he confirmed that it wouldn’t, he stepped around the wounded corpse and walked over to the dripping stump that his silhouette still held up, staring at it in its black and orange eyes.

  “Not. One. Drop,” he declared vengefully right as the last moments of consciousness would have left the head. He knew, though, that the Bane of Progress was no longer inside of the eidolon but instead leaking out in many directions on the floor. It needed to be burned. The silhouette dropped the head onto its corpse as it sank back into an ordinary shadow and let it roll away into the fading light as it leaked out of Twilight’s blade as he released his grip on it.

  It was finished. Lucifer’s eidolon was well and truly dead. He’d been saved… That was the hope, at least.

  Now all that remained was to burn it. It and any other oleum that remained, any pools of their wicked ichor, any unfortunate soul who had been bled upon. Then he had to journey to the Black Isle to try and eradicate the Old Dead One at the source. Still so much to do…

  It was then that he remembered why he had entered the citadel in the first place – aside from dealing with Lucifer. “Joscur?” he called out, weakly at first, then took in a deeper breath and shouted, “JOSCUR!?” into the dark.

  He received no answer, but, knowing that the dark could no longer be used against him, Twilight gathered more of the fading dusk into his sword and stepped off into the shadow to look for him or any other oleum that might still be hiding within the halls of darkness.

  ***

  The last oleum was slain when an animunculi smashed it into the ground as though breaking a bag of ice, making sure that it was well and truly deceased before letting go of its leg. It, like its fellows, was covered in ichor from the battle and knew that it was not safe to touch anyone at the moment until it was sterilized. It stood and blue light flashed across its visor, as it did for the other animunculi, as it conferred with the orbiting ornithopter to make sure that there were no other monsters to be found hiding in the dark. After this, they began to communicate with Golem and report on the events as they had taken place.

  Of the sixty-five that had entered that unnatural wood only fifteen remained who were both alive and uninfected. Those yet living and yet had made contact with the ichor sat apart, fearfully huddled together, dreading what would happen to them. The certainty of death or the absolution of corruption were, neither one, hallowed prospects.

  The fifteen survivors were nothing short of traumatized by what had just happened. Many of them were still on high alert, gauntlets raised high to fend off any that would approach. Many of their fuel tanks were empty from all of the fighting. Pain, confusion, and fear ruled their actions and reactions, with relief being a minority in their emotional space. Despite the lack of living oleum around them, despite the animunculi reverting to their passive, peaceful ways, anxiety was still high as the knowledge of one errant drop would be enough to seal their fate. Eyes wildly scanned the ground for any puddles of ichor, any droplets on their clothing, checking each other in places where they couldn’t see.

  Adding to the air of anxiety was the destruction of the trees. Mere moments before the final olem was killed, all of the trees had simultaneously shattered and collapsed, a billion fissures forming on each mirrored surface that resulted in their integrity failing and collapsing in on themselves each and every one. Their fragments like marbles rolled and spread about like a tinkling sigh. None of them outside knew what had caused it or that their collapse had coincided with the moment of their triumph over the Bane of Progress, nor had they had time to think about it with so many mindless monsters left to burn. In the relative calm that followed their view was suddenly unburdened for miles in every direction, coastal winds blowing through and sending the tiny fragments rolling towards the sands to be consumed and forgotten like so many pearls in the ocean.

  “Is it over…?” Teutna asked, filled with fighting energy. She cautiously inspected her surroundings, began to notice how few of them were left.

  She didn’t recognize many of the people she saw so twisted were they by fear, confusion, or trauma beyond a base discernment of individuals. After a while it had become all but impossible to keep track of what they were fighting and who they had been fighting by as the circle grew tighter and tighter. Spears and plumbatae had been completely used up, if not in the fighting then in the explosion that had ruined the wagons. At a point there had only been fire, screaming, and confusion as their bodies seemed to move on their own – whether acting on instinct or reflex she couldn’t say – and through all of it, they few had managed to survive.

