"The Laws are about Humans," I huffed, eyeing the large and less than imposing Asgore, King of the Monsters. His little paper crown had already started to fall over his eyes, somehow. "If any of your people have broken them, don't even worry about it. Even if they have done something crazy like mind-controlled people or raised the human dead, maybe just keep that to yourselves. More so if you're crazy enough to keep doing it. You're not human, so the Laws aren't about you."

Asgore's eyes widened as he lifted the paper crown and he spoke slowly. "I… don't expect that to be a problem, Mr. Dresden."

I waved him off and frowned at my Whopper. They'd made it with lettuce that had gone bad, the tomatoes were shriveled and sad, and I could taste the burned meat in every bite. For all that I'd wanted to meet these Monsters somewhere worthwhile, today was already shaping up to just not be my day.

Why hast thou forsaken me, Burger King?

"Is there anything else you need from me?" I held up one of the bits of almost rotten tomato. "I'm an investigator, and with as much as you're saying you can pay, I figure another job'll help pay for enough good burgers to make this one go down easier." I glanced at him with a side frown. "Seriously, this place is normally way better than this."

Asgore sighed a deep sigh, holding the crown in his large paws, looking it over sadly.. "...yes," he finally admitted. "In addition to my previous request, I would also like another opinion on my… adopted son. He's been distraught these last few days…"

When I need information, there are a couple places I can go to ask for it. Bob was one, but he'd failed me already. Demons were another, but it was too early in the century for me to consider selling my soul for anything less than permanent world peace or something. Lastly, there were the Fey, creatures from the Nevernever that would trade for information or aid.

I knew the Name of one in particular in Chicago who was usually willing to trade for sweets and bread, normally pizzas, in exchange for information. I even had a place called Pizza 'Spress ready to send me pies to anywhere I asked, and now plenty more money to pay for them with.

I had also stopped by a nearby popular cop hang out at the donut shop for a down payment, so it wasn't much effort to ask for help. I set myself up next to one of the cop cars and prepared the little creature's Name.

I whispered, the jelly donut in the circle a more than sufficient reward for the sprite's presence. The Will in my voice lured the creature in, and while I hadn't bothered, y'know, hiding the circle, I suspected I'd be capable of-

"Really?" A tiny voice asked from behind me. I turned my head, and sure enough, the little fairy I'd shortened the Name of to Toot Toot was there. "You didn't even try to hide that you were going to trap me!"

I sighed. I hadn't expected him to be this close. At least he was talking to me. "Sorry, Toot Toot," I told the little dewdrop fairy. "I wanted to get your attention, but it'd be your choice if you wanted to be caught or not this time. For showing up, the donut there is yours." I motioned to it, and the little purple-haired dragonfly-winged man started looking back and forth between me and it. He seemed truly torn.

He was half a foot tall, but I wouldn't correlate his people's abilities to their size; on the right job, they were even more capable than I was. Which was why I hired them, of course. I try not to be dumb if I can possibly avoid it, and going to the little folk was just good sense. He was wearing little bits of junk he'd scavenged from the human world, and I silently approved of the plastic little Coke bottle cap hanging on his hip.

"I don't see why I have to be in a circle to talk to you," Toot Toot huffed, visibly holding himself back from going for the donut.

I shrugged. "I thought it was a signal of your status, like, if I didn't at least make the effort, I'd be insulting you."

The tiny man gave me a flat stare. "You didn't even hide the circle." His little hand waved around as though my stupidity were self-evident. Considering it, maybe it was.

I put my foot down and scuffed the edges of the chalk working, and Toot Toot was quick to dive in to devour the thing.

Eugh. You wouldn't really think to compare a tiny man to a full grown shark until you saw the way a red jelly donut could explode in miniature when attacked by said tiny man.

I carefully cleared my throat at the little guy, who was patting his stomach contentedly; sometimes, it paid to remind yourself that these creatures could do serious damage when they wanted to. "There's more pizza for you, if you could get me some information."

The little fairy gave me a little glare, crossing his arms as best he could. The sugar was agreeing with him, though, which took a loot of the edge out of however upset he'd been. "...how much pizza?"

I grinned. "More than enough for you and a few dozen of your friends, same as always," I promised. "So here's the job: I need your help finding some missing Monsters…"

Bock Ordered Books. I think the owner's first name was Artemis or something. If Toot Toot and his friends were reliable, then the second floor had been altered into something… nasty.

