《Endslayer》 The Big End Monster Or Something Artilleries and guns spat out a sideways hail of death, magicians hurled beams and bolts and constructs of mana-stuff, and a few individuals with striking garbs spat out streams of pure kinetic energy from their swords. Mines, shells, and missiles both mundane and magical punctuated the constant drum with chains of detonations. In the distance, nukes and world-spells provided the bass. Earth around the fortress was rendered to ruins and craters, and still the tide of chimeric horrors threatened to overcome the tide of death raining down upon it. In the horizon, beyond the atmosphere, loomed a draconic leviathan of late-space age technology and early-worldwalker magic as it sat on a now sinking continent. Pren was watching this unfold 5 kilometers underground from a screen half the size of the conference room. She had with her a cup of something blue and brewed, a weirdly crusted donut, and a handheld device loaded with 8Tb of tumbo pictures. Pren was already in love with tumbos. They were evolution¡¯s answer to ¡®what would happen if seals, but with bunny ears¡¯, and were as dorky as puppies. ¡°Heh.¡± She grinned at a conga-line of tumbos slide down a grassy hill and into each other¡¯s buts. Their noses got squished. ¡°Heh heh!¡± ¡°I take it you¡¯re pleased with the offering,¡± said an anxious woman in a sharp navy-blue uniform. General Halla was middle aged, with a few more wrinkles than Pren herself had. But where Pren was blessed with a forever tan and thick black hair, this lady looked like an undead animated by the grace of caffeine and stress. The shouting match she¡¯d had with the other military suits after hearing her demands hadn¡¯t helped. Pren didn¡¯t feel guilty for causing it though. Her rates were incredibly competitive, considering she had a near perfect monopoly on the business. ¡°Love it. I¡¯m gonna keep this okay? ¡± said Pren, lifting the device and pocketing it. Halla nodded, lips pursed with strained patience. ¡°Yep, yep. So¡­ to business.¡± Pren sipped tea and gestured at the screen. ¡°So what¡¯s the situation here exactly?¡± ¡°Dire.¡± General Halla let out a weary breath, flicking her gloved hand to project maps and data over the video feed. Roughly 1% of the map was green. Half was angry red, and another half was straight up blacked out. ¡°The Void King has shattered Jurope. It and the Corrupt Sentinels are engaged in battle with every Battleship-class mage, adventurer, and freelancer, while we hold the line to try preserve what little humanity is left, but we¡¯re rapidly running out of nuclear weapons and other meaningful ammunition. Our strategists predict total collapse of frontline in a maximum of two¨C¡± ¡°Right, right, okay. Hold up.¡± Pren lifted a hand. ¡°I don¡¯t need the nitty-gritty. Let¡¯s try a checklist. Your world is ending?¡± General Halla¡¯s control slipped momentarily, her face flashing with briefest outrage. ¡°Evidently,¡± she drawled. ¡°Well, you¡¯d be surprised! A planet ending is not always the same as an actual reality apocalypse. Has anything unusual happened lately?¡± ¡°Has anything¡­¡± General Halla took a moment to compose herself, mumbling something about ¡®summoning worked¡¯ and ¡®she isn¡¯t human¡¯. Rude of her, though Pren let it slide. Some humans don¡¯t treat regular zero percent altered kin as humans, and she had ran out of energy to change natives¡¯ views long, long ago. ¡°Just give me like a quick top ten history changing from the last ten decades,¡± Pren said helpfully. ¡°Top ten¡­ Well, mana sensitive individuals first appeared 2056, roughly sixty years ago. In 2058, the first Battleship-class individual awakened, prompting the creation of¡­¡± Blah-blah-blah faction this, blah-blah faction that. It took a while for Pren to gather the important bits, but she let the General continue. ¡°OK. So, natural law changes and invasive species. That¡¯s a check for minor conceptual damage. Definitely a sign of an apocalypse right there. How are the colors? Are colors still normal?¡± General Halla blinked. ¡°Pardon?¡± ¡°Sorry.¡± Pren smacked her own forehead. ¡°Checklist. Go through the checklist. Have you noticed the color pink going missing, or perhaps a new color popping up that makes people insane? Anything like that?¡± ¡°Ah¡­ Not that I am aware of, no. Should we expect color changes soon?¡± she asked warily. ¡°Nah. Just checking for conceptual damage. Colors are usually a good first indicator, especially the wrong ones. How about missing hours, lost days, a sudden appearance of hyper-competent individuals who seem to know what is going to happen ahead of time? Wars between powerful individuals happening in the span of seconds without warning? No? All guns suddenly being replaced with water squirters all across the globe?¡± General Halla continued to shake her head, her expression perplexed. ¡°No problems with causality. Check.¡± ¡°Does that happen? Can magic control time?¡± she was dead serious now, hope twinkling in her eyes. ¡°Not here. Not yet. Never if I do my job here. Now, last question: How much is one plus one?¡± When General Halla seemed reluctant to answer, Pren gestured wildly. ¡°C¡¯mon. How much is it?¡± ¡°Two?¡± ¡°Neat-o. So your abstracts are a check. Good news ma¡¯am. Things are not as dire as they seem. Your reality has what I like to call a Monday Apocalypse. It¡¯s kind of inconvenient, but Tuesday comes and it¡¯s all over with no ill effects. In fact, in many cases people actually prefer a small shake-up to the laws of reality, especially if they grant you magic or superpowers.¡± ¡°Inconvenient,¡± said General Halla slowly, holding her tone even, though Pren saw the quiet deadly fire in her eyes as he met her gaze. ¡°Billions dead. Billions. Humanity on verge of oblivion. And you laugh.¡± Pren sighed, lifting her hands in a placating gesture as she leaned back. ¡°Yeah. Well, not laugh-laugh I heh¡¯d at the tumbos, but I am enjoying myself for sure. They¡¯re fantastic.¡± That gave the woman a pause. ¡°I still can¡¯t get over them. What kinda world evolves tumbos? Were there no predators that could catch these fat ass round helpless balls of fluffy? Makes no sense whatsoever. No wonder you¡¯re getting grilled by some basic ass biomass corrupting technomagic mutants. And how can I focus on the important things, while a billion nameless nothings die you ask? Why, my dear contractor, because you¡¯re barely real to me. Like any responsible person, I¡¯ve tinkered with my ego to ensure a healthy ¡®emotional distance¡¯ to my work, and while my seeming murderhoboism may be offensive to you ¨C so sorry by the way ¨C it¡¯s absolutely essential for my own long-term sanity.¡± Not the first awkward silence Pren had endured, nor the awkwardest. The battle continued to play out on the big screen. A flying battleship got wrestled down into a sea by an eight winged angel-like chimera with faces for skin. A digital tag marked it as ¡®Battleship-class Corrupt Sentinel¡¯. It plummeted into trench lines. A magical reactor of some kind exploded, consuming an entire frontline. Another tiny pixel of green area was lost. Pren watched none of it. A clip of two tumbos slapping each other with their floppy ears demanded her full attention. ¡°You called them biomass corrupting technomagic mutants,¡± said General Halla, composed once more. Desperation tends to do that. You can get away with beingreallycheeky if the other side is having an apocalypse. ¡°Have you faced them before? What can you tell me about them?¡± ¡°Not these exact ones, but yeah. A common enough trope. Pretty effective too. I¡¯d wager at a glance that this ¡®mana¡¯ you¡¯ve got is going on here is their infection vector. On contact they spread contagious mana, which proceeds to rapidly transform your oncology if your defenses aren¡¯t up to snuff. Reversal might be tricky without breaking causality, but you should be able to block the process by disrupting that mana as it undergoes change.¡± ¡°Hm. This aligns with Dr. Randoffel¡¯s experiments from six years ago,¡± General Halla said evenly. ¡°However, halting the infection as you call it requires a trained mage to react within seconds of infection. We haven¡¯t had success in finding more scalable alternatives.¡± ¡°Catch.¡± Pren tossed a tiny pale-blue marble at General Halla. She caught it, perplexed. ¡°And this¡­¡± ¡°Squeeze it.¡± General Halla did. An invisible wave shuddered through the room within less than a blink. Forcefield sealing the room flickered and sounds of panicked orders could be heard from the hallway outside. An alarm began ringing somewhere. ¡°What¨C¡± ¡°You¡¯ve been shot by a Tumbo Wave. It¡¯s what happens when you release a bunch of mana frozen from aligned superposition. Think of it as splashing ripples on the big mana-lake, but more like a magnetic explosion. Takes a bit of finesse to craft them, but should be doable for your mages. I¡¯ll draw you a tutorial if you¡¯ve got some crayons. Does seem to disrupt your own magics too, but that¡¯s a skill issue you can solve yourself. On the flip side, it¡¯ll stop whatever magical ass-pullery your enemies are using to regen like that.