Taking Back the Crown

by JCMorrigan

Mozenrath. Archibald Snatcher. Roman Torchwick. Mad Madam Mim. Yzma. The Huntsman. Wuya. Ayam Aghoul. Their mission: take over the multiverse, or look fabulous trying. Rated M for swearing, steamy implications and VERY bloody battles. Contains slash and het shipping.

145. Chapter 145

A/N: The required listening for the musical portion of this chapter is "It's a B-Movie" from The Brave Little Toaster. However, the first segment of this chapter (a flashback from long ago) is divided into several "acts" that are labeled with song titles, and those songs were so instrumental to my inspiration that I want you to be able to follow along if desired. The playlist is:

A Night on the Town – The Dear Hunter

The Revival – The Dear Hunter

Killer – The Hoosiers

Wicked Game – Ursine Vulpine feat. Annaca

Nothing Personal – Des Rocs (this one is NSFW; use discretion)

True Believer – Dragonette

Precious – Depeche Mode

Meddle – Little Boots

Halo – Depeche Mode

Crazy – Nothing But Thieves

...

This is a story from long, long ago. Thousands of years in the making, in fact.

Act I: "A Night on the Town."

Once upon a time, there was a very lonely girl named Salem.

Her cruel father kept her locked away in a tower of isolation. Hero after hero perished trying to liberate her for the purpose of sating their lust. But as everyone in that era would come to know, the first to arrive with the intent to do what was right rather than pursue the hand of the maiden would prevail over the despot king of the city known as Angielle. This hero was Ozma. Together, he and Salem made their escape, and decided to walk together once they exited the castle walls.

"Where do we go now?" Salem asked.

"Wherever you want," Ozma replied.

Salem shifted; "Where do you call home?"

"Many different places, depending on what I am questing for," Ozma told her. "The world is my home. But most often, I return to the city in which I was born: Amaurot."

"I would like to go there and see it," Salem told him.

And so a journey began, one that spanned many weeks. As they traveled together, Ozma and Salem fell deeper for one another, unsure how to confess their feelings until just before they'd reached the city.

"I think I might love you," she said to him in an inn a day's journey out.

"Forgive me if this is forward," he replied, "but I am certain that I love you."

Hand in hand, they approached a city so different from Angielle, Salem had difficulty believing her eyes. Angielle was made of low houses and wooden-walled manors, its technology powered by magic or a little gas. Amaurot had harnessed magic in an entirely different way, its towers rising to the sky as skyscrapers, lit against the dark night sky by a million blinding lights.

"It's beautiful," Salem sighed.

"There is much to see," Ozma told her. "I will take you anywhere you wish to go. But first, I must reunite with a friend."

"A friend?"

He explained as they ventured into the city's winding streets, dwarfed by its architecture. "My most loyal childhood friend," Ozma explained. "He and I have endured many adventures together. We've owed each other our lives so often…and only recently has the balance become even."

"Why did he not come with you to Angielle?"

"He had his own business to take care of. We parted ways so as not to delay each other."

They found Ozma's friend, a young man with long, platinum-blond hair, reclining beneath a tree in a public park. His eyes were shut as he nestled in on the ground.

Ozma gave a light laugh; "I know you're not asleep, Hades."

Hades did not respond. Not until Ozma approached and gave him a light boot to the side.

"Must you, Ozma?" Hades grumbled.

Ozma chuckled. "How did your business go?"

"As planned," Hades replied, still not opening his eyes. "I should hope you expected no less. And you?"

"Angielle is liberated of the tyrant," Ozma replied. "And…I made a new friend. She is here, and I would like you to meet her."

"Mm…is that so?" Hades finally peeled one of his bottle-green eyes open, looking over to where Salem stood shyly at the park's edge. "A friend, is it?"

"I…I do love her," Ozma said. "I know it must seem sudden."

"Not an exaggeration by any means, Ozma."

"But her spirit is strong," Ozma went on. "I think you will like her."

"I think that remains to be seen, Ozma." Hades shifted, peeling himself up off the ground.

Ozma extended a hand down; Hades caught it, letting Ozma provide leverage so he could stand. Then he turned to stride toward Salem; "You are the hostage?"

"No more," Salem replied. "Thanks to Ozma…I know what freedom truly is, now. It's everything I ever dreamed. I'm lucky to have met him…and you're even more fortunate to have known him all these years."

"I suppose that is one word for it," Hades teased.

"Hades!" Ozma rushed him, giving him a playful shove. "I know you enjoy having me around."

"Oh, do I?" Hades scoffed. "Or do I simply enjoy the thrill of picking up your slack whenever you fail?"

"I seem to recall our last quest together going the other way around…" Ozma chuckled.

Salem giggled as she watched the two trade banter and soft blows. So this was friendship. Something she had never known, until Ozma.

"So you intend to show your paramour about our grand city of origin?" Hades posed. "Have you an itinerary, or were you simply meaning to wander the back alleys until inevitably mugged?"

"I want to show Salem our favorite places," Ozma told Hades. "I want her to see the beauty we find in this city."

"We might start at the theater," Hades suggested. "There is a production of 'A Night on the Town' within the hour. The casting is much better than the last run; they've given the male lead to someone who can actually emote!"

"I've…I've never been to a theater," Salem admitted, wringing her hands. "I have always wanted to see a production…"

"Then we shall attend," Ozma decided. "Though I would not advise sitting next to Hades; he insists on providing running commentary throughout, particularly negative."

"I am only speaking as any director should," Hades argued.

"You are not the director of the show!" Ozma laughed.

"It's better than you eating up everything with no regard for quality!" Hades was laughing as well now.

They turned to walk down a wide, bright street, and Salem walked along, her heart soaring. Truly, her life had just begun.

...

It was within the year that they fought the dragon. This was when dragons that were not Grimm still roamed the world; the creations of Zodiark, God of Darkness, were rarities confined to his divine realm. What was more pressing was the predators of nature, those who feasted on humanity because of the food chain.

This particular dragon was beautiful in its own way: a six-legged, green-scaled machine of destruction studded with countless spikes of bone. Ozma, Salem, and Hades had brought it down in a field between villages, knowing it had to perish before it reached another human civilization.

Thick purple tendrils of magic radiated outward from where Hades' staff of pink crystal slammed into the ground; he fueled more and more energy into the casting until the dragon was rooted to the earth. The dragon struggled, threatening to break the bindings, until Hades cried, "IF ONE OF YOU COULD ASSIST!"

Salem formed a bubble of magic in her hands, one that glowed with all colors of the rainbow. She launched it up high into the sky, letting it expand as it rose. It descended upon the dragon like a meteor, punching into its body, stunning it with a grand convulsion.

Ozma, however, knew that a dragon could not die so easily. There was one surefire way to slay this particular creature, and he was going to go for it. As it writhed, its jaws open to bellow in discontent, he hurtled toward the mouth.

"OZMA!" Salem and Hades yelled as one, knowing exactly what he was about to do.

Into the dragon's mighty jaws went Ozma. Then the beast's neck erupted from the inside in a shower of blood, separating head from body. Finally, the reptile lay stone-dead on the ground. Ozma, drenched in its blood, beamed as he jogged toward Hades and Salem.

"YOU could've been obliterated with that idiotic move!" Hades scolded.

"Ozma – OZMA!" Salem ran toward him, throwing her arms around him.

"Careful, Salem!" Ozma cautioned. "You'll get its blood on you – "

"I don't care!" Salem cried, hugging him tight. "You SCARED me!"

"Salem…" Ozma placed his arms gently around her. "I would never leave you."

Hades always hated this part. Every victory they had was punctuated by the two of them exchanging sweet nothings. It made his stomach turn. It was too saccharine, too cliché. Were he ever to fall in love –

(With someone not unlike Ozma - )

It would be without all this idiocy, all this acting hysterical.

(It would be as two friends deciding to elevate their relationship, or maybe make it what it always had been.)

They'd let go of each other and were facing Hades now. "I couldn't have pulled that off if you hadn't held it down," Ozma told him.

"Quite obviously," Hades sniffed.

"We should alert the nearest village," Ozma suggested. "They should know the monster poses no threat to them anymore."

"Perhaps they shall throw us a victory feast," Hades suggested.

"That is not why we took the dragon on," Ozma argued.

"No…I would appreciate some good food," Salem urged.

As they set off down the dirt road to that very village, Ozma stumbled. He collapsed, there in the road, barely aware of when he hit – he blacked out before he could.

The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was the twin screams of "OZMA!"

...

The disease took him slowly. It was nothing contagious, and something that many people could and did survive. Salem and Hades took turns at his bedside, telling him stories of the world outside his recuperative bed – and he told his own stories, of quests one or the other hadn't been on.

To the end, he was smiling, recalling the beauty of existence. Loving humanity and his friends.

(But mostly Salem.)

It soon became clear he would lose the battle so many had won. Sheer rotten luck, and a genetic predisposition. Both Salem and Hades stood beside him that day as he lay back, sinking away from them.

"Ozma," Hades pleaded, taking up Ozma's hand into his own. "I beg of you, if this truly is the end, then remember us. Remember that we once lived – "

"It's…time," Ozma croaked. "Let me talk…to Salem."

Perhaps, because he was dying, he did not realize how deep that request cut. Hades was filled with rage he could barely contain. He was about to lose Ozma, his Ozma, and Ozma had turned him away in exchange for the woman?

But he stepped aside. Because he wanted to honor Ozma's last wishes. What he did with his anger could come after.

"Ozma," Salem said as she knelt at his bedside. "Oh, Ozma…"

She began to sob, splaying herself out across his chest. He took her into his arms, stroking her hair, holding her close.

"Death won't stop us," he said hoarsely. "Salem, if you can wait…then eternity is in store for us. Until then…live your life as happily as you can. Chase your fairy tale. Find new love…new adventures…Salem, I beg of you, do not let this…let this stop…y…"

His final words petered out. And then he was gone. Salem howled and bawled, pressing his remains closer to herself.

As Hades glowered on.

...

Once Ozma was taken away, Salem and Hades found it within themselves to re-enter the outside world. They stood on the main thoroughfare of Amaurot, looking to the horizon. A place that once had held so much promise.

"What do we do now?" Salem asked, sniffling.

"We…?" Hades glared at her. "WE? There ceased to be a 'we' when Ozma made it QUITE clear where his loyalties lay. You may answer that question for yourself. I shall carry onward, as he wanted YOU to do."

And he began to stride away, tensed in rage.

On a basic level, Salem understood. Horrific as it was to have her last remaining friend abandon her in the wake of the tragedy…the biggest thing they'd ever had in common had been Ozma. She couldn't imagine moving on with Hades, without Ozma. Every interaction they would have would remind her of the missing piece. She was certain her own presence would do the same to Hades.

Finally, however, the truth pummeled into her. "HADES!"

He paused but for a moment.

"You loved him, didn't you?" Salem called out to him.

Under his breath, Hades growled, "Too little. And far too late."

He continued onward. That gave Salem the answer she was looking for.

She took the opposite path, walking away from him. He was headed toward the sunset, where night would begin but the light still illuminated the truth. She attempted to make her way toward where the dawn would rise anew, but at that desperate hour, all she managed to accomplish was walking into the deeper darkness.

...

Act II: "The Revival."

When Hades next saw Salem, it was five years later, in a kingdom far, far away from Amaurot. At first, he didn't even believe it was her. He'd been taking in a production at the theater, a tragedy in which people kept on digging their own graves because they were idiotic and insolent. Such things always made him smile where others cried.

After curtain call, she forced herself onto the stage, and at first, the audience thought it was part of the show. She raised her fist high; "I HAVE COME WITH A DESTINY!"

How pretentious, Hades thought.

"I have learned to transcend life and death due to the weaknesses of the gods we worship!" she cried. "Hydaelyn and Zodiark are fallible; they are NOT meant to rule this world justly!"

(For this was back when their names were known. And when it was understood well that Hydaelyn was not really male, not all the time.)

"HERESY!" someone cried, and Hades sneered because they'd beaten him to it.

"Is it?" Salem retorted. "I have come to you to show you what humanity can truly be. But I can see how you might be skeptical." She spread out her arms. "Allow me to demonstrate. Let any who is armed in this audience tonight attempt to strike me down. Destroy me as bloodily as you can. Then you will see the truth."

And to be honest, Hades did think about it. But he wasn't yet ready to desecrate Ozma's memory so badly, much as he resented her. He did, however, count on something he had learned about humanity on his own travels: that in every crowd, there is at least one Dark heart with an itchy trigger finger.

He was right. After Salem stood onstage for an awkwardly long amount of time, one poor soul finally lost his impulse control, vaulting onto the stage with sword in hand.

Blood rained. This stranger really had been a disturbed sort; Hades raised a brow in interest as Salem fell apart gorily. There were gasps and screams of utter horror from the audience.

Which ended up being nothing, of course, compared to the cries of terror when Salem's body began to put itself together.

The dismembered limbs rejoined the whole, the skin sealing up as though it had never been sundered. Every wound fused back into the unbroken. The attacker backed away, a hand on his mouth, his eyes wide.

She stood up, feet planted in a lake of her own blood. "Do you see now?" she urged. "Hydaelyn has tried to tell you that life and death are a delicate balance, but this is a LIE! THIS is their true power! That of immortality! On the other side of the coin, Zodiark has the power to revive those who have gone. He could return to you every last one of those you have lost! And yet he CHOOSES not to because he is petty and envious!"

Hades was trying to puzzle this out, now. Because obviously, something had happened to make Salem invincible. Something to do with the twin gods.

She must've attempted to get them to give Ozma back. How idiotic was she, truly? And they'd punished her in kind. Likely she'd gone to Hydaelyn first, gotten rejected, and attempted to manipulate Zodiark into thinking he was actually loved. Actually, since she'd used the word "envious," that was most certainly what had happened.

"We deserve a world free of the shackles of death!" Salem cried. "Join me, and I shall ally the kingdoms of this world to rise up against those who hold us back, who give us life only to condemn us to DIE! Once this world is freed of them, WE SHALL ACHIEVE PARADISE!"

A cheer went up. Louder than the applause for the actual show Salem had superceded. All the while, Hades shook his head. This was just another tragedy in which people would dig their graves by being imbeciles.

Entertaining, but not worth his time. How far could a zealot get on words and immortality alone, anyhow?

(Evidently far enough to make Hydaelyn punish her in a way they'd never bothered to punish any other mortal.)

Hades left the theater alone while the congregation rallied around their new priestess. He wanted no part of it. There was, however, a glimmer of gold in all the muck. For she'd given him an idea.

Since the loss of Ozma, he had been attempting to figure out what, exactly, he wanted to amount to. Perhaps he'd never given it enough thought, simply letting his best friend choose their destiny. Meaning that upon Ozma's passing, he'd left Hades empty, and with no one to blame but Hades himself.

He'd wandered this world, retiring from heroics despite his relative youth, attempting to find purpose. Nothing yet had stuck out to him as a path to pursue. Maybe that was because he was meant for more than what this world could offer.

She'd most certainly aggravated Hydaelyn first. And ended up powerful in a way she didn't want. What would happen, however, if someone did approach Zodiark first? And asked not for the crime, but the punishment?

For once, Hades felt enticed.

...

Zodiark's realm was a pool of pure Darkness surrounded by dusk-colored stones, in a valley where the sun never properly broke through the cloud cover. Here, his creatures, the Grimm, paced about, awaiting the command to enact divine judgment. They were a lifeform that Zodiark himself had evolved from a prior entity to have roamed this world, even before humanity – now, there were no more Heartless, because the Dark used to create them had been recycled completely into Grimm.

Some of them attempted to attack the bold mortal. Hades brushed them aside with a powerful blast of magic. He'd studied the Dark arts in the five years since Ozma's passing, and though it was basically fighting fire with fire, these spells were much more powerful than anything Light could offer. How had they not utilized this aspect for so long, when they were slaying dragons?

Into the caldera he strode, where the liquified Dark bubbled. He took a knee at the edge of the pool and waited.

Not for long. A humanoid silhouette with ram's horns twisted itself up from the depths, bending in ways nothing with a skeleton should be able to. Zodiark, God of Darkness, walked on all fours and upside-down toward the pool's edge.

"Great Zodiark," Hades said reverently, a hand upon his heart. "I have come to seek your blessing."

He could feel pure indignation radiating from the god before him. "I will not fall for such words again," Zodiark snarled. "You have only come to me because of what my sibling cannot provide. Leave this place now, else I shall be forced to destroy you."

"I shall take my chances," Hades replied. "After all, what I say is the truth. Would you truly slay your only worshipper because you believe him a liar? Though if you doubt, perhaps you should ask your sibling."

The god of Darkness must have been desperate. After all, the only mortal to have come to him with such platitudes had lied about them. "Wait here," he snarled, and then he vanished.

Hades didn't move a muscle. Not five minutes later, Zodiark returned, as though he had never left.

"You speak the truth," Zodiark sneered. "But why? What is it you could want of the Darkness?"
"Destiny," Hades replied. "And if there should be power in the mix, it would be a lovely bonus."

"Do you believe in the power of the Darkness, or is this a bid of selfishness?"

"I have seen its true strength over the past half decade," Hades replied. "You can find the proof in the bodies of your minions that line the road to this domain. Oh, don't look so dismayed – you and I both know they are disposable."

The emotion that Hades felt on the air was now something entirely different. Surprise. "You have a Dark heart," Zodiark stated. "One that is unique among mortals."

"Truth be told, I always have enjoyed tragedy," Hades stated. "So long as I am not the recipient."

"Light and Dark exist in a balance," Zodiark reminded him. "I am not a god of evil. However, the dark of evil is required in order for good to shine. Were I to have an avatar who spread the Dark for its own sake, that would in turn allow the Light to shine, as it should."

"That is all well and good," Hades replied. "But consider: were you to have an avatar who spread the Dark for its own sake, then you would have outdone your sibling until such time as they recruit one of their own. For years, you could have the upper hand."

"The gifts I give are not boons," Zodiark said. "Everything has its price. You will pay in pain."

"For what, immortality?" Hades replied. "Do believe me, I have seen what happens to those of your victims who have become immortal. They seem to be preoccupied with cutting the sentence short. I? I wish to make the MOST of my life. The longer my life, the more I can make of it."

"You wish to take a punishment as your very power."

"You do not think I came prepared?"

Zodiark thought it over. "What will you offer me as a benefit?"

"Undying loyalty," Hades replied. "He who spreads word of all that Hydaelyn is not. I am the lord of your dead. I shall seek out those who feel similarly and bring them under one roof in a grand convocation! You, for the first time in your existence, shall feel worship and LOVE."

At long last, Zodiark stated, "I see no reason why I should not give you what you ask, so long as you hold your end of the bargain. Bring me the Convocation, and act in the name of the Dark and evil."

"You shall not be disappointed, my lord," Hades stated.