The Monsters would have been here, then.

"Second floor?" I asked one last time, just to be sure.

We were across the street, looking at the place through the clear windows of this (illegally parked) SUV, and I was considering making my way over just as soon as the traffic died down a little bit. It was actually weird, this street wasn't normally used. I guess the students must have been on lunch or something.

"Well duh," the little guy was hovering just so, making it look like he was standing on an invisible platform in front of me, impatiently tapping one foot. "There isn't a basement, is there?" He asked, shaking his head. "In this land? And the first floor is all books! Of course it's the second floor." He sighed, dejected. "I worry about you sometimes, you know?"

I nodded seriously. "Sometimes I need help, and the fairies have been there to guide me."

He puffed himself up rather importantly. "Of course we do! Come on, I'll show you the way up!"

And off he went, rushing ahead.

Somebody opened the bookstore's front door, a young woman with a slim figure, long brown hair, mousey features and glasses. She might have been sixteen, if my guess was correct. She didn't even see Toot Toot as he flew in past her, her nose buried in a paperback.

She didn't have time to react when the building behind her exploded, throwing her forward into the street.

Personally, I didn't have time to do more than panic, throwing up my left arm and forcing whatever magic my panic could provide into my shield bracelet, an effort that might have just barely saved my own life. I was pushed to the ground, and the force of the blastwave might have been disrupted by the SUV I'd been standing behind. The glass shards from the utility vehicle's windows were blocked by my shield, and the car itself was shoved into the side of the curb.

I know that because it was the last thing I'd seen before the bright wave of heat forced me to close my eyes, stunning me.

I managed to reorient myself in moments, then hurled myself to my feet, quick to move around the front of the vehicle to get closer. Any cars in the area had stopped, and people had started screaming.

The young woman's back was scorched, and I realized with a strange emphasis that I had no idea what color her turtleneck had been before it'd been charred and burned away. I leaned down, put two fingers on her neck, feeling for a pulse. Nothing.

From that close, the scars of abuse on the sides of her back were clear where the blackened burns hadn't covered them up.

I swallowed my morbid curiosity on how she might have been involved, on how she'd gotten those injuries, on all of it. I needed to see what had happened.

If she'd died on impact, the chances that Toot Toot was still alive were nil.

I almost stepped inside the still-burning building when what was left of the front of the door started to collapse, and I stepped back and swore as it did just that, the building collapsing and closing any more entry points.

I shook my head. This lead was dead and gone, just like my friend. Just like that girl.

I turned to leave, or at least to get back across the street, and then I saw it.

Embedded in the side of the SUV I'd hidden behind, there was a strange, glowing ring of metal, with sigils that made my skin crawl etched around the sides. It was a few feet wide, and… disgusting.

If the explosion had been magical in nature…

I swallowed down the bile that burned the back of my throat, gritting my teeth and focusing on anger instead of disgust or anything else.

Somebody was going to pay for this.

"I swear on my life here, Murph, it exploded before I got there!" I promised the fiery policewoman on the other side of the desk. "I was across the street, ready to go in to find out what was going on, and then? The damned place explodes. I never even got close."

"Across the street is close!" She shouted back, furiously scribbling into her notepad. "Damn it, you need to bring these things to me now, Dresden!" She waved around the office. "The government knows that monsters and things that go bump in the night are real now, and you have to let us in when that happens!"

"I didn't even know it was-" I growled and cut myself off, crossing my arms. "I only heard there was something to even look into this morning," I managed through grit teeth. "And now there's a body." I shook my head. Before I could add, "somebody's going to pay for this," Murphy had already responded.

"Seventeen bodies," she seethed, and I quickly looked up to meet her eyes, then glanced to the side just after. "Yeah, this wasn't some small wearhouse fight where nobody on the outside got hurt. Whatever you're into right now?" she slammed her pen down, apparently done taking notes. "It's big, and it's only going to get bigger." She pointed at the door behind me. "The media is in a frenzy out there, demanding that we tell them all about whatever magical menace caused this. Your face is all over the news. Unless you've got something, I'm considering trying to smuggle your giant ass out a side entrance or something. Damn it, I was supposed to be on vacation!"

