Esofar Kills Everyone

“Keep a careful eye on the Other,” Morgan had said to her, only he was dying and she didn’t understand. He explained, a few hours later when she’d composed herself and broken him, but it was laughable how much it didn’t matter because now Morgan was well and truly gone beyond death even, and Katia had been dead for longer but she was double dead as well, and Harmonia was dead (three of her parents, gone just like that), and all the Pillars of that generation were deader than dear dead Ingrid’s droopy dead houseplant who somehow managed to outlive her even though no one even read books anymore, but it wasn’t like it mattered because she was sure he was dead in the truest sense even more so then they were. It was laughable how much it didn’t matter.

It brought her to tears now much it did.

It started with Esofar. All things started with Esofar ever since he’d been born, but maybe she was wrong here and his blackhole center of the universe wasn’t the start of it. It had started with Carmenilla. No that was wrong too. It had started before Carmenilla, far before the treacherous snake that was Esofar, just after Katia in a time and place called Elecktra where the Supreme was nauseous and the Cornerstones fractured. It started long *long* before Mara.

It started with Mara and it happened like this.

There were five stones until there were nine and then there were thirteen. There had always been thirteen, but no one knew it until they were told tales of the revolution entirely too late. Mara’s team was up by quite a few points, she had two of the Stonebearers in her clutches, one of the Stonebearers trapped in the dreamscape with no means of escape since the rebellion had hit hard there, a number of the stones in her possession, and quite a few child soldiers (although no one had recognised the need to call them that yet) in her filthy rotten jail. Team Good (or what counted as good back when it existed and Raatu wasn’t dead and Naara wasn’t dead and-) scored a couple victories with a jailbreak but Howlite in all his miserable glory still killed Rebecca and the hounds were let loose and a very small portion of hell in a handbasket staked out with a bag of microwave popcorn to laugh at the ants of New Beginnings Academy.

Enter Elecktra.

Fifteen years old and made of no substance but storm clouds and lightning with the most fragile mental stability Bianca had ever come across in her lifetimes. Hundreds of years old and wielding the power of a Cornerstone, heart, lungs, stomach, *brain*; time, space, reality, *magic*. Fifteen years old and still a child with so much more power then she needed and wanted but that was how it happened. Magic and the mind were connected after all, and it was no surprise that Elecktra’s mind shattered.

But. That was too far. It didn’t start with KatiaMaraElecktraCarmenillaEsofar. It started with a prince who fell in love. His name was also Esofar, the bastard, and currently he was destroying the multiverse. She’d been wrong. It did start with Esofar. All things started with Esofar. She was losing her mind.

Esofar was a prince of the Others, heir to the sorrowful Great Other who ruled the phantom stars and lead a genocide campaign against the Multiversei. He’d come to kill the Supreme, fallen in love with her, and then tried to kill her anyway. So she’d trapped him in a special Verse called Last I Remember where he’d seethed and hissed for years and years until the Pillars trapped him halfway out of the Supreme in a dimensional rift, but that hadn’t stopped him either.

After Esofar, it *continued* with Mara. In a sense. Really it continued with the stones, chips off the larger greater Cornerstone of Magic that were used to tip the tide during the war, but they had become so maddenly intertwined with Mara on the loom of fate (for what reason Bianca didn’t know, Mara was simply last in the line of villains defeated by the stones and she was dead now anyway) that their entire course of history was just noted as *Mara*.

Mara had the stones, Elecktra had the stones, the stones disappeared for twenty something years as they always did, the internal workings of the Supreme providing magical homeostasis in short bursts as her health gradually failed her. Mara had the Sones, Eleckra had the stones, the stones disappeared, reappeared, and were subsequently broken as Esofar weakened and corrupted everything from Last I Remember. Katia was dead. Carmenilla died. Enter Esofar once more.

The new Pillar of Chaos was a hotshot, dirty-talking, feral sociopath with a truly hideous coat, distinct lack of sympathy, and fascination with the morbid, morose, and maleficent. Why he was named Esofar, Bianca wasn’t sure. It was a warning sign, but none of them could read it except for Triss, who had seen it not as a warning, but an omen of goodness, for she hadn’t been Triss in a long time and they were all to stupid to notice.