"Then rise," Zodiark commanded. "You shall receive the gift of Darkness first. Light shall come afterward.

As Hades got to his feet, Zodiark bade him, "Step into the pool. Wade forth until your head is submerged."

Casually, Hades followed the instruction. The liquid was just a bit too viscous to be water, but almost thin enough that somebody could be fooled. Visibility was nonexistent once his eyes were below. Strangely, though he did not breathe, he felt no desire to.

All at once, it rushed to him, filling his soul. Darkness like he'd never known. His very being flooded, his pores prickling from the infusion. His darkest desires amplified, and oh, how much he realized he'd been repressing! Now that there was no Ozma around, why had he even bothered, these last five years? He could have been doing what he wanted, all this time!

A part of him, a small percentage, was now Grimm. The Dark left its mark on his appearance, deepening most of his hair to raven but lightening one shock to moon-white. The colors of the Grimm, showing that he was now one of their number. His eyes, wide with revelation, ceased to be green, taking on the bright, luminous yellow that belonged to those truly given over to the Darkness.

Then he was falling upward, out of the pool, high into the air until up was down again and he hit a second body of water. Now he could feel the pool of Hydaelyn's Light infusing him, the way it had obviously done to Salem. He felt invigorated. Healthier, more energetic than he ever had been. How could anyone be dissatisfied with this feeling of utter perfection? How could anyone want to escape this?

He breached the surface, throwing glittering droplets off his new mane of black-and-white hair, his golden eyes adjusting to the sunlight.

Another humanoid figure, bathed in golden light and bearing stag's antlers, stood at the side of the pool. Zodiark appeared alongside his sibling, and Hydaelyn turned to him.

"Brother," they said in almost a lament. "I do hope you realize what you have done."

"The question is," Zodiark replied, "when will you make a move in return?"

Hades stepped up onto the solid ground, water rolling off him, euphoria surging within. As he passed the two gods, he heard Hydaelyn tell him, "Dark is required to make Light. Your existence is to hold a delicate balance. I cannot decide whether you act with good or ill intent, nor is it my place to. I shall advise you of one aspect of your new state of being, however."

Hades looked over his shoulder at them. "What is it?"

"You can now harness the Darkness between the worlds," Hydaelyn stated. "This will allow you to see realms outside your own. There is much to discover, between the walls of the worlds. Use this power wisely."

This was something Hades had not even expected. Something he knew Salem couldn't even do; she was all Light through and through. Carefully, he held out a hand.

The Darkness rippled before him, forming a gate, a Corridor to a realm outside his ken.

"Go," Hydaelyn urged. "See what there is to be seen."

"But do not forget our promise," Zodiark hissed.

"I most certainly shall not," Hades said teasingly before striding into the Corridor.

The whole of existence and eternity lay before him. All because he had pledged his loyalty to the entity that would allow him to be who he truly was always meant to be.

...

He toured many worlds, but always returned to his point of origin. For he had not forgotten his vow to make the Convocation.

He began his search in Amaurot, only to find that Salem had beaten him there. Most were caught up in her frenzy, arming themselves to destroy the very god Hades was now worshipping with fervor. Oh, this would not end well. It was a futile strike; Hades could see that.

He would let it play out, because he wanted to see just how far she would push the envelope.

There were disbelievers. And among those disbelievers, the disenchanted who wanted to give in to base desire, to take what they wanted, to take unethical paths to their goals, or just to give Zodiark the credit that the God of Darkness had never gotten because everyone was always too afraid to make the first move.

Here, the Convocation began, meeting in an old theater that Hades was able to buy out. He'd dressed the part; his hair was cut a little shorter, and he had opted to wear a long, billowing coat befitting of a scion of Darkness. They came to his sermons, to hear the word of the disrespected god, to remember in this time of rebellion that the God of Darkness was responsible for half their world. Perhaps even the better half.

Hades' followers were…devout. Also fairly stupid and boring. Yes, the loyalty was all he had promised, but surely he could deliver Zodiark something better than Elidibus and Lahabrea. (To say nothing of whatever was going on with Fandaniel.)

So he reached out to other kingdoms. The idea of dramatic irony appealed to him, so he approached the place where it had all begun to go wrong: the nation of Angielle. A new royal family had stepped up to replace Salem's line, and Queen Hildyr was very enticed to hear that Zodiark might be particularly fond of her climb to power once the vacant seat was left. Her daughter Lucette was a brat, but an obedient one, and was soon on board as well. Others of the royal court – Delora, Fait, Waltz – flocked to the Convocation, dividing their time between Angielle and Amaurot.

Hades was particularly fond of one aspiring young man calling himself Mythros. Mythros was a devotee from the start, eager to please. Always champing at the bit whenever Hildyr gave him a dark deed to carry out. So easily he added Hades to his list of masters along with Hildyr, and Hades was not about to complain. Mythros became an extra body for him, a voice for his tenets.

Every day, the word of Zodiark spread. The Convocation became larger.

But then Salem had to go and ruin it.

Hades never did know exactly what she'd done. He knew it could only have been her handiwork. She had been playing with fire. He knew it would end in flames, but he had never expected to share in her torment.

She must have riled up enough people. Marched on the gods. Maybe even actually threatened their lives.

What Hades knew was that one day, without warning, there was a massive shockwave of Darkness, its epicenter in Hydaelyn's domain. It engulfed the city of Amaurot, shaking it to the foundation. Skyscrapers toppled; streets cracked.

Once it had passed, everyone was simply missing. There wasn't a soul to be found. The Convocation had vanished, as had every single other person Hades had ever known.

There was only Hades. And, as he would later learn, Salem.

He ran to a window, watching as Zodiark ascended, propelling himself into the sky. There was the sound of something unimaginably big cracking. The moon was sundered, shards of it raining down to the world below.

The idea was that Salem should be alone. Hades, at the very least, still had the other worlds, millions upon billions, but Salem hadn't the means to travel them. Not yet. But had Zodiark truly thought Hades was that callous? Perhaps he was, but that didn't mean he hadn't formed attachments.

Mythros, dead. Hildyr, gone. Even Elidibus' idiocy left a void.

And as the final nail in the coffin, the god he'd devoted his life to had abandoned him, rushing to the heavens to leave his planet behind. A Remnant of its former glory.

Salem was alone, because Hades most definitely wasn't going to be there for her, and the gods had known that. Hades was not alone. Yet, having witnessed the very end of the world, he finally felt what tragedy was supposed to mean.

...

Act III: "Killer."

Hades had to watch the world rebuild itself nearly from scratch. The old civilizations fell, and new ones rose.

There were some definite changes from how things had once been. With Zodiark gone, he had no more hold on the Grimm, and said Grimm were now treating the entire planet as their playground. Becoming what the Heartless had once been before they were remade into Grimm. History repeats itself.

Nobody could do magic anymore. Nobody but Hades. And presumably Salem, but he made a point of ignoring the fact that somewhere on this new Remnant of his old world, she existed like a deep-rooted cancer. No, they had fragments of power instead, something that didn't follow the rules of magic. Each person had one power and one alone.

There was a new race, that of humans with animal features. They were referred to as "Faunus."

The city of Amaurot was forgotten, left to crumble to waste.

But if the world could start over, then so could Hades. He resolved to do exactly that. The Convocation could be rebuilt –

Except no, it couldn't, because when he preached of a God of Darkness that didn't technically exist on that world anymore, no one believed him. And even if they did, well, the entity they prayed to couldn't hear them anymore and would never answer.

Hades' purpose was gone. The Darkness he served had crashed through the moon on a swift getaway from this Remnant. He still did not regret the immortality, nor the Grimm blood that mingled with his own human blood. In fact, the longer things went on, the more he felt like the only complete soul in all the world. He had magic and divinity within him. These people? Fractured and randomized abilities. They'd only be able to live a fraction of what he would. They were weak, inferior, ants.

Not his people. Not his world.

Anger and grief filled him, even more than it had when Ozma had passed. At least Ozma was only one man. Not an entire existence. Yes, Hades had planned to live through many generations, but it wasn't supposed to have ended so quickly as this.

He hated Salem with every fiber of his being.

The good news was that immortality and the inability to fall ill provided him with power. He could work tirelessly without need of food or sleep (though every now and again, he would sleep for the relaxation of it – and now that his life was extended, his sleep seemed to be as well, for the last time he hadn't set an alarm, he'd been unconscious for two months). This provided him the advantages needed to quickly claw his way to the top, to prove that he was in effect superhuman without revealing his entire hand. For if they knew the truth…well, they wouldn't believe it anyway.

He became the lord of a small province. Disappointingly tiny in comparison to Amaurot. Angielle would have also put it to shame. He amassed followers – not so many as Salem, not as devout as his Convocation, but people who would take his words seriously.

If there was no purpose for him, then he would have to make one. What he wanted was chaos and destruction. Not complete obliteration; something that would leave a fallout. A production with a curtain call. What he wanted was entertainment.

How does one create chaos in a world with distinct subsets of people? The answer is obvious. People will take any excuse to hate each other. Hades did not have any particular resentment for the Faunus, but the moment he began to paint them as filth and villains, that was the moment things got interesting. Humans began to consider themselves superior to Faunus, kicking them around and banning them from parts of town. Blissfully unaware that both they and the Faunus were mere specks in the eyes of Hades the immortal.

Hades became a killer, in a respect. He began an epicenter. Ripples flowed outward, and things broke. How he loved to watch the cracks branch. This may not have been a purpose, but it certainly was passing the time in a way he enjoyed.

What if it could be a purpose, though? If he could make this world sufficiently Dark and tumultuous…might Zodiark come back? Realize the mistake of what he'd left behind? Return, without his glowing sibling, and elevate Hades still higher? He could bring people back from the dead if Hydaelyn wasn't there to guilt him – Hades could have his Convocation back, the city he'd known!

Maybe even –

He set out for a new goal. Spread misery until Zodiark could sense it across the universe and would decide to come back home to his avatar.

(He hadn't known, yet, about the Relics. What they could do. He wouldn't learn until the point at which he was too disgusted by the thought of the gods returning together, especially to permanently break all he'd worked so hard to warp into art, that he would no longer accept that method of Zodiark's return.)

If nothing else, he wasn't bored. He fueled the flames, and the prejudices of human versus Faunus spread worldwide. Moreover, the Grimm running wild were doing his work for him, stirring up fear that attracted more Grimm that inspired more fear and so on. It was maybe the best he could ask for without his god present.

Until Salem rose to power yet again.

She was suddenly the queen of the largest empire in the world. People flocked to the safety of her walls to protect themselves from war and Grimm. She had a consort, a man Hades didn't bother paying attention to (but he really should have). The royal family had made it a mission to protect humanity, give them a panacea, whether or not it was real. Make them all happy. Make them loyal. Oh, and she was now also part Grimm, too, and in a higher concentration than Hades was.

The fact that Salem was doing it better than Hades enraged him. Meanwhile, the poison that Hades had steeped into Remnant, the war between humans and Faunus, was causing upheaval in Salem's societal structure, and she was growing ever angrier. She didn't even know it was his work, not then. (She'd figure it out later.)

They played this game of chess from opposite sides of the world, Salem trying to rein in Hades' chaos and Hades trying to break her precious order. This feud in and of itself assured him he was winning, because it stirred up confusion.

Something must have broken, because it ended with Salem's manor in flames, her consort and their four small children dead. Hades wasn't exactly sure how he'd caused this, but he gave himself the victory. She was, however, still out there. He needed to expand his reach if he wanted to choke her resources dry.

She had taken his god, and before that, she had taken his only friend, his secret love. If Hades had a purpose now, it was making Salem regret every minute of her eternal life.

...

Act IV: "Wicked Game."

As the years went on, Hades had to switch the seats of power he held in order to prevent people from realizing how long he was living. He was never in want of a seat of power, though. Far too many years' worth of historical information and hoarding of finance ensured that.

When fate spread itself out for Hades to trip over, he was acting as king of Vale, under a name he didn't even remember to the present day. The sun had gone down, leaving the night black, and his guard accompanied him as he strode down the stone roads to the Academy Castle at the center of it all. Where knights trained; where he made all of the rules and signed them into existence with golden ink.

(The knights bored him. Heroes all seemed to be the same these days. If only something about them could change, even something superficial…perhaps he could at least submit some designs for weapons that were more interesting to watch. A few hybrid blueprints took shape in his mind.)

Road construction forced him and his guard to turn into a back-street detour, turning the stride into a trudge as the rain began to pour. Unbidden, one of Hades' men put up an umbrella over Hades' head; no one else got that luxury. Hades smiled at the thought that really, he was building their fortitude, making them "waterproof." A little rain shouldn't bother the royal guard.

But of course, it had to get even worse. There was a homeless bum, an elderly man with a long gray beard, sitting at the side of the road. Hades sneered, turning up his nose and refusing to even look at the man. He was probably going to beg Hades for coin, which Hades had no intention of letting him get.

Then the homeless man said a word that changed everything:

"Hades?"

Hades stopped, dead in his tracks. His umbrella went a few paces without him. Mildly soaked from the rain, Hades turned in shock to look at the man. The face and body were objectively unfamiliar. But those eyes…despite their change of color, the life in them was unmistakable.

The old man gaped right back. The last time he'd seen Hades, his hair had been longer and blond, and his eyes a different color as well. More importantly, by the math, Hades should have been long dead. This could have just been a lookalike.

Yet they continued to stare at each other in sudden recognition.

Call it magic or something much stronger, but each immediately knew who the other was.

"Ozma?" It was practically a whisper coming out of Hades' mouth. "You…you can't be…"

"I'd thought you dead as well," Ozma replied, almost as softly. "How – "

"There will be plenty of time for explanations later," Hades barked curtly. He snapped his fingers, a resounding noise. "Guards! We are bringing this man back to the estate, where I expect to see him treated as no less than royalty."

"You know him?" one of the guards asked.

"He…" Hades' breath caught in his throat. "He is a friend."

"Hades, no." Ozma's eyes widened; he shook his head. "Do not extend your pity to me, I – "

"You have no say in the matter," Hades told him. "Now stand and walk beside me before I have my men bring you to a warm bed and hot food by force."

So Ozma stood. Which was a long, slow challenge, and Hades could feel his own heart breaking. He hadn't lost the old staff that he'd once used to channel magic. However, that staff was now serving a purpose as a walking stick. Ozma's body trembled; he leaned hard on the staff, mentally cursing himself out for being so weak.

"Will you be able to make it?" Hades asked, a whisper.

"I'm not that weak yet," Ozma coughed back. "Even if I am a shadow of what I once was."

Another snap and Hades' guards put the umbrella up over Ozma's head instead. The procession walked slowly so as to allow Ozma to properly hobble along. At last, they reached the castle, and Hades demanded the finest guest suite be redecorated in green, with a hot bath drawn for the man who looked like he hadn't even bathed in ten years.

As Ozma settled into that bathtub, scarcely able to believe the bliss of the warm water on his skin, he noted Hades slipping into the room. Ozma chuckled; "And what is the meaning of this?"

"To ensure that in your frail state, you do not slip and fall and shatter every last bone in your body," Hades teased, leaning against a wall, arms folded. "Worry not. Warn me to shield my eyes and I shall protect your dignity."

"You…you really haven't changed, have you?"

"I can't say as much for you. When did you get so old, Ozma?" Hades was smiling, truthfully smiling.

"It's a long story," Ozma replied. "But this body is only several decades old. Yours…yours is centuries. Your face is unchanged. You are far older than me in the physical sense."

"Please, Ozma."

"Azem, actually. In this lifetime."

Hades snorted. "Azem? Practically an anagram. Then again, you never were the most creative of men. I might as well call you 'Ozma' still, and I shall."

"If it is you, then I do not mind." Ozma scratched a sponge over his skin, peeling away a layer of filth, watching the true tone of his skin show through the dirt in a neat line.

"You're also paler of complexion," Hades noted. "I'm not certain I like it."

"I'm not either. But when it comes to the blessings of the gods, I really shouldn't complain. It will be different still in the next life."

Was he really supposed to be telling this all to Hades? Did it matter? Hades knew who he was, knew he had to have survived through divine means, and seemed to be using a divine gift himself.

Ozma's thoughts were cut off when he winced, dropping the sponge onto the bubbly surface of the bath with a plop. "Ngh…"

"What now, Ozma?"

"Sometimes…there is pain," Ozma sighed. "Everywhere. It'll just take a moment."

"Truly, must I do everything for you?" Hades shook his head, pushing off from the wall, turning in the direction of the bath. Walking to close the distance. Stopping at the edge and asking so softly, "May I?"

Ozma, flustered for reasons he couldn't even analyze, answered, "Of course."

Hades knelt beside him, taking up the sponge, pressing it firmly and rubbing it gently to take away still more grime from Ozma's sharp shoulders and withered spine.

After he was cleaned up and dressed, Ozma was taken to the green bed and served a steaming plate of roasted bird resting on a nest of vegetables, all placed on a breakfast tray so Ozma did not have to leave the comfort of the mattress. As he ate ravenously, Hades sat at the edge of the bed.

"Now do you mind finally telling me how this has come about?" Hades asked.

"As I said, it's a long story," Ozma sighed. "But you should know that Salem has also returned."

Hades feigned surprise. "She has?"

"Or rather…she has survived."

"Then I take it you would have us reunite once more."

Ozma shook his head. "No. Salem is…she's changed. Or maybe I never saw who she truly was. She…I can't love her anymore. All I want to do now is…"

End her. But he couldn't bring himself to say that.

"Avoid her," he settled. "I…I'll tell you more in the morning. It's late."

"I hadn't even noticed. What was the first clue to give it away? The dark skies? The bitter winds?"

Ozma laughed. "Hades, how did you make it to the other side?"

"I think we both know the gods had a say in what happened to us," Hades replied. "As for my tale…I am afraid it shall have to remain untold. Ozma, do trust me as your friend when I say I cannot reveal what has transpired."

Ozma nodded. "I will always trust you, Hades. You're the only person left who I can."

Hades felt his own heart rising. "You're quite obviously exhausted," he said as he shifted off the bed, standing to leave. "I shall turn down the light. Breakfast is whatever you desire, so feel free to dream an extravagant menu."

"Hades," Ozma said hoarsely. "I never thought…I just never thought I'd find you again. I'm having a hard time believing I haven't already died. The only thing stopping me from that theory is that I can't."

"It seems fate has decreed we should reunite," Hades replied. "I suggest we do not question it."

He dimmed the lights, left Ozma to fall asleep in perfect comfort. Would take a long time to reach his own slumber, thoughts of the return of the man he'd thought long-lost whirling through his head.

...

In the morning, Ozma told his tale. Nearly all of it. Hades once again pretended to be surprised. The story he spun in return was that he had already spoken to the gods, received immortality for reasons he could not disclose, and then watched the world perish, unsure of who was at fault.