I swallowed several unkind remarks and started trying to stare a hole through the wall.

Today was just getting better and better, wasn't it?

"You need to give me something, Dresden," she insisted. "Or some moron with more medals than brains might actually try to put you in a cell again."

I exhaled, hard. I pointedly did not mention that it'd been her that had tried to lock me up more than once in the past. "...shit. Fine." I shook my head. "Fine. I was hired by the King of the Monsters on a missing person's case…"

Reality took the time to remind me that things could get worse.

Things could always get worse.

"Thomas…" I whispered, holding him close. "Thomas, no, speak to me, no, no, no, no…"

He'd been breathing two fucking seconds ago!

I swallowed, mouth dry, and I started giving him chest compressions right there in front of Mac's bar, ignoring the magical spears flying overhead.

We should have just gone back to Burger King.

We should have just gotten bad burgers from Burger King again.

Why had I invited him along?

Why did I ever invite anybody along?

I pressed down on his chest, counting, "-thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-"

I blew into his mouth.

If he made it sexual somehow, stole bits of my life somehow, I'd ignore how gay it was, I'd make out with him if I had to, I'd do almost anything for this not to be real.

"One, two, three, f-four-"

I kept going while that weird fish woman and the king fought off whoever had attacked us, and I kept going when a bullet whizzed close enough by me to push my bangs to the side. I kept going no matter what anyone said. I kept going until the paramedics came.

They took him into the back of the emergency van, and I stood there and watched him be taken away, taken somewhere I didn't dare follow.

Something small and dark whispered in the back of my mind, clear against the noise around me.

"You could have saved him with Necromancy…"

"You don't have to do this, Dresden," Murphy was trying to talk me down, but I was far, far past that now.

"I do, Murph," I told her breezily, balancing on the balls of my feet as I crouched down by the ritual ring they'd found again in the Field Museum. If they'd just kept hold of it, hidden it better… all those cops would still be alive. "I really do."

I had my right hand on the skull hanging from my hip, gathered up just as soon as I realized that Thomas' death had been intended as a distraction.

As a fucking distraction.

I could almost feel her shaking her head. "It's not your fault."

Anger.

"...Why are you here, Murph?" I asked, keeping my tone light and bouncy, just like I'd been until a few moments ago. "Aren't you supposed to be on vacation?"

No answer.

I let the cold emptiness fall away, instead choosing to focus my efforts on the same thing that was apparently worth killing anybody who got close to me over. A small feeling urged me to share that insight with the cop, but I quashed it. I was busy.

"Yeah, this thing is nasty," I finally told the military officer who had accompanied me here; his name was Tarkin, and in another life, I'd have never let that pass without comment. "As best as I can tell, this thing is designed to swallow life force, to turn errant spirits into energy for rituals. It's pretty generalized, too, and it'd probably hold some serious threats still for as long as you had spells for them to power. I wasn't sure before, but I am now: This thing?" I finally looked away from it, back at Tarkin. "It's designed so you can power whatever you're doing with something around the circle, or with some poor bastard trapped inside." I shook my head, noting just how insidious the runes were, now that I was paying attention to them. "If you ever see yourself getting carried toward one of these things, do yourself a favor and bite your tongue out so you can choke to death on your own blood. It'd be a cleaner death."

No answer.

I tapped my fingers on Bob's skull, considering things.

When I started asking the right questions, he'd been really rather forthcoming about all these things. It was too bad answering the wrong kinds of questions triggered a kind of… failsafe, I guess, where he turned blue and tried to kill me.

I still got the answers I was looking for. It just required a lighter touch to get them.

Butters was dead.

The Alphas were dead.

A lot of the Monsters were dead, too, but at this point, I was having more trouble remembering all their names.

The Necromancers' ritual of Ascension was happening right there, not a hundred yards away, and the only corpses I might be able to raise to get closer to it were human ones.

I was convincing myself, bit by bit, that it was going to have to be done.

At least then I might be allowed to die by beheading in one of the White Council's little kangaroo courts, instead of out here, being ripped apart by zombies, ghosts and ghouls.

I raised my staff, unleashing another blast of fire, and as before, the spell collapsed before it got even halfway to the ritual site.

Shooting was even less effective, and I was running very low on bullets.

"How do we get closer, Dresden?!" Morgan shouted, back against a huge dirt wall, holding the stump of his left arm closed with a tourniquet made from some kind of braided dirt bandage. "There must be a way!"