¡± ¡°Write it down!¡± General Halla rushed to a side table to fetch a datapad of some kind, then set it down and rummaged through a cabinet for pen and paper. ¡°Uh, just hand me the whatever-pad. I can probably write on it,¡± Pren said. General Halla ran to her with the pad and turned it on. The UI was idiot proof, and Pren began sketching a tutorial on a painting program. ¡°So you¡¯ve been hiding your mana rings? This changes things.¡± General Halla leaned with her hands on the table, thoughts racing through her face. ¡°Another potential Battleship-class mage won¡¯t make a difference, unless¡­ You have ascended past it. You¡¯ve solved the tri-halo bottleneck. How?¡± ¡°Girl, don¡¯t throw your native system-lingo at me like that. I started playing around with mana like five minutes ago.¡± ¡°Impossible. That finesse¡­¡± Pren cringed a little at the peanut gallery response, but mastered her expression. ¡°It¡¯s all about tossing different things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Once you¡¯ve done it enough times, you grow an intuition for these things. I like to start by checking if local metaphysics is energy, matter, soul, or mind based, if it¡¯s a purely physical system, dual system, tri-system, or a hodgepodge mess. Then it¡¯s about narrowing it down. Your mana is energy so I check if it¡¯s a wave, particle, string, bling, or whatever. Then comes figuring out how it interacts with local reality, they¡¯re usually analogous to the world¡¯s natural laws with some twists. Easier to work within constraints of the reality you¡¯re in once you know the limits you shouldn¡¯t break.¡± ¡°Unified Theory of Mana,¡± the General swallowed. ¡°If what you say is true we have a chance. Draw it for me.¡± ¡°About that.¡± Pren paused her scribbling, having finished a beautiful cartoon tutorial for Tumbo Wave. ¡°Your initial offering pleased me, but we¡¯re going to have to talk about payment before I accidentally save you early.¡± ¡°Now?¡± General Halla¡¯s eyelids twitched and she pointed at the big screen. Thousands of magitech mechs ground against unending waves of wiggly-purple-black hordes of limb and claw. It was like watching two army-sized cheese graters do a mating battle, except one could regen and the other could not. ¡°Seems like a good time, no?¡± ¡°No. You will be compensatedifyou deliver, and after we survive. This is not my first time summoning a demonic entity, precautions have been taken to ensure that the object of your obsession will be destroyed, should you attempt to renege on your promise. Now write down the theory.¡± ¡°Lady, you should probably get some sleep or up the dose on whatever stims are keeping you upright. You kinda ping-ponging between awed-annoyed-hostile triangle. A woman of your status and age should be a little more stoic and play along.¡± Pren grit her fist and lowered her voice. ¡°Like ¡®Mrrrh, I suppose I shall do what I must and seal the deal with you o¡¯ stranger.¡¯ Or just keep it in the awed-annoyed axis. Leave hostility out.¡± Determination hardened General Halla¡¯s expression and squeezed remnants of her patience. With swift, precise movements she took the datapad, sent Pren¡¯s drawing somewhere, and handed it back. ¡°Theory of Mana. Or you¡¯ll never see the photograph of the Black Lantern.¡± Neither Pren¡¯s smile nor lazy posture twitched. She continued half-heartedly flipping through the tumbo videos, as relaxed as ever. All the same, something in that room changed. ¡°Lucky you there¡¯s someone I hate even more than uppity little bitches who don¡¯t know their place,¡± said Pren cheerily. ¡°You have contingencies for my reward in the event of your untimely death?¡± General Halla continued her death-stare. ¡°You don¡¯t? Aight, I¡¯m gonna suggest we shake hands and you swear to deliver my reward no matter what.¡± Pren held out her hand. General Halla eyed it suspiciously, then glared again at Pren. ¡°Contract magic?¡± ¡°No magic. No tricks. A promise.¡± They shook. ¡°Done. Your apocalypse will be stopped.¡± Pren clapped her hands and started drawing on the datapad, geometrics, figures, and cute smiley-faced mana-particles. ¡°This is a big bonus for you by the way. I don¡¯t usually do technology development if I can help it, but you are getting your asses handed pretty badly here.¡± The forcefield flickered again. Pren hadn¡¯t caused it this time. General Halla¡¯s pupils flitted around as she conversed something through some kind of telepathy. Her face grew grim.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°They¡¯ve breached through the outer bunkers,¡± she said to Pren, her voice curt. ¡°We¡¯re evacuating. Keep up.¡± Angular lines and sharp runes glowed on her black glove. The forcefield dropped. A brisk pace took her to the door. It opened to a bare-bones bunker hallway of organized chaos. Military staff ran one way and lines of bulkily armored soldiers the other. Pren hurried along and had to dodge a few people who hadn¡¯t noticed her behind the general. Tremors shook dust off of the ceiling and cracked concrete. Muffled gunfire echoed from the distance. A short helmetless man in armor not much taller than Pren paused when he noticed them rounding a corner. ¡°Ma¡¯am, do you need help securing asset-09?¡± ¡°Oh-nine? Budby, I¡¯m oh-oh unique.¡± General Halla ignored Pren. ¡°Negative. 09 has been confirmed as a pure information asset. Minor disruptive capabilities. Mana saturation at below five. No halos.¡± The man nodded in understanding. ¡°Roger that. Results?¡± ¡°Hyep, here¡¯s your world¡¯s mana explained through family friendly pictures and squiggles.¡± Pren offered her datapad to the man. General Halla snatched it. ¡°Details classified for now, but hope is alive. Stay strong commander. Saints yet live.¡± ¡°Saints yet live,¡± said the man, a white grin breaking through his full beard. ¡°You hear that, losers?¡± ¡°Saints yet live,¡± echoed soldiers behind him. ¡°And so we fight!¡± Raahs and hurrahs came from all but one throat. Emergency lights flicked on as Pren and General Halla passed through a massive cafeteria and more hallways. Another squad of soldiers jogged past. Gunfire and spells sounded beneath the emergency klaxons. They arrived at a station to board some kind of underground train, when a vault door flew off its hinges. Biomechanical monsters of black metal and ghostly luminescent flesh tore through turrets and blender soldiers. General cursed and dragged Pren to a side elevator. The train was abandoned. A couple squads of soldiers and a handful of mages were left behind to protect their retreat through elevators. A few important looking wizardry types were in the elevator with them. ¡°New plan,¡± said General Halla. ¡°You will board a raptor fighter to Skyway Bastion. General Alba will receive you there and nominate your handlers, who¡¯ll interrogate you for spell designs and magical knowledge.¡± ¡°Hm?¡± Pren blinked, her focus broken. ¡°Oh? Nah, I can do my thing from here. You¡¯ve got like a source of mana I can plug into? One of those generators your flying battleships had or something similar. I¡¯m ready to speedrun this system.¡± General Halla¡¯s eyes flashed bright blue as they scrutinized Pren. ¡°Six percent mana saturation? Your asset class will be re-evaluated once you reach fifty and awaken, but we won¡¯t be providing you with magical resources. We need everything to hold the frontlines.¡± Pren studied her expression. ¡°You can¡¯t or you won¡¯t?¡± ¡°There¡¯s no difference at this hour. I am a blade of the Union. Nothing more. Nothing less.¡± ¡°Right.¡± Pren crossed her arms over her dirt-brown traveling coat, re-thinking her approach. Pren started stretching, limbering her muscles. Already she could feel her mundane biology augmented by the world¡¯s magic, however slightly. She was stronger, her senses sharper, and her mind clearer. She let out a long breath. ¡°Huuu¡­¡± ¡°What are you doing?¡± General Halla asked. Pren closed her eyes. In the blackness she sensed mana within herself. Hair-thin blue lines traced out her veins and nerves, slowly widening as she ¡®magnetized¡¯ them to draw in ambient mana. Her power grew, but nowhere near fast enough. The focal point of core growth seemed to be the lower abdomen. ¡°You¡¯re making some of the younger ones panic,¡± whispered General Halla. ¡°Stop it.¡± ¡°And there¡¯s no way for us to get me a mana reactor?¡± she asked to confirm. ¡°Not for you.¡± ¡°Absolutely zero totally never no way? I¡¯m asking ¡®cos the alternative is gonna hurt.¡± ¡°You will never be given access to a mana core, much less a mana engine.¡± After a moment, Pren nodded. ¡°Right. Right. Rogue we go then.