(Then he learned that Ozma was the consort of Salem he'd waged war on, after the rebuilding. He learned that Ozma was the one she'd killed at close range, him and his precious four daughters.)

They were two of the only three people on this world who wielded true magic. Two of the only three to have known that world before the cataclysm. Two of the only three who, in Hades' mind, were complete souls.

If only the third could be removed from the picture, but Hades knew that she couldn't, because he couldn't, and they were imbued with the same waters.

Ozma's life was the very immediate after Salem had murdered him and his children. Hades did the math; yes, Ozma's body was very old, all right. Yet apparently he rebirthed as a younger soul upon every destruction of his shell.

He wasn't even purely Ozma. He was also the man who had previously occupied that body. They'd merged, somehow. But Ozma seemed to be the one talking to Hades, so Hades chalked that up to Ozma's soul being stronger, more powerful, in charge. From what Hades could understand, though, Ozma had ruined his own life. The first soul in that shell had been rather well-to-do. But Ozma had been so despondent after things with Salem that he barely put forth any effort to live, only hanging onto life because he could not truly die. Bills went unpaid, work went undone, and landlords had their final say, in the end.

No more, Hades decided. Ozma could be a complete leech; Hades would fund him, whatever he wanted. He had a century's wealth anyhow. The one thing it could never buy was the return of Ozma, and miraculously, it had happened, he was here –

Hades knew he shouldn't get his hopes up.

That didn't stop him from bringing Ozma to every public function he could. At royal balls and feasts and promenades, the citizens of Vale would always gossip: why was the king entertaining such a frail old man, who couldn't even stand up straight for his chronic pain? Why did the two of them seem to have such an easy rapport?

Tongues even wagged that the two of them were intimate. Romantically. Sexually. These things didn't bother Hades for any damage done to his reputation; what could an immortal not smooth over in time?

They bothered him because he did want that, and having Ozma back was already too much to ask. He would ruin everything if he pushed it further. Ozma had only ever seen him as a friend, and only ever would.

(He believed.)

He brought Ozma out to a play in the most lavish theater in all of Vale. Didn't tell him the title or any of the cast, because he wanted to see Ozma's reaction. It only took a few lines into the first scene for Ozma to turn to Hades up in their private box and gasp; "Is this 'A Night on the Town,' Hades?"

"Ah, your memory is sharp," Hades responded.

"But…how?"

"It is under my pseudonym now," Hades replied. "I simply rewrote as much of it as I could remember, then passed it off as an original creation."

Ozma scowled, but playfully. "Hades, that's cheating."

"Are we not both cheating death itself? What more can I possibly do wrong?"

Ozma found himself laughing in response. As the play continued, almost word-for-word perfect, Ozma's body faltered a bit, but because of the special memory of their past he was reliving, he decided to deal with that by leaning not back or forward but onto Hades, his head resting on his friend's shoulder. Hades didn't object.

By intermission, Hades had his arm around Ozma's narrow waist.

By curtain's final fall, Ozma kissed him.

...

A month later, as they lay entwined beneath the green blanket in a state of undress, Ozma said, "I was wrong."

"How so?"

"To choose Salem when I did not truly know her. All this time, I could have had love with the person I knew I could rely on to the bitter end. With my best friend, my partner in adventure. It should have been you from the very beginning, Hades. I…I'm sorry it took me so long."

"Well, eventually you got the right answer into that thick skull of yours," Hades teased. "I suppose I cannot fault you too much. She is beautiful…or was, anyhow."

"You are beautiful."

"As are you."

"Hades, don't lie." Ozma chuckled. "At least save it for when I have a younger body."

"Ozma, I can assure you that I am not lying. I am looking into the eyes of the most beautiful creature ever to tread the surface of this planet."

Ozma nestled in closer to Hades. "When I die," he promised, "I'll come find you in my next life, and we can pick up where we left off."

"Let us not lose ourselves in such morbid thoughts, shall we? I prefer to focus on what is here and now."

"You're right."

They fell asleep side-by-side. Woke at almost the same moment of the morning. And that was when Hades made his decision: "Ozma, there is something I must share with you immediately."

...

Act V: "Nothing Personal."

Hades told Ozma everything.

At first, Ozma didn't believe him. "This is a joke," he said. "Immortality has ruined your sense of humor."

(Actually, Ozma did believe him. He just wanted so badly to be naïve.)

"If you still disbelieve," Hades replied, "then perhaps I should show you the proof."

There was a door in the castle that had always stayed locked, carved with a pomegranate. Hades had said never to open the door, and Ozma, contrary to how the hero of every story should ever behave, had refused to even make the door relevant. His trust had gone so far that he didn't even want to know what obviously suspicious thing Hades could have behind the door.

Well, Ozma had just pledged his love. Meaning Hades could no longer do this without him.

The door to the pomegranate room was flung open, to reveal pomegranate-pink carpet and walls bordering laden bookshelves and a desk. Hades began to practically dance around the room, plucking documents from every surface and bringing them to Ozma.

"See! A ledger of a century's worth of ill-gotten profits. Here, the speech I passed off to a figurehead to rally the humans against the Faunus in Vacuo. Here, the speech the Faunus faction leader used to retaliate and create the Faunus insurgence! An entire folio of literature I plagiarized, not only to bring culture from our time into theirs, but to gain notoriety and ethos! And here, see the most important part!"

"Battle plans." Ozma went pale. "Against…"

"Salem's kingdom she ruled alongside you. They are still relevant, of course."

"So you knew." Ozma let the papers slide from his hands onto the floor. "This whole time, you knew she was alive, and what she'd done."

"You can see why I could not yet reveal my hand," Hades replied. "But Ozma, see the possibilities! You and I both seek to destroy Salem, to remove her from the equation!"

"I want to stop her from destroying humanity," Ozma argued. "I want to remove her before she removes this entire world from existence. But you…you're driving humanity closer to Darkness."

"Does there not NEED to be Darkness such as mine to offset Light such as yours?" Hades posed. "The difference is that where Salem intends to exterminate, I merely plan to build a civilization of dark desires. You and I could rule it together! Far longer than Salem would have let you! You and I, we may be Hydaelyn and Zodiark reborn!"

"This is exactly what Salem – "

"You can SEE how it is different, Ozma."

"I can," Ozma snarled. "And it's splitting hairs. Hades, I TRUSTED you, but all this time…you were hurting the people I came back from the dead to protect." His tone mounted in severity. "I was thrust into an immortality I never wanted for the purpose of saving a humanity I never knew. I accepted that duty because they're worth saving. And you're telling me that while I work to save them…you just POISON them? And that you want this to continue without any alterations?"

"Ozma," Hades pleaded. "We love one another. This must be shared. It cannot remain a secret between us any longer. We needn't pursue the same goal, only – "

"Damn you," Ozma seethed. "You were the same as Salem all along, weren't you?"

"Admittedly, some qualities were…amplified by Zodiark's blessing." Hades waved it off. "But this was the purpose I needed. No more aimless wandering, slaughtering of beasts. At long last, I can indulge my deepest desires. As can you."

"Here I said I was wrong to choose Salem – I said you were – I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE I COULD TRUST!"

"And you can!" Hades asserted. "I am telling you the truth now, and I shall never lie to you again! Only open your mind, Ozma – "

Ozma had drawn himself up as straight as he could be. His staff was lifted off the floor; he trembled without its support. Its gem glowed.

Hades' eyes widened. Then his brow furrowed. "Then this is your choice? I will remind you of what is at stake. On one hand, a pool of half-souls, of strangers, of playthings for those such as us. People who you shall wear out and outlive lifetime after lifetime. Not a single one shall ever mean eternity to you. On the other is your lifelong friend, your love, the only one in this damned world who UNDERSTANDS you. The only one, barring Salem, who is a human the way you know humanity should be."

"I have to stop you," Ozma insisted. "I know I can't kill you. But…any other way I can, I'll try."

So that was it. Hades' heart shattered all over again, but in its wake, what poured out from the broken center was sheer rage he was barely able to mask. He put up a white-gloved hand, letting it glow with a radiant violet light.

"So be it," Hades seethed through gritted teeth.

The two men had enough magic between them to level the castle. But that never got the chance to happen. Because at that moment, the physical age of Ozma's own shell caught up to him. Once again, where so many foes and perils had failed, Ozma was brought down by his own failing body.

A heart attack. Sudden, bringing him to his knees faster than Hades could realize what was happening. Hades did know better than to fire off a single spell, however.

Not a single blow was traded between them. After two convulsions, Ozma was dead on the floor, lying on his chest across Hades' damning papers.

"Ozma – " Hades ran to him, dropping to his knees, scooping Ozma's discarded shell up onto his lap, holding him tightly in his arms. "Ozma, no…"

Even though he knew the man was already somewhere else in the world, in a younger body, meeting a new soul, he couldn't stop himself from shedding tears, clinging tightly to the last remnant of a man who had said he loved Hades.

Because when Ozma was reborn, he would no longer be an ally of any sort. He and Hades were to be mortal enemies evermore.

Ozma, Hades, and Salem. Three friends who had traveled the world, now each looking for a way to permanently kill the other two for good.

...

One thing was abundantly clear: Hades couldn't count on Ozma. Or any of these half-souls. The only people he had been able to remotely trust were the Convocation.

He stood on a cliff overlooking the broken remains of Amaurot. An ancient magic tome, its pages about ready to crumble if gripped too tightly, was cradled between his hands. The spell was complex, able to create projections based on the caster's memory – but at a very slow rate. Days to make something as small as a cat. A human was a year's worth of magical energy.

But did Hades not have all the time in the world to rebuild his city?

Eventually, he would have his Convocation back. Only even better, this time. Because this version would be based on his idealized image, and they would obey his will, conscious or subconscious, to the letter.

...

Act VI: "True Believer."

Many, many centuries passed, and technology advanced. Combination weapons were quite in fashion – an old king of Vale had introduced a host of novel designs to the public, and it took off like wildfire.

The four kingdoms had been established for quite some time. Vale, Vacuo, Mistral, Mantle. Mantle in particular was beginning to gain an economic presence thanks to the payloads of Dust found beneath the icy surface of Solitas, with an enterprising family rising to the challenge of mining it all up. And then of course there was the royal family of Mantle, growing the kingdom by investing in new technologies and ensuring that Grimm stayed far away from the borders.

That was only eighty years ago, and was Hades' favorite reign, so he remembered the name he went by at the time and he remembered it fondly. Last name: Ascian. First name: Emet-Selch.

Regrettably, over the eras, he was still in love with Ozma, which was horrible because he also had an unquenchable need to make Ozma hurt as much as immortally possible before expunging him from existence. He'd managed to keep out of Ozma's way, for the most part, but they still knew each other was out there somewhere and working for the exact opposite of what the other wanted.

Thankfully, this didn't mean Ozma was the only person Emet-Selch was able to love. He just had to be a lot more guarded about his true self. No one else could ever know who and what he truly was.

Insofar as he could love someone who had no knowledge of his dark side, let alone his immortality, he did love Proserpina Aventine, who married to become Proserpina Ascian. She loved who she thought was a husband both moral and mortal and Emet-Selch didn't feel in the least guilty. Proserpina was no rose-scented woman herself, a cunning politician who'd climbed the ranks of Mantle with dirty tactics. They both said what they did was for the "greater good of Mantle" and Proserpina probably even believed that of herself.

But that love was nothing compared to what came of his union with her.

He made heirs. Three of them. First came Macaria Ascian, a snobbish girl with brown curls the same shade as her mother's long tresses. An utterly dislikeable girl. Then came Zagreus Ascian, a temperamental boy who stamped his feet and yelled when he didn't get his way, his hair as dark as most of his father's. A nuisance around the estate and someone that Emet-Selch was all too glad to pass to a governess.

But then came the third child. Emet-Selch could never quite figure out what was so different about her from the start, but when Melinoë Ascian was placed in his arms, a squalling newborn, he was seized with regret. Regret that she would one day have to die, for she was such a small, precious thing.

She grew up sweet, demure, kind. Always smiling and trying to offer things to others. And her hair – she'd had a clump of bright saffron on her even as a newborn, a very strange occurrence, which is how Emet-Selch and Proserpina arrived at the name "Melinoë," the saffron. But as she got older, that hair lightened, and Emet-Selch had sired a few heirs in families past but none had ever managed to inherit the hair color he'd had at his own birth, the one he'd had up until he'd entered the Grimm pool.

The only heir that ever made Emet-Selch feel she wasn't an heir. She was his child, his precious daughter.

Sometimes, when she offered him a flower she'd picked from the family garden, a big smile on her rosy little face, he contemplated letting her know. Everything. All the way back to Amaurot.

(After all, unlike Ozma, she was his from birth.)

He kept it secret, though, that his frequent absences from the Ascian estate could be explained by his trips out to the most desolate part of Solitas, where he had raised Amaurot from the dead but only as his memories. Lifetimes of work, to create this paradise. The towers glowed as they once had, actors put on the plays Emet-Selch had remembered and repackaged, Elidibus was even more of an idiot than usual, Fandaniel was even less comprehensible, and Mythros always ready to wait on Emet-Selch hand and foot because he was programmed to.

Here, in Amaurot, he drew up plans and schemes. He still hadn't managed to attract Zodiark back, which meant his next move would have to be incredibly drastic. He wasn't going to stoop to Relics; that was out of the question. No, he would have only the darkest empire, and one that came without the threat of humanity being eliminated because Zodiark had been summoned without being prepared for what he was about to face, thank you very much. Relics might make him judgmental; if he noticed Emet-Selch's work from afar, he would surely decide humanity was worth protecting for its Dark potential.

Yes, he needed somewhat of a bomb. Not a literal bomb, though. That would be over too quickly. He needed something awful to fester beneath the surface of the entire planet.

This wasn't something that could be decided in a day, or even a year.

As he stewed on his deliberation, Melinoë grew into a teenager, an adventurous girl. She liked to sneak off the estate of Alsius Academy in order to get to know the civilians of Mantle, the lifeblood of her kingdom. She learned quickly to disguise herself, to not be recognized as the princess she was, and once she mastered that art, she began to make friends among the populace.

One of whom ended up changing the entire game.

Emet-Selch later wished he'd known the details. All the news that reached him was that Melinoë had befriended an older woman, and then that older woman had died, and the next thing anyone knew, Melinoë was able to conjure ice at will where before she had not.

Long had Emet-Selch been aware of the Maidens. Ozma and Salem's four daughters in Aura alone, passing from one person to the next. None of the brain, none of the heart. The one who had given her power to Melinoë had obviously been the Winter Maiden. Several centuries divorced from Ozma's bloodline.

And yet…

The correlation to Ozma was inescapable. Not in any sort of infuriation, though, by which Emet-Selch actually surprised himself. No, his precious Melinoë was now carrying one of the only good fragments of Ozma. One of Ozma's spawn was now reborn in Emet-Selch's darling daughter.

He became even more of a doting father after this, slyly hinting at ways that Melinoë might hypothetically be able to control her new powers. Never letting on that he had all of them and more. Becoming prouder of her every day, and oh what a shame that she would have to die someday.

(Maybe he'd take her to see the worlds before she went. He'd been stopping around here and there – he never stayed away from Remnant too long, but Remnant was not the only planet to have been warped by his doings.)

He gave her the gift of the arts, as well. He bought her books galore, treated her to opening nights at the theater, brought her to opera at the concert hall. Macaria and Zagreus could see by this time that they were the black sheep, but Emet-Selch never cared. Melinoë deserved only the best of this world, and the innate human desire for story and performance was the best this world could offer.

…Oh. Oh, that was it, wasn't it? If Emet-Selch wanted to truly make waves, that was the sacrifice required. Remove the best thing from this world, and the Darkness would spread.

This would hurt. He would miss the theater, so badly.

But not as badly as he missed the days of Zodiark. (Or Ozma.)

And he had all eternity; he'd find a way to bring it back around someday anyway. Not to mention he didn't have to abide by others' rules, not for this.

On a wintry morning, he made the proclamation that henceforth, all creative arts were banned, as creativity birthed emotion that gave rise to Grimm. He built a platform around how art was an outlet for disgusting desires anyhow, with stories about death and dysfunction fueling people's desire for that in the real world. (A load of bunk, but people were so ready to find something to blame, something that could easily go away and suddenly there were no more problems.)

Many protested. But a lot simply accepted it, tired of Grimm, tired of there not being enough books about good and wholesome values, tired of being unable to topple the obviously corrupt Ascian dynasty that was probably bringing in more Grimm than anything. And better yet, Mistral caught wind and hopped onboard right away.

It had to stop at Mistral, Emet-Selch resolved. Because if the whole world actually did go into an artistic coma and found tranquility there, that would defeat the entire purpose. A few rogue agents paid off in the dark made sure that the philosophies of Mantle and Mistral were frowned upon in Vale and Vacuo.

Theaters were boarded up. Libraries were burned down. The witch hunt began for those who defied Emet-Selch's proclamation. And in the end, when it boiled over at a settlement debate, the Great War resulted.

...

Act VII: "Precious."

Emet-Selch had expected Vale and Vacuo's leaders to stand against him. That was the whole point. War begot more Grimm hotspots, and Darkness was spreading most impressively. It helped that he and Proserpina's dirty laundry was being aired in the process; with accusations of slave labor in Mantle flying, tensions burned hotter.

There was, however, one foe he didn't expect: Melinoë.

"This is wrong," she told her father.

"It is what is necessary," he replied. Not the truth but also not a lie. Just leaving one to fill in what it was a necessity toward.

When she reached adulthood, she stormed out, leaving Emet-Selch stunned. Had he not treated her with the utmost compassion? It was Ozma all over again – no matter how much love Emet-Selch gave to those he treasured, they would always choose the world, the strangers, the proletariat who were in "danger" over the one who loved them so. The one they'd promised to love in return.

Unlike Ozma, he couldn't hate Melinoë. Not his precious girl, his flesh and blood who he'd held in his arms when she was at her very weakest as an infant. Not the one who carried the last fragment of Ozma he could still care to preserve in the form of the power of the Winter Maiden.

He threw himself further into the war to distract his mind. Being immortal, he had no qualms about standing on the frontlines. It hurt to see Proserpina worry for him, crying her eyes out before a decisive skirmish, but he couldn't very well tell her the truth. He began to collect war medals that he himself had set the criteria for, adding more and more to his regal coats. He practically jingled when he walked.

Melinoë hopped the border to befriend the king of Vale. She offered him insider information, resources sapped from Mantle. She heard it first when Mantle planned the strike against Vacuo's Dust mines, and she passed the information on diligently.

Mantle and Mistral's attempt to stifle Vacuo's economy was bested by Vale's advance knowledge, which it passed on to Vacuo. Not without a bloody struggle, however. At the end of it all, there were so many dead. The Warrior King himself slew most of them.

Emet-Selch shattered a wine glass on the floor once he heard that his own daughter had destroyed most of the rest of his own troops.