"Necromancy!" I shouted at him, ready to just shoot him and be done with it. "The only force you can use to get closer without getting eaten is necromancy, you miserable piece of shit! You had them, you fucking had them, and you let them go!"

"I will not kill with magic!" He roared back, and in that moment of distraction, something with sharp claws punched through the dirt wall he was leaning up against and managed to catch him around his throat.

His torso fell one way, and his head fell another.

I blinked, at a loss. Even after all that had happened, certain things were impossible. The sun didn't come up in the North, grass didn't grow in space, and Morgan would never stop trying to ruin my life.

Morgan couldn't die.

He couldn't. It wasn't allowed.

I shook my head, raising my staff as the wall he'd been holding up with little more than sheer Will fell, and then the army of zombies were upon us.

Ramirez cussed and swund his Warden's sword like a man possessed, but even his hands weren't fast enough. He fell, too.

They all fell.

Time seemed to slow.

I looked at the zombies just a few feet away, at the hurricane of force the Necromancers were preparing, and I just…

Stopped feeling.

"...Lasciel," my voice echoed in my own mind, reality moving too slowly for the words to form in my mouth…

"I need your coin."

One moment, my left hand was empty.

The next, I could feel the cold metal of a blackened little silver Denarius, grasped firmly in my palm.

"Hello, my host," a sensual voice whispered in my ear. "I've been waiting for your call."

"Yeah," I whispered back. "If we don't stop them, those Necromancers will kill us all."

"I can help you with that," her voice promised, just like I knew it would. "Here-" I felt something nudging my hand, something that burned like cinnamon, "take a bit more Hellfire, but this time, keep it contained, just so…"

I could visualize what she meant, now.

Time resumed, and my hand was guided forward in a line of fire that would not be stopped, barely a finger's width wide, directly across the horde of zombies before me.

They fell, too.

The Corpsetaker, scowling, waved her hand, ordering forth her ghostly army.

"They're no match for this…" Lasciel whispered another secret into my ear, and sure enough, I knew it'd be effortless to slay them, too.

All this power, and finally I had the finesse to go along with it.

"How are you doing that?" Frisk asked from behind me, and I glanced down at the child.

"How th-" I cut myself off. "Run, kid!" I waved my staff across my chest. "I'll handle this!"

Frisk's eyes widened. "Two voices, and your eyes…?"

I blinked.

My vision remained unobscured.

I hadn't even noticed, but I'd been seeing the world more cleanly since I'd taken up the coin.

Lasciel must have done that thing the Denarians do, where they open a second set of glowing eyes on the forehead of their wielder to grant them more power. How must I have looked, just then?

There wasn't time for that.

I ignored the child and turned back to the charging army of ghosts, and just as I'd suspected, tweaked Hellfire was effective on them, too. A roasting for all occasions.

Corpsetaker was being clever, sending the attacks in waves rather than all at once, and even as I was now the fire didn't quite reach the center of the ritual. The great clouds above us were spinning now, faster and faster, and I knew that it wouldn't be very long before it created a funnel of power that would lead right into Cowl's mouth.

The distraction it afforded when the Corpsetaker looked his way, apparently furious, was enough for Lasciel to advise me on a special kind of piercing necromancer magic, for me to fire off a spear of conjured bone that pierced the energies around us, flying as fast as a bullet.

The Corpsetaker's head rocked back, and then she, too, fell.

I'd have never made that shot without the Fallen's help.

God forgive me.

Lashiel laughed.

I fought off the last vestiges of the ghosts, keenly aware of just how little time was left to stop Cowl from destroying the city to become a god-

Frisk was standing behind Cowl on the stage.

When the fuck had Frisk gotten up on that stage?

How?

No time, the tornado of power from the sky was inching closer and closer to Cowl's open mouth every second.

I drew on Lasciel's power and knowledge one last time, to strike through the howling winds to disrupt Cowl's ritual with another spear of bone. Somehow, he saw it, and managed to raise a wall of bones from the many nearby corpses to protect himself. Just as it connected with his shield, the child stepped forward, a kitchen knife of all things in the kid's hands, and stabbed Cowl in the back.

It was enough. He fell, and in one step more, Frisk reached up, was lifted into the sky, and the howling winds fell into-

I saw destruction, all around us.