They’d been so stupid.

He’d come back to them possessed and he was the same as he’d always been because he’d never once been a good person, but she should have realized should have realized *should have realized* that he was horrible in a different way.

Now, as she watched the dying embers of sparkling worlds blink out across the great ceiling of the Library of Truth all she felt was a numbness settling into her core. She’d always been numb, she was a Pillar after all, but this was the first time she’d felt the true weight of the emptiness inside her. Emptiness she was not entirely sure existed anymore.

They were arguing about something unimportant, always they were arguing. Emotions had run unchecked since Loralei died, the Pillar of Emotion vanishing into Esofar’s nothingness and the essence of his subordinate gods being drained as their bodies turned to papery flakes of ash. She’d never seen anything like it before. Powerful gods could and were often expected to live through multiple generations of Pillars before abdicating their titles or being forgotten and appearing as mortal souls in the In Between, but Esofar had changed that, upending the fabric of reality and killing the unkillable. But she couldn’t expect anything else, the reality cornerstone was broken beyond repair, the Supreme impaled neatly through the stomach. And it was her fault completely.

She’d opened the trapdoor that led from the Inbetween to the Desert that Wasn’t. Esofar had been unleashed from his prison in Last I Remember years and years ago, but she’d been the one to aid his escape from the Supreme’s body. She hadn’t known, of course she hadn’t she’d been stupid, but she’d still set that cataclysmic track of events in motion. The Supreme had told her the fault did not lie in her, she’d only been aiding a friend (even though that friend was a liar), but it was hard not to be horrified by the gaping stomach wound and know how much innocent life would be lost because of her mistake.

So Bianca had followed Esofar back into the body, pursued him all the way to the devastated Realm of Dreams, where he’d sat her down and told her the story of the war and how the woman he’d loved had trapped him for eternity in a broken reality within her. He neglected to mention he’d always planned on betraying and killing the Supreme, but Bianca wouldn’t sympathize with him anyway, partially because she didn’t know how to feel sympathy and partially because she was numb with rage.

(*Maybe that’s how it works*, she’d thought, back when Loralei was still alive to answer. *Pillars were always devoid of emotion because their emotions were numbed, not nonexistent, but that numbness could be a result of emotion*.)

She called a summit of the Pillars, to formulate a way to stand up to the immense threat they faced. That had been her second mistake, for what had ensued could only be called a massacre.

Esofar strolled in, casual as a coyote hunting meek rabbits, red coat billowing behind him. There was still blood on his shoes, and it left sticky blue foot-shaped marks on the floor.

Aeris stood up and Bianca new she was fully prepared to rip his throat out with her teeth without hesitation, but before she could even start towards him Esofar had sent tendrils of darkness shooting straight through her, twisting and wriggling, turning her insides to bloody applesauce that joined the Supreme’s on the library floor. As her body perished with a last death gurgle, Bianca could see Aeris’s feather pen soul float calmly out of her wrecked corpse to find the next body it needed to reincarnate into, only for the tendrils of shadow to wrap around it and squeeze, shattering the jar and destroying the soul inside.

Pidge, who had taken it upon himself to watch over Bianca from the shadows ever since Morgan and Harmonia joined Katia in death and could no longer traverse the world of the living as easily, let out a choked gasp. She whirled to face him, only to see him crumbling as he leaned on a bookshelf, breaking apart and turning to gray ash. He gave her one last smile before his face cracked away and all that was left of her father was a pile of dust on the floor.

No soul left his body to join his beloved Pillars in the afterlife as it should have.

Further in the dark depths of the library, tenderly held in the armlike vines of the remains of Ingrid’s beloved plants, the already fading god of books died as alone as he deserved. No one would cry for him, for had he reached the afterlife as the laws of reality dictated fallen gods would, the softness in his being would shrivel as the memories of himself as he was truly in life all those years ago would return with fury. No, no one would cry for him, whether he be Xine or the gentler One, but he was in his last moments embraced by the faintest visage of a wandering spirit who had thought of him as her only friend.

His soul was gone as well, his very existence erased by the utter obliteration of the soul of knowledge no longer contained in the new mistress of that domain.

Around the remaining Pillars, some of the books and scrolls crumbled as well, abdicating from this plane to the nothingness of unreality. This should not have happened, should not have been allowed to happen, but nothing made sense any more, all hope and reaches of a sensible world bleeding out in a blue puddle and the Supreme died alone on the desert sand of her world.

Bianca found she could not move as Naara and her brother Iseiraa, dark and light reborn, were slaughtered before they could stand, or as Adari fell like the angels of old, feathers burning with red blood and order vanishing from the world with him. She remained frozen as Lorelei glitched into existence before Esofar, claws erupting from his fingers and plunging into Esofar’s chest with the fury of countless lives behind the one blow, but Esofar did not die then either, simply twisted Loralei's head off and caught his soul in his teeth. Stellovet could not do much as the shadows engulfed her, shredding her torso to ribbons, but she growled like a wild animal and with the last of her remains pushed her unfurling plant soul towards Bianca. Esofar crushed it beneath his heel and he turned and sent his shadows after Teriovan, cleaving the Pillar of Creation in half. His soul too was caught and subsequently shattered in Esofar’s fist.

Finally he turned his lavender eyes to her, rooted to the spot with incomprehensible terror that for once in her life cut through the numbness in her chest now that the very fibers of emotion itself were torn and reformed by endless unreality.

“Bianca,” said Esofar (which Esofar she could not be sure) as he stepped toward her slowly. He seemed to think he had all the time in the world, for he did. Or he would. Did. She wasn’t sure.

His hands came up to rest gently on the sides of her face and he broke open her second skull with actions that could be described only as full of reverence. She whimpered at the touch, eyes screwed shut as she bit her lip to keep from letting out a scream of pain. He had just broken her bones after all, peeled away the only mask she had.

“Bianca.” he repeated, fingers ghosting over the shattered fragments of bone protruding from her pasty skin. Their foreheads touched, resting together. The meaning behind the gesture was not lost on her, though she doubted he planned on blessing her. She opened her eyes to stare into his lavender, his gold-

“You’re not Esofar,” she said, stumbling backwards. Her back hit the side of the bookshelf.

“I am Esofar,” he purred, voice lower and rougher than the voice Esofar, her Esofar, usually spoke in.

“You’re not- not my-”

“Not your Esofar?” he smirked, catlike and malicious. “Yours, yours, yours. Do you think anything really belongs to you? You’ve lived your entire life in a body that I laid claim to far before even a hint of your being existed. No, every belonging you have, every friend, family member, lover, it is all *mine*.”

She breathing turned ragged as he drew closer, arms moving to cage her in against the solid wood she had backed into. She was feeling, truly feeling something. Some creature of fear, curled around her heart and eating through her brain. “Please…” she whimpered, “Please. Esofar, if you’re in there. I know you’re in there. Please help.”

The prince of shadows laughed, “Oh Bianca don’t be naive. I can only inhabit willing hosts. Why do you think I spent so much time in that ridiculous festering verse holding those worthless challenges to recruit former villains? They were so regretful, so full of self loathing, they let me take over easily. But I missed the real opportunity. People who don’t care about the consequences so long as they can reap the benefits. People like…”

“Esofar,” she whispered.

“People like Esofar,” he agreed. “You saw his eyes. It wasn’t me that killed the Pillars, no that honor goes to my host.”

“No, please no.” she whispered, quieter even than before. Barely a breath.

“Bianca,” he murmured, lips ghosting across the shell of her ear. She detested how he said her name as if he owned it. As if he owned her. As if he actually believed that everything was rightfully his because the Supreme had made the mistake of loving him.

“I want you to know,” he continued, voice like sticky sweet acid burning her ears, “That I am going to cut you open with my fingertips, and crush your soul into cheap glass while it’s still in your chest.”

He licked his lips and paused, irises flickering, lavender gold lavender gold lavender gold lavender.

“No,” he contradicted himself, or rather disagreed with the prince inside him, for this was the Esofar she’d always known. “We’re not doing that.”

“E-Esofar…?”

“That’s too easy.”

Esofar had always been cruel, always taken delight in tormenting others, gratification from suffering. She’d done nothing to curb it, had always assumed his better nature would reveal itself, that the part of her mother in her successor would make him a better man. She’d been so blind to his true nature.