There was a meeting on neutral ground, at Vytal, which did not go well for Mantle's elites who had begun it all. The Ascians were revolted against. All but one. Melinoë was welcomed back into Mantle along with the grand return of the authors, the poets, the playwrights. They chased away her family, ransacked the palace, and hung her name on the banners of the streets.

She stood before an adoring crowd, claiming that they had never wanted this, that they now felt liberated. Regardless of how much of that was lies, Melinoë was ready to protect what was now her people.

"BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND FAMILY OF MANTLE!" she cried. "No longer must we censor ourselves! The words that have been waiting in your heart, the ones they forbade you to speak, may now be spoken! You may go forth and create stories! Make that which never was and never will be real! Paint with all the colors they outlawed! In fact…do everything you can with the colors we have been banned from for so long! I, Melinoë Ascian, am named for the color saffron. In honor of the retaking of our creativity and individuality, I will be naming my first child after a color, one of my choice!"

Whether or not she intended to start a movement, as the crowd cheered, they agreed to do the same. In their haste to reclaim individuality, they succumbed to groupthink. It spread to the other kingdoms in due time; there soon wasn't a single name the likes of "Emet-Selch" or "Proserpina" about.

Melinoë kept good on her word. She married a lower-class man and elevated his political status. She bore his child, a girl who also had bright blonde hair, though not so strikingly pale as Melinoë's own. She was called "Elenar," after an old word meaning "light." The bright, shimmer-white light of hope.

Mantle was transformed. The war had opened Melinoë's eyes to the technologies she could use and abuse in order to build something better than before. There would be a new kingdom built from the ashes Emet-Selch had left behind, one that would stand high above all that had come before. A kingdom built to bear the weight of the world on its shoulders.

She had taken every step possible to erase her father's legacy. It was so cutthroat that at the end of the day, Emet-Selch was more proud of her than anything else.

...

Act VIII: "Meddle."

Emet-Selch hadn't taken another overt position of power since the rise of Atlas. Melinoë was now dead – far too young, even for a mortal – but her daughter had managed to take her legacy in the exact worst direction it could have gone.

Not without her uses, though.

Emet-Selch proceeded through the Atlesian streets to get to the rebuilt Academy – now a "Huntsman Academy" for Grimm – and the seats of the council of the new capital. Such a young system. So ready to fail.

He stopped at a reception desk. He was asked: "Name?"

He had another alias by that time, but he didn't remember it past that. It wasn't as good as the Emet-Selch years. He gave it.

"Business?"

"A meeting with Elenar Schnee," Emet-Selch replied. "You'll find my name on the list of those approved to approach her."

A clacking of computer keys. "You're approved. Follow the assistant and DON'T veer off track."

He let the assistant lead him through the winding halls until he was dropped off before an austere door. "This is private business," Emet-Selch stated, and the assistant backed off, ready to wait out of earshot until all was over. He knew he could trust this – the penalty for meddling with Atlesian government processes was steep.

Inside the office, Elenar Schnee was sitting on her desk most unprofessionally, her back turned to the door. One of the highest-ranked members of the council, she was dressed in a smart blue suit jacket, a white collared shirt, a black tie, a black pencil skirt, and gaudy blue boots that matched the jacket in color but not tone. Her short blonde hair was styled so that those two symmetrical sprigs Emet-Selch hated were curling up from her head like demonic horns.

"Uuuugghhhh," she groaned, not even hearing the creak of the hinges as she pored over her pages. "I swear every time I turn around, this city just gets stupider."

"I should be the one to sigh."

She gave a shriek; the papers were scattered. In one fluid motion, she'd jumped down from the desk, whirling to glower at the door. In her hands, a set of throwing knives extended between the fingers, having waited up her sleeves for any excuse.

"Ever heard of knocking, Gramps?" Elenar spat. "Or better yet, actually going somewhere you were INVITED."

"I played my part to perfection," Emet-Selch went on, shutting the door behind him and ignoring Elenar's misgivings. "I had earned my rest. And then, thanks to your Council's idiocy, it becomes necessary for me to be summoned back."

"Uh, no, it doesn't," Elenar replied, relaxing and tucking away the knives. "I'm handling this, Gramps. No need for you to be here."

"Your tongue is far too sharp," Emet-Selch replied. "A tiresome trait, would you not agree?"

Elenar knew. In order to puppeteer Atlas the way he'd wanted, he'd had to lay some of his cards on the table. Facilitated when she'd received the Winter Maiden powers upon Melinoë's death, and someone had to make sure she actually used them properly instead of going on wanton rampages.

(She was the exact opposite of Melinoë, which was both a good thing and a bad thing.)

"What, have you no words for me anymore?" He advanced toward her desk. "No matter. I've long grown weary of this mummery."

"Can you not use words that went out of style two hundred years ago?" Elenar scoffed.

"I have no intent to comply with style when you know perfectly well what I mean," Emet-Selch replied, his own tone growing cold. "Now, my dearest granddaughter, let me remind you of your place in the simplest of terms."

Elenar folded her arms, rolling her eyes.

He pointed to her; "You do not make judgments; you administer them. Swiftly and to the letter. N – "

"Naught else is your concern," she finished, mocking his voice.

His own grew louder, sharper: "If aught threatens the balance 'twixt Light and Dark, IT FALLS TO YOU TO REMOVE IT! Be it by those knives you keep up your sleeves or by the armies of workers you have amassed through your dubiously wealthy husband, you have ample means at your disposal."

"You didn't even so much as send a card when you heard about the wedding, you know," Elenar reminded him, flaunting the glittering ring on her finger. "I could've used some moral support when I took on mothering those stepbrats in order to get access to the goods."

"You know why this empire exists," Emet-Selch reminded her. "Why I built it."

"Big words. You stabbed your empire in the ankle. Mommy dearest was the one who BUILT it."

"Had she lived longer, she certainly would have rethought her choice. Or was it her choice to make? Was she already on the verge of denying you a seat at the table, when her demise brought to you no grief but instead opportunity? You being the heartless wretch you are."

"Tch…" Her mouth twisted into a scowl.

"Oh, dear," he taunted, "have I touched a nerve? You always were an easy one to read." He shook his head. "I pity you. I do. As they say, ignorance is bliss. And I know how much happier you would be not knowing the things you know. The founding father, Emet-Selch Ascian, was a tyrant! And he influenced Mantle solely for the purpose of sowing the seeds of chaos!"

"And whose fault is that that I know any of that, anyway? You showed up at my doorstep and told me your boring life story when I didn't even want to know it."

"Don't take it personally. I merely do my duty." He made a dramatic shrug. "To bring about a calamity requires no small amount of power. And there is no surer way to obtain such power than by collecting powerful pawns."

"Which is why I'm your figurehead in the Council, blah di blah di blah."

"To that end, I have labored long and hard, and I must say I am quite pleased with my handiwork – paltry though Mantle seemed in comparison to Atlas."

"Rgh – ENOUGH!" Elenar, quick as a wink, spun. A knife whistled through the air accompanied by a crack of thunder, a trail of lightning – Maiden magic – in its wake.

Squelch. Right through the heart. Embedded completely into his body, not even the handle showing.

"I made that decision last assembly because I'm the writer of my own destiny," Elenar seethed. "Not yours. Not your family's, and not the Winter Maiden's. Sure, it wasn't what you wanted. But it was what I thought would send the message loud and clear that I'm more than your lapdog."

His fingers worked into the wound, extricating the knife and dropping its bloodied metal to the floor as his flesh healed on its own, his heart pumping as it ever was.

"Because that's what you came here to lecture me about, right?" Elenar scoffed. "Tipping the scales toward the motion to use that spear thingy to lift us off the ground. I couldn't even care less, but once I figured out that was the last thing you wanted, I had to send my message."

Emet-Selch sighed. "Such a waste of energy. Both yours and mine. Lest you forget, you are the most powerful voice on the Council. If you wish to spout drivel about destiny, save it for the masses. It will serve to give them a sense of purpose…and you pliant pieces for the game."

In response, Elenar only pouted.

That brought a smirk to Emet-Selch's face. "Oh, do stop sulking, girl. You of all people should understand. Ours is a struggle to restore both mankind and the world to their rightful state. Viewed thus, our goals are one and the same. Be that as it may, ensure in your haste to shed the mantle of a pawn of one side, you do not become the pawn of the other."

Elenar stuck her tongue out at him.

"Most unladylike. Were I you, I would ask who indeed this mysterious man is, who suggested to elevate the city under a cover story of Gravity Dust. Who knew that the latest in the parade of Schnee trophy wives would have all the access not only to the aforementioned linchpin but also to the lines of communication needed to formulate a lie around it – all while receiving the sum for the Dust and not having to deliver an ounce of the stock."

"Spare me from the thought of two of you running around," Elenar scoffed.

"The truth may be far worse than you entertain. Do your research, girl. And do not think to disobey my orders again. I would demonstrate why, and yet I believe once you have learned the truth of your mistake, you will see the very threat I protect you from."

(He couldn't hurt her, though. No matter how awful she was. Because she was the last link: the Winter Maiden. He already knew he would be following that power to the ends of the earth.)

"Consider." He nodded, then turned and left through the door.

The door subsequently felt the thuds of a host of knives thrown in utter frustration, thunderclaps echoing.

...

Act IX: "Halo."

"Our supplies of Black Dust have been ruined, but the new plant is already under construction. We should have the first batch ready in time to fill the order, Ms. Schnee."

Ten years later. Underground, lest they figure out the secrets she now had to hide. To most of the world, Elenar Schnee was dead, but the fact that she had not in fact actually died of that death had allowed her to secure a unique position within Atlas. Not unlike that of her grandfather, when she had still been publicly alive and able to hold a seat at the council.

Now she was underground, doing his dirty work and planning her own.

"Just hurry it up," she sneered at the Faunus page who'd come to deliver the information.

"Yes, Ms. Schnee." He bowed. Strode out of the room.

Elenar could practically count down to when she would hear that voice break into her consciousness: "Ah, yes! Black Dust. The rarest of all. If I recall correctly, your husband did not much care for its discovery and effects."

"Are you here to lecture me about doing my job behind the scenes?" Elenar huffed at Emet-Selch, who leaned against a tank in the dark and shadowy laboratory. "Don't worry. I'm still working on your to-do list. But a girl's gotta earn a living."

Emet-Selch pushed off from the tank, walking to Elenar's side. Taking in how much she'd changed, which, in the physical sense, appeared to be not at all. Moreso in the way she dressed, swapping her blue suit coat out for a weathered denim jacket, her black pencil skirt for black leather. Loosening her tie.

"A ruthless and indiscriminate weapon indeed, Black Dust," Emet-Selch continued. "It seems you are capable of making decisions worthy of your bloodline."

"Well, that would just be fitting now, wouldn't it?" Elenar posed. "Seeing just how much I inherited from you, gramps." She sniffed.

"Is that so?"

"You have to have noticed, or else you're stupid," Elenar told him. "I don't have so much as a wrinkle or a gray hair. I'm not aging, the same way you're not aging. Where do you think I got that from?"

"Are you certain that is no mere function of your current…altered state?" Emet-Selch teased, his eyes twinkling in the dark.

She'd been on the business end of a Grimm attack. She'd come out of it not quite alive but not quite dead. She had no pulse. She seemed not to have emotions, either, unless she put on a show of having one she remembered the hallmarks of.

It hadn't really been a downgrade as far as she was concerned.

"Nooooo, I thought that had something more to do with the fact that I still had these." She held out her hands, palms up. Forming a small crackle of lightning in one and a frosty cluster of ice in the other. "At least at first. A whole new Winter Maiden and I can still do half the parlor tricks."

"There are some who do not limit their seasons to four, you know," Emet-Selch told her. "Cultures of faraway lands that divide the years perhaps even more accurately. I know of one such civilization with an entire season devoted to the monsoon, and another season meant to be the pre-winter."

"Pre-winter," Elenar repeated. "That seems almost fitting for what I can do. But after I got over the shock of figuring out that I could still use magic even without being the Winter Maiden, I began to wonder if the Winter Maiden ever had anything to do with it. After all, the lightning always was weird. I'm starting to think that's another thing I got from you. A little teensy-tiny fraction of your magic. So in the end, if I'm doing what's worthy of your bloodline, my genetics decided that a while ago, didn't they?"

(She was waiting for the day she could break away. They both knew it. He had to make the most of the time he had her caged.)

Emet-Selch shrugged. "How very astute of you. Truly, though, I must commend you for continuing to embrace your role as she who directs Atlas' finances, even behind the scenes as of your little mishap. You play the part of the chessmaster well. Sometimes, even I catch myself believing!"

She sneered. His face, as ever, was filled with mischievous intent. "I figured out what I did wrong with the staff, you know," she spat. "I never missed a background check after that. It was YOU who didn't warn me there was an ex-boyfriend wandering out there waiting to throw a spanner in the works."

"An explosive, caustic agent of death," Emet-Selch mused. "Now that I think on it, Black Dust may well possess the perfect aspect."

"WHAT WAS THAT, OLD MAN?"

"After all, slowly but surely, in this godless world, the absence of Light and Dark has worked upon the aether of this Remnant, meaning there is no influence for the Dust to be susceptible to…it acts a force of its own to fill the void…even if the Dark never follows." His voice dropped to a mutter, and his eyes averted.

"I think you're ranting about you instead of me now," Elenar accused.

Emet-Selch snapped to attention. "Well, I shall leave you to your own devices. Go forth and reap the profits of your grand and glorious embezzlement." He turned to stride away.

Elenar put a hand on a hip, shifting her weight as she watched him retreat. "While you do what? You came here for a reason, you know. You're planning something. And you get to know all about what I'm doing, so now I get to know all about you."

He stopped. Turned to smile at her. "Need you ask? I will be doing what I always have done."

"Spreading Darkness and chaos in hopes of your god returning," Elenar scoffed. "I know the story, Gramps. But HOW are you gonna do that now that nobody wants to start another war? Or did you forget? I had to reach out to the fringe groups in order to find buyers for the Black. After your Great War, everyone's gun-shy except the hidden radicals. Oh, and there was one more little detail I was thinking about. What was it? …Oh, the fact that you actually managed to tear Remnant in half and your god still didn't come back."

Emet-Selch slowly shut his eyes, and his smirk faded, slightly. Because she was right, and he'd been coming to terms with that for decades. But he was quickly able to regain his theatrics, striking a pose of mock exasperation. "Are you truly so naïve? You thought me oblivious to the result? Of a war so painstakingly plotted?"

"If you have some spiel about how Atlas is the entire thing you were going for the whole time, you can swallow it," Elenar said. "You've done a whole lot of things on purpose, but Atlas was a big fat failure."

He kept up the act. Smirking. And immediately changed the subject: "If you have no further questions, I must be on my way."

"What's wrong, Gramps? Touched a nerve?"

He had already turned on a heel. Begun to exeunt. Then: "Oh, but before I take my leave, it would be remiss of me not to offer a word or two of gratitude. I really must thank you for the highly customized Grimm you were able to engineer. I could wage war on Salem for control of Zodiark's pool, but having them tailor-made for me with the funding and equipment of the Schnee Dust Corporation is so much less tiresome!"

"And theeeere it is," Elenar deadpanned. "You never came here for anything to do with the Black Dust, did you? You wanted to see how experiment number four was coming along."

"Merging cloning techniques with the old magic, yes?" Emet-Selch confirmed. "It certainly is a compelling – not to mention entertaining – field of research. And of all the options available…" He flung his arms dramatically. "You agreed to the most destructive designs you could get your hands upon! You have a twisted streak to you, Elenar! Like grandsire, like granddaughter…eh?"

"Cut the monologue," Elenar spat. "Just follow me. It's almost done."

She led him through the laboratory to a hidden room in an already-hidden facility, pulling back a curtain to reveal an entire wall that gave a view into a fluid-filled tank. Suspended in it was a winged, humanoid Grimm, its head designed as a horned skull.

Emet-Selch reached out to brush the glass with his fingertips. "He is beautiful," he whispered.

"And I added the little bonus feature you requested," Elenar went on. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to exhume the body of a war hero?"

Melinoë's head and upper torso looked as though she'd never been dead, only sleeping, the skin in pristine condition. She was stitched almost seamlessly onto the Grimm creation – not at all alive, but a puppet that would be animated by its movements. And perhaps a ghost lingered; Emet-Selch could sense the slightest stir within Melinoë's corpse. A prevailing emotion. Fear?

Once this Grimm was under his control, same as the others he'd commissioned, then he would be able to keep this fragment close. "I shall call it 'Zalera,'" Emet-Selch decided.

"Whatever," Elenar huffed. "Anyway, give it a week."

"I suppose now may be an appropriate time to inform you that I have designs for still more."

"Oooooof course you do."

"Roughly nine more, in fact," Emet-Selch told her. "What Salem has amassed in quantity, I shall surpass in quality."

"Drop them off at the door and I'll see what I can do."

...

Atlas' finest Huntsmen couldn't begin to best the fish-tailed Grimm they'd seen hovering over the fields, brandishing a trident of bone. Mateus was an outdated model, but an efficient one.

Emet-Selch, however, had some decisions to make from his study in Amaurot. Elenar's words stung with too much truth. He'd done his worst, all but ended Remnant's civilized life, and Zodiark still hadn't taken notice.

He could tell himself that the creation of his designer Grimm would be what finally got the Dark god's attention. But he knew better.

Long ago, he had taken Zodiark's words as a new purpose because he had been a slave to the approval of Ozma. It had happened all over again, apparently. This time, he'd at least had the dignity to choose an actual god as his lord and master, but really, who was he serving? All he had left to serve was himself and he wasn't even doing it.

Times had changed. No more could he be in the public eye without suspicion; hundreds of years of records would begin to give him away. No more could he focus on breaking Remnant; he'd already done that and it hadn't worked. He needed to diversify his portfolio. Look to more of the worlds outside his borders, the ones he could travel to by Corridor. Figure out a way to stop relying on Elenar, because she would turn on him any day now and become the fourth immortal with a grudge on the chessboard.

Move ahead on his own terms. No one else's.

...

Act X: "Crazy."

Which brings us to more or less the present-day era. His most recent alias: "Solus zos Galvus." A sun-reminiscent name to keep with the color theme. And a little reminder that he was the ultimate progenitor of the ones that had called themselves the lights of hope after the Great War.

He expanded his borders and also contracted them. Many worlds were reflected in his eyes; he knew much. Yet hadn't made a move, not yet. He needed time to make a decision, and it had only been a few decades, which was a blink to him.

On Remnant, he kept mostly to Atlas. It was a political hotbed, a pressure cooker ready to get too high and blow. Especially with the ascension of one General James Ironwood. An absolutely paranoid man who had insisted upon taking power despite his many mental and physical injuries.

Oh, this was even better than Solus himself ruling the city, because Solus would have been intentionally malicious beneath everything, and that could be discovered. But Ironwood? He proved that the road to Hell was in fact paved with good intentions.