¡± A question died in General Halla¡¯s throat as Pren punched it, took a knee, stole her pistol, and burrowed a bullet in her lower abdomen. Pren stabbed two fingers into the general¡¯s guts and magnetized her mana. General Halla choked on a grunt of pain, her eyes bulging. In the black space of mana and souls, brightness as violent as sunlight flooded into her from the General''s core. An invisible whirlpool rushed towards her, blowing clothes and hair of everyone around them. A torrent of fire and pain flooded Pren¡¯s nerves. She heard a pop somewhere that shouldn¡¯t pop and tasted iron on her tongue. Shouts of alarm turned into guns pointing at her. Eyes lit up with inner light. Tightly packed arcane circuitries glowed on gloves and clothes. Several circles and cages of ghostly energy began forming around Pren. Inhaling the last of General Halla¡¯s mana-stuff, Pren willed every mote of energy within her to rapidly align and de-align. The resulting Tumbo Pulses crashed through the twenty-plus souls in the elevator, giving them the spiritual equivalent of a concussion. All but two youths with the ¡®I¡¯m just an intern¡¯-look about them dropped. Some groaned. Others drooled, their eyes blank. Oh, yeah and General Halla was up too, since she no longer had mana. ¡°Sorry about that, I¡¯ll put it to good use.¡± Pren laid her to the ground and stuffed the pistol in her pants. General Halla grunted stoically, glaring at the interns. ¡°Subdue her! Now!¡± ¡°Best if you don¡¯t try,¡± said Pren. ¡°But do something about her. She¡¯s got a bullet wound. Use a stapler and whatever magic medical gel you probably have. I¡¯m gon¨C whoah¡­¡± Her step faltered. Pren¡¯s nose was bleeding profusely. Everywhere inside her still burned like she¡¯d pumped 100 ml of fire ant piss into her veins. She did feel stronger though. Whatever bad stuff the mana was doing to her body, it felt kind of like a second set of muscles, and brain-muscles and eye-muscles and everything-muscles. General Halla hauled her to a sitting position while making struggling noises. She pressed on her wound and somehow managed to draw a firearm from a downed officer. Pren confiscated it and shoved it in her pants. ¡°Shhhh. Take it easy. You¡¯ll tear something if you move around. Come on guys, she¡¯s been shot! Hurry up!¡± ¡°Demon filth,¡± the general spat. ¡°Should¡¯ve never let you out¡­¡± ¡°Should¡¯ve, would¡¯ve. Now¡¯s not the time to bother with hypotheticals, General. You¡¯re in a grave situation. Come on you two, keep her alive!¡± Pren stayed by the general until the two interns finally came over. ¡°You¡¯re bleeding,¡± observed the male specimen, his wide brown eyes staring down at Pren. ¡°Shot her,¡± whispered the general to the female intern. ¡°In the guts. We need her alive.¡± ¡°Ma¡¯am, I¡¯m¡­ I¡¯m scared,¡± replied the intern. ¡°My hands are shaking, I can¡¯t.¡± ¡°How bad do you think it is? Be honest, I¡¯ve only a vague guess how your magic works with biology.¡± ¡°You¡¯re dead. Killed yourself you stupid bitch.¡± General Halla laughed, then grunted from pain. The other intern fussed over her stomach with medical supplies. The general continued through red teeth, ¡°Mana of a Frigate-class mage in an unawakened body. You¡¯ve less than a day before death without treatment.¡± ¡°It¡¯s bad,¡± confirmed the male intern. ¡°K. Thanks. Let¡¯s finish up quick and try deal with this afterwards then,¡± said Pren. ¡°How¡¯s the general looking up?¡± ¡°Please don¡¯t shoot, I won¡¯t shoot you!¡± shouted the female intern and threw her pistol at Pren¡¯s feet. Looked like she had everything handled with the general. Pren wobbled over to the next knocked out wizard, one who¡¯d had particularly bright glowy eyes, while the general continued to loudly demand the interns to stop her. They didn¡¯t. Pren willed mana around her fingers to strengthen them, and shoved them into the person¡¯s guts. She drained this person¡¯s mana, and then the next. With every mage drained her head grew lighter and the sounds more distant. Thankfully, Pren found some tissues to stuff into her nostrils and ears, which took care of the blood. The nine or so extra mages amounted to about two-thirds of General Halla¡¯s mana mass. Pren¡¯s soul felt really, really bloated. ¡°Whew!¡± She swept her hair back, turning to face the fast approaching end of the elevator ride. Up there, on a pier-like platform that received the diagonal deep-earth elevators, a delegation of automated turrets, drones, and soldiers awaited them. Pren was a bit surprised the snipers hadn¡¯t shot her already. Oh well. Pren unleashed a Tumbo Wave at the reception. Forcefields flickered. A few men fell to a knee. No one collapsed. ¡°Nice! You¡¯re fast to adapt,¡± said Pren to General Halla, smiling. ¡°Good, good. Make sure everyone learns that, everyone you want to live anyway. You¡¯ll need it for the mop-up once we nuke the big boy.¡± ¡°Evacuate all nuclear armaments! Don¡¯t let her get near them,¡± shouted General Halla into an earpiece. Seems they had redundant comms. Must be how the general warned them of her. Pren laughed. ¡°Figure of speech. No magic nukes today. We already have a perfectly fine trick already, just need a lil bit of extra oomph to pull it off. Now let¡¯s make sure we don¡¯t die.¡± Because the soldiers up at the pier were taking aim. Even if they shot non-lethal rounds, Pren¡¯s body felt like a too watery jello held together by pure willpower. One good shove would knock her out, nevermind a real bullet! No problem. She¡¯d already produced a kinda okay-ish beginner mana-bubble with the marble. Topaz-blue gleamed around her hand as she expelled mana from her veins, encasing herself in hardened mana. Gunfire ripped through the air. Bullets ricocheted off of her. Belt-fed turrets sang ratata. Large caliber rifles glowed behind the firing squad, charging. Their projectiles broke the air in a straight line. Thunder clapped. Unconscious people and stuff flew about. Pren remained standing beneath a shimmering blue veil, unharmed. One problem though. She couldn¡¯t move an inch. That was unexpectedly successful, she¡¯d locked herself in place on a conceptual level. A bit weird, considering how fine this reality was. Actually, this wasn¡¯t so bad. Freezing herself on a conceptual level had also stopped the nosebleed. It wasn¡¯t elegant, but this might be the easiest way to not die from magic overdose. The soldiers rushed in. Interns evacuated General Halla and the knocked out wizards. They took out magic blades of some kind and started chiseling at Pren. Someone was jogging at her with explosive charges. A tacticool wizard was drawing glowing circles on the floor. Very efficient and methodical. Always inspiring to see how the end turns people into survival machines. Pren began to mentally wrestle the fickle liquid-like mana with her mind. Practice is always different from theory. Even if you¡¯ve done something kinda similar a hundred times before, there¡¯s always new quirks and tricks to learn. Always some fickle variable that takes a while to grasp, but she got there. Solidified mana globs began oozing out of her, wiggling about according to her whim. The sword guy retreated. Explosives began piling up around frozen Pren¡¯s legs. Red light lit up beside them. The wizard released a spell that sealed her in. Whiteness. Dust and debris and zap-crack of broken cables the width of adult men. Fighter crafts flew by high overhead in death-brown clouds. A gust of wind revealed Pren¡¯s surroundings, a crater of steel and concrete. The wizards and soldiers had evacuated. South, the stratosphere parted around a titan of geological scale. Earth quaked with the lumberous rhythm of its footsteps. All colors of rainbow and beyond sparkled around it, when heroes the size of microbes peppered its black hide with magic. Several of those floating battleships not currently engaged with other lesser creatures were firing beams and salvos at the thing. The closest of them was right overhead, a big town sized steel ship with too many guns, layers of blue bubbles, and a score of engines spitting blue mana at gravity. Skyway Bastion, said the white text on its side. Perfect. Pren wrapped the dough-like blobs of mana around her frozen self and applied her magnetism trick with a tweak. Nothing happened. She gave it another tweak. Slowly, she began lifting off, falling up. World backflipped around her as she accelerated skyward, towards the battleship. Above, gun turrets changed targets from the planet-resculpting titan to her. A squad of drones dispatched. Showertime. The rain opened with light. Pren rocketed through the little asteroid field made out of mana, metal, and death, picking up speed. Faster. Faster. A sonic boom clapped behind her. The drone swarm broke. Barriers of magic shattered like glass. The hull was there and a blink later, she was burrowing