“Congratulations, Bianca.” he said, grinning wolfishly. That was the difference in them, besides the eyes. The prince moved with the cruel ease of a cat toying with its prey before the kill, but her Esofar had always been a wild and savage thing, like a wolf still dripping with fresh blood. “You get to live. All your friends are dead, never to reach your beloved afterlife. Currently the only thing keeping anyone in this vast body alive is the fact that reality is ruptured and nothing works as it should. Everything you know, everything you feel, any sense of order or right and wrong, that’s all in flux. And to top it off, you’re completely alone!”

“Why…” she couldn’t hold back the tears that came with this new feeling of sadness shredding her chest, “Why are you-”

“Doing this? Oh it’s simple, Bianca!” his voice and eyes shifted back to Prince Esofar’s golden rasp, “Because living with the weight of what you set into motion will hurt you more then death ever could.”

And so they’d left her alone, slumped against a bookshelf with her face pressed into her knees, great heaving sobs shaking her body. She hated this, emotion that is. She’d never hated anything before, except for Esofar, though that was just what hate permeated the numbness in her chest. But oh how she hated him now. Emotion was inconvenient, but the feeling of blood boiling in her veins when she thought of his wolfish smile was nothing short of elating. She loved hating Esofar. She loved that she could love. She hated that she could feel love and all the other thrice damned emotions when what she needed was a clear head.

“I’m going insane.” she whimpered, the quiet whine sounding like roaring echoes of thunder in the deathly still library.

“You’re not.” said the voice in her head.

“I am. I’m going insane because I feel too much and I don’t know how to feel.”

“You’re not going insane, Bianca.”

“I *am*. The fact that I’m hearing your voice in my head is proof enough, isn’t it?”

“I’m not in your head, Bianca, I’m in front of you. And I know you’re not going insane because I myself am insane and you are nothing like me.”

Bianca looked up to see a woman who couldn't be any older than her mid-thirties at most staring down at her. The woman was dressed in a yellow raincoat and boots, holding a black umbrella. Gold framed glasses rested on the bridge of her nose. What was perhaps her most distinguishing feature, however, was her storm gray skin and the fact that her hair seemed to be composed of crackling thunderheads.

“Elecktra?”

“My name doesn’t matter, not anymore. What matters is finding a way to stop Esofar before he does any further damage. In order to do that, however, we’re going to need to assemble a team and make it to a specific cornerstone before he can. We’re incredibly pressed for time, so you’re going to need to get a hold of yourself.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’m not… I’m not strong enough to face what I did, not when I can feel so- so *guilty* over the lives I’ve lost. I’d rather be dead. Please, just let me die.”

“Bianca-”

“Don’t call me Bianca!” she shouted angrily. “That’s what- that’s what my parents called me. What the other Pillars called me. But it’s my fault they’re dead. Now it’s just what *he* calls me.”

They were arguing about something unimportant, always they were arguing. They’d only met seconds ago, but it felt like a lifetime. They’d only met lifetimes ago but it felt like it had been seconds. Bianca’s salt crystal tears dripped down her face in misshapen pearls of emotion while Elecktra, stormy and buzzing with a repressed force of unimaginable power, screamed at, no, pleaded with her to get up. But she couldn’t. At least, not until-

“They’re not dead.”

“They’re- what? Who isn’t dead?”

“Ms. Cats. Morgan and Harmonia. Your parents are still alive.”

Bianca knew that, rationally she knew that she and the Supreme were both still alive so the Afterlife should still be present as usual as it was out of the jurisdiction of the broken reality cornerstone, but to hear the words from the mouth of someone else…

“Okay,” she said, letting the comfortable (terrible) numbness settle inside of her once more, “Okay I… *we* can save this. I won’t fail again.”

She turned her gaze to the spirits that haunted the library, the two wraiths that had emerged from the shadows seeking the last living beings in their home. Lady Ingrid’s advice would have been useful, but Bianca knew the old soul wouldn’t wish to join their quest. The other spirit, Nira, the wanderer, crackled with electric curiosity, but Bianca remembered her soul from when she was a child, rebellious to the natural order and disobedient in death as in life.