  Gradually they began to relax as one of the animunculi turned towards the group and informed them that there was nothing left to fear for the moment. They were advised to stay alert in case anything unexpected were to happen, and to stay close to one another, but to not approach any of the animunculi or the bodies of the fallen. They would tend to them, taking note of who had been slain, who were infected, and which corpses carried the ichor. This did little to ease the collective anxiety, but, it did ease it none the less. Arms began to relax. Some collapsed onto the ground as they found their legs could no longer support their weight. Others removed their masks and goggles and simply tried to breath. Night had come. The stars and triplets were very bright that evening.

  One face that Teutna recognized was Daniellex, who stood not far from her and was shrugging off the now empty fuel canisters off of his back. He pushed the goggles up into his bushy hair and let the respirator mask fall below his chin as he, too, looked around, searching for one face in particular. She approached him. “Rally-ho, short stuff. Have ye seen Luff or Vivicetti in a while?” she asked him.

  He looked at her, his expression harsh and dismissive. He shook his head, responding with a blunt, “No,” as he finished scanning those around him and turned back towards the dark citadel.

  William was there, emerging from out of the dark and walking towards them, his head hung low. Daniellex marched over towards him, Teutna at first following but stopping herself after only a few steps. There were only the dead and fire in that direction, and she felt a responsibility as a captain to try and locate her fellow commanders at sail. Dead or alive, she needed to know, so she turned back and went to ask the others if they had seen Vivicetti and Captain Luff.

  “Where is Joscur?” Daniellex demanded as he came up to William.

  William gazed at Daniellex with heavy eyes, shook his head. “Couldn’t find him in there,” he admitted. “It’s like a maze inside. Difficult to get around on your own. I called, but he didn’t answer. I don’t-”

  A thunderous crack interrupted the eidolon’s explanation. Everyone turned to the citadel and watched as the entire structure abruptly sagged. Paused. There was another boom like a mountain splitting in two and then the black building collapsed in on itself, its spires crumbling as the structure seemed to simply give up the effort required to stand.

  Daniellex’s reflex was to lunge forward and try to get Joscur out himself but his body froze almost as quickly as he felt the impulse. Self preservation wouldn’t allow him to charge recklessly forward. He knew buildings, how they worked and how dangerous they could be if unstable from his work in Mirage, and knew that there was no chance he would make it in and out safely in time from the instant he witnessed that first structural sag. The rush of air pressure that blew past pushed William and Daniellex back a step and fanned the multiple pyres to near extinguishing.

  The pair of them stared, bewildered. William wondered if he had been the cause of the collapse with his kugelblitz but dismissed the possibility quick enough. He hadn’t placed it to cause such a collapse as that, and were it so unstable, it would have fallen in on him during his fight with the Bane. Could it mean that the collapse had been intentional, somehow? Had Darkness managed to subdue the palace of dark glass? He looked around and noticed, then, that the trees had fallen as well. Could it be that, with Darkness’ eidolon slain, these edifices could no longer properly substantiate? Twilight stood and speculated the possibilities, weighing the likelihood of another Ultimatum’s interference, such as Time and Change, preventing the collapse until he escaped, or if it had been mere chance. Few things often were.

  Daniellex was concerned only for his friend and brother.

  Once he had made certain that the citadel was nothing more than glistening, glassy rubble, William turned without a word and walked towards the survivors.

  “Where are you going?” Daniellex demanded to know. William stopped in his tracks but did not turn around. “What happened in there?”

  “I’m going to finish what we started,” William replied, both hands gripping the pair of blades he held. He began to walk away again.

  “What about Joscur? You are going to leave him underneath all of that!?” Daniellex bluntly cried.

  “If he was in there, he’s gone. I have infected that need to be dealt with,” William replied just as bluntly.

  “Dealt with? Hey. Hey! You cannot mean what I think you mean!” Daniellex rushed after William, grasping his elbow and pulling his arm back. William stopped once more but didn’t turn.

  “Let go of me, Daniellex.”

  “No. You cannot do this. It is not right! It is not decent!” the ningen protested vehemently.