Then I opened my eyes, my view unchanged.

I glanced down, noting the strange circle in fire on the ground, glowing orange. Not hellfire orange, but…

I felt at my right hip.

I'd completely forgotten that I'd had Bob with me this whole time.

How had I forgotten that?

And now… his essence was being burned to shield me from the soul swallowing ritual.

…

"Lasciel," I intoned, looking at the coin that had fused itself into the skin of my (now healed) left hand. "Have you been taking things from me?"

I heard chuckling all around me. "Don't worry too much, my host," she purred in my ear. "There's all the time in the world now for me to make it up to you. A full year's worth of a trial run should be enough time for you to decide whether or not I'm truly bad, I think. After all this time, I've only ever wanted to help you, and now? I finally can."

The web weaver, they called her.

What had I done?

Around me, the winds finally slowed… then died.

I looked up at the stage.

…

Where was Frisk?

I gulped, trying to ignore the phantom itch in my left hand, a feeling Lasciel had willingly granted me when I'd asked for a reminder of what buying Frisk the time to get behind that bastard had cost me.

My friends. My family. My soul.

A huge chunk of Chicago, too.

Frisk had gone off the deep end, after seeing me take up Lasciel's coin. Apparently, the kid had already known about the shadow of the fallen whispering sweet nothings in my ear all this time. When I'd apparently given up hope, Frisk had followed suit.

I'd never realized the kid was using me as a measuring stick. How could I have?

In the end, when the Necromancers prepared their little ritual, when I had nothing left… I broke. I can't even lie and tell myself it was to save people anymore. I took up the coin to make the bastards pay for what they'd done.

And Frisk swallowed the city.

I'd had a bad year.

Frisk had decided that the only way to win, the only way to get back all his friends, was to raise them from the dead from those piles of ash that remained. The kid even briefly tried to see about raising the human dead that had fallen, too. There were… complications.

First off, it didn't work right. I mean, the people's general personalities managed to come back in a lot of cases, but the specifics always… melted away.

Often literally, but also spiritually.

Frisk's own impressions of the creatures, of the Monsters, had a heavy impact on what they would be reborn as, and whatever Frisk's core as a baby Death God was, it seemed to disagree pretty vehemently with human life to boot.

Frisk's "diplomatic immunity" only went so far before people started accepting that maybe going to war with his undead country wasn't such a bad idea. Even before that, though...

I'd tried to warn Frisk, when he found me. I'd tried to tell him how the only reason the whole of the white council hadn't buried him was because of the ongoing war, and… there simply weren't enough soldiers to hold the lines and go to war with all of his new undead creations.

Black magic. You start small...

On a more personal note, Frisk fucked up on a grand scale, trying to bring my lost loved ones back to bribe me for more materials.

Y'see, in Norse mythology, Odin sends Valkyries out to collect the souls of heroes who fall in battle, to take them to Valhalla for their eternal reward. If you want those souls back, you have to fight their respective afterlives for them. And people like Odin have zero reasons not to bring everything they have to that fight, too.

Frisk didn't much care about that, at first. Why not just focus on the bodies for now, and on the Monsters who he actually seems to have the souls for? Honestly, the kid was a powerhouse, but there's strong and there's strong, and Frisk only counted as the former. So when Frisk tracked me down in South America, chasing a lead on some Red Court Vampires making trouble, I wasn't exactly in the right state of mind, and it got much, much worse when he lied to my face about being able to bring them back correctly, like I was some unknowing rube.

It turned into a fight.

We were pretty even, when I had nothing left to lose, but I did still get beaten to within an inch of the other side.

"I swear, I can bring them back," Frisk was pleading with me, even when I was spitting blood and teeth out onto the dirt. "I've already brought so many others back, and a lot of those left are coming along as fast as we can produce Determination. With Necromancy alone, so much is possible, but with both of them combined? If you can spare some, I could save a lot more lives!"

Oh, I bet you can.

But I'd already looked into raising my friends from the grave, even just parts of them, just in case, and…

Pet Cemetery didn't cover half of it.

While the Monsters had lives that tended to be more focused on material things and being infused with old loved objects, humans go to places like the Silver City, like I'd said. If you want a soul back, you basically have to be Jesus or be friends with Odin.

I was the latter, and I still got politely told to fuck off.

I'd asked my fallen angel about alternatives, both in polite tones and less polite tones, and Lasciel had gone pretty far out of her way to warn me off the entire time. She liked me, but she didn't like me that much.

Maybe I could pull off a heist for the souls, if I put in a few years or decades of effort, but…

The best I got was a quick, heavily supervised trip to Valhalla, and it had come close to burning every favor I didn't have with Odin. In spite of all that, it was… nice. Just really nice.

From what I was told, other places people like my friends tend to go when they pass? Likely have some tendency to be as nice, so I wasn't as worried about my lost family anymore. It hurt, it always hurt, but…

The world was burning to ashes, and they didn't have to deal with it anymore.

But it didn't leave me any less furious that Frisk tried to use them against me, after everything that had happened.

"Know when you've lost, kid," I grunted, still trying to push myself up off the ground. "Part of the only reason I haven't given up Lasciel's coin is because she protects me from you. I'm going to hell, or maybe into Odin's trash bin, but I'm not going to burn off little pieces of my soul so you can pretend your friends are all alive again!"

I raised my staff, and Lasciel's efforts kept the hand holding it from shaking.

"There's nothing left for me in this world," I admitted. "Everyone and everything I cared about is dead or tainted. You helped kill them, when you swallowed that ritual. I've been fighting the Reds, doing my part to make them pay for every drop of blood they've ever spilled, and it'll end when I've got nothing left!"

I spat more blood on the ground.

"Funny thing is, I think I've killed more times than you have, by now. Maybe the Reds'll get me, maybe the White Council will find time to finish me off… whatever it is, I'm gonna make damned sure that whoever pushes me over that edge will pay for it, mark my words. So either kill me!" I shout the words, ignoring Lasciel's attempts to get my attention, "Or get the hell outta my way. But don't ever, ever tell me you can get my friends back. They're behind heaven's and Odin's walls, like you've already been told a dozen times. Stick to your Monsters," I spit more blood, this time as an insult, "and leave the surface to the living. Or else."

I think it says something about me that Frisk flinched away from my eyes, avoiding the pull of a soul gaze.

Yeah.

I've had a bad year, but that little reminder that the kid wouldn't risk looking me in the eyes actually felt kind of nice at this point.

"...this really doesn't work, does it?" Frisk finally asks, looking around the Jungle in the middle of nowhere we're in. "You, the Wizards, the government… it'll never end, will it? Even if I do bring back all the Monsters?"

"It's taken you this long to figure that out?" I ask, a bit disgusted with the kid. Even so, a very small part of me, almost forgotten, feels hope.

Is the kid quitting, after all this time?

Frisk stands there, staring at nothing, considering the problem.

I, meanwhile, continue waiting.

I'm only buying time, after all.

Ebenezer knew where we were going to be for this, so I just had to keep the kid talking.

"...honestly, I'm curious," Frisk admits slowly. "I can't… really stick around here, if it's going to be this way…"

I raise an eyebrow.

"...but I'm really sort of curious, after everything."

That… wasn't Frisk's voice. I mean, I'm pretty sure Frisk didn't sound like that. Who was that? What?

"I've been trying to warn you, my host," Lashiel's voice whispered in my ear, finally passing through the defenses I'd broken too many Laws to enforce in spite of her Coin literally being buried in my palm, where I had told all my remaining fr- ...allies to attack in the event of an emergency. "Frisk never stood alone. Or have you forgotten, again?"

"What are you curious about this time? More blood magic? Different forms of raising skeletons? Whether or not you still have any morals worth the name?" I poked at Frisk, considering the implications of what Lash was whispering…

Because…

Because this wasn't quite going to be real, was it?

I'm in the now, aren't I?

For now.

If the kid tried, really tried, to catch me in a time loop, for whatever reason…

Then in spite of everything, I only needed to hold out long enough for Ebenezer to arrive. And, for a given value of the word, we'd "win."

Or at least, reality wouldn't tear itself apart, as I was warned it was trying to do, ripping at Wizards' minds as it was.

"...You know," the thing that was speaking through Frisk smiled, and it was practically a Glasgow Grin. "I didn't have a chance until you showed Frisk it was really OK to take up 'Evil' as a resource," it admitted. "We both really want to see how you Fight, when you aren't holding anything back. Why don't you show us, before it all ends?"

Uh.

Huh.

Let me just throw down with the junior Death God real quick.

Nope.

I rolled my eyes, relying heavily on my Fallen-granted muscle control to avoid giving the game away. Stall, stall, stall, and if it was a fight Frisk and this other thing wanted, then it was a fight they would get. Here's hoping that my memories will stop falling all over themselves while I go for the sucker punches.

"You're a tiny god right now, aren't you?" I asked, raising an eyebrow and feigning bemusement instead of a touch of anxiety and, y'know, years of hatred for raw power. "And you're expecting this to end well for either of us?" I snorted. "Yeah, let me just call up my buddy Han Solo real quick, he's got the right idea for these sorts of things, and he'd probably make the fight more interesting, too."

I don't bother shaking the made and remade and remade and remade and remade and remade and remade and remade power bracelet out of my jacket sleeve. I don't need to, even if it would probably buy more time. If it came to a sucker punch, I was promised the ability to survive any hit, even one from a black hole, and that would give me the chance to counterattack.

Or I could just spend my Death Curse. It seemed kind of ironic, all things considered.

Time felt… off. Feels off.

Goddamned tense disagreement, etched into my skull after all the times Frisk had-

My left hand shot up and fired off The Works, just as Ebenezer arrived.

Frisk's eyes widened as a Hellfire empowered advancing wall of poison billowed out of my skin, the skin and muscles around my fingers melting away to pay for the effect. In the back of my mind, Lashiel sighed, having already accepted that even being with me in person wasn't going to work if I had already lost my friends, but when she didn't follow it up with any verbal remarks I quietly noted that she had another plan in play.

The green and blood-red mist was washed away with a swing of Frisk's infamous knife, the common chef's blade leaving a trail of destruction as it tore away the effect, but I was just getting started; partitioning off parts of my mind for combat had become second nature since I'd picked up the coin, and I'd been putting it into practice for as long as I'd had the Coin. It was barely a tenth of a second later by the time I'd tossed up another two spells.

Frisk sidestepped the first, a simple blast of concentrated Hellfire (accept no substitutes), but only narrowly managed to hop over the Volcanomancy I'd hidden behind it, leaping up as the floor fell away to reveal the molten earth that was swiftly seeking to disgorge itself into the sky. The amalgamation that looked like a kid practically teleported, they moved so fast, and it was almost sheer luck that saw the bolt of lightning I'd called up from the sky with my right hand landing close enough to shock the bastard numb.

Yeah, I'd come to rely on Lashiel's aid in hiding my spellwork-

ARGH!

I bit my tongue as the horizontal slash caught my eye, and I threw up a Faraday's Prison defense instinctively to counter the followup. The mass of chains anchored to reality almost didn't come into play fast enough, but thankfully the half-sphere dome of metal was all the way up by the time Frisk's energy blade hit it. In spite of the attack practically being a reality slash, the Prison did it's work and ate the blade's beam as it was meant to, vanishing back into nothingness without bothering to sink into the earth first.

"Forzare!" My mouth lied, and Frisk prepared that infamous green shield spear to catch my omnidirectional attack, relying on some apparent mandate that anything attacking it only approach in a way that could be blocked with sufficient speed, no matter what.

Game, set, and match.

Ebenezer's hurled chains came down from Frisk's blind spot, and when the struck the kid's defense, the chains didn't disappear. And they wouldn't, ever, forcing the kid to defend in that direction while my real attack came through.

They'd been used to hold down Prometheus while his liver was eaten for all eternity, after all.

Frisk's perpetually squinty eyes widened when the chain attack started to approach from my direction, too, empowered by

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̷̲̈́̂̌B̸̻̻̿̄̓ÿ̸̯̳̦̙̘͗̾ ̶̼̖̌

I blinked, and the perpetual headache I'd lived with since that hellish day T̴͓̅̉w̵̧͕̥̽ȋ̶̫͙̘͔̔̈́͐s̴̬̓̋́̑ṭ̷̥̟̈̋e̸͎͚͑͜d̴̰͑

Frisk hadn't moved, though the second attack I'd tried to add to McCoy's had fallen a bit short. It was still close enough.

"Gotcha, you flighty son of a bitch," I muttered, grinning like a madman as the eye that had been torn from my socket bounced against my cheek.