a Pren sized hole through fifty meters of metal. It slowed her enough to give her a glimpse of a room washed in mana-blue light, walls of glyph-engraved cylinders and magictech contaminants, and a big, big blue ball made up of concentric halos. Pren smacked bodily into it. For just a second, Pren lifted the conceptual freezing on her body. A blazing sun. The presence dwarfed her manacore like a star. Spells woven throughout the containment chamber pressed upon her on all sides with the weight of an ocean, burying her into the core. Half of her skin evaporated on contact. Every cell in her body screamed on an existential level. Mana rioted inside her. Powers began to unmake her. Pren reached deep with fingers that turned skeletal half-way through and touched the center. She magnetized it. A flood of light. Pren¡¯s consciousness blinked. In the span it took to activate her conceptual lock, she¡¯d lost an arm, an eye, most every organ, half her matter, roasted her genome back into pre-life stages, and erased half of herself on an existential level. She might¡¯ve screamed a bit. Honestly, it¡¯s no shame if you do, when you¡¯re dipping an arm into battleship reactor cores on a strange world. Gravity reasserted itself on her, and as life dimmed out of the chamber, on the metal hulk around her as well. The battleship began to fall. Not yet boyo, I¡¯ve got a use for you. Pren flooded the chamber with doughy mana and let it gush out, filling the pipes and hallways and cracks she¡¯d made in the hull. The crew started jumping off the ledges and into escape shuttles. Most had made it off by the time Pren had finished, and re-did her little magnetizing trick while wearing a broken battleship as a disguise. The only thing large enough to pull her was the planet ending leviathan. Half-way through its plummet, the battleship righted itself. It reached its max speed of some hundreds of kilometers per hour and continued soaring through the battlefields. Beneath and above, mankind fought tides of rapidly evolving all corrupting chimeric beasts. Their magic and metal were outmatched, but their spirits never broke. ¡°Saints yet live,¡± they screamed in their dying breaths, when they saw a burning battleship fly above on a kamikaze course with the beast. Disguised Pren flew past the frontlines. No more men. Only a tide of writhing horror. They flew onboard and began tearing through structures with tooth and claw. The ship became a writhing hive, its corridors veins flushed with monsters. Corrupting infection seeped into metal and magic. The very structure around Pren began to pulse with a life and a will of its own. Dead grav engines ignited to a second life at full reverse as the undead battleship tried to change its course. Engines tore off their sockets, when they met the magnitudes greater force of Pren¡¯s little magic trick. Bad boy. Naughty. The undead battleship roared in defiance. Pren hoped this wouldn¡¯t totally ruin her disguise. Explosions grew louder again. Infested zone thinned. The battleship approached the ongoing fight between Earth¡¯s mightiest beings and the planet ending thing. It promptly took aim and started peppering the heroes with projectiles and magic lances. Three individuals with presences as radiant as the battleship¡¯s core barred its way. One was a constellation of small moons, another a man inside ever expanding architecture, and third a woman with a¡­ was that a denizen inside her? Shit, Pren thought she could sense a denizen. Well okay, props to General Halla or whoever did the summoning. There was at least one sorta competent person here. Or it was Black messing with them. Pren¡¯s mood soured at that. Magic of a caliber she had not yet witnessed bent reality around her. The battleship cried as it peeled open like a thousand cans and spiraled into a pretzel of twisted architectures mid-flight. Impacts the magnitude of planetoid collisions flattened what remained. A small sliver around Pren remained airborne. Last remnants of the undead battleship cried in agony as she surfed it through its falling corpse and towards the horizon-defining figure. Then the denizen was unleashed. Reality folded backwards around a spot that moved towards Pren. It was an absence of fire, blue, and an abundance of metal this world could not define. A nameless thing without a narrative, it had the feel of artificial and intentional design. Pren¡¯s frown grew graver. Fuck. It met the end of her little disguise and gobbled up everything. The undead ship screamed in terror. Could she make it? Pren looked up. Still a couple of seconds to go. Nah, she¡¯d get eaten by this thing. Damn it.It had been such a perfect disguise too. The leviathan would¡¯ve never expected her. Damn it and damn Blackie or whichever meddler asshole planted knowledge of that thing here, she¡¯d make them eat a sock for making her do this. The denizen was behind her. It promised a swift end. Pren pulled something of her own into this reality for the briefest of moments. There¡¯d been sunlight in this world for as long as mankind could remember. Stars had shined on it for eons unknown. Fire had warmed hearts and electric and magic glow had dispelled the night. But not once had this world yet beheld the light souls turned real. The tiny lantern of silver she held existed in this reality for only a heartbeat. It was the smallest glimpse of pale light in a battlefield a planet wide. A vanishing little thing. And all who bore witness remembered it forever. For it was right and correct. And the unreal thing it shined on was no more. Pren put the lantern away. The saints and heroes and whatnot had stopped to gawk and no longer bothered her. Hundreds of eyes the size of houses and cities turned on her. The full attention of a continent¡¯s worth of mass focused on her. Too late for it to dodge. She and the spear-like remnants of her battleship pierced its center. The undead battleship died on impact. Magic propelled Pren through canyons and caverns of biomechanical super-being. Tiny inhuman civilizations unaware of the outside world saw her fly-by. Monsters with the task of guarding the being¡¯s innards opposed her and their biomechanics became pure physics. She reached a core the size of a small moon. Red and malevolent. The moment she undid her conceptual lock, Pren had a microsecond before death. Which is why, she took a couple looks before, while face-hugging the big burning ball. Humm humm, what do we have here? Clever girl, trying to copy mommy¡¯s trick? Yes you are, you are. Such a clever girl. Seriously, the leviathan had already mastered her mana draining trick! Wow. Talk about a fast adapter. No wonder the mankind of this world were struggling. Pren would not be able to drain it. Which was fine. Quick thinkers and adapters are the reason it¡¯s good to be stingy with your methods. Only show them the tricks you have to, so you can use the rest later. Pren undid conceptual freeze. A pulling force was applied on her mana. In the same instant, she coded her mana with an infectious command to disperse. She was drained empty. And the one who drained her had all of its mana yeet itself out of the solar system. A consciousness and body that had been sustained by magic alone died. Lifeless, the continent-sized chunk of now dead biomechanical waste began to collapse. Most of Pren¡¯s biology also resigned simultaneously. Her vision and senses exploded with blood. Stuff that was supposed to be solid melted like nuclear waste and became a puddle around whatever solid remained of her. She was pretty much toasted. Oof did it hurt. Her brain released every last endorphin it had left, but wow, the tingles were something else. Pren laughed a bloody laugh. ¡°Like tumbos dancing on my nerves.¡± A footstep. Several individuals had descended near her. Going by the random geometry spilling from one of them, these were the saints and heroes of mankind. ¡°Ey hello folks. No need to clap. So about the payment. You¡¯re gonna want to call General Halla and tell her to hurry. I¡¯ve only got¡­¡± Pren coughed up another organ that should not look like a microwaved roadkill. ¡°...I¡¯ve got a minute at most, so she¡¯s gotta hurry. Chop chop. I need my picture.¡± A flash and it was over. Pren was killed. 