  “Let go of my arm. Now,” William ordered, patience rapidly dwindling.

  “How can you be so cold? So cruel? Abandoning Joscur to his fate, walking past Marisia, rushing in after my friend and not coming back like that! Telling me to run when I could have saved him! What gives you the right? Who gave you permission to act so draconian!? What about the meals that were shared? They gave you shelter! Took you in! And now you do not even deign to make certain that they are dead and gone!? Answer me!”

  William was through pretending for the moment. Too tired to keep up the act for the sake of pleasantry. He whirled around and drove his elbow into Daniellex’s mid biceps, striking a nerve and forcing his grip to loosen. He reared his head back and slammed his forehead into Daniellex’s, cracking his goggles in the collision, cutting their brows, forcing the ningen to take a step back in disbelief at the sudden violence done to him from William, who he had never seen act this way.

  The eidolon pointed his blade at the burly ningen, gesturing back over his shoulder with the tip. “If you want to dig through that wreckage to try and find him, fine. Be my guest. If you want to perform some kind of funerary rite for Marisia, by all means. Don’t you dare try to stop me from ridding the world of the filth that took Darkness and Discovery, or I’ll kill you before getting back to my work and I won’t even bother to remember you.”

  It was a choice presented to Daniellex, but one that Choice didn’t have to enforce. Daniellex wiped his bleeding brow with the back of his hand, spat on the ground between them, and turned his back to go to Marisia to see what could be done with her body.

  William walked over to those survivors who had had the oily fluid invade their bodies. Without a word he began to cut them down, giving each of them as quick and clean of a death as he could by decapitating them with the two blades he now held.

  “What the FUCK are ye doin’!?” Teutna called, responding to the cries of fear from the other infected survivors. She couldn’t believe the horror that she was witnessing – her Songbird, mercilessly and seamlessly executing ningen like that!

  “Taking care of them before they can become oleum,” William replied bluntly as he moved on to the next, merely managing to slit their throat rather than remove their head entirely in his cold rage. Their blood was still red, and for that he believed they would be grateful if they truly understood the true extent of what he was sparing them.

  “William, stop! Fucking stop, do ye kin!?” Teutna demanded as she, and others, began to rush over in an attempt to stop him. The other infected had risen to their feet and were looking for somewhere to run from the seemingly suddenly murderous William. “They might be cured! We dinnae have te -”

  “Yes we DO, Teutna!” William thundered, glaring up at her and the rest of them with biblical rage in his gray eyes. “There’s no cure for what’s happened to them!” He turned to the closest animunculi, his baleful glare turned accusingly on it as he raised Lucifer’s sword up to point at the metallic giant. “Is there!?” he demanded to know.

  “No. There is not,” the animunculi spoke, and only then did Teutna and the others stop moving towards, or away from in the case of the infected, William. They all turned to the soiled giant with shock and disbelief looming from their gaping mouths.

  “You knew the whole time,” William stated.

  “We did,” the animunculi confessed.

  “Because this isn’t the first time that you animunculi have encountered this, is it?”

  “That is correct,” the animunculi said softly.

  “They’ve known the whole time that there was no saving anyone who came into contact with the ichor,” William clarified quietly, lowering the blade blade. “Since before they came to Mirage with their surveillance and their patrols to protect you from oleum that the Elder Council tried to keep secret from all of you for the, so called, ‘good of you all’. They’ve known for centuries! And were content to watch and wait for the situation to get out of hand, just like it did, before acting!” The eidolon laughed a brief, cynical laugh. “But they don’t even know the full extent of what they’re dealing with, either! I’m the only one here that knows, and if I told you, none of you would believe me anyway! So all of you are just going to have to stand there and watch as I save your lives, again, in ignorance and in thanks!”

  “How is it that you are so informed of all this?” the animunculi inquired. “Was there something inside which provided this information?”

  Choice looked up at it with a deep set frown on his face, offended by the very question. “How about you never mind how it is I know. You might not be made of flesh, but you’re infected, too. Maybe I’ll decommission you, save everyone the risk that you might turn out to be just as bad as the monsters we all fought off today!”