He had to become part of Ironwood's inner circle. A few well-placed words, a bribe or two, and a dramatic showcase of what he could do with a gun and he was in.

(A gun. He'd chosen it for its simplicity. A hilarious joke to him and him alone – he'd invented the entire hybrid-weapon trend, he was capable of wielding more magic than any of the four Maidens, and yet he relegated himself to the most ordinary-looking implement possible.)

This also offered him a better vantage point for the Winter Maiden. It changed hands a couple of times after Elenar. The latest, Fria, he watched from afar until he ascended in the Ace Operatives. Then he introduced himself to her innocently: a mere bodyguard.

(The Winter Maiden would always be his fragment of Ozma, his remnant of Melinoë, his daughter. No matter who had it – unless Salem ever got her hands on it.)

The other Operatives didn't appreciate him much at first. He was apparently too caustic, and sowed discord. Exactly as he wanted it. Tortuga in particular was a foe he crossed paths with often.

"I've had about enough of your high-horse BULLSHIT, zos Galvus! You don't get to come in here and act like you're better than everybody else! So help me, I'll have you court-martialed if you piss me off ONE MORE TIME!"

Well, that was a challenge Solus had to rise to. In his Amaurotine stronghold, he asked the memory-shade of Mythros, "What is the most aggravating thing I could do in this situation, the straw that would shatter Tortuga's spine and fragile ego? What could I change about our working situation that would assert that I do, in fact, act the way I please because I am, in actuality, superior to everyone else?"

Mythros gave Solus the exact answer that Solus would've wanted him to, as by design.

"Ah, you are ever the genius, Mythros."

Tortuga spilled his coffee all over himself when he walked into the briefing room to see Solus stroking his new accessory, which was puffed out on his lap. "The HELL, zos Galvus?"

"I call him 'Hythlodaeus,'" Solus responded as he continued to pet the miniature shoebill stork, straightening out its feathers. "You do not want him around?"

The next coffee cup was thrown straight at Solus, who shot it out of the air. "I TOLD YOU TO KNOCK THIS SHIT OFF!" Tortuga yelled. "NOT TO BRING IN A FUCKING EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMAL!"

"So it seems that what you would most resent is my acquisition of an 'emotional support animal,'" Solus mused.

"Wha – why are you saying that like you're going to get ANOTHER one?"

The shoebill made a noise like gunfire going off, and Tortuga blew a gasket.

And then, a few weeks later, Tortuga died in what was reported as a most unfortunate accident. Solus himself put in the recommendation for the only Faunus to have ranked the top third of his class.

As Marrow Amin ascended, Solus muttered, "Tortuga, would that I could see your reaction to the 'emotional support animal' I have brought onboard to assuage the distress I feel at your comments toward Hythlodaeus."

The others seemed to know, on some level. So they didn't question anything else Solus ever did. They did, however, snap back whenever he berated them, and he didn't mind that because it was such a fun game.

The pressure built. Something was going to blow sooner or later. And whatever was left in the aftermath was what Solus wanted to ride out of Atlas. He could sense the Darkness in the air – between the spawn of Elenar's stepchildren creating a corporate monopoly run on slave labor and the economic division that kept Mantle constantly below Atlas in every sense of the word, the people were getting restless.

This time, Solus had a secondary goal. The Great War was all about Zodiark. He couldn't top that. But this new calamity, he could target toward one or two specific immortals. He would bring them to the field and show off his newest purpose: to serve himself.

When they arrived, they would fuel the fire. Especially if it was Salem who showed up.

(He hadn't expected her to take Fria.)

But what shape would that calamity take? What was all of this building toward? Even Solus did not know. He anticipated it, however, feeling as though some sort of euphoria were just around the corner.

Only time would tell.

...

This is a story from not as long ago. Shortly before Jafar departed for Remnant with his allies, in fact.

What the Overtakers knew that many people didn't was that Hades had decided to re-open the Underdrome and stage battles between the dead for entertainment. It was never a bad idea to have a tournament arena on the side anyhow, should one end up with some more interesting and less-deceased captives. The Forbidden Mountains were given a linking portal, and the Overtakers could come and go as they pleased to the Underdrome to watch the fights.

Many were just for fun. Throw two angry souls in the ring and even with no prize on the line, they'll recognize they have nothing left to lose and batter one another. But in some very rare cases, prizes were offered to lucky souls that managed to battle their way out of the tournament bracket.

This was one such incidence.

Hades let Maleficent walk ahead through the rows of seating. "I'm tellin' ya," he insisted, "these are some big up-and-comers. Already made mooks outta most of the monsters I threw at 'em. And I stacked fights against 'em on purpose. I think these two crazies just might have what it takes to swim in the big kids' pool."

"I reviewed their histories," Maleficent replied, taking a seat. "They are not without their similarities to our legion. All the same…I require proof of their mettle."

"That's what today's all about, babe." Hades settled in next to her, flicking his wrist to summon up a gray cardboard container filled with something that vaguely resembled popcorn, but also seemed to be crawling. "I set up the biggest, baddest match in the whole gauntlet. Winner take all. Loser…well, let's just say that even in death, you would NOT want to be the loser. Now these two, I got faith in 'em. But you're the one they gotta impress."

"I look forward to seeing their prowess," Maleficent said.

Hades threw a handful of the snack he held into his mouth, crunching it. His eyes scanned the audience for other familiar faces from up above. There was only one in attendance that day. "Oy…geez louise. Talk about awkward."

"Oh?" Maleficent looked down to where Dr. Facilier was seated in the second-from-front row, with about fifty seats' distance between himself and the dynamic duo. "Might I ask what has transpired to invoke such a comment?"

"So I dunno how I managed to miss, like, all the signs," Hades said, "but apparently the guy was moonin' over me while I was moonin' over you. Aaaaand now that I got my one and only, he's…well, let's just say a little resentful."

"This will not become a problem, will it?"

"In the sense that he'll come for vengeance? Nah." Hades pushed his hands outward to dismiss the concept. "He knows I brought him into this world and I can take him right back out. In the sense that he's not gonna be givin' a hundred and ten on the field? Most likely. Also, it's gonna make drama, and I don't like drama when it actively impedes what I'm trying to do, i.e. co-run a house of divine usurpers and universal conquerors."

"Hm." Maleficent thought it over. "To destroy him may be a waste of resource."

She didn't need to say what she was really thinking. Hades knew that while Maleficent would never, ever admit to having regretted something she'd done, she still had reservations about the fact that she'd made an example of Pete. "Hey, uh…" Hades spoke up. "Completely unrelated, but I took a third look at my records today, and wouldn't you know it's the weirdest thing? The Petester himself, disappointment of the week, was recorded as coming in, NOT recorded going out, and yet there's no evidence that he still exists. And I'll tell you, when stuff like that happens in MY Underworld on MY watch, I don't care who or what the soul is, I need to know what is going on under my nose. Trust me, this is NOT over until I figure out where he's blundered off to."

"I hope you can put your mind at ease on the subject." It was a cold response indicating Maleficent didn't want to discuss it further – much as she appreciated the update.

"Anyway, on the Shadow Man," Hades went on. (Facilier had taken one glance to confirm it was Hades there and then moved about ten seats even further away.) "Thought about seeing if a Malef-approved one-night stand would get it out of his system, but nnnno, pretty sure that'd just make things worse, and I don't need anybody pining over me. I hate pining. You never pine and that's why I love you."

"I do not even know the emotion of pining."

"What I figured. You're great, babe. Anyhoo, only one solution left then, and as much as I hate the C-word, the quickest and easiest way out of this is probably gonna be to play…Cupid."

"You would find him a new mate to divert his affection for you?" Maleficent asked. "It seems a clever solution."

"Yeah, well, might be more trouble than it's worth. About two lingering looks from him ago I started puttin' together a list of eligible bachelors around the Overtakers, and the only two who I thought were maybe, almost, REMOTELY suitable ended up hooking up WITH EACH OTHER."

"I presume you mean Jafar and the Captain."

"I do in fact mean Jaffy and CaptainFloor. I mean, I guess the Dark Ace exists, but really? Nah, that'd go over like a lead balloon. So my current solution is just to ignore it and just hope it all blows over unless Mr. Right-for-the-Shadow-Man comes riding in here on, like, a huge enchanted tarot card or somethin'."

Maleficent did a double take. She was no stranger to those who used cards in their magic, and a particular image had come up in her mind – not of anyone who rode a card around, but of someone who did do very interesting things with cards. Someone suave. The two problems being that this person was firmly in enemy territory last time she saw him and that she didn't really care to put much effort into this, much as she did want her Heartless master working at full efficiency. The more pressing concern was the sheer amount of scorn radiating from Facilier at the moment. Because the crux of the issue was that neither Hades nor Maleficent liked to be scorned, especially under their own roof.

Thankfully, the sound of a funeral march and the dimming of the lights indicated a distraction. "Oh, this is it, this is IT!" Hades pumped a fist and put more almost-popcorn into his mouth.

Maleficent smiled softly in the dark. Whether the up-and-comers won or lost, at the very least, she'd be treated to a show.

In a puff of teal-and-purple smoke, Pain and Panic appeared in the midst of the Underdrome. "LADY AND GENTLEMEN!" Pain said to all three members of the audience. "WELCOME TO THE FINAL BRACKET OF THE EREBUS CUP!"

"We got a real, REAL big match today!" Panic pointed out. "Who's gonna win? You don't know! I don't know! They don't know! It's anyone's game!"

"IIIIIIN THIS CORNER!" Pain gestured to one edge of the battlefield. "They've been demolishing the competition and haven't seen a loss yet! Hopes are high for these underdogs who've defied every expectation! I present to you! FISH MOONEY AND RUSSELLLLLL EDGINGTON!"

The two souls being tested that day sauntered onto the field. Russell looked about the threadbare audience and gave a cheeky wave to everyone present; Fish simply focused on walking with as much poise as possible, gaze focused straight ahead on where her opponent would arrive.

"And now, for the rivals who stand between them and the ultimate win!" Panic introduced. "They've been giving even Hades heck for as long as they've all been down here! I present to you!"

As Panic continued his introduction, a quite large winged Fellbeast, laden with muscles and slavering from between its fangs, burst onto the field, a robed and armored rider with no features visible atop it.

"The Witch-King of Angmar!" Panic introduced.

After him strode an elderly man bearing long white robes and long white hair, a gnarled staff in his hand.

"Saruman the White!"

Finally, between the two of them, there arrived, gliding on a plume of smoke, a man in full armor, a burning red aura surrounding him.

"And the one! The only! Lord of Mordor, Base Master of Treachery, Lord of the Rings himself: SAURON!"

Sauron let his spiked helmet fall aside, golden locks of hair billowing out. He withdrew an angry-looking sword from a scabbard at his hip as he smiled toward Fish and Russell.

"The Dark Lords of Mordor?" Maleficent commented. "What a challenge indeed. And given our history with them…surely an intentional matchup in more ways than one."

"Do I maybe wanna see them get their tushes kicked after acting all high-and-mighty to us way back in the day?" Hades suggested. "Yeah, yeah maybe I do."

"A powerless human," Saruman remarked. "And a creature of the night, disposable as any of our armies."

"Such insignificant beings hardly dare to challenge the likes of Mordor," Sauron said in a low hiss. His very image seemed to flicker, indicating that even if he were alive, the fair face he wore would be but a disguise.

"Well, somebody thinks they've got big dick energy over there," Russell replied. "You can talk the talk, but how about walkin' the walk?"

"You will fail," the Witch-King snarled. "We shall scatter and tread upon your bones, for our hour has arrived. With the victory of this tournament of shadows, we shall regain our right to the living."

"Try me," Fish responded.

Maleficent raised a brow.

"Look, had to make the competition worth fighting," Hades said. "I make an empty promise, the next round of 'em won't even step into the ring. If we want the two we want, we gotta make sure the three we DON'T want got a chance."

"I shall trust your judgment," Maleficent said, though her tone was laden with doubt.

"Let's not drag this out any further," Fish suggested. "I didn't come all this way to fall short of the line."

"Can't say I always wanted to know how a Nazgûl tastes," Russell added, "but I'm hopin' it pairs with a choice vintage."

"AAAND THREE!" Pain counted down. "TWO! ONE! LET THE BLOODBATH…BEGIN!"

Panic had to drag him away from the field in order for him to remember to leave before he could get trampled. And then the battle commenced.

Russell went for the Fellbeast first, charging as fast as light. The Witch-King implored his mount to rise into the air, out of the vampire's reach, and Saruman focused all his magical energy on lighting up the area where the Witch-King had been, where Russell was headed. Russell was faster, zigzagging around the sudden conflagration of flames and rushing to pummel Saruman himself. Saruman hurriedly surrounded himself with an impenetrable magical shield just before Russell collided with it, baring his fangs hungrily.

As this took place, Sauron put his arms out to either side, and the floor of the arena rippled, ready to bend to his design. One hand extended toward Fish, emitting a wall of white-hot flame. She sidestepped, but not before checking to see which way the Witch-King had taken off.

She placed herself right below the Fellbeast. The Witch-King thought it an error on her part, ordering his steed to plummet. One massive claw snatched her up.

"That was your first mistake," Fish said from within its grip. She withdrew a toxin produced deep within her body (or the shade of it, anyhow), making her entire self venomous. The bare skin of the Fellbeast, in contact with her, was immediately infected.

The beast bucked, trying to ditch the Witch-King off its back. It flew quick circles of the field in hopes of dislodging its rider further. The Witch-King clung on steadfastly, snarling as Fish scaled the beast's leg to end up on its back beside him.

"You are as foolish as any mortal," he seethed. "No man may bring an end to me!"

Fish gestured to herself, making a vague tracing of her figure with a long-fingernailed hand. "Please tell me I don't even need to say it."

The Witch-King leapt to his feet, sword drawn. At that moment, Fish commanded, "Down, boy."

The Fellbeast swooped low enough to pick up Russell, who instantly abandoned the pursuit of Saruman in order to hop on. He rushed the Witch-King from behind, knocking off his helmet and sinking his teeth into the Eldritch void that lay beneath.

Fish watched as he slurped up the Witch-King. When the Nazgûl lay slumped across the Fellbeast's back, Russell straightened up, Darkness dripping down his lips as he gave a breathy "Aaaah!" followed by "And I AM a man, which just makes your little boast sad!"

"How did it taste after all?" Fish asked.

"Like midnight sex under a full moon, but with a faint little hint of citrus."

Fish dropped to take the Fellbeast's neck. "Now, let's see if you can make Mommy proud."

The Fellbeast hurtled toward Sauron and Saruman, dodging elemental attacks and entire chunks of the field thrown at it. Sauron was casting so quickly that he had no time to shield himself again, meaning when the Fellbeast hit, he was thrown across the field. In almost no time, he had Fish standing over him while the Fellbeast took Russell higher. Fish leaned down, cupping Saruman's chin with her hand.

As fear flooded the old man's eyes, she told him, "I don't think it's fair how you've had to take orders from that swaggering pretty boy. In fact, I think you should take out any anger you still have on HIM, not me."

Instantly, Saruman was on his feet, throwing all of his magic at Sauron. Sauron let out a screech before transforming into a wolf several times the size of what a wolf should be, using his new form to barrel across the field, jaws snapping.

The Fellbeast circled back down to collide with the wolf, Russell bringing the almost-drained shell of the Witch-King's shade down to the battlefield floor. While Sauron in canine form chomped down on the throat of the traitorous Fellbeast, flipping it onto its back, Fish rushed over to Russell, who was kicking the Witch-King in the side.

"Now, I know I took just enough outta ya that ya ain't dead," Russell said. "So wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!"

The Witch-King stirred. "You – "

Fish thrust her hands at the void that made up his face. "NOW you're being bested by a woman," she told him. "And this boss bitch is telling you to turn on the Ringlord and fight him to the death."

"Or equivalent thereof," Russell amended.

The Witch-King had no choice but to obey. He hefted his sword, rushing Sauron.

Sauron, having torn the Fellbeast's head from its body, changed form again to challenge Saruman. Now, he was a pale creature, blood dripping from pointed teeth.

"WELL THAT'S JUST FUCKIN' PLAGIARISM!" Russell yelled at the vampire.

"I would've said cultural appropriation bordering on racism," Fish commented.

"It's BOTH," Russell snarled.

Sauron used super speed to dodge all of Saruman's assaults, tearing his way through chunks of ice and dancing around fireballs, all while his blade clashed furiously with that of the Witch-King. All it would take was one final opening to bring him down.

Which was why Fish never revealed her hand until the endgame. Sauron had no idea she'd even brought a gun to a wizards' duel until she'd pulled the trigger. The bullet went right through his head.

Which wasn't enough to kill him. But it was enough to get him to flinch, and then every spell in Saruman's book seared his skin while the Witch-King's blade cleaved him in two.

The last thing he saw before his death-within-death was Russell tearing away his breastplate and ripping out his heart before taking a bite as though it were an apple.

"AAAND GAME!" Pain yelled as Sauron collapsed in pieces, Saruman and the Witch-King brainwashed beyond recovery. "You know the rules, everybody! Winner of the final match gets to come back to life, while the LOSER gets a one-way ticket to Tartarus!"

Saruman, the Witch-King, and the broken shade of Sauron's form dissipated. They'd all return to unlife later, at which point they would be at the hands of unimaginable torment.

"And THAT'S what I call a sweep!" Hades yelled, his blue fires burning brighter over his whole body. "Did I tell ya or did I TELL ya, Malef?"

"It seems your trust was not misplaced," Maleficent remarked proudly.

The two of them flitted down onto the field to speak to the challengers. "SPLENDID job, just STUPENDOUS!" Hades congratulated.

"You displayed a cunning that overcame that of the Lords of Mordor's sheer brawn," Maleficent noted. "While they each relied on their own skills and counted on being the strongest, you combined your talents in a clever manner to overcome them. I must say, as an old foe of Mordor, it was satisfying to watch."

"Couldn't've been half as satisfyin' to watch as it was to actually rip 'em open," Russell pointed out. "Just sayin'."

"The terms were clear," Fish stated coldly. "Victory begets resurrection."

"Two pulses, comin' up!" Hades raised his hands skyward, forming an orb of light in each before plunging them down to engulf the pair of souls.

(Around this time, Facilier just decided to head back topside.)

The restored flesh of Russell and Fish practically glowed. "Good," Fish said. "I was afraid I'd have to show you the consequences of reneging on a deal with me."

"Not sure 'afraid' is the right word on my end," Russell said. "More like…half-hopin' I'd get a chance to show you what I'm REALLY made of."

"The CHUTZPAH on these two!" Hades gestured to them.

"Indeed, you seem to be of our very ilk," Maleficent said. "I should like to enlist the forces of the both of you, now that you are once again among the living."

"Always a catch, huh?" Russell scoffed.