50 years later 2110, mankind''s greatest saints banded together to defeat the great End Dragon and its infinitely replicating army. Among the greatest heroes of that day was General Halla, who sacrificed her magic to create a spell capable of negating the endling infection and led Earth''s heroes in the war to retake our planet for two decades. This is where she lies. That''s roughly what the plaque at the foot of a ten meter statue of General Halla said. A flashlight lit up the night-dark marble corridor of the museum''s hall of heroes. "Hey, this is off limits at night. What are you doing there?" shouted a security guy. Pren swept sweat from her forehead and let out a sigh. "Phew. Hey, perfect. I''ve got some questions." The security guard started towards her, his flashlight held in a baton-grip. "What are you doing here? What''s that?" "Just looking for General Halla, although¡­ you don''t happen to know where she buried this photo she promised me, do you?" He looked confused. He probably didn''t know. Dang. "What is that?" he demanded. "A pickaxe? It''s for chipping through stone." The guy ended up not being very cooperative, so Pren gave him a nap time behind one of the other hero statues. She kept chipping away at General Halla''s grave until early morning, before finally pulling out a well decayed corpse half human half magitech cybernetics. "Time to cough up," said Pren, only to notice something that froze her on the spot. Then she noticed another. And another. All around General Halla''s grave, engraved in the stonework and littered about her, were spherical approximations of a creature with floppy ears and an unspeakably adorable face. Creatures so cute their visage burned itself into your subconscious and made you want to think of them and oh fuckity fuuuug. Pren let out a groan. Then another, more pained groan. Then a fuck and a few curses not spoke of in most civilized realities. "AAAAAHHH! Should''ve checked." She checked the security guard. His phone had a tumbo background. His keychain was a tumbo. His underwear had a tumbo print. His ass had a tumbo tattoo. And all around her, every floor tile and pillar was decorated with tasteful artistically carved little tumbos. "AAAAAAAHHH fuck! Fuck." Pren took her frustration out on the wall and stubbed her toe. She kept cursing. "Fucking fucking fuck fuck fuck. Whyyyyyy?! Why did I have to be an overconfident little twerp and not check everything? Always check evolution. ALWAYS. CHECK. EVOLUTION. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it, and I ignored it, cos they were so frigging impossible disgustingly improbably cute. Damn." Pren took a deep breath and looked at the deceptively cute little things. Dammit they were cute. "That one''s on me," she said to General Halla''s corpse. Then she brought a handful of resurrection into the reality and sprinkled the figment onto the body. Bones straightened. Flesh reknit itself and a naked general Halla stared up at Pren with a blinking white cybernetic eye. "Hell?" she croaked. "You wish." "Y-you¡­" The freshly reanimated General fumbled to rise from her sarcophagus. "I ordered your death. I saw your corpse." "And I saw yours. A classic step in any good frenemy relationship. Anyway, get up. I''m gonna need some evidence of payment before I stop this apocalypse." "The apocalypse¡­" General''s human eye blinked. "I stopped it¡­ We stopped it¡­ We defeated the End Dragon." "You didn''t, and even if you had it wouldn''t have done shit. Look." Pren pushed the man''s phone towards General Halla. "Look!" "A phone?" "Look at the background!" "Tumbo?" "Look!" Pren gestured at the museum walls and floor and at the man''s underwear. "Look!" "Tumbos?" Pren grabbed her by the collar. "What are tumbos?! Answer me?" "Tumbos?" "Where do they come from?" General Halla''s mouth hung open. "I would¡­ I''m alive? I''m¡­ how?" Pren slapped her face around. "Focus! Tumbos, where do they come from what are they?" General Halla''s expression hardened. "You¡­ you''re back." "Yeah yeah yeah, blahblahblah, dangerous outsider, must prevent her from destroying all I fought her. FOCUS WOMAN." Her shout startled the woman blank. "Your reality is under siege by a memetic anomaly. Tumbos do not have pooping holes or genitalia or predators or a natural diet or a natural habitat or a natural anything. I''ve studied thousands of pictures. I know. Have you ever seen anything remotely dangerous happening to them? No. Have you ever seen a dead tumbo? No. Have you ever seen other animals near them? No. You have not, because these things belong in your reality even less than I do. And before you try to argue anything, the whatever you''re about to say is exactly the reason you haven''t suspected anything until now. Believe me, I know. We need to assess how widespread the damage is, and you need to remember where you put the photograph of my ex if you want me to save your reality from certain annihilation." General Halla absorbed the words. Slowly, reason and cognition entered her expression. Pren let her stand and climb out of the sargophagi. The general took a long look at her statue, then stared into the marble corridor of hero statues lit by pre-dawn. Her aged face tensed with emotion. Then hardened. "If it is as you say, what can be done?" "Oh, well that depends entirely on the payment. Do you have it?" General Halla licked her lips like a person trying to skimp on payment. Pren gave her a cross look. "You cannot be trusted after I pay. An existence like yours¡­ Union has recruited people capable of dealing with your kind. We are not as unarmed as we once were." Pren let out a weary breath. "Seriously tedious that you keep it with the threats. No, you are not capable of dealing. You met one or two baby delvers, congrats. Did they sell you canned wonder and perpetual machine tech? Nice, welcome to being a banana reality. But I assure you, girlie, you are not capable of dealing with my kind." The general swallowed. "So long as I hold the photograph, I have power over you." Pren thought about saying something. She glanced at the marble statues and the faraway sky. It was a pretty sunrise. It had the right ratio of pinks and golds and the baby-blues were refreshingly clear. She caressed the cool smooth marble and reminded herself this was real stone. These ¨C she glanced at the napping security guard and the graves and the uppity resurrected general and the city visible at the end of the museum hallway ¨C were real people. Real people in a real world. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. They needed the certainties and rules and logics. They needed to keep believing in reality. "Yes," said Pren, feigning annoyance. "So long as you have the picture." General Halla relaxed visibly. Pren met her gaze. "Do you believe that that power is more beneficial than my trust?" The general considered it nervously. Her fingers twitched. She hid a trembling sigh. "Yes." Pren nodded and got up, chipper. "Alrighty then, let''s figure out how fucked you are." Later, in a cafe in some big flying car and endless dystopian skyscraper megacity they''d built inside the End Dragon''s corpse, they found out that the reality was very thoroughly mega extra fucked. Cave paintings had tumbos. Ancient civilizations had made tumbo statues. The world''s reneissance paintings had tumbos. Tumbo was the symbol of most flags. Tumbo meant cute/perfect/adorable in all of the world''s eight major language families, despite them being separated by tens of thousands of years. Tumbos had been found in deepest jungles, tallest peaks, darkest abyssal depths, and the coldest arctics. Every single nature documentary ever featured tumbos. No other animals existed. The only plushies available in any toy store were tumbos. No other character was worth making a plushie out of. The first space programs had sent tumbos into space and discovered a thriving tumbo colony on the moon. "They''re messing with your causality and abstracts," said Pren after inspecting the evidence on the general''s holopad. "Fundamental laws will begin bending soon." "How can you be certain they haven''t always existed?" "They have now, but you can spot inconsistencies in places where they were half assed. Look here, it says a tribe of hunter gatherers used tamed tumbos to herd cattle. The picture has tumbos on a leash ¨C adorable ¨C guarding larger tumbos." "Some tumbos are more adapted to certain roles," argued the general. "No. Look at that pudgy cuddle beast. It''s round, it''s cute, it''s helpless. It''s not guarding anything. And what would it be guarding the cattle from? What hunts tumbos? And why raise tumbos anyway, when nobody ever eats them?" General Halla stroked her chin in contemplation. "How¡­ why would they do this? They''re¡­" she sought for words but failed. "Tumbos." "Why does water make things wet? Because that''s part of its definition. Being the cute and adored companions of mankind seems to be part of tumbo''s tropes." "And you are saying this will lead to a reality-wide apocalypse, if not dealt with? Thus far it seems the tumbos are harmless, if not beneficial. People are enjoying them. They''re peaceful." "They''ve gotta go. I''d rather not. I love them too, I really do, but they''ve got to go." "Stranger, they are the last animal that made it through the apocalypse. Do you understand what removing them would do to mankind?" Behind General Halla, a little girl was trying to pick a sandwich she liked with her