  “That is unnecessary,” the animunculi interjected. “I need be only sterilized of the black fluid and I will cease to be a contaminant.”

  “Are you really so certain of that? Are you willing to pit your data against my knowledge and find out which is more reliable?” William challenged. “You tell the other animunculi to spread the word – that I’m coming to the Black Isle to cleanse the world of every drop of ichor that can be found, that I won’t stop until it’s done! You tell them that!”

  “Is there really no saving us?” a ningen asked, stepping forward. She had a smear of oily black on her cheek, the remnant of some amount of the Old Dead One’s amniotic fluid that she’d tried to wipe away. She looked between William and the animunculi uncertainly, her voice frail and quaking. “Am I going to become… like them? Like the things that kept us inside at night years back?”

  “This is the only mercy I can offer you,” Twilight said gravely, holding his sword up horizontally in front of him. “A quick, clean death while you’re still you, and to turn your corpse to ashes to make sure that there’s no chance for it to spread further from you.

  “William – Not like this,” Teutna begged, on the verge of tears after everything but trying to remain strong. “There must be somethin’ that can be done…! We could get a hold of people on the mainland, find doctors, or-”

  “It’s not a disease. It never was,” Choice cut across her sharply. “The thing we’ve been fighting is nothing short of an abomination that should have never existed in the first place. The antithesis of all that is good and decent that you know and more, a thing born dead into this universe through spontaneous parthenogenesis with the void, a literal living cancer on reality as you know it and now it has infected them,” he pointed to the ningen who had stepped forward, tears streaming down her face, “and will infect any living thing it comes into contact with. There is no understanding it, no cure, no fix for the damage it causes. The only treatment is complete and total extermination, cauterization, and annihilation of every single drop of this thing’s being by fire or any other means I can find. Point blank, that simple, end of discussion! She dies! He dies! And anyone else who gets infected to stop the spread and save the rest of everything you know!”

  The authority with which William expressed this uncompromising hatred was as palpable as it was frightening coming from a young ningen’s body who, until then, had been all but quiet and sweet, hard working, and distant in the eyes of Teutna. She did not recognize her Songbird now, speaking with strange words and making grand statements she couldn’t fully understand. She was frightened of him, frightened for him, and grappling with the revelation that there was nothing to be done. Her gut told her it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true! That something so fatalistic, so drastic, so dire, was not within the realm of possibility in actuality. The scope escaped her but the weight did not. She felt it in her bones and could do nothing but turn away, holding her gauntlet her mouth and walking away to fight the urge to vomit. A failing battle.

  The crying ningen stepped forward in front of William, trying to be brave as she looked at him through tear streaming eyes. “I do not want to be like them…”

  “Then kneel, and let me give you peace.”

  None who were spared the fate of coming in contact with the ichor could stand to watch these executions take place. They turned away, as Teutna had, putting distance between themselves and the damned. Each one contemplated what had been said, looking at the animunculi differently, wondering what else they knew and weren’t telling them. Had been withholding this entire time.

  She knelt and used the heels of her palm to wipe away the tears. William raised the crossed blades to either side of her throat. “Do you have family back in Mirage?” he asked her softly.

  “Yes…” she whimpered.

  “Animunculi. Get the ornithopter down here. It’s going to record their last messages for any who they would give it to,” William declared, wishing that he’d been of a clearer mind minutes ago to think of this gesture of kindness before he had ended the first two’s suffering.

  One by one, each gave their messages if they had any to give. One by one, William killed them.

  ***

  It was several hours later when the fifteen ningen, animunculi, ornithopter, and William returned to the Pequod and Andros. Time had been carefully taken to make sure that there were no more living and uninfected, that the dead who were without infection were retrieved, that the rest were burned using what pyres still raged and what fuel was left. Both Captains Vivicetti and Luff had been discovered to be among the dead, as were the other bloodlings that had come with them. Including Marisia, only four corpses had been found to be unsullied and could thus be given proper funeral rites instead of a mass pyre so very far away from home.