(She remembered also the watered down bedtime tales Katia would tell her, about the thirteen great darknesses led by a god, puppeteered by a wraith and their battle against the seven heroes and their friends. She remembered Morgan introducing her to the souls that gathered in different afterlives, and how thirteen had become ten, the worst of them finding a way to continue even post mortem. She remembered the carefully jared and labeled samples of negative emotions in Harmonia’s workshop and how there were very few she was forbidden from touching, but she remembered the names on those jars. She remembered traveling with Pidge and how the castle of stained glass made her feel sick but she stayed since she needed to understand what it was her other parents wouldn’t tell her outright and Pidge would always tell her the truth if she asked.)

“Do you know what happened to him?” the wanderer asked, “The book god?”

“He returned to dust,” Bianca muttered, “As we are all made of dust in the end and the sands of the great desert claim what is forgotten.”

“But I remembered him.” she said, and Bianca’s numb chest ached with the depth of emotion this spirit felt in the presence of her her queen, for this childlike innocence of the wandering wraith was not that of Nira she’d been told about, and yet that grim evil was buried deep within her as it had been in One.

“You are made of dust and lies.” Bianca said stiffly, “It does not matter. Neither your lies or Lady Ingrid’s indifference could have saved him, for he could not be saved. Aeris’s death erased him.”

The wanderer did not understand but Bianca did not feel like explaining. Lady Ingrid, or what was left of her, could do that. She moved instead to stand with Elecktra, who she was sure had understood the conversation even though she should not have been able to, for even the Supreme was bilnd to wanderers of the death domain outside of her.

“And what dust are you, Bianca?” Elecktra asked gently.

“Dust and ruination.”

As they left the library through Bianca’s gateway to the Inbetween, the breeze of their departure scattered Pidge’s ashes to the phantom wind that blew through the coldest stars, and Elecktra explained to Bianca Esofar’s plan. The trick to defeating him would be to use his cruelty against him. He’d impaled the Supreme through the stomach because he’d wished to hurt her, but now that he knew she would undoubtedly suffer and die he’d turned his catlike gaze to the denizens of her body.

He would go for the brain first, Elecktra explained, the Cornerstone of Magic. Without magic the people of the verses would be greatly disadvantaged in a fight and he could slaughter them like animals. A brain wound would not kill the Supreme, not if it was dealt from the inside. It would not affect her physical body like the earlier attack on the Reality Cornerstone had so he could still play with her insides without killing her so instantly, maximizing his fun. They did not have to worry about Esofar destroying the Magic Cornerstone, however, for the Cornerstone had been broken into the various stones from the time when Katia and Carmenilla still walked the realms and Esofar was but a squalling baby rather than a Pillar. Those stones were passed through bloodlines, so the brain could not be eradicated so long as the children of the Stoneberers lived. Furthermore, Elecktra’s mind had so thoroughly intermingled with the cornerstone when she’d wielded the stones as a girl that even if Esofar slaughtered the descendants of stonebearers like Lilac and Mitis and Alyix (and stars, Alyix was gone for good now, crumbled with the rest of Teriovan’s gods) were to fall to the prince of darkness, Elecktra, who knew all that the Supreme knew but acted on the whims of a madwoman, would be the one thing keeping magic alive in the multiverse. That is to say, whatever magic worked in the nonexistent confines of unreality.

“So we don’t need to stop him from reaching the brain?” she asked.

“We do not.” Elecktra confirmed. “What we need to do is find a healer who can reach the Supreme, though I have a sinking suspicion that should we traverse to the Desert That Wasn’t, calamity would befall the Multiversei.”

“Is it not already?” Bianca asked bitterly, “Their queen is dying and the prince of the Others has returned.”

“The Supreme’s daughter will rule after her,” Elecktra said, “Though she is too young to be a good queen now. The Supreme must live on just a little while longer… and yet I cannot help but feel that we are playing into his hands.”

“Should our plan with the healer fail, what are we to do then?” Bianca asked.