mother. She was hugging a tumbo plushie. Its beady eyes glared at Pren, trying to hypnotize her with their cuddly beadiness. And oh no the floppy ears. Too floppy. Unnaturally floppy. "We must," said Pren firmly. "That¡­ but¡­" General Halla looked around them. The cozy little square of the hip upper class UV-lit district was littered with joyful tumbo symbology. The cities, the people, the world, its internet, and its history. All contaminated. "How?" asked the general. Pren made the mistake of staring at a tumbo picture too long. Her heart clenched at the thought of hurting such an adorable creature. She let out a sound of pain. "Won''t lie. It''ll be ugly." "Exactly how are we to approach something of this scale? To kill every tumbo in existence would require¡­ Such cruelty will be opposed by the public and the entire world from beginning to the end. You will have no allies. Even without accounting for interference, which will be substantial, to eliminate all tumbos in the solar system would take decades. And then you would need to somehow reach the tumbo on Deep Delver Nine." "You sent a tumbo to explore deep space?" General Halla showed Pren the article about it. "Of course you did¡­ oh fuck." "Modern mana propulsion drive. He''s almost a lightyear away and flying fast." "Fantastic stuff. Marvels of human ingenuity." "Then there is the Far Friend Twenty program, twenty separate probes sent towards opposite corners of the universe. They aren''t quite as far yet, but catching them won''t be trivial, considering the total distance between probes." "Aight." Pren started scrawling a plan on the table. She did not use tumbos for illustrations this time, despite the near unnatural temptation. She had to fight it. "It would certainly take godlike power to accomplish. Do you intend on finishing that speedrun you spoke of?" asked the general warily. "That makes you scared." General''s expression remained uneasy. "I cannot say with certainty, which would be a greater threat to this reality, your final form or whatever schemes the tumbo have for our world." Pren chuckled. "Well, good thing you won''t be seeing either." "Then how will you deal with the tumbos in space?" "Oh, dunno, I guess I''ll empower you and send you flying around for a couple decades." "Couple decades?" "Yeah, well, killing all tumbos in existence was never the problem. I mean, sure that''s something we''ve gotta do, but it''s gonna take a century or two max. The real issue is killing the idea." Pren ran fingers through her hair, frowning at her plan. "Yeah¡­ the issue is that you''ve got no other cute animals left. It''d be fine if you had, we could replace the concept and that''d be that, but no. This is gonna need some intense abstract surgery." General Halla took a sip from her empty blue herbal brew mug. Tumbo snuggle flavor, said the cup. Pren shook her head. "Intense abstract surgery. Gonna need to remove every concept tumbos have touched. Cuteness, animals, space flight, technology, internet, fluffiness, floppy ears, it''s all gotta go." Strange horror dawned on General Halla''s face. Pren offered a smile. "Don''t worry. I''ll stick around and get it done. No matter the cost. No matter the pain." The End of an End Imagine a hypothetical scenario if you will. Concept A is an entirely new idea. Concept A spread through word of mouth, pictures, and videos. Where it has spread, it becomes real. Where it is real, it begins to embed deeper into reality, absorbing adjacent concepts and burrowing through time. It has a physical population north of two billion. It has a thought imprint on 99.9999% of the sentient population. It has been recorded on most media produced by the governing civilization. Roughly a percent of all language is contaminated by it, as are multiple common abstract concepts. To remove concept A, you must simultaneously remove everything it has touched. So where do you begin? General Halla had proposed they start by rallying an anti-tumbo movement and allies. An impossible dream. Nobody with a conscience would ever hurt something so cuddlable and innocent. No, there was only one way to begin an undertaking of this scale. The flying vehicle Pren had borrowed wiggled a bit. The trunk made sounds. "Hold on! We''ll be there soon," shouted Pren. The neon trail of the vehicles mana engine painted swerves around the massive dead pillars and chambers that''d once been the great planet devouring dragon''s internal biology. She flew over the ruins of a civilization that''d lived and died within its body and the long-dead corpses of beings that''d once defended its core. Pren squinted, scanning the gloom. "Shouuuuld be about here-ish¡­" The vehicle''s comms cracked. All screens blinked from blue to red. Code rippled into the shape of a female avatar. "Do not resist¡­" she said. Pren waved. "Hello~" "...you are detained for violating restricted airspace under Union regulation one-five-eight, section three. Remain seated and comply." The vehicle set a new heading towards distant blinking lights at the far end of a vaguely familiar tunnel. "Yeah. Yeah, this is the place. Alright. Fantastic." Pren leaned back to wait. The other passenger made noises in the trunk. They zipped into the former mana core chamber of the great dead beast. Within sprawled a vast research complex of white domes, walkways, and cannons and barriers and a couple thousand magical soldiers armed. They''d progressed a bit since last time. Every grunt was blinking with magic. Their guns had multiple switches. Their armor had glowing runes. A couple teleported right up next to the vehicle and escorted them to a landing site. "Exit the vehicle. Hands up. Mana still," ordered a grunt. "Yeah, yeah." Pren hopped out. Hands very much wherever she wanted them. "Hands up!" Mana thrummed within several barrels. Personal barriers activated, blurring reality around the soldiers. "Freeze!" "Chill. I''m unarmed and helpless. Just driving around on my floating automobile thingy." Violent protests and muffled screams emanated from the trunk. One of the guns pointed at it. "What''s in there? HQ, scan? W-what? A person?" The aggressive gun-aim posturing intensified, as did the grunt''s tone. "Who do you have there, private Fen, open it." "She''s General Halla, your war hero and my frenemy. We had a small disagreement on the details on how to save this reality." In the trunk, General Halla''s gagged sounds grew increasingly desperate and pleading. There was a clank and a bang. A punch dented the plasteel hatch. You could sorta make out the words ''no please don''t open the trunk, don''t open it, don''t let me out''. So of course, they popped it open. A tall frazzled woman was back there, hogtied. The cyborg half of her writhed with the same black-purple-ghostly biomechanical mass as the dormant cave floor beneath them and her non-human eye glared at the world with an unending hunger. "What the¨C" Several biomechanical tendrils skewered the first soldier''s torso and limbs and lifted him off the ground. His scream turned to a gurgle. His body convulsed. Glistening black biomechanical mass ruptured through his skin. The others had opened fire. A miniature version of the older battleship''s reality erasing lance deleted General Halla''s tentacles. The resulting vacuum collapsed with a violent clap. Another gun shot a silent pulse. Colors that did not belong in this reality twinkled around the general. Parts of her began melting into hallucinatory shapes. Still, the general''s remaining human eye sought the soldiers out, as she spoke her plea. "Run¡­" One of them was fast enough to pull the trigger a second time. She deleted the vehicle and bottom half of the general from this world. Then, a blink later, they and five of the closest aircraft were buried beneath a rapidly worming briar of black biomechanical tendrils and spines. Concrete cracked. General Halla''s roots burrowed deep, coursing through the facility''s foundations, racing towards the last flickering remnants of the great Doom Dragon''s dead core. Red and red warning lights twinkled to life all around the facility. Barriers blinked to existence, coating floors and walls in layers of glyph-littered transparent fields. Outside the rapidly expanding thicket of biomechanical corruption, spells and spell guns sang in an orchestra of pure obliteration. Inside, at its center, Pren frowned at the unpleasantly despairing moans of her frenemy, while gathering the smoking remnants of the car to make a chair for herself. "No¡­" Groaned general Halla in a hundred small voices half machine half monster. "Stop this¡­ You can stop this¡­" Pren huffed. "Yeah, well, you didn''t want me to blow up the planet. So¨C" "Nooo!" Tears in her eye, General Halla let out a pitiful roar. "I cannot¡­ not after everything¡­ after the lives we lost. I cannot. Please¡­ Don''t make me do this." Fake