Then the kid vanished, and all hell broke loose.

Where the… thing had been standing, there was now a hole.

I will make no effort to describe the hole, because it did not exist.

I do not exist.

I will never exist.

That is well and good.

All things are well and good and will be well and good and all manner of things will be well and good.

"Hoss!"

Lashiel was asking me to make a deal that I was accepting that had not been accepted because it was already accepted when nothing was everywhere and nowhere and all manner of things would be well and good.

"Hoss, listen to me!"

All manner of things would be good and all manner of things would be well and all manner of things would make sense when I remembeeed that aht where else would be good and would be well.

"Hoss, you need to get the chains, back when!"

I could see colors and I could smell sapce and all manner of things would beel well not good.

"Hoss!"

I am nowhere.

You are nowhere.

Nothing amha vne been anywhere or anything and all manner of things will be well.

I don not know when I am. It is. Not and it will always. Be not. And I will be then and I will be will.

I drop Lashiel's coin win my hand and lose the fingers, but that is ok because I have already tesvrke d back in time and the plan is a pa. Ins a plan is a plan is a pan is

See below; Frisk's death does bring this to an end after Dresden drops the coin

Predicted sequence of events:

1. Dresden is informed in the middle of battle that Murphy and Thomas are dead. He tries to use his amulet to connect to Thomas, as they're both part of a set, and it fails completely. In truth, Thomas' amulet was broken, but in Dresden's mind this is sufficient reason to take up the coin if he starts losing the battle.

2. Dresden starts losing the battle.

3. Dresden, in a moment of desperation, takes up the coin.

4 .Dresden promptly curb-stomps Snakeboy. As he's one of the top 40 strongest wizards in the world, and he's just been corrupted, he can put the millennia of experience Lasciel offers him to good use. He fights Lasciel every step of the way, but from her perspective, the fighting is good-natured; it gives her an in.

5Frisk sees Dresden's new nature, accepts that sometimes it's OK to use certain powers, and promptly nabs minigodhood out from under the Necromancers.

T6. hey begin fighting their allies, tentatively, because they've got things to do in the past to prevent this from happening. Frisk fights off Sans while Michael manages to slash Dresden's eye.

7. Dresden sees Frisk fighting as a dark mirror to his own actions, destroying his soul for power, giving Michael the opportunity to talk him into dropping the coin.

8. Frisk is noticeably confused. Isn't the correct use of power, knowing the damage will be undone, something that means they should be able to ignore the consequences of this future-to-be?

T9. he White Council takes advantage of this confusion and promptly nukes Frisk with a lot of things they've had hidden away; they can have the Blackstaff carefully fix this so it doesn't break quite so spectacularly.

begins dying, and preps his/her automatic-cast Death Curse, to send memories of what happened back in time. The Blackstaff manages to break up the sending, but realizes they're low on timetimetimetmtimetimetiemti

Eb11. enezer tells Dresden that there's a Plan in play. He admits that he's been working on the problem from the outside since somebody started mucking with time, and they're running rapidly out of ways to prevent reality from unraveling. Go back, and say whatever you have to, do whatever you have to, to buy time for the good guys to pull a one-last-time fix against everything that broke, without the necromancers taking full advantage of all that happened. You can still fix this. Try to fix this. Good God, hoss, try, help us, no, stop, help, somebody help, god please no, help me Dresden please God no Rashid help me help me help

D12resden agrees, and Lasciel's shadow admits that taking him in the state he was in would probably have led to him dropping the coin in a hot minute anyway. It's this interaction that encourages her, more than any other, to play a longer con.

13Dresden wakes up in Dresden Prime's mindscape. He catches Dresden's subconscious and Lasciel herself and begins integrating memories he himself had gotten from the natural backwash of time.

14The neutral timeline

up Lasciel's coin, and killed Snakeboy with it, after Cassius told him Murphy and Thomas were dead. It isn't quite that cut and dried, but it covers the basics. From tdiverts things using the coin, making an effort every step of the way to fight Lsciel over his ue of her power. Frisk sees this s it, and ends up completing a version of his/her own god hood off to the side. Dresden hoss for the love of God help me is bpen/talked down, and Frisk is killed in the end, which triggers the

All manner of things will be well and all manner of things will be good and all manner of things will b

It's a beautiful day Outside