"You disposed of the Lords of Mordor," Maleficent reminded him. "Surely if our arrangement is not to your liking, you can simply…break free."

The unspoken threat hung in the air.

"Very well," Fish said. "What goal are we working toward?"

"Total multiversal domination!" Hades announced, throwing his arms in the air.

"Well, well, Miss Mooney, I think we just lucked out," Russell said. "As it would happen, I'm in the mood for the exact same thing."

"So am I," Fish responded. "But on one condition. I can't work properly without resources. All I request is a few…allies from my home city of Gotham. If you know anything about Gotham, you'll know they won't disappoint."

"If she gets allies, then so do I," Russell said. "One in particular."

"Hey, so long as they don't make waves, they're in," Hades declared. "This is the beginning of a real good thing; I can just tell!"

"This is most auspicious indeed," Maleficent agreed.

...

This is a story from the present. Right where we left off, in fact.

Harley gave a dramatic yawn and a stretch as she sat up in bed. What a strange dream –

But it hadn't been a dream. Even though it had. It was a dream, but it was a very lucid one where she'd made new friends, and they'd all been sailing toward the light together on the Van Eltia and…

Wait.

This was very, very wrong.

Harley cast her gaze about. She wasn't sure exactly where she'd expected to end up, but it definitely wasn't this place. It was a small bedroom, rather ramshackle, with peeling wallpaper that revealed mold spots behind. A crooked desk and a wardrobe with a bent door made up the other furniture. There was a window that maybe could've given Harley a glance at the world this was part of…but it was boarded up, unevenly yet completely.

"What the hey?" Harley jumped out of bed at once. "Where's everyone else, huh? All my new pals? My girlfriend?"

Panic was starting to mount. What if her dream really had been just…a dream? And if that were the case, where even was she now?

She bolted to the door, throwing it open to reveal a narrow hallway that stretched into shadow on either side. It was lined with doors upon doors, all identical to the one Harley had come from. It took a moment for the aesthetic to click.

"This is like some kinda mental hospital," Harley muttered to herself. "Wait – no. It ain't a mental hospital; it's a HOTEL."

She wandered the creaking floor, her glance passing over dim wall sconces that provided the bare minimum of illumination. What else hid in the shadows besides the cobwebs? "Yang?" Harley called out. "Yang, sweetie?" She tentatively opened the nearest door.

There was a lump tucked beneath the blankets on the bed. Dare she hope? As she approached, her stomach filled with dread. "Yang? That you?"

The lump stirred. Then twitched.

Harley panicked, striking a defensive stance.

The blankets rose as the thing under them awoke from slumber. "Ugghhhh, five more minutes, Mom – "

"EEEEYAH!" Harley decked the lump.

"OW!" it shrieked. "WHAT THE HELL, HARLEY?"

She realized whose voice it was. "Oopsie! Sorry!"

A very unamused Giovanni threw the blanket off himself. "Do I even wanna know why you decided PUNCHING ME would be the best way to wake me up?"

"Somethin's wrong, Gio." Harley cringed. "Look at this place. It ain't normal."

Giovanni did in fact look at the place. "Hhhhhhuh. This is sure…an aesthetic choice."

"I don't think we were s'posed to wake up here."

"I mean, maybe the owners are just, like, really bad about maintenance?"

"Hope that's all we're dealin' with," Harley said. "C'mon. We gotta go find the others."

They exited their room just as Velvet came from the door across from them. "Does anyone want to explain to me what this is?" Velvet asked.

"We will when we figure that out for ourselves," Harley said. "Vel, was that room as creepy as the ones we woke up in?"

"I guess it was," Velvet said with a shrug. "Compared to my cell on Titania, it was downright comfortable, so I didn't mind."

"I feel like I've seen this exact building in at least three different horror movies," Giovanni remarked. "Not that I'm scared or anything. This speaks to me on a very evil level." His voice cracked.

"Okay, we gotta find Yang," Harley said with mounting panic in her voice. "If anythin' bad happened ta her, I just couldn't – "

A loud BANG made all three flinch. It was coming behind the only door in the hall that was the odd one out. Instead of wood, it was made of metal, and looked to have been welded shut.

"OH GOD," Giovanni shrieked. "THAT'S A FUCKING METAL DOOR THAT WAS VERY OBVIOUSLY DESIGNED TO KEEP SOMETHING INSIDE AND THAT SOMETHING'S ON ITS WAY OUT!"

Bang. BANG. A dent was forming from the other side.

Velvet stepped out before Harley and Giovanni. She tested her daemon claw; it extended, and had an altogether new shine to it, a softer red marked at the wrist with a looping symbol. "Let's see if being a Nightmare is half as effective as being a daemon," she said. "Whatever's in that room…do your worst."

Three more bangs, and the door was blown completely off its hinges – revealing a huffing and puffing Yang, who'd just battered her way out with the use of only one arm, since her prosthetic had dissolved in the dream.

"Okay, THAT was more of a hassle than expected," Yang said. "Also, hi, guys."

"YANG!" Harley hurtled toward the other blonde, nearly tackling her in a grateful hug. "I was startin' ta get worried!"

"Seriously?" Yang teased. "C'mon, Harley, you've seen me punch my way out of worse situations!"

"I don't suppose you know any more than we do about what this place is," Velvet said.

"Actually, I might," Yang said somberly. "My roommate briefed me."

"Roommate?" Giovanni asked.

As Harley let Yang go, she turned to call into the room beyond the metal door, "C'mon out, little guy. These're my friends. They won't hurt you."

Out waddled a short, stout child. He could've been an ordinary eight-year-old except for a few things. One being that he was an anthropomorphic cat, white with gray ears, clothed in a striped tee and khakis. The other being that his face was covered in stitches – including lengthened threads that his eyes stared through and his mouth had to speak around. Someone had, at one point, sewn his entire face shut.

"The only reason I trust you is because it's no worse than anything else in this place," he said in a low, raspy voice. Still obviously a child's voice, but one that had been weathered by unspeakable torment.

"What the – who DID that to you?" Giovanni yelled. "That's horrible! And so gross!"

"The person who did this to me would be the one I warned you about," the cat child said. "But as it turns out, he's not even the worst of the bunch anymore."

"You were telling me something about this hotel," Yang reminded him. "This is more of the group, so let's hear the rest of it."

"You're all guests in what used to be a branch of Purgatory," the cat child said. "This place was a hotel of horrors run by a sadist. The one who killed my family and sewed my face shut. But that was up until recently. Now, this is only one floor. I can't tell you what the rest of it looks like, because the last time I tried to leave, they refreshed some of my stitches. But now, there are more sadists, and worse. The old owner's mother used to be the real brains of the operation, but I think they must've killed her. They're the only people who could."

"You've told us a lot about what this place isn't," Velvet pointed out. "What about what it is?"

The cat child nodded. "They call it Morbia."

"These, ah, these sadists," Harley realized. "Would they happen to have pals who look like…oh, I dunno…there's this goth girl who wears a lotta purple, a red demon-type guy with antlers, a little spotted weasel with a Cockney accent, and a real fancy lady who casts scary magic?"

"Don't forget the one in the tiara," Giovanni reminded her.

The cat child nodded. "Cyclonis. Alastor. Lucy. Boa. Sara. Them and more. So you've crossed them. That's why you ended up here."

"Aw, geez – " Harley could feel her guts dropping. "This is Cykes' last power play, isn't it? She wants me to be her gal pal – or maybe at this point she just wants me dead – so she invited me right to the sleepover!"

"We gotta find the rest of our Heathens," Yang insisted. "This just became an emergency situation."

"I mean, they should just be behind the other doors, right?" Giovanni posed. "That's…that's what would make sense, right?" His voice cracked again; "Right?"

Harley spun to fling open another door. Inside, she saw someone else stretched out on the bed. "GAR!"

She rushed to Garfield. Shook him. "C'mon, Gar, wake up, wake up wake up – "

He didn't respond. Only gave a soft snore.

Yang, Giovanni, and Velvet dispersed, each finding someone else behind the doors.

"Eizen?" Yang yelled at the sleeping man before her. "Hey, EIZEN! WAKE UP ALREADY!"

"Ainsley," Giovanni pleaded, "if you turn out to be dead, that would SUCK and be a jerk move, so PLEASE DON'T BE DEAD, OKAY?"

"L…Laphi?" Velvet said, face bloodless. "LAPHI!"

It seemed the Morbians had the power even to immobilize an Empyrean. Harley, Yang, Velvet, and Giovanni threw open door after door, finding the friends they'd amassed in the dream world in repose beyond. None were dead, but none would wake.

"I didn't even think Flint COULD pass out!" Harley remarked as she exited one room. "The guy's made of sand!"

"Uh…speaking of, like…rocks…" Giovanni said nervously. "I have some bad news. I mean, like, we all saw this coming, but…"

He held out his hand. On his palm sparkled several pink shards.

"Aw, Spins…" Harley gasped. She gathered Spinel's gem into her hands, tucking her away in a pocket. "Don't worry. We'll wake Entrapta up real soon, and she can get ya back to normal."

They accounted for everyone, then made a rendez-vous back at the metal door. "They won't wake up, will they?" the cat child asked. "It takes longer for some people than others. It depends on who the Morbians want to play with."

"Are they at least havin' good dreams?" Harley asked.

She was interrupted by another childlike voice, this one laced with more innocence: "No…no, please don't take my Epithet! I'm scared! I can't admit how scared I am! Help me! Molly! Giovanni!"

"That almost sounds like – " Giovanni gasped. He bolted toward the source of the noise.

As he'd expected, the dialogue was coming from where Sylvie was passed out. But it hadn't been Sylvie's voice that spoke. Instead, it was a child even younger than the cat – this one a sheep with black-and-white fur, dressed in striped blue pajamas. Lying crossways on the foot of the bed, like a pet.

"Giovanni, help me!" the sheep said in his sleep. "Molly! Somebody! I'm all alone!"

"Wait," Giovanni said. "Is that…I mean, it sounds like…"

The cat child wandered in. "Sleepy Sheep can read the dreams of others when he's asleep. It sounds like your friend is having a horrible nightmare he just can't wake up from."

"NO!" Giovanni yelled. "Not my second-worst minion! You can't just leave him like this! MAKE IT STOP!"

The cat walked up to the foot of the bed, tugging on a white curl of wool. "Wake up."

The monologue stopped. Sleepy Sheep, as he was called, sat up and rubbed an eye with his hoof. "Neko Zombie? What's going on? I'm so tired…"

"Your name is Neko Zombie?" Velvet asked. "That's a little on the nose, isn't it?"

"Wha – " Giovanni sputtered. "I meant make the NIGHTMARE stop, not make the other kid stop telling me about it!"

"I can't do that," Neko Zombie said flatly. "All I can do is take away the distractions."

"So basically, what you're saying is we gotta get our pals out of here ourselves," Yang realized. "Then we can work on waking them up for real."

"If you can make it that far," Neko Zombie said.

"We can't very well carry all of them," Velvet said. "We'll need to wake them first."

"Can't you just take the train out?" Sleepy Sheep asked blearily. "That way, they could all stay asleep while you ride home!"

"There's a train?" Yang asked.

"The Last Train," Neko Zombie corrected. "It's parked outside this floor. It rides on ancient tracks created by angelic spirits. In theory, you could load your friends onboard and drive away."

"But not in practice," Velvet said.

"They keep the key hidden somewhere in Morbia," Neko Zombie said. "And they won't let you have it without a fight."

"Then we fight," Yang stated. "Simple."

"You won't win," Neko Zombie said. "The only reason you're awake is for them to play with. They already know you lost. Believe me…I've tried to win this game hundreds of times."

"Hundreds?" Giovanni repeated. "But, like…you're five."

"Looks more like eight," Yang corrected.

"It doesn't matter!" Neko Zombie's stoic demeanor finally cracked. "You're never leaving, and I'm never leaving, and it's all just impossible! You're going to die here, and then come back to life so you can die again until they decide they want your souls!"

Yang finally seemed unable to respond. It was Harley who said "No. Nuh-uh. I don't accept that. We're gonna get outta here, all of us. Ain't we the ones who time after time rise up from the underbelly an' prove we can scrap with the big boys? It's what we're all about! We ain't givin' up now. At least I ain't. And I'm takin' you with me, whether ya want it or not."

She felt Yang's hand reach out and interlace with her own. "Then I'm not giving up either," Yang insisted.

"I never intended to," Velvet stated.

"We're just gonna have to pull our greatest heist yet!" Giovanni declared. "Stealing OURSELVES from this hostage situation!"

"Well, we wouldn't be the Heathens if we just did somethin' heroic, now, would we?" Harley teased. "We gotta take somethin' of theirs, too. More than just some dumb old train. How about…these two kids right here?" She beamed.

"Huh?" Sleepy Sheep asked. "Are we going somewhere?"

"I wouldn't," Neko Zombie warned. "Sleepy Sheep and I are fixtures of this part of Morbia. They won't want us to leave. They'll fight you even harder."

"Challenge accepted," Yang said. "Unless you guys wanna stay."

Neko Zombie traced the floor with a foot, looking the most childlike he had since the beginning. "I…I've dreamed for so long of finally being able to escape here. But no one will do what needs to be done. I was hoping it would be different this time, since no one would need to sacrifice themselves to end it. But it only got worse."

"I don't like it here," Sleepy Sheep pouted. "It's scary."

"Then it's settled," Velvet said. "You two belong to the Heathens now. Regardless of moral orientation."

"I always wanted a zombie minion," Giovanni mused. "Like, zombie apocalypse fantasies got boring so fast when I was just thinking about how to kill 'em. Now, RECRUITING the zombies and making them into my army? And having a bunch of zombie pals? Now, THAT'S what I call a good time! Also, I'd never wanna kill you, so don't worry about that. You've got spunk and probably PTSD."

"I…" Neko Zombie's stoicism returned. "I'll believe it if you can pull it off."

"We should split up," Velvet said. "Two of us work on loading the others into the train, and the other two go hunting for that key."

"DIBS ON YANG!" Harley held up her and Yang's intertwined hands; Yang couldn't help but smile.

"How about we take key duty?" Yang asked. "You're kinda the heart of the team right now, and I might only have one arm, but it can hit twice as hard."

"Yeah, but you have no idea where it even is," Giovanni said.

"So we turn the whole place upside-down and inside-out until we find it," Yang said. "It's not like we have a better option, right?"

"I'm feelin' lucky!" Harley chirped.

"Then Giovanni and I will load everyone onto the train," Velvet decided. "Probably a better task for us, since I can more easily lift a person with this." She extended her claw yet again.

"And I'll take roll to make sure we got everyone," Giovanni said. "Right down to the part where I pretend I forgot Ben, then make a big stink out of 'accidentally' remembering him so I can make sure he gets outta here safe too. Oh, and could you hand Spinel back?"

Harley passed over the gem fragments. "Probably not a good idea to take a pal all around a house of horrors anyhow."

"All right," Velvet said. "Then let's split up."

Giovanni patted Neko Zombie on the head; "You get to show us where our getaway car is! Or…getaway train. Anyway, since you helped us out, you get to blow the whistle!"

"I…I don't care about things like that," Neko Zombie muttered.

Yang nodded to Harley. "Let's go."

Neko Zombie pointed them back down the hall; "The exit to the rest of Morbia is that way. The train is the other. …Good luck."

Harley and Yang set off together, hand in hand, down the hotel hall, past the other doors they'd opened. Then the doors ceased to be, and the hall seemed to narrow a bit before culminating in a rusty elevator door.

But before either of the women could press the call button, there was a cry of "JUDGMEEEEENT!" and an absolutely strange entity descended from practically nowhere, unfolding as he dangled from the ceiling. He was squarish, striped with red and yellow and purple, with iron bars sticking out of either side of him, serving as arms. A loop at the top of his head kept him connected to a hook on the ceiling; a loop on the bottom was chained to a five-ton weight with another five-ton weight below it. From each iron bar descended a chain ending in a tiny birdcage: one holding a glass heart of pure red and the other holding a glass dollar sign in yellow.

"WHAT THE FUCK, MAN?" Yang yelled.

With his fanged mouth, the creature sang, "Want to know who I am? They call me Judgment Boy!"

"Nobody asked," Yang growled.

"Aw, I think he's funny!" Harley said. "And that's a catchy song! Though if you're here to hurt us, then I'm gonna hafta change my tune."

"Hurt you? I'm here to JUDGE you!" Judgment Boy said. "As your first test before you pass into the rest of Morbia! Quickly! You find a wallet dropped on the street, with a million dollars cash tucked inside! What do you do?"

"Keep it," Harley said. "Duh."

"Hmm." Yang thought it over. "You know, I might've answered differently a while back, but what the hey? I say keep it."

"You SAY you'd return the wallet," Judgment Boy began, "but let's see the – wait. Did you two just say you'd keep it?"

"Uh, yeah," Harley said. "What could go wrong?"

"Well, that wallet belonged to a high-profile surgeon who now can't pay his rent!" Judgment Boy said. "He's been evicted, and can't perform several life-saving surgeries!"

"And we were supposed to know that how?" Yang asked. "That's an insane hypothetical. I don't regret keeping the wallet."

"Besides, he shoulda had a backup plan anyway," Harley said.

"…Well, I GUESS that's one way to pass," Judgment Boy said harshly before folding back up into the ceiling and promptly disappearing.

"The name was spot-on," Yang remarked. "That boy sure was judgmental."

"C'mon, sweetie," Harley urged. "Let's get outta here."

She pressed the call button, summoning the elevator. The doors creaked open with a horrible noise; Yang and Harley entered the lift beyond, letting the doors shut again with an equally horrible noise.

As the elevator descended, Harley made note of its unusual construction. "Is this thing…made of glass?"

Yang tapped the wall. "Looks like it. I wonder why."

The why wasn't about to be answered anytime soon, but the transparent walls did offer the answer to another question entirely. After passing down from the first floor, the elevator was suddenly no longer surrounded by its shaft, instead moving smoothly down through thin air, and Yang and Harley could finally see the rest of Morbia.

It was suspended in a dark void of night, peppered with stars no matter where you looked in any direction. Against the stars, one could see the structures that made up Morbia, built in ancient architectural styles that occasionally defied physics and acted as optical illusions in person. Some of it moved, and some of it stayed still, creating an ever-shifting landscape. The buildings seemed to all connect to one another, some of them changing which other rooms they were adjacent to. The tallest by far was a Sphinx whose paws were illuminated by enormous braziers of fire.

"Whoa," Harley gasped. "That sure is somethin', all right."

"Yeah," Yang agreed. "This might be harder than we thought."

"But did we really have any idea of how it was gonna go, though?"

"You're right," Yang said. "Our only other option is to give up, and that's not really an option at all."

"Dang right! Let's just treat this as an extra-weird date night, okay?"

The elevator sank into one of the buildings, its inner glass door opening up followed by the outer door. This one was much smoother than the one on the hotel block, and the area beyond looked nicer, too. It seemed to be a lobby of sorts, painted in shades of pastel pink, with lace curtains and doilies adorning the tables. Charming paintings of children in pastoral scenes adorned the walls.

It looked innocent, and for that reason alone, it was already terrifying, for no room in Morbia would look like this without a hidden secret.

"Hate this already," Yang said as she stepped out.

"Yeah, coulda gone with a better look," Harley agreed. She nodded to a door across the room; "That's gotta be where we start."

Before either could get there, the door opened. Harley and Yang braced themselves, fists curled.

They were right to do so. What entered was a pair of creatures that defied human biology. Their skin was leathery and coarse, a shade of beige-gray, stretched out over frames with too many limbs and lopsided asymmetry. Instead of faces, each only had two buttons that served as eyes.

"Uhhh…hi?" Harley said nervously, putting up a hand to wave.

The two creatures advanced rapidly, reaching out to grab the escapees.

Harley and Yang quickly went to work, fists flying. Punching one of the creatures was like punching a bag of mud, Harley thought – until its innards hit the floor and there was no more "like" about it. It was a bag of mud, plain and simple. The texture of the skin had been canvas all along. Harley had hit it so hard that it had burst apart and no longer moved.

Yang had also felled her opponent. "Ew," she gasped. "They're…like…I don't even know. Did we just commit a double murder?"

"Reminds me of golems," Harley commented. "But without the protection part. Or maybe they just protect the wrong side. I don't think they're like us. I think they're like…wind-up toys the others made for minions."

"That makes sense," Yang said.

"…You know what makes even more sense?" Harley realized. "If we go walkin' around the way we are, we're just gonna attract more attention an' get ourselves noticed. Buuuuut…"

"No," Yang said flatly.

"Pretty pleeeaaaase?" Harley begged.

"…Only because it's literally life-or-death," Yang relented.

They slathered themselves with the mud, then pulled on the canvas wrappings. Now they looked like two of the toy-minions rather than a pair of escaped humans.

"Ugh," Yang muttered. "This thing smells like crap."

"Yeah, in hindsight, this might not've been the greatest idea I ever had," Harley admitted.

"In your defense, we didn't have many options," Yang pointed out. "This is a LOT smarter than traveling without disguises. Anyway, we should get looking for that key. Stay close."

"I will if you will."

The bright-pink door across the lobby led them into a kitchen that was the same amount of pink, with floral-patterned china resting in polished glass display cases. A shining teakettle was perched on a stove, just beginning to whistle at a dulcet tone.

Before Yang or Harley could take in the scene any further, a pleasant-sounding voice emitted from a small horn set in the wall: "Oh, Stitchlings! Since you're in the kitchen, could you please put the tea in the pot and put the pot on the train?"

"Um…what?" Yang whispered.

"Stitchlings," Harley whispered back. "That's gotta be what we're pretendin' we are. Maybe they're like servants around here."

"So in other words, we should do what she said with the tea or we're busted."

"Bingo."

Harley shambled over to the range, careful not to burn her canvas wrappings as she picked up the teakettle. A white ceramic pot painted with pink roses rested nearby, awaiting its contents. Harley poured delicious-smelling, steaming-hot tea from kettle to pot, then set the lid on top.

"Oh, and Stitchlings!" the woman's voice sounded once more. "Add one of the red tea bombs, will you?"

"Tea bombs," Yang muttered as she began to open cabinets. "Tea bombs, tea bombs…oh, here we go!"

She had found a dish full of spun-sugar spheres, hollow on the inside to contain tea leaves. Taking care not to get any of the mud from her disguise on any of the precious tea bombs, she plopped a bright crimson sphere, like a jewel, into the pot that Harley held out for her.

"What did she mean, put it on the train?" Harley whispered.

"Maybe that train over there?" Yang gestured.

Harley turned to see a tiny toy train mounted on a track that spanned the wall, held up by a little shelf. Behind the locomotive engine was a flatbed for cargo. The shelf with the tracks continued across the room, then through a hole in the wall that led to the room beyond.

"Oh, cute!" Harley gasped. She delicately placed the teapot on the flatbed, and the train began to move of its own accord, giving a pleasant whistle as it passed through to the next chamber.

"It is pretty cute, isn't it?" Yang commented. "And we sure figured that one out fast. Guess they've already got us…well-trained."

Harley snorted into her hands. "Yang! You can't make me laugh here! We'll get found!"

They continued on into the next room, following the tea train, making sure to use the most unnatural-looking of gaits so as to not appear at all human. The tea train's tracks went through several rooms in a row, and Harley and Yang followed along, beginning to see the gradual difference in each chamber. Many were near-identical in layout, but the next room would always be a little bit darker, a little more crooked, a little more frayed in its lace. By the end, the rooms were completely warped, rhomboid rather than square, shadowy without a trace of pink. And the floors creaked horribly.

"Yang?" Harley hissed. "I don't mean to freak ya out, but if I look too hard at any of the cracks in the floor, they start to look like pencil lines."

Yang glanced down. "Yup. That's trippy, all right."

The next door took them into the most horrific room yet. This was the tearoom, featuring a round table and two stools to act as chairs. There were no lights as decoration. The only illumination came from the rest of the furniture, which glowed softly.

That didn't seem so bad until the second glance, when Harley and Yang realized that every piece of furniture present was some sort of overlarge insect. The table was a spider with a flat back, its legs propping it up to hold the tea set. The chairs were rolled-up millipedes. There was a caterpillar sofa against one wall; a beetle whose carapace was set like wardrobe doors clung to the opposite wall.

The tea-train came through, whistling, on a track now made of spider's webs. It halted at its final stop midway across the tearoom; a thin, spindly hand that appeared to be made of welded-together needles plucked the teapot from the car.

That hand belonged to a too-tall, impossibly thin woman with a cracked-porcelain face and button eyes. She wore a flowing gown of black; as she moved, several metal spider-legs clacked beneath the skirt. She took a seat at the table on one of the millipedes, leaning over the spider's back to pour the teapot's contents into the teacup across from her. "Here you are, dear," she said as a luminous crimson liquid spilled down with a foreboding hiss.

"Why, thank you, my dear." This came from the other occupant of the room, as bizarre as she was but in the exact opposite way. While she was much taller than your average human, he was a little shorter, an anthropomorphic rat with patchy gray fur and a dingy mop of blond upon his head. One eye seemed more half-lidded than the other, and also was lolling. He wore a pink garment that was either a housecoat, a bathrobe, or a kimono; by this time, it was too battered to tell. It seemed he hadn't washed it in months. The rat picked up the cup and took a deep drink before flinching; "Yeowch!"

"Oh, do be careful, Gregory!" the needle-woman said with a mock gasp of sympathy. "The tea can burn if you drink it too quickly."

"It feels so good to have a woman care about my well-being the way my mother never did," the rat, Gregory, replied. "I suppose that's the benefit of inviting an…Other Mother along for the ride."

"I'll always look out for your well-being, dear," the Other Mother said as she poured her own cup. Spooned from the sugar bowl not sugar, but what seemed to be a cluster of white insect eggs.

"You know, there are certain OTHER advantages you have over my mother as well," Gregory teased.

The Other Mother leaned forward to poke him on the nose with a needle-finger, not hard enough to draw blood. "No dessert until after tea, Gregory. You know the rule."

She then flinched, having realized the two Stitchlings to enter the room had simply been staring at her and Gregory the whole time. "Move along," she said to them sourly. "Or you'll need to be punished. You don't want me to punish you, do you?"

Yang and Harley finally wrenched themselves out of being stunned at the sight, shambling right along to the other end of the tearoom and on out.

When the door shut on the other side, Harley said, "That guy had some serious mommy issues. I'm callin' an Oedipus Complex on that one. An' I didn't even believe Oedipus Complex was a real thing…"

"That was…disturbing," Yang agreed. "For multiple reasons. Well, I guess now we know a little better what we're up against. Spider lady and a giant rat that makes all of the rules."

There were several crooked doors set around the dark, circular chamber they'd found themselves in. "Which way now?" Harley asked.

"You pick," Yang told her.

Harley pointed to each door: "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe! Catch a tiger by the toe! If he hollers 'Let him go,' eeny, meeny, miney, moe! My OTHER mother told me to pick the very best and you're IT!"

She was pointing at one door in particular. "See what I did there?" she teased.

"Not quite a pun," Yang told her, "but a good effort. You'll have to up your game for next time, though."

"Rats."

Yang snorted; "Now THAT was good."

"What w – " Harley's eyes widened. "Hey, I didn't even mean that one!"

The door chosen opened on a spiral staircase leading downward. After exchanging a glance through their button-eyed disguises, Harley and Yang made their descent. A hot red glow indicated the upcoming next floor, and strangely, there seemed to be swing music coming from the area ahead: loud, catchy, too cheery for this place.

"Now, that's the first sign of taste I've seen in this place!" Harley commented.

Yang was using her arm to do a little dance; "Makes me wanna cut a rug!"

She held out her hand to Harley, and Harley took it, hopping with her all the way down to the landing. Thankfully, the area beyond was empty; no one saw the Stitchlings acting most un-Stitchling-like. However, the contents of that area caused Yang and Harley's stomachs to drop.

It was a torture chamber. Iron maidens, a breaking wheel, racks, and even a dunking machine that was set to dip its chair into a vat of something green and sizzling were placed around the glowing-red basement. Each device was carved at the top to contain an old-fashioned radio, sticking right out of the machines of torment, and these radios in unison played the swing song.

"Yep, that killed the mood," Yang sighed.

"Figures this place'd find a way to make swing dancin' creepy," Harley groaned. "Hang on, is that a trap door?"

It was underneath the rack: wood standing starkly against the bloodstained stone floor. Yang and Harley worked together to push the rack aside.

"Ever think about how a rack kinda looks like a bed?" Harley said. "Just one of those weird thoughts…"

"It does look like a bed, though," Yang said. "Not a very comfy one, but I see where you get bed out of it."

Once the door was revealed, Harley pulled it open to reveal another staircase, this one descending into darkness. "If I were hidin' somethin'," she said, "like a key to an escape train, I'd put it in a place like this."

"I hate that you're right," Yang replied.

Halfway down the stairs, a conversation became audible: "And then I made a move like this, da-da-da-daaaa! Now, you try it!"

"I would rather not waste time on this – "

"Nonsense! Unless you're trying to tell me you don't have any groove in you."

"Very well, but you'll need to provide the music."

Yang and Harley walked down into an immense chamber of shadows, like a palace sunken in the depths. There was hardly any light to be seen, and yet the silhouettes of a cluster of cages hanging from the ceiling on iron chains, each nine feet tall or more, gave an indication of the depth perception of the room.

Then there was suddenly a burst of blacklight in the center of it all, accompanied by the sound of a thumping electroswing song. Alastor was at its heart, doing the Charleston in the most fluid way possible, and Pitch Black, having been challenged, was now trying to out-Charleston him.

"I've been at this far longer than you," Pitch chuckled. "I have been dancing since the days of yore. You, since the thirties."

"Twenties, if we're being technical. Or do you think I only learned to dance when I kicked the bucket?"

Alastor's head suddenly perked toward the pair of Stitchlings moving through the shadows. "Ohhh, no," he teased, "you're not getting away so easily!"

Yang and Harley froze. Had they been found out?

Alastor seized Yang by her only hand, whirling her onto the dancefloor. "The true testament to a real swingin' cat is how well he works with a partner!" he crowed. "And any old Stitchling will do!"

Yang had no choice but to dance right along. Harley knew what was coming; she looked over to Pitch.

"Oh, dear," Pitch remarked. "It seems I am being upstaged. Well, we cannot have that, can we?"

Then he had taken Harley to spin her out into the blacklight, doing his best to outdance Alastor.

It seemed the two faux Stitchlings would never get away until at last the song came to an end, and as a big finish, Pitch and Alastor each twirled his dance partner clear out of the blacklight and left her on the outside of the dancefloor area.

"I should say I won that little competition of ours," Alastor said as he nudged Pitch with an elbow.

"You would say such a thing," Pitch replied. "That does not make it correct."

"Oh, you little scamp!"

Harley and Yang scuttled off into the darkness. "That was almost kinda fun," Harley giggled. "At least we got to dance together, even if it wasn't together-together."

"You know," Yang realized, "you're not exactly wrong. That was kinda fun, wasn't it?"

They walked into the mouth of a cavern, leading them up, through rooms of metal walls and blinking lights, purple and green. "Did we wander into a spaceship or somethin'?" Harley remarked.

"It kinda looks like everyone who hangs out here decorated their rooms to an aesthetic," Yang noted. "The needle spider lady had the pink stuff, the giant rat I think mighta been connected to our hotel area…from the looks of it, the red guy probably hangs out in the torture room where his music is already playing, and he came down here to the pale guy's room to bother him."

"Met the red guy already," Harley said. "And…gotta say you're spot-on there."

"So…we're dealing with at least one big sci-fi person."

"Looks like it."

Suddenly, the high tech gave way completely to a regal ballroom that looked ripped from a European palace, only with even more glitz and glamour to it. Intricate chains of glass ornaments dangled from the ceiling and swayed slightly at any nearby motion, casting rainbows across the floor.

Yang nudged Harley when she saw Boa weaving between the glass ornaments, arms spread so she could spin about like a fairy-tale princess. "What a pity," she was saying to someone else. "You had him under your thumb…but you let him get away."

"Yours killed you." This from another woman, storming after Boa's wanton whirling and trying to keep up. She also had long raven hair and pale skin, clothed in a red robe cinched with a black corset and leaving quite a good deal of skin showing from both directions. Behind her twitched a large appendage: a scorpion tail, not unlike Scorpia's, though most definitely not as harmless as Scorpia's. She was missing her left eye, and had it covered with a patch the same deep red as her revealing robe.

Behind her still, Sendak was following. "Tactically speaking, Adiane came out far better than you did, Boa," he grunted.

"Tactically speaking is one thing," Boa teased, still dancing and watching the sparkling murals on the ceiling with an expression of childlike wonder. "But Christopher came after me and killed me! A man only does that when he is truly fascinated – no, obsessed with a woman. Viral got tired of you after you were destroyed, and now he's too bland to even contemplate. Maybe if you'd led him on a little more, you could've had a more interesting death."

"Maybe if you'd known what it was like to work with Viral," Adiane snorted, "you would've felt the same need to batter him."

"There is no place for seduction among a military force," Sendak agreed. "Adiane made the correct choice. Punishment when the lieutenant has disappointed. No punishment if he has served."

"You two are no fun," Boa pouted. "Sendak, I bet you had plenty of Galra tripping over each other to get to you, and you didn't even care how that could be so USEFUL. Even I wouldn't mind you in bed…but I know that's not what you want."

"You're trying to annoy me," Sendak accused.

Then Boa, not looking where she was going, nearly mowed down Harley and Yang by making a sudden sharp turn. "Oh!" She backed off quickly. "Ugh! The last thing I need is to get Stitchling mud on this dress. What I'll tell you is that Stitchlings are the only truly useful thing to have really come from a Carrion. Sometimes I wonder if old Mater Motley would rather have a granddaughter than a grandson, now that it's come out in the wash which one of us is the truest nightmare. If nothing else, I could pretend long enough that she could teach me how to make even better Stitchlings…and then we could put her in the same place we put Mother Gregory."

"Or we could topple this nightmare island of yours by force," Adiane suggested (as Harley and Yang scooted away, trying to evade notice). "All it would take is one Gunman for me to pilot, and perhaps Sendak could even have a role in directing the backup force."

"Hmm…at the end of the game, perhaps." Boa was now spinning again.

Once Harley and Yang had left the area, Harley said, "So, uh…seduction versus strategy, I guess?"

"We are so not dealing with the same breed of villain as the Heathens," Yang pointed out.

"I almost feel bad for that Motley lady, whoever she is," Harley said.

"Well, at least now we sorta know what we're supposed to be," Yang said. "Blatant plagiarism from another villain, I guess."

"Yeah. Well, we plagiarized it in the first place when we knocked the livin' mud out of 'em, so I guess that works."

They found themselves in a true cave then, one that started out as only dark rock studded with stalagmites until a few crystals of various colors began to show through the stone, and suddenly, it was a glittering rainbow cavalcade of crystals, thrumming with high energy as though one would be injured by stepping too close.

"Aw, geez – " Harley flinched. "Pretty sure I know whose place this is. Cykes loves these things."

"Harley," Yang said, "I know punching her would give away the disguise. But I really…want…to punch her."

"I won't even blame ya if you do."

They entered another form of dancefloor, this one of a decidedly different mood than the glass ballroom. This appeared to be a rectangular high school gymnasium, decorated with paper banners and garlands that had seen better days as well as a plastic disco ball hanging from the ceiling, slowly rotating and casting prisms of light. A table with a paper cloth played host to a punch bowl filled with fizzy clear soda.

Sara Berry leaned against that table, drinking her Mountain Dew with a blank expression. "I think it's clear you never really wanted her gone."

"OF COURSE I WANTED HER GONE!" Cyclonis raged, pacing back and forth. "I tried every method at my disposal to DESTROY Piper, and she outsmarted me at every turn!"

"I tried only a few of the methods at my disposal to destroy every girl in the running for prom queen," Sara reminded her, swirling her glass of soda. "If you wanted Piper gone, she would be gone."

Cyclonis whirled on Sara, pushing her staff up close to her face. "You. Never. Got. JULIE. JENKINS."

Sara batted the staff aside with superhuman strength, not even flinching when it let off a red beam that struck the wall behind her. "My mistake was saving her for last," she said coldly. "If I'd started with her and let the idiots survive longer, no one would've caught on. What was your mistake, Cyclonis?"

Cyclonis simply picked up a glass of Mountain Dew and turned to hurl it at Yang. Yang flinched as it pummeled her in the stomach; that had hurt. At least it stored up some energy for a Semblance blast later on.

"Taking it out on the Stitchlings?" Sara scoffed. "Because they're not the easiest possible target you could pick on to inflate your ego. Like a chess-club incel. Too easy."

Harley and Yang picked up the pace to exit the makeshift prom. Once they were out of earshot of the two girls, Harley hissed, "You okay?"

"Eh, I'm fine," Yang said. "Not sure about Cyclonis, though. She sounded soda-pressed over that girl."

Harley had to once again stifle her laughter. "Yang, STOP."

The next few chambers really defied description. There were many polygons that moved in ways that they shouldn't have, all a steel gray, and waterfalls that flowed upward. Then Harley and Yang came upon a dark shrine filled with black statues of fanged cats in every possible position.

"And I can prove that a Fearcat is in every way superior to a Kivouachian!" Mig was saying as he paced back and forth before a panther-shaped altar, gesturing wildly. "A Fearcat can kill an entire Mercurian rescue squadron in a single blow! YOU couldn't do that!"