  William had taken time with the animunculi to sift through as much of the rubble as was feasible in search of both Joscur and any oleum that had gone unburnted by the raging father or otherwise that they could locate. Their massive forms made moving and scooping up hunks of dark glass easy. The cloudless night made searching easier. Ultimately they did not find many oleum that had remained inside, either reduced to incubation pools as the one Twilight had seen or too mutilated to continue a facsimile of living. Those they did find were burned. They found no sign of Joscur, and when they had gone through the rubble to William’s satisfaction the animunculi were cleansed with what was left of the fire that could be squeezed out of the remaining flamethrowers. A quick and dirty sterilization. They would remain separate from everyone else and accompany William to Golem’s Isle, where he could keep an eye on them and make sure that the Bane of Progress truly couldn’t affect them as they claimed.

  Seeing so few return was horrifying to those who had stayed behind. From afar they had been able to see the distant glow of fires across the flat, parched earth and had been told by the animunculi who were guarding the sandsailors when the fighting had begun, that the forest had suddenly vanished. That they had been victorious and were returning No specifics were given. The hollowed expressions of those who had come out of the other side of this ordeal said much, but as they climbed aboard, their dead in tow, not one of them obliged the curious on what had happened.

  The unsullied dead were brought aboard the Pequod, with the exception of Marisia, whose body Daniellex held in his arms and would watch over her himself as they returned to Mirage. Where others were quiet, he was completely silent, refusing to meet the eye of anyone. His usual jovialness robbed of him, he sought only to return the remains of his goddaughter to rest beside her brother and mother. That Joscur’s body had not been found agonized him, the thought of his friend and the father of his godchildren being left separated from the remains of his family was unbearable. As he sought a place to rest Marisia’s remains, he steeled himself to try and search the rubble himself for his friend. If only so that he could be laid to rest with those he loved most.

  William marched behind everyone else, even behind the four animunculi who were planning on self quarantining between the two remaining ships as they had been instructed to do. His mind was at once clear and muddled. He thought of his most recent conversation with Darkness and Discovery, wondered when he would be able to speak with his eidolon again. If he would be able to. He thought of Mr. Wink and his machinations, how they had to twisted his own plans and thoroughly thwarted a scheme he’d been putting into motion for decades before Time and Change whisked him away. He wondered how much of this world was the way it was because of that act of treachery.

  He thought of Cornello and his heart ached, wishing that he had pushed harder to be reunited with him.

  The sword in his left hand, Lucifer’s sword, felt cold and heavy. Foreign to his fingers in a way that was difficult to explain. It belonged to Darkness’ eidolon, and now he had possession of it. For how long? For the rest of this cycle? Or would it simply vanish one day here soon – a sure sign that Darkness and Discovery had reincarnated, as their swords followed them from body to body? Would it ever return to its rightful owner, or would the Bane of Progress have to be exterminated first?

  ‘Bane of Progress… Bane of Progress…’ he repeated in his mind, considering what that title meant. Mr. Wink had seemingly come up with the designation on a flight of fancy, but he somehow doubted that that was the case. Despite how long it had been since they had made contact with each other since before all of this began, Time and Change was as purposeful as the rest of them. He didn’t do things randomly. Never had. Perhaps out of all of the Ultimatums, Time and Change was the most methodical, which would mean that there was something in the name. Some hint. Mr. Wink could look ahead down possible timelines and try to steer the universe towards a decidedly less terminal end. So what had he seen that he felt the need to label this Old Dead One the ‘Bane of Progress’?

  His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a commotion coming from ahead. He lifted his head wearily and could see in the luminous dark that the animunculi ahead of him ad stopped and were looking back. Beyond them, on the ships, people were calling out. In alarm? Difficult to say. His hands gripped the blades and readied himself to fight once again if need be despite the ache in his body and strain on his mind.

  He relaxed immediately when, through the din, he heard Daniellex’s voice loud and clearly as he was descending from the side of the Andros, “Joscur!”

