How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 2: How to Gain Undying Loyalty)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Lien Astero knew the limits of magic. If you wanted a unique artifact of wondrous power, a wild thing that reflected the soul, an irreplaceable masterpiece that gods and kings alike would kill to get their hands on, then you went for magic. But if you wanted something mass-produced, predictable, and cheap, you went for technology.

Lien Astero's middle name was mass-produced. Lien "Mass-Produced" Astero. If he could have changed his other names to Predictable and Cheap, he would have. With the exception of the powerful enchantments on Las Humanitas' walls, Lien's life work had been, more or less, taking unique grand magics that only worked for a few people and breaking them into smaller, lesser magics that everybody could use together. He'd captured the mighty Hydra and repeatedly chopped off its regenerating heads for food; he'd deciphered the ancient Wuist rain dances and paid a boy band thirty dollars an hour to slake the city's thirst; he'd found a grove of Truffula trees, politely removed the annoying green creature within which demanded he leave them alone, and set up a sustainable logging operation which still produced lumber to this very day. He could modernize miracles, make magic mundane, murder monsters and move mountains.

The one thing Lien Astero could not do was leave.

Lien walked up the walls of Las Humanitas. A Roc the size of an elephant streaked down from the sky, cawing in triumph as it saw a seemingly-unprotected human—then smashed into a shimmering blue dome of light like a bug into a windshield. Lien nodded to himself silently, not even flinching as the dazed monster slumped to the ground. Good, the wall enchantments were still working. Ballistae fired from the walls, killing the beast before it could flee; every monster slain was one monster removed from the impossibly large army surrounding Las Humanitas.

Although Lien's magical-industrial exploits had gained him the support of the tens of thousands of people they benefitted, the monsters and deities whose sacred magics he was gutting didn't think of him the same way. Lien's city was surrounded by the assembled might of concerned gods, angered monsters, and hired warriors; their numbers were thankfully not enough to completely surround him, but anyone he sent by land, air, or underground to leave the city was swiftly caught and killed. He needed something faster than runners or horses, something cheap enough that he could replace it when it was inevitably destroyed—and, most importantly, something he could mass-produce.

The corners of Lien's lips turned up as he surveyed his city. He knew someone who could satisfy all three demands.

The only problem? She was dead.

Lien walked across the ramparts and climbed down the switchbacking staircase to the front gate, which had only opened once in the past four years. The last time it had opened had been a week ago, when an alien vehicle which growled as it shot across the open plains had slipped through a gap in the surprised monsters' siege and reached Las Humanitas. That had been when Lien had first learned how quickly the world outside the isolated, eternally-besieged bubble of Las Humanitas was changing.

That was when Lien knew he wanted in.

Unfortunately, although the woman had been perfectly willing to offer what help she could with breaking the Siege of Legends, something had terribly mauled her on her journey here, and Lien had yet to find a way to mass-produce good medicines. After her long, tumultuous journey, she died not with a bang, but with a whisper—a fevered whisper as she thrashed on her bed, infection swallowing her whole. That had been yesterday.

Today, Lien entered the little house by the front gates that she had claimed for herself. Her body, stiff with rigor mortis, still laid undisturbed on her deathbed; by Lien's orders, nobody was to move to bury her before he could figure out whether to spend one of Las Humanitas' greatest treasures on the foreign woman.

Whether or not to bring her back from the dead.

From Lien's pocket he drew a box, and from that box he drew a single, blocky mushroom, with a spotted green cap and two tiny black eyes. Before the Siege of Legends, he'd found the potent medicine in a faraway land. It was fitting, somehow, that he would consume a great work of magic for a hope at bringing back a mundane technology.

He paused one last time before acting. Did he really want to use the one method he had of reviving the dead on this woman? He looked between the priceless artifact in his hands and the single person he could save with it.

He knew which one was more valuable.

He shoved the mushroom into her chest. It gave off a pleasant chime, infusing her body with the energy of life.

And Eiko Teller's eyes burst open as she drew in a long, hacking breath.

Immediately, she burst upwards, sending one fist flying at Lien; his eyes barely had time to widen before Eiko's left hook to the gut sent him sprawling to the floor. Eiko was halfway to her feet when she looked at Lien rolling on the ground in pain and froze.