“Alas we are fighting two wars at once,” Elecktra sighed. “On one hand we must prevent the Supreme from dying in the Desert That Wasn’t, but on another we must keep the cornerstones from breaking here so that all these lives may continue on inside of her. I know that we should focus all our energy on the survival of the Supreme, and thus the Multiversei and the lives they contain, but to sacrifice the life here to the whims of Esofar is too big a sacrifice for me to make. Not when my whole life I’ve strived to save everyone. It’s terribly selfish, but it’s something I must do.”

“I see.” Bianca murmured, “If that is so, then what is our plan?”

Elecktra did not smile gratefully, this was not a day where smiling would come to either of their faces, but the harshness in the corners of her eyes softened slightly. “Aside from our healer, we’ll need a few more people if we are to succeed.”

“Only a few? Elecktra, he *massacred* the Pillars! We can’t even rely on the gods for help, what can mortals do? What can any of us do?”

“Nothing. At least, not if we face him directly. But think for a moment, Bianca. We have an advantage he does not. Esofar is working with himself, your Esofar, and maybe that insufferable treasure hunter. You are the Lord of the Inbetween, Keeper of Keys, and Master of Death. You and you alone can travel between the Supreme and her world easily, and any of the greatest fallen heroes and minds of their time are your subjects. To put it quite simply, you’re at the head of the most powerful army that’s ever been amassed and you can bring them anywhere.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Bianca said, “But I’m not in my right mind right now! I can’t be trusted to lead an army when I’m feeling and not feeling all the time!”

“Get yourself a commander then. If you can’t be a leader be a weapon the one in charge can use as they see fit. Use your power under the command of someone else.”

“Who do you have in mind?”

“Someone stronger than the Pillar Esofar.”

“And the healer?”

“An old god.”

“And who else?”

“Any of the last generation of stonebearers or their children. Retired, faded, or slain gods. Former Pillars, though they’re incredibly hard to find since they cannot be tracked. Most of them should be in the Golden Grasslands, or an adjacent afterlife. You will find your commander in the Grasslands as well.”

“And our healer?” Bianca asked, opening the second door at the end of the hallway that would deposit them in the Afterlife.

“Leave him to me.”

That statement had an ominous air of potential about it, but Bianca chose not to worry about it. Elecktra was eccentric, crazy and unstable, but her heart was in the right place, or the next best thing to right when there aren’t any sides.

With an assurance that she would know who she was looking for when she found them, Bianca headed off in search of her new commander.

It did not escape her notice how the cerulean blue sky of the Golden Grasslands shimmered and flickered with white reality threads occasionally. Even here, in a place outside the Supreme the tethers of reality were unraveling and disconnecting. Bianca hoped that no breaches would open, there were several unsavory spirits that would do nothing good if they escaped their afterlives.

She found her commander under a cherry tree, crying.

“Carmenilla? You’re the one I’m supposed to find? Are you alright?”

They’re dead aren’t they?” Carmenilla asked, raw and wet with the golden acid of sadness. “Alyix and my aunt and uncle? My mom? My sister?”

“Yes.” she affirmed quietly.

“I wish they were dead!” he screamed, turning to drive his fist into the tree with a sickening crack before slumping against it, trembling like a leaf. “I wish they were dead like me, at least then they’d still be here! They’d still be here… they’d still be here with me and dad in the Afterlife but now they don’t even exist anymore…”

Bianca wondered how Carmenilla could ever be the leader she needed when he was so frail and painfully mortal, sobbing and broken. But she didn’t understand emotion and didn’t feel it quite right because he pulled himself together after only a few minutes (hours? she wasn’t sure) in a display of mortal resilience she knew she’d be unable to replicate in herself had she contained all the emotions he did.

“Alright.” he said. He was still crying. “Alright what do you need of me, Lady Bianca? I sincerely hope it involves ripping someone, preferably whoever killed the gods, to shreds.”

“I think that’s a likely outcome.” she said, nodding. “I have no idea where any of the Pillars are in these afterlives since my parents are on tour, so you just may be the strongest fighter we have.”

He nodded. “I see.”

“But I, myself personally, also need a favor from you.” she said tentatively, “As Loralei is now dead I’m experiencing fluctuating emotions and I’m not entirely in my right mind. I was told that finding someone able to give me definitive orders would be the best course of action. Will you do this for me? Be my instructor?”

Carmenilla bit his lip, “You want me to order you around?”

“Yes.” she nodded, “I am not fully in control of myself, so it would be best if someone could do the controlling for me. Out of everyone in these afterlives that would fight alongside me, I trust you the most. My mom chose you as her successor, and that, to me, speaks volumes about your character. So please, command me when I can’t control myself.”

“I… I will.” he said, after a moment of deliberation, “But I think I might need some explanations first. About what’s going on, that is, what happened to my- my family. And where we go from here.”

“Of course. Elecktra’s finding the other people we need currently, but when she returns I’m sure that she’ll explain everything better than I can.”

As if she’d been summoned by the echo of her name in the air of the plains, like an old fable of the devil, Elecktra materialized behind them. “I see you’ve found your commander, Bianca,” she said. “Good, I’ve enlisted the help of our healer and several others.”

The healer was not a Pillar but he was something akin to one, an old god born under no Pillar, made of the remnants of their dust at a time when intelligent life was taking its first gasping breaths on the shores of whatever abyss existence created and fledgeling Pillars began to weave the order of the universe through the body of the unborn child who would someday be queen of a species they barely knew.

He was a god so old she was loath to admit he may have strength barely behind she who was Death herself, and yet somehow he’d fallen like some great mockery of Icarus that burned one thousand times brighter than the sun that turned his wings to ash and painted his stomach crimson with a wound that even the afterlife had not been able to erase from his spirit.

“Hello,” he said, lightly and musically. Blood trickled down his abdomen and legs, pooling around his bandaged feet. His eyes were cloudy white, blind, and his neck and arms were bandaged heavily, twisted lumpy scars peeking around the edges while one was slashed across his lips, “I hear the world has need of me again.”

“This is Naomi,” Elecktra said, “One of the original gods… God of Blood and Injury. He can heal the Supreme.”

“The God of Blood and Injury is a healer?” Carmenilla asked skeptically.

“I’m not actually the blood god if it’s any consolation,” Naomi said tentatively, hand moving to rest on the gaping hole in his abdomen, “It’s just imagery. The first life painted me red in the old texts due to this wound of mine, and future generations worshipped me as the god of blood as well as injury, when my domain is really just the latter. I’m the one who imbued healing magic into the Healing Stone when the Old Gods such as myself were granted the stones during the war.”

“Strange.” he said, but left it as that so Elecktra could explain to the moderate group of dead gods and former Stonebearers the plan.

Bianca was to open three gates: one to the lungs and the cornerstone of space, one to the heart and cornerstone of time, and a final one to the Desert That Wasn’t. The various gods and bearers they had been able to gather in the short time they had would take the first door and fight against Esofar should he try to make a move from the inside of the body. Elecktra was to travel alone to the time cornerstone, where she would do her best to… well Bianca wasn’t exactly sure what she could do from there alone, but she, for some reason, trusted the madwoman when she’d insisted that was her place. The final gate to the outside world was for Naomi, Bianca, and Carmenilla. Naomi was to heal the Supreme, Bianca was there to open gates should they be needed, and Carmenilla was a security measure to fight Esofar should he somehow forgo the gate system using warped reality make a reappearance at the physical location of his former lover.

The plan was beautiful in its simplicity and doomed in its entirety. Gates opened and closed, pieces navigated the chessboard perfectly, and the edges crumbled into the abyss slowly but surely. Dust of fallen gods blew through empty muscle and coagulated alongside monsters in the bloodstream while a haggard figure with purple hair slumped against the beating heart of a being beyond all forms of God. A cloud spirit with power beyond power rose to meet her as an army more powerful than any seen before waited nervously for their foe to slaughter them like animals. In the land beyond death shimmering threads unraveled and broke loose as the undefined worlds of the dead and living intermingled while the carefully constructed dimensions collapsed. Across the shimmering sands of a desert that was never there a being of pure chaos energy stood guard over the elder god of injuries as he attempted to heal the mother of his kind while Death herself watched in mourning. The Prince of Shadows and his regret-bound golden host marched towards the incomplete center of magic with the fury of a thousand years behind them.

And high in the phantom stars an ancient king began to laugh.