humor disappeared from Pren''s face. "I''ll give it. I''ll hand it over. Take it! It''s in¡­" A monstrous roar broke her speech. Her features were being buried beneath a draconic face with too many jaws and a small forest of eyes. The voice she growled out was barely legible. "Mmmmmmmrah ahheey¡­ Mmmmaaaah aiiiiee¡­" Her cybernetic eye stared at Pren. "Aiieehhh¡­ pih¡­ pih¡­ pihchtuuuhr¡­ sah¡­ shaaahh¡­ shaaaaiiiived¡­ phichtuuure ihn aaiiieeeh¡­ shaaivvee¡­ aiihh¡­" "Alright, alright, I get it. It''s in the eye. You can stop." "T¡­ t¡­ ke¡­ mhaaiikkhh¡­ eeehht¡­ shhhhdaaaaap¡­" "Sorry frendo, no can do. I promised didn''t I? No matter the cost. No matter the pain." General Halla, whose body had now absorbed three quarters of the research facility and over half of its staff, let out a roar that shook the ground. Deepest most otherworldly purples pulsed across her biomass. The general''s face froze. "Ahhh¡­ feeeelll¡­ theemm¡­" The tendril-skewered bodies of soldiers near them twitched. Their now mutated bodies gurgled with sound, echoing the general. "Mehmmorrriiihhh¡­ aahhh¡­ what?" "You''re becoming a hivemind. Hang in there, okay? This''ll be much, much easier if you stay half-way sane." An echo of the pulse that''d rippled through General Halla appeared on the cavernous ceiling. The same light spread throughout the world ending dragon''s continent-sized corpse with a command, consume. Far away, kilometers underground, decades-dormant organs the size of cities shed off a crust of stone with their first pulse. Far above, higher than any mountain should''ve reached, vents wide enough to have their own atmosphere cracked open. Their awaking inhale changed the planet''s climate. Blood rushed through veins as vast as rivers and entire jungles of interwoven muscle and machinery hummed to life. And as the machine and biological awoke, so did the magical. Mana stolen from the victims assimilated to the great being gathered through the channels and canals of the resurrecting dragon, coalescing inside General Halla. The formerly human general screamed as veins of glowing mana burst across her and her shape ignited. Her growth was fast, but it''d take a couple days for her to fully reform as the dragon''s core and truly begin the hard work of absorbing all of mankind to free them from the terror of the tumbos. ***? Mankind fought fiercely. Not as bitterly as some other realities, these guys didn''t have that fanatical order of the End here, but they put up a fight. It didn''t matter, in the end, of course. 2356, a few years behind schedule, the last saints of the Grand Alliance (names started getting messed up because of tumboed up causality) fell defending the launch of a cryogenic arc. The Last Salvation was a ship capable of interstellar travel, housing the genome of humanity, all of its knowledge, and every survivor. General Halla had regained a type of control of herself. She now projected a glowing red avatar of her humanoid form onto the mountainous dragon back, watching mankind''s last hope rise like a shining star. Pren was with her, exhausted, ragged, and totally done with her job. "Welp. I''m starting to think tumbos never existed. Never saw a live one ever, but I remember touching them and the sound they make. Hiiiiop hii hiip! This super chipper happy ''hiiup''. Fuckers got me good. I''m not usually this sensitive to mental influences." "To save humanity, I must shoot down the last hope of mankind fleeing a world consumed," mused General Halla with tragic stoicism. She''d grown a bit over the century, as a character. Hardened if you will. Being a hivemind tends to do that. Half the time she looked dead inside and the other half she looked like she wanted to murder Pren. "Yeah, or I guess you could get started on the satellite elimination now. Piggy pag on that ship." General Halla gazed at the rising star. "So time has come for the final stretch of our undertaking?" "Better start now. You''ll also need to send an offshoot to the moon and glass it. Make sure nothing tumbo shaped remains. Earth actually needs the same treatment¡­ yeah, yeah, I know, you didn''t wanna break it. Tho I couldn''t find any tumbos, I did find the cave paintings. And murals. And hieroglyphs. And fossils, somehow. We''re gonna need to get rid of a couple tectonic layers." The general''s gaze was ice. She asked, "And the infected abstracts?" "All in good time. Physical evidence needs to go first, or they''ll have new places to latch onto. You''ve got access to their minds?" General Halla''s gaze returned to the distancing spaceship. It''d begun to breach the upper atmosphere. "Two billion, four hundred thirty-one million, nine hundred seventy-five thousand, three hundred twelve." "Great." "Pren." "Hm?" "The being I am right now can see through you. I can see you." Much of the now planet sized all devouring entity''s attention focused on Pren. The very air around her choked. She met the general''s eyes with one of her polite smiles, waiting. Resentment boiled from the blood of billions stormed within the blazing red avatar. Power capable of shattering reality and extinguishing the sun pulsed a hand''s breadth from Pren. The planet sized hive mind considered its words very, very carefully. "Is there a promise I can make, which would persuade you to help me fix what comes after?" asked the general''s avatar. Pren let out a breath, offering her a sorry smile. "Well¡­ You already promised me the one thing I want, and you''ll be fresh out of cute animal pictures once we''re done." General Halla turned back towards the space ship. Her mana twitched with the slightest twinge of sorrow. She spoke of the last survivors. "A man prays." "Lovers kiss. They hope." "The captain burns with determination. His oaths are to mankind itself." "The engineer fixing a malfunction in reality drive sacrifices her arm to keep fixing the reactor." "A child is hugging her mother. She has a tumbo plushie." General Halla''s avatar flickered with emotion. "These are the last moments of mankind, the last glimpses of our history before all is erased. These are the last moments of this world and its legacy." This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. She turned to Pren. "Will you remember what we were?" "Once in a while. Not often, but every now and then." "I¡­ We wish you had seen more of us than this. More than tumbos and war." "Mmmh." There was a moment of quiet. Pren did not need to explain that she would be the last person to ever speak of or hear of this Earth or its history and culture and people ever again. General Halla, with her planet sized cognition, understood. It was calming. Almost nice in a way. Wasn''t often Pren felt this serene. The combination of a century or so of tumbo hunting, mankind ending, and a nice view of the stars and the last rocket just did something. And she didn''t exactly dislike this current General Halla either. After being resurrected and turned into a civilization-ending hivemind she was starting to be at a point in her life where she felt a little bit relatable. Maybe that''s why Pren felt talkative. "Black Lantern. Black. He, she, they ¨C whatever form it has now ¨C was my husband." "You mentioned this in passing," said General Halla. "He was¡­ she¡­ well. We kinda met by accident. It''s a fun story." General Halla glanced at her. "We are not friends." Pren made a pop with her lips. "Alrighty. Oookay." "You forced me to devour my world and every living soul upon it." "Yeah. Alright, I get it. I was just¡­ Yup. Yes. Ahem." They watched the last survivors for a bit after that in awkward silence. General Halla waited for the single child aboard to fall asleep before launching parts of herself to take it down. Everyone onboard was assimilated instantly. Not a single human consciousness remained in that reality. ***? Centuries passed into a millenia. A hundred thousand Battleship-class entities spawned by General Halla turned the moon into a pearly marble of glass. Battleship class entities equipped with reality drives were launched to hunt down every deep space satellite, while others scoured the solar system orbits. The tendrils of her main body ground Earth and rearranged tectonics, removing any and all sign of human civilization. All physical evidence of tumbos was erased. Then came abstract surgery on the scale of an entire species'' cognition. For this occasion, Pren had some rubber gloves, a face mask, and a very special scalpel. Silver of sharpest thought gleamed in its unreal metal. The true body, or the condensed core of General Halla''s mana core, was laying on a surgery table. The two were in a psychiatrist''s office decorated with diplomas and posters on mental health and old textbooks. The carpet and sofas had that inoffensive gray almost home-like, but not quite cozy enough color and the palace smelled vaguely of citrus. It was all an illusion created by General Halla''s body. "Is this necessary?" asked the woman in the chair. "Totally. The symbolism is extra important since this place no longer has a functional noosphere. We need to make sure the scalpel works." General Halla gave a nod at that. "Alrighty, so. Looking at the list here¡­ it''s looking very oof. Would you like to know what''s gonna happen or¨C" "Begin." "¨Cveery well. Connect to every mind within you. I''d say this may tingle, but you''re a big girl now. Heh." General Halla gave her a thousand year glare. "End it." Pren muttered at today''s youth and set to work. She took a deep breath. The list of concepts to cut was long and she only had so long. This required absolute focus. Another deep breath. She dipped ever so slightly out of reality. World of thoughts engulfed her. Grays and dreamcolor. Blurry shapes and flickering mists. This world was connected to beyond by the thoughts of two beings, herself and General Halla. The power that the scalpel lended to Pren allowed her to see it all in clear detail. Every concept, every abstract, every thought, every memory. A thousand years of pain and sorrow. And buried within it, linked to it through a hivemind, billions others. Pren peered deeper, allowing the bizarre ontology of the scalpel to shape her way of thinking. Concepts became webs of concepts. Blurry scenes multiplied into kaleidoscopes of meaning. There, at the center of everything, Pren found it. A tumbo. Or, perhaps, the tumbo. Woven into the zeitgeist of an entire world, the cute floppy eared animal sat there with a derpy grin on its adorable face and flopped around helplessly. Foolish denizen. As if Pren could be seduced by such attempts at cuteness. She struck with a slash of her scalpel. Concept of tumbo was eliminated from memory. Concepts it had touched began to warp, making up for what was lost. The hole in the web started knitting itself back together. Pren cut off the concept of cuteness. And fluffiness. Roundness. Floppy ears. Fur. Softness. Pet. Animal. Unconditional love. Emotional support. Brand symbols. Words. All the words. Languages. Ranching. Soft gray and white and black and most of the brown colors. Also silver and gold. And orange. And red. Most of the colors¡­ She cut and cut and did not stop cutting until the hole she''d torn in the web of the zeitgeist gaped at her unmoving, lifeless. Pren released the power and the scalpel. She was back in the psychiatrist''s office with General Halla''s core on the table. The glowing being was clutching the surgery chair, crying, opening and closing her mouth. "It''s done." Pren peeled off the latex gloves. "You can give your biomass a kill command and release them. Maybe create some plant life first, and clothes, and habitats. Otherwise it''s gonna be rough." General Halla grit her teeth. Her silent sobs wracked her core and would not stop. She gestured for Pren to leave. She did. ***? Some time after all was done, General Hall and Pren stood on a small hill. Strange web-like mess of trees grew in the distance. A small group of humans were wading through a meadow made of harsh spiky cacti. They wore simple clothes of reed and woven leaves and had haggard appearances. Pretty much cavemen. They did not speak much, except in annoyed grunts and occasional shouts. Language had yet to develop anew. A long fluttering cloak of black-purple biomass flapped at General Halla''s back. She''d compressed much of her planet-sized body, assuming human form, on the outside at least. Her true existence could no longer be classified by the understanding of her old civilization. This, the two had agreed, would be their last meeting. "I honestly recommend you leave. It''s fine being a transcendental being in a reality full of them, but here¡­ it''ll get lonely," said Pren. "I must stay and teach them what I can. It is the only way I can atone for unleashing you upon this world." Pren gave her a wry smile at that. "Yeah. I guess. Just to be clear, you can only die if someone else comes along with causality twisting stuff. You might live throughout the end of this universe." "Then that shall be my sentence." "Okay." One of the humans fell. The others did not rush to help her. General Halla''s breath shuddered. Pren stayed quiet. "Your payment is due," said the general. "Yeah." General Halla turned up her palm. In a blink of black and purple, a torn half of an old photograph materialized on it. The person in the picture was a beautiful tall woman in her early forties, though her true age was ageless and her gender mutable. Her straight shoulder-long hair was black with white stripes or white with black ones and her irises were as black as her pupils. She wore a dapper black suit with an overcoat. She appeared to be holding something that would''ve been featured on the torn half of the image, while beaming with that handsome coy smile of hers. Pren knew exactly what Black had been holding there. The implications were not great. "Thank you," said Pren. "You can destroy it." General Halla raised an eyebrow. "Very well?" Purple black mass absorbed and erased the photo. "Was the payment satisfactory?" "Oh yeah," sighed Pren. She then rubbed a hand to her face. "Damn. Yeah. Good stuff. Alright. That''s it then. Reality saved." "Reality saved," said General Halla, voice oozing sarcasm. "Yeah. Aight, gonna hop off then, unless you had something else?" "No. Begone, demon of the Undereal." "Pren. It''s Pren, if you ever get in trouble again. Use the name, makes summoning easier." "I would have our interactions end, Pren." "Yeah, it was¡­ yeah, be not seeing you, General Halla." With those words, Pren stepped out of that reality and into her real body. She stood in a hypnotic place of waxing forests ¨C dreamlike reflections of the Earth she''d just left. In those dreamlike forests prowled the dreams and nightmares of the freshly reawakened civilization''s subconscious. These were young dreams and small myths, barely shaped and weak, base reflections of nature. In that bizarre place, Pren set down her little white-silver lantern glowing with pale light. Its prismatic hue stabilized the surrounding Undereal, giving the ever-shifting vistas near her solidity and consistency. Pren sat onto a dream cacti-log beside it and took out the scalpel made of thoughts. She had a ritual she did after every world. A little something to keep her human. She touched a spot on her brain with the scalpel, the place where she imagined her empathy to be. There, she cut the threads she''d bound it with. It began with a drop. A child holding onto a tumbo, journeying towards stars. Love and faith in mankind. A haggard woman from a cave age stumbling. No one helped her. Emotion clutched Pren''s chest as did her fingers. She let out an ugly scream. A mankind destroyed. What had she taken from them? Could they ever recover? Two billion souls stranded in a cruel loveless world that did not know the very concept of softness. All done by her. Another ugly heaving scream left Pren. Tears burned her eyes, blurred her sight. She''d taken from them kindness and pets and all things fluffy. And General Halla. What she''d done to that woman was beyond cruelty. She could never be forgiven for it. Never. Oh, how she''d treated her. Pren sobbed, ashamed, furious, bitter, absolutely condemning herself. "Please remember us," she had begged. And Pren had barely known what their world was like. What had been special about it? Urgently, in regret fueled panic, Pren scrambled for memories. The mana and magic, had there been something unique and special? No, she''d barely paid it any attention. She''d just figured it out and discarded it. The culture! The culture¡­ she knew nothing about the culture except tumbos. Anger seized her at the memory of her ex''s photograph. Pren''s soullight lantern crackled. Her surroundings turned hyperreal, then began to melt under her wrath. That Abyss damned Black, smiling while holding a tumbo. Untold eons of dark emotions bubbled forth, clouding Pren''s vision. Quickly, before they could overwhelm her, she redid her usual ego surgery. Calmness took some moments to return. Black remained in her mind. This newest development was troubling. First the fishless world and now this. It wasn''t quite a pattern yet, but two instances were enough for Pren to conclude that Black had upped her game. The old bastard wasn''t just ending worlds anymore. Nah, she''d turned to experimenting on mass producing apocalypses. Pren''s head fell to lean on her hand. A sigh took out the last shivers of emotion left from unleashing her empathy. She remained seated for a long time, thinking. If Black was on her way to developing a method to mass produce apocalypses, Pren could no longer keep up cleaning after her. She''d need to rethink her methods. Might be she had to bring other people in on this, again.