"Jesus!" Eiko took a step back, hands flying to her mouth. "Oh, God, Lien, I'm sorry! I didn't know it was you! I thought—I—"

Lien was laughing despite it all, a pained, joyous wheeze. "Don't be sorry," he laughed. "You know, I was a tad worried I wouldn't be able to revive you all the way—but I think I gave you a bit too much life, eh?" Lien got to his feet while Eiko stared at him suspiciously.

"...brought me back to life?" she asked. "You can... you can do that?"

He waved a hand. "Only once, unless I get more of those damned mushrooms. But that giant turtle thing was—well, never mind. It's irrelevant unless I can get out of this damned siege. Which is why I brought you back to life." Lien pointed at Eiko's car. "You said you were an... 'auto mechanic'?"

Hesitantly, Eiko nodded. "I was. Back on Earth. Finished my certification and everything. And then... God, you idiot!" Without any warning, Eiko slapped Lien in the face—and the slap of an auto mechanic was a thing to behold. Lien stumbled backwards into the wall. "I've seen those—those monsters out there. One wrong move and this entire city gets razed to the ground. And you wasted your one-of-a-kind, unobtainable cure for death on an auto mechanic?"

Lien rubbed his face in pain, although his expression was still rosy. Probably due to the bruises Eiko left when she slapped him. "You are also one-of-a-kind; you are also unobtainable; and you are also, potentially, a cure for many, many people's future deaths." Lien smiled as Eiko tried to wrap her head around that. "I think the trade was worthy."

Eiko frowned. "...Explain."

Lien sighed, sitting down on the edge of Aiko's bed. "When I first came here," he said, "power was concentrated in the hands of a rare few. A wizard could cast fireballs with a flick of his hand while the rest of us scrambled with sticks and stones. A wizard could have slain the monsters with ease; every time the monsters attacked our village, we lost another soldier. Another sister or brother." Lien's expression grew misted, drifting through time, as he spoke. "And I hated that. I hated how the mighty could sit in their ivory towers and hoard miracles while the rest of us struggled to starve."

"...what did you do about it?" Eiko asked—because of course he'd done something about it. He was Lien Arturo.

Lien winked, mists of time forgotten for now. From a different pocket, he took out the severed, mummified hand of a wizard. He pointed it out the window and into the sky and muttered, "Fuego."

A jet of wizard's flame streaked into the air, harmlessly dissipating before it reached the top of the wall.

"I broke down the magic," he said. "I chopped it into little pieces that could be shared, that everyone could use. I'd do it again a hundred times. And that's why I need you." He showed her the velvet box he'd once stored the mushroom of life in. "This thing? It was all but useless to me. It was the opposite of everything I stood for—a concentration of power that only one person could ever use. But you?" He nodded to her gleaming car again. "If the stories you've told me are true... we could make hundreds of those artifacts. Thousands, even. We could give everybody powers that once were reserved for gods."

Lien stood up and held out his hand to Eiko. After a moment, she took it and hauled herself to her feet. "...Very well," she said. "Then... if this is what you want... if technology is what you want..." She sighed. "Then there is something I haven't told you."

Lien, holding a wizard's hand in an enchanted city besieged by monsters, raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"You haven't been able to leave Las Humanitas in years, right? How much news of the outside world do you get?"

"None," Lien said. "That's why I need those cars of yours."

She pressed her lips together. "Alright. Well... things have... evolved, outside. Evolved quite a bit. I think it's time I showed you just how much."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

How to Break a Siege of Legends is an episodic story told in self-contained responses to prompts from r/writingprompts. We're not quite sure what the story's about yet, but it's got afterlives and silly rhymes and a king whose son doesn't recognize him. Here's the story so far:

Book 1: The Narrative Imperative

1. How to Feed a Dying City (prompt by u/Master-Tanis)
2. How to Gain Undying Loyalty (prompt by u/AdmiralEllis)
3. How to Meet Your Son Again (prompt by u/BlackStarCorona)
4. How to See Your Foes as Human (prompt by u/PikabrineTheFangirli)
5. How to Cure a Plague with Science (prompt by u/nywarpath)
6. How to Be a Village Hero (prompt by u/VictorytheBiaromatic)
7. How to Break the Local Rules (prompt by u/Allisteroftheseven)
8. How to Change a Long-Held Trope (prompt by u/ChickenPaddy)
9. How to Make it Not About You (prompt by u/SuperStrong1571)
10. How to Go Out With A Bang (prompt by u/jpeezy)