"I also can't die is what," Lucy Lacemaker reminded him as she leaned against a small statue of a cat with an arched back. "Think I win on that alone."

"Oh yeah?" Benglo retorted. "Well, have YOU ever gotten ahold of an Octavian Chalice?"

"Never needed one," Lucy scoffed, picking beneath her claws. "Always had my wits. And a few little toys they don't make in this multiverse."

"Like what?" Mig challenged.

"You wouldn't even know what I was describing," Lucy informed him.

"That means you're just making it up!" Mig accused.

"And that's another thing!" Benglo argued. "Our multiverse still exists! Yours doesn't!"

"How is that proof of anything?" Lucy asked.

"Because we wouldn't let our universe die so easily!" Benglo said.

"Is that a bet?" Lucy asked. "You want me to make it so you've got a chance to actually prove it? Because I can pull a few strings and make it happen, I can."

"THEN DO IT!" Benglo yapped.

Mig smacked him on the back of the head. "NO! You'll only destroy everything we're working so hard to ruin! Mirage will be furious with us!"

"Well, we're ruining it anyway!" Benglo argued. "We might as well destroy it, too!"

"You idiot!" Mig countered. "You're just suggesting we let HER destroy it and then take the credit for it!"

Benglo flinched; "Wait…"

"Boys," Lucy sighed. "Always got to be measuring dicks against one another. It's pathetic is what it is."

Harley and Yang left the arguing trio behind as they passed through the mouth of a giant cat that formed the doorway to the next hall. "I'm starting to think maybe we're out of our league on this one," Yang said.

"Hang on," Harley told her. "I'm still tryin' to figure this out, 'cause if you survived your universe breakin', that means you're tough, but also it means you prob'ly messed up somewhere real bad, unless that's what you were goin' for on purpose, but I don't think that's what she was goin' for on purpose – also, didja get the sense she was bluffin'? I don't think she can actually get the worlds blown up. Prob'ly just tryin' to rile up those guys."

"Well, she was right about men," Yang teased. "Those two men, anyway. Heathens men are different."

"True that!"

The surrounding area erupted in glittering gold. Every wall sparkled. The room beyond was a casino, with slot machines and card tables of all sorts, looking to be the most expensive of such a thing that money couldn't even afford. It was here that King Dice was hunched over a card table, writing something on the face of what appeared to be a large playing card.

When a booming voice declared, "WELL, WELL, WELL! WHAT HAVE WE HERE?", King Dice hastily flipped the card over.

"Ain't good manners to read over a fella's shoulder!" he chastised with a grin that belied his true emotional state.

He spoke to a rather lumpy and rotund creature. At first, Yang and Harley wondered if this was a higher form of Stitchling. He did have burlap skin, and his insides seemed to be fluid, almost in constant motion. But there was no mud dripping from him, nor did he have the button eyes – just dark, hollow voids. A hornet buzzed out of one of them, and suddenly Harley realized what the crawling motion beneath the burlap really looked like.

"Well, I'm the Boogie Man, and I ain't got no manners to speak of!" Oogie Boogie guffawed. "Whatcha been writin', huuuuuh?" He leaned around to try and see the card.

King Dice shifted to block him at every turn, his body bending like rubber. "Ain't none of your business is what!"

"Well, I am joint owner of this li'l enterprise. You're writin' that under my roof!"

"Tell ya what, pal!" King Dice said, his demeanor suddenly shifting to true cheer. "How 'bout we play for it? You win a hand of 21 and I'll show you what I was writin'!"

"Very well," Oogie replied. "But we're usin' MY deck."

King Dice was well-versed in working with cards. He knew that Oogie would be cheating, but that didn't matter, since he had quickly used a sleight-of-hand trick to swap out the message he was writing for a far more benign card that would only amount to some false gossip. The real card, he would send off later.

The two gamblers sat down across from one another, and Oogie began to deal the cards that had elegant black-widow spiders printed on their backs; a few spiders of his own crawled out of a loose seam. King Dice was counting the cards as fast as Oogie was dealing.

Harley and Yang could've made a comment, but once they stepped into the next room – yet another golden chamber in the casino – what they saw there made them lose their trains of thought.

It was a large golden key, suspended from the center of the ceiling. Glittering in the lights of the casino room. There was really nothing else of note here – the room was empty, save for a floor patterned like a great roulette wheel.

"GO!" Harley hissed; she and Yang rushed toward it.

"When I signal," Yang said, "you step on my hand, and I'll launch you to the – "

All the gold in the room suddenly dimmed to jet black. The panels of the roulette-wheel floor lit up brightly, red and green and marked with such morbid emblems as skulls and snakes. The floor also sank down, making a pit and driving Harley and Yang much further down than they'd been as the key dangled above them like the fruit of Tantalus.

"You didn't think those disguises actually had us FOOLED, did you?"

Mirage sauntered into the room where Harley and Yang were plunged into the roulette pit. Behind her came every Morbian they'd seen in the entire lair: King Dice, Oogie Boogie, Benglo, Mig, Lucy Lacemaker, Master Cyclonis, Sara Berry, Sendak, Adiane, Princess Boa, Pitch Black, Alastor, the Other Mother, and Gregory.

"Harley Quinn," Cyclonis said with a grin. "So nice of you to drop by, especially after I went to all the trouble of reuniting you with your little friends."

"And just in time for dinner!" Oogie crowed. "We're makin' a special batch of snake-and-spider stew tonight! All it's missin' is a couple of crazy blondes…"

Yang and Harley looked to each other in horror. Then Yang said, "I guess this means we can take this stuff off."

"Finally." Harley tore away the Stitchling skin, brushing off as much of the mud as she could, and Yang did the same. Then they braced themselves, looking up at the Morbians who were filing around the pit to surround them.

"Yeah, well, we knew what we were doing!" Yang barked. "We knew it would come down to a smackdown, and we're ready to kick ass!"

"Yeah!" Harley agreed.

Mirage chuckled; "Oh, dear, sweet girls. We also knew it would come to this, and we have the home field advantage. It was so kind of you to leave your teammates behind, however…"

"Once they learn you're missing," Benglo jeered, "they'll come running looking for you, and then we'll get to show them your broken bodies before we do the same!"

"Hey now!" Alastor protested. "Show them the broken bodies? That implies we don't get to eat any of the stew!"

"And you of all people can't fool me." Mirage's glowing eyes locked onto Yang's. "I see how you quiver with fear, even now. That Adam Taurus really took you down a peg."

"WHY YOU - !" Yang erupted out of the pit in a blaze of fire, only for a swipe from Mirage to knock her right back down in.

"YANG!" Harley rushed to the other fallen blonde.

Yang peeled herself up; "I'm fine. But she's STRONG."

"That's what we love about our dear Mirage," Gregory chuckled. "You never quite know what she's going to do! She's so spontaneous."

"SHUT UP!" Harley yelled at him. "We're done with this horror show! We're gonna escape!"

"Did you hear THAT, my friends?" Gregory chuckled. "They think they're going to ESCAPE!"

With a jolt, the roulette wheel began to spin, knocking Harley and Yang over. The neon lights glowed a little brighter while the dark around them deepened.

Softly, in chorus, the Morbians who surrounded them began to sing: "Watch yourself! Don't fall off of the shelf!"

Adiane put a hand on her hip, her scorpion tail twitching as she put on her most seductive tone: "You must be the new girls in town!"

"Whoa – what's that sound?" Harley staggered to her feet.

"We're going round and round!" Yang answered, having stood as well.

"Lie down for a spell!" Mig commanded. "You don't look so well!"

Oogie broke in; "Wait a minute! I feel great! You just leave yourself to fate! You might as well just – " A pair of neon-green nooses dropped to either side of him. "HANG AROUND!"

As he manifested a large square die in each hand, rippling red-orange like flame, the chorus joined together again: "It's too late! We've got to operate!"

As Oogie passed the dice on, and they were handed from Morbian to Morbian, Gregory's voice was heard sticking out among the rest: "Just try to relax! It's a house of wax!"

Alastor had the dice on the next beat, and he hurled them onto the roulette wheel. Because of the numbers that turned up, a host of writhing black tentacles erupted from the wheel, stalling it as they whipped at Harley and Yang, right as the Morbians escalated in volume; "Oh, IIIIIII remember Frankenstein! Shivers up my spine! Whoa-ohhhhh!"

Yang punched the tentacles into eruptions of Dark smoke using her only hand. "I'm for getting out of here!" she yelled at a rapidly backflipping Harley.

"NO NEED TO SHOUT, MY DEAR!" the Morbians taunted. "No-ohhhhh!"

The Other Mother had gotten the dice; she gave them a roll. The number she got was fortunate; a massive mechanical grasshopper appeared on the wheel. Her body compressed and contorted; as she leapt onto the grasshopper's back, she was wearing the face and shape of Summer Rose but with shining silver buttons for eyes. "Who will go?" the others sang as the Other Mother drew back a scythe. "To that cellar down below!"

With a scream, Yang hurled herself into the grasshopper, her Semblance finally exploding and dealing all the damage she'd taken back to the insect so that it exploded into shrapnel. As the other Morbians declared that "Trouble is a-bubblin' in the brew!", Harley ran up to the Other Mother, using two fingers to poke right into those button eyes.

The Other Mother sprang back up to the main level, where Pitch was making his roll. The dice landed, and a herd of sandy black Nightmares galloped across the wheel, horselike hooves thundering as they whinnied at Yang and Harley.

While the two blondes dealt blow after blow to the horses, causing showers of black sand, Pitch led the chorus in singing, "And while you're down there, Mr. Boogeyman! Will take you by the hand!"

Gregory chucked the dice; "He'll know what to do!" A pair of robotic mice, their ears halves of giant bear traps, blew up the last two Nightmares that Yang and Harley hadn't gotten, then proceeded to clack their way to the two women to attempt to devour them. "You just tell him BOO!"

Oogie threw the dice then, and in addition to the Trapmice, Yang and Harley now had to sidestep a great bladed pendulum, decorated with bug emblems, that swung from the ceiling. "HE WILL PUT THE VOODOO IN THE STEW, I'M TELLING YOU!" the chorus belted.

After seeing Yang and Harley evade both the pendulum and the Trapmice for a few seconds too long, Cyclonis wrenched the dice away from Oogie, hurling them. Two Nightcrawlers replaced the field obstacles, living crystals strapped to their chests.

Yang and Harley battered them back-to-back as the Morbians declared, "IT'S LIKE A MOVIE! IT'S A B-MOVIE SHOW!"

Down went the Nightcrawlers, but then Adiane's roll brought a massive mecha with white wings down onto the field. Yang rushed to tackle Harley out of the way of its energy whips as the chorus continued, "IT'S LIKE A MOVIE! IT'S A B-MOVIE SHOW!"

Yang was then caught up in a whip, but Harley had clambered up to the cockpit of the Gunman, mashing all the buttons until the Gunman, a miniature version of Adiane's Sayrune, collapsed. "Awww, c'mon!" she begged. "Ain't SOMEBODY up there got a heart?" She pointed at Sara. "Fellow blonde! You just wanna be prom queen, right?"

"Think again!" Sara crowed. "I'm more than just a prom queen – I'm a cheerleader AND an advanced AI!" She rolled the dice next, and part of the roulette wheel gave way for a series of grinding gears that threatened to crush Yang and Harley – the rest of the wheel still spinning them toward it. "You could say I'm a mishmosh!"

Yang grabbed Harley's hand and said, "This is weird!"

As they charged together, Harley declared, "It's much worse than I feared!" Together, they reached the edge of the gear pit, then vaulted it. When they landed on the other side, Harley suggested, "I'll close my eyes an' make it disappear!"

"YES! WE'RE STRANGE!" the Morbians yelled as the grinder disappeared to form a whole wheel once again.

"It ain't home on the range!" King Dice crowed as he hurled the dice. At the roll that turned up, a massive rabbit in a top hat materialized, flicking a magic wand that sent explosive energy crackling toward Yang and Harley.

By the time Harley had ended up stomping the rabbit back down into the hat angrily, the Morbians were declaring, "You just tell Saint Pete that you got cold feet!"

Harley attempted to leap back out of the pit, but Sendak didn't even bother with the dice, using his rocket-propelled fist to punch her back down; Yang caught her to make a slightly softer landing, and was bowled over in the process.

Lucy had the dice, and her roll brought ethereal spikes of hardened light that jutted out of the air at random, threatening to skewer the two women. She sauntered forward, mocking, "There goes the sun! Oh, here comes the night! Somebody turn out the light!" She pressed the back of a paw to her forehead. "Somebody tell me that fate has been kind!"

After Yang and Harley evaded the final cluster of spikes, Boa's roll brought up an immense dark shade of a fishlike creature – a Requiax, from the depths of strange waters. The fish creature let loose a massive dark shockwave as the Morbians picked up, "You can't go out! You are OUT OF YOUR MIND!"

The Fearcats didn't wait to roll, winning themselves multicolored energy bursts as the chorus sang, "It's like a movie! It's a B-movie show!"

Harley went left, Yang went right, and they steered the Requiax shade right into the Fearcats' attacks, where it died spectacularly in a rainbow.

In its place, several red fire cats brought up by Mirage's final roll cropped up. Yang recoiled, but Harley surged forward, her sheer anger shrinking them.

By now, the Morbians had tired of that particular game of cat-and-mouse. Oogie pulled a lever, and several hatches opened up, pouring a boiling broth into the bottom of the roulette wheel.

"HARLEY!" Yang yelled as she felt the heat rising. She and Harley ran to one another; in the background, the Morbians were singing an ascending scale.

Yang hoisted Harley up, as was the original plan, but now Harley could only reach as far as the central spike around which the roulette wheel turned. Harley reached down to catch Yang's hand as Yang leapt; she hauled up Yang. The broth, now showing the floating corpses of several spiders and reptiles, was filling the pit rapidly, and definitely far too hot for either of them to touch without burning instantly.

Knowing they'd won, the Morbians hit their final, highest note, as loud as they could sing.

When the stew broth itself suddenly erupted outward, toward the Morbians, rather than continuing toward the center. In fact, it seemed to be avoiding the axis at all costs, keeping Yang and Harley completely dry.

There was screaming as the Morbians backpedaled to avoid the burns from their own trap (and many didn't). "HOW?" Mirage screeched.

A shrill cackle bursting with malicious joy echoed throughout the chamber. "You sealed your own fates THE MOMENT YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD TAKE MASTERY OVER SOUP!"

Yang and Harley lit up, yelling in unison; "GIOVANNI!"

Giovanni Potage and Velvet Crowe had burst into the room just in time; it was Giovanni who had controlled the flow of stew to turn it on its masters.

"And the WORST part," Giovanni continued, "was that if you'd made it an ACTUAL STEW with only minimal cooking liquid, then I wouldn't have been able to take control of it! But you, my unfortunate foes, HAVE MADE SOUP!"

"UP THERE!" Harley pointed frantically at the key.

Velvet was soon soaring, her consuming claw reaching out to rip the key off its chain. In the meantime, Yang and Harley stood precariously upon the axis, clutching each other.

"You trust me, right?" Yang asked.

"With my life," Harley breathed.

Yang spun, using her weight to offset Harley's and fling the lighter woman across the pit; Giovanni reached out and caught Harley, ensuring she landed safely. Then Yang used her sole gun to blast herself, somewhat crookedly, after. Velvet had crossed back again, and Giovanni set about filling the room with a thick, soupy fog.

"GO!" Velvet yelled. "Everyone's loaded on! All we need is the key!"

Together, the four Heathens barreled back the way Yang and Harley had come – through the golden casino, through the Kivouachian marvels of physics, through the Fearcat shrine, through the crystal mine.

Mirage sputtered, shaking away the last of the broth. "This hardly matters!" she spat. "The key is a fake, so we have all the time in the world!"

Which was when Mig yelled, "The key was supposed to be a FAKE?"

"WHAT?" Mirage hissed.

"You told me to bait them with a key!" Mig growled. "You never said it had to be a fake one!"

"So you are telling us," Pitch reiterated, "that they now have the means to ESCAPE WITH THE LAST TRAIN?"

"Nice going, Mig!" Benglo shoved his partner.

"You were standing right there when I hung it up!" Mig shoved right back.

"STITCHLIIIIIIIINGS!" Boa screeched, and a horde of them appeared out of the shadows – canvas creatures filled with animated mud. The princess pointed in fury; "AFTER THEM!"

The Stitchlings moved rapidly. By the time Harley, Yang, Giovanni, and Velvet had reached Pitch's basement, the herd was upon them.

Velvet, however, was not worried in the slightest. On instinct, she activated her claw, turning it on the nearest one.

She clutched it. Fueled intent. As a daemon, she'd had the power to eat other daemons and malakhim through that claw; she'd done this without even thinking. As it turned out, a Nightmare had the power to eat other Nightmares. The Stitchling was sucked into her aura, fueling her energy.

"So that's why they're called 'Dream Eaters,'" Velvet remarked with a smug grin. "It's already a good thing to have my sense of taste back. It's even better to know I can still eat like a daemon if I want."

With a roar, she gathered up the other nearby Stitchlings.

Thanks to Velvet, she, Harley, Giovanni, and Yang were unaccompanied by any undesirables as they headed up through the torture chamber, into the Pink Palace tearoom, into the elevator that brought them into the Gregory House block of hotel rooms. They tore down the hall, where the door to the train awaited them at the end, pressed up to the hall like any room would be. Neko Zombie waved them on from inside.

"HURRY UP!" he yelled.

Giovanni made it first, followed by Yang, Harley, and Velvet. They slammed the door shut, rushing to the locomotive engine. The other Heathens were all safely tucked into the passenger cars behind.

Sleepy Sheep was curled up in the engine car. "I'm tired," he said.

"Then just zonk out," Giovanni told him. "We've got it from here. Though, uh, we do have a whistle that needs blowing."

Neko Zombie trotted in after the four Heathens. "Are you sure that key isn't fake?" he asked.

"NO IDEA!" Giovanni plunged it into the engine.

The train roared to life.

"Wow," Yang said. "These guys are a bunch of idiots, now that I think about it."

"LET'S GET OUTTA HERE!" Harley yelled.

The Last Train took off from its station, across cosmic tracks laid down in the starry sky, barreling toward the world where the Heathens should have woken up in the first place: the one bearing the continent of Glenwood.

As it departed, its whistle trilled sharply, over and over, pulled by a child who hadn't gotten the chance to actually be interested in trains for decades.

Mirage and Cyclonis were the ones to pull to a halt at the end of the hotel block as they watched the train depart with all of their guests. "NO!" Cyclonis yelled. Then, without even waiting for reprimanding or an order: "I WON'T LET THEM GET AWAY ALIVE!"

She leapt down onto the tracks, energizing them with her staff. Her feet slid along them as though she herself had wheels. And she gave chase after the train.

Mirage laughed. "I knew we were onto something with that girl."