  William turned around and saw Joscur trudging through the sand behind him, following in his footsteps. Despite everything, a sense of relief washed over him as he saw the ningen – relief which was immediately supplanted by dread. His half-smile faltered and his fingers tensed on the blades again. Would he need to kill one more oleum this evening?

  The eidolon walked forward to meet Joscur while Daniellex ran. By the time he caught up to the two of them they were already facing one another, each one equally drained and on edge. Joscur’s last remaining link to a family stopped just behind William, looking between the two of them, concerned. It had only just hit him that Joscur might be infected. He had heard and listened to William talk when he was dealing with the stained only a few hours ago.

  Twilight came out and said it directly. “Are you infected?”

  A pregnant pause. “No,” Joscur replied, his voice barely audible from how torn his vocal chords were because of his shrieking hours before. All of his equipment was gone from him. He carried no weapons. Had no flamethrower. His leather clothing was loose and disheveled, barely hanging onto his frame.

  “Wonderful to hear!” Daniellex spoke in Mirage-Tongue, stepping forward and embracing his friend. Joscur did not return the gesture, staring directly at William. “Come, my friend, we must return home. Mirage is waiting…”

  “You said you would protect her,” Joscur accused angrily, voice cracking with every word he spoke. “You promised me that Marisia would be kept alive. Do you remember?”

  “She acted on impulse. The oleum was on her before I could do anything,” William stated flatly, defensively.

  “I told you that I would kill you if you did not.” Joscur’s hands balled into fists.

  “Jos, no,” Daniellex begged, planting his hands on his friends’ shoulders. Joscur didn’t even try to resist him. “This is not right. You are not well. Your family would not want this for you.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” William casually challenged, expressionless. “I did what I said I would do and tried to keep you both alive. All things considered, I’m not omnipotent by any means. I have my limits, same as you, just not the same as you.”

  Joscur scoffed in disbelief. He heard not apathy but arrogance in William’s voice, saw on his face refusal of guilt and shame. To him, William appeared to hold no responsibility at all for the fate that had befallen he and his family. How much crueler he would have thought the eidolon if he only knew that Twilight and Choice did not, nor had he ever, truly cared for them as individuals to begin with.

  “Who do you think you are?” Joscur demanded, his voice soft only because he could not physically muster the strength to make it firm. “Who are you?”

  “I am nobody,” William replied coldly, honestly. “I am not a person, I am a metaphysical law and a concept put into a body that was never meant for this, and I am beyond your petty, ephemeral wrath. I did what I could to save you. Accept that or try to kill me, because I have no more time to waste on you when there is far more important work to be done.”

  Joscur was silent. Expressionless, as William was. Daniellex urged and pleaded for Joscur to back down, to ignore William, to come with him so that he could hold his daughter’s hand one last time. Anything but more violence. He had had his fill of violence for a lifetime and could not bare the thought that Joscur, grieving and lost, would give into the seemingly insane taunts of William and try to kill him barehanded.

  The ningen who had once been a husband and father, now a widower and bereaved, pulled away from his life long friend, turned, and walked off into the Wastes away from the Andros and Pequod.

  “Jos? Joscur? Joscur!” Daniellex called after him, at first trying to follow but stopping when he received no reply. His heart broke, knowing, in that moment, that Joscur had chosen to die out here, alone and away from Mirage, rather than return to the place that held within it all of the memories that would forever haunt and harm him, the entombed remains of his wife and son, soon his daughter to join them, and there wasn’t anything he could say or do to convince him otherwise. Worst of all, Daniellex realized, as tears welled in his eyes and his throat closed, that he did not wish to risk his own life to pull his friend back from this. Whether for selfish self preservation or mercy, he did not know, but he watched as Joscur vanished into the night out of sight behind a dune before returning to the Andros himself.

  William had turned and left for the sandsailors only a step after Joscur had made his choice, something he had had no influence on. He was beyond tired, and had yet years and miles upon miles to go before rest would find him.