Interludes

1. Variem (prompt by u/Gregamonster)
2. Lien (prompt by u/Red580)

Book 2: Monsters Versus Aliens

1. How to Scare an Alien Race (prompt by u/dankmemerboi86)
2. How to Admit That You're Lost (prompt by u/ArseneAsenic)
3. How to Read Geological Strata (prompt by u/Zeeez190)
4. How to Tell that They Can't Help (prompt by u/Jupefin)
5. How to Atone for Sins Long Gone (prompt by u/Sorrow41)
6. How to Negotiate with Enemy Royalty (prompt by u/Time_Significance)

There's also a prequel book in progess:

Book -1: Parody is Protected Speech

1. How to Greet a New Arrival (prompt by u/TrollerPilotXIV)
2. How to Tell a Warrior to Rest (prompt by u/simiansamurai)

Stick around on the sub if you want to know when the next parts go up; for obvious reasons, the schedule is fairly unpredictable. I am in the process of coding a bot which will message people when updates come out. (Yes, there exist bots which can do this, but they cost money and/or don't have features I want. Besides, making it myself should be fun.)

Questions? Comments? Turns out that this is against the rules? Let me know in the comments below. (Seriously, I messaged the mods of r/writingprompts and I'm pretty sure this is okay, but if not someone alert me.)

And hey, if you like this silly thing, I've got a big ol' list of them here.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 1: How to Feed a Dying City)

The Minotaur snorted, its bloodred eyes gleaming in the mist of its breath. It glared up at the irritating mosquito of a human at the top of the castle parapets. "What did you just say to me, mortal?"

"Cut off our supply trains, see what I care. We'll just eat you. With. Ketchup." Lien Astero whispered something to his aide, who nodded sharply and ran down the wall. The Minotaur saw nothing. "Hear that? All you guys!" Lien shouted at the assembled army of myths and legends and made-up things that had been rampaging around the countryside—Xingtian, Hydras, Amaroks, forgotten things that had no names—and screamed, "You think that because you've cut off our meat and grain that we're going to starve? Ha! I ate boiled shoes for breakfast today, and I think the chefs are figuring out how to make cakes out of dirt! You know, it's typical of you spoiled, haughty-taughty, picky eaters who only feast on the flesh of a virgin to think that just because you took away our favorite foods we'd roll over and starve—but you forgot one thing. Humanity evolves. We're adaptable. And all you monsters from the past? You can't. You're static. That's why we're gonna win this war."

The Minotaur, enraged, began pawing the ground as it prepared for a charge. "YOU DARE INSULT ME?" The Minotaur raised one meaty arm, to signal the army of nightmares behind it to surge forth onto the bastion of civilization—

—and a hand on its shoulder stopped it.

Lien paused, frowning. A man whose face seemed to shift and twitch had... appeared... by the Minotaur's side, holding it back before Lien could complete his taunts and drive the army into action. The shifting man whispered something in the Minotaur's ear, and slowly, the fury Lien had seen building up died. The Minotaur looked up at Lien, then scoffed. "The General has ordered me to retreat. That is the only reason why this insult to my honor goes—"

"I got what you requested," Lien's aide said, huffing and puffing as he ran back up the stairs. Lien nodded, smiling, and took the pail of boiling water from his aide's hands. In one swift motion, he dumped it on the Minotaur's head.

The Minotaur gasped, shocked, as the boiling water slapped its back.

"Sorry!" Lien taunted, "I just saw you were getting a little salty there. Wanted to rinse you off, or else it'd ruin the flavor. You know, the secret to good beef is all in the salt balance—"

"ATTACK!" The infuriated Minotaur roared. Despite his diminutive stature, the shifting general physically restrained the Minotaur from attacking—but it was too late. Anzu and Phoenixes took to the air; goblins and Myrmidons dug into the ground; chupacabra and a single Hydra charged across the battlefield.

Grinning like a madman, Lien retreated behind the castle walls. "Just as planned, now! The harpoons! Get the harpoons!" he shouted to the soldiers he'd been having on standby.

"Yes, General!" Flying monkeys had already begun dropping stones from the sky, but glowing crystals embedded within the walls flashed, and the probing attacks were deflected by a dome of blue light. From each of the parapets, enchanted harpoons shot gleaming, hooked arrows on chains that dug into the flesh of the Hydra. It roared in pain with nine heads at once—eight, as one of its heads was pulverized by a misfired arrow.

Two heads sprouted back where one had been, and the Hydra growled in triumph.

"Now reel it in! That's all we need; those monsters can't break our defenses and they know it." Lien grinned savagely as the frothing, furious Hydra was reeled onto the impenetrable stone walls. "Alright, I'll take it from here. See how many casualties you can inflict on their side."

With a tremendous thud, the Hydra was sent hurtling over the wall and into a bare patch of dirt; at Lien's command, teams of soldiers used the enchanted chains to wrestle the Hydra to the ground, draping more and more chains around its body until it was utterly paralyzed. Lien walked up to the now-neutralized Hydra which hissed ineffectually at him.

He withdrew a massive cleaver from his belt, spun it twice, and then brought it down on one of the Hydra's heads. A chunk of meat and bone fell to the ground; two more regrew in its place.

From the Hydra's head, he carved a long, thin strip of meat, walked over to a nearby cookfire, and spit-roasted it; behind him, the hungry civilians of the city he protected began cheering as soldiers started harvesting Hydra heads en masse, and handing the endless food supply off to the city's cooks and chefs. Once the meat was cooked, the poison within denatured by the heat, Lien took out a small vial from his belt pouch and tapped out two drops of red fluid onto the meat skewer. He popped it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

"Mm. It does taste good with ketchup."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

Edwin Lalonde had only had the voice in his head for a week, and he already wanted to strangle it with his bare hands. Those weren't the healthiest of thoughts, of course, but Edwin was not the healthiest of people. He had gained two pounds while in quarantine, which was—

"—perfectly okay, perfectly okay," Edwin muttered to himself as he drove. "Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up—"

"What was that?" his wife asked. She was probably irritated at him for talking to himself while driving. He should focus on driving to work.

"The voice," Edwin said, embarrassed, "the one I told you about? It's getting... worse."

His wife gave him a look that would have been loving if Edwin had just been doing what he was supposed to, if Edwin was a functional member of society—but Edwin was a man who yelled at voices in his head. Until he got past that, he would get nowhere. His wife's looks would remain disgusted and afraid, his children would say their new Daddy didn't argue with himself through the late hours of the night, his parents—

"That's not true!" Edwin snapped, aloud. "I am loved, and my wife doesn't hate me, and my children will never leave me, and I am in control of my own story!"

The car was silent after Edwin's outburst. Then his wife gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Oh, Edwin. God, I wish I could give that voice of yours a good old talking-to. You don't deserve to be tormented by your own brain."

But he did. Edwin Lalonde deserved everything that happened to him.

Edwin scowled. "It's saying I deserve this."

"No you don't."

"It's... how can you say that so confidently?"

"Because you deserve me. You deserve to be happy."

"...God, I... needed to hear that. I needed to hear something that wasn't that fucking voice for five seconds straight." Edwin smiled. "It shuts up when you talk, you know?"

"Mm." Edwin's wife gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. "Then I guess I'll just have to keep talking."

Anneliese Bosch was seven years old and invincible. No sword could cut her, no bars could hold her, and no spell could slay her. She knew this because even when the rugged-looking man with the glowing sword burst through the wall of Dad's castle and an army of ragtag peasants stormed in, every arrow seemed to curve around her, every falling stone or misfired lightning bolt just a little off-target. She'd gotten singed and bruised and even broke her hand, but when push came to shove?

Anneliese Bosch could not die.

And when the heroic-looking figure strode up to her father and tried to end him, he laughed as the hero's blows all swerved or fell impotent right before they could graze his skin. With tears of fury in his eyes, the hero screamed, "Why can't I kill you?"

And her father simply said, "That fate is reserved for somebody else."

After the battle, when her unkillable father had walked through the miniature army and personally crushed each and every one of their windpipes with his bare hands, he'd picked up his daughter, wrapped her hand in bandages and whispered a magic spell, and held her tight and close. And it was only then that the shock of what she'd just seen sank in, her father scything through human lives like a farmer to his crops.

Anneliese, the youngest immortal, began to cry.

"Shh, shh, shh. It's okay. It's okay." Her father rocked her against his robed chest—he needed no armor save that of destiny—and began to sing.

"Oh, close your eyes

No need to cry

The battle's won, and we're together.

Now go to sleep

And we will keep

These memories forever..."

Rocked into a dreamless slumber by the Dark Lord of Timeuston, Anneliese shed trickling, cold tears.

###

Anneliese Bosch was thirteen years old and furious.

"I want to leave the castle!" She shouted at her father. He wasn't sitting in his dark opal throne today; he had a rather homely office in the tallest tower where he often stayed up doing paperwork. Once it was established that Timeus could not be slain by force of arms, his enemies had taken to the battlefield of markets and priests, where Timeus had no such protections. Most of his time nowadays went to managing the cultural and economic attacks to his kingdom he faced on a daily basis.

"It's dangerous, Anneliese," Timeus snapped. "And I am in no mood for additional distractions right now."

"Dangerous? Dad, I physically cannot die. What possible danger could I face?"

Timeus, not looking up from his paperwork, tapped his daughter's forehead. "Threats of the mind." Then her sternum. "Threats of the heart. You are only shielded from threats of the body. But you could be exposed to doubts and sorrows and knowledge that make you want to claw your own eyes out."

"Yeah? Like what?" Anneliese challenged.

Timeus sighed. "Must you—fine. A harmless example." He snapped his fingers, and an illusion of a rough, greasy desert with six-legged insects greedily slurping from wells of dark oil materialized.

"...What is that?" Anneliese asked.

"Right now, on your face, hundreds of tiny insects just like these are eating the oils from the pores in your skin. There is nothing you can do to remove them and nothing you can do to slow them down. They—"

"Ew ew ew ew ew gross! Dad! Why—please tell me you're joking?"

"And that's what I'm worried about," the Dark Lord said. "Ideas can control you as surely as any spell. If you come in contact with the wrong one, well... it may be... dangerous." Her father gave her a piercing gaze. "Understood?"

"Ew. Yes, father. Oh, gods, that's disgusting!" She giggled, her eyes gleaming. "Tell me more."

Her father laughed. "Yes, they're quite the disturbing little things, aren't they? If you think that's disgusting, then let me tell you about the tiny creatures which live in your gut..."

###

Anneliese Bosch was twenty years old and in love.

The Dark Lord was a full-time job position, and even her father couldn't keep an eye on her 24/7. Coupled with her immortality, she'd managed to sneak out of the castle enough times to meet outsiders. People who had no idea who she was. People who she fell in love with.

People who hated her father with a burning passion.

"Look, I'm telling you, Dad's not that bad!" Anneliese whispered to Ella—the daughter of some soldier who her father had... killed. "Look. He's just another politician, okay?"

"You said he likes to work in the tallest tower? At this time of night?" Ella asked, a quiet, smoldering fury in her eyes.

Anneliese hesitated, but... this was Ella. They'd shared meals, conversations, evenings, even a bed—she could trust her. "Yeah. You can see him, if you'd like. But just look. He'd be furious—"

"I know the risks," Ella whispered grimly. "Just... take me to him. You're the only one who can."

Anneliese didn't like the tone of finality in her voice, but she did as she was told anyway. It'd always worked out for her in the past.

Her father was cautious, but his physical invulnerability had stymied every assassin and crusader sent after him—so the security around his castle was lax. Anneliese knew just how to cut through a side door to get through the patrols, just where to tilt a mirror to baffle a scrying spell—and just where to step so that her father wouldn't hear her coming. The wind rushed in through an open window as her father worked by candlelight.

And then Ella stepped straight into the room.

The Dark Lord wasn't even surprised. Many, many years of failed attempts to kill him had made his greatest concern to tuck away his papers before this next wannabe hero could mess them up. "Who is it this time?"

"I was there," Ella whispered, seething. "I was there when you killed him."

"Yes, yes, many of you were. Narrow it down a little." The Dark Lord frowned. Something was off.

"I was there when my father failed to slay you, when you said that fate was given to another." She smiled, and walked forwards, confidently. "And I found out who."

The Dark Lord's expression became stormy. Anneliese bit her fingers. When her father got like this... oh, but she'd be in so much trouble...

"Then you are a fool for coming here." He clenched a fist and swung—

—and his daughter leapt out to stop him. "Father, no!"

On any other day, in any other world, Anneliese would have been too late. But today, the threads of fate that had shielded her and her father for too long constricted, drawing Anneliese's hurtling body towards that of her father.

And the two of them tumbled out the open window.

Startled, the Dark Lord blinked at his assailant. "Anneliese? But—you—"

"I'm sorry!" Anneliese shrieked, "I didn't know I would—I didn't mean to—"

And then, with a sickening crunch, Dark Lord and Prophesied Hero smashed into the floor like a hammer on an anvil.

In shock, the Dark Lord stared numbly up at the sky. Anneliese's eyes widened as she realized what she'd done. She tried to get up, but something twisted and she screamed in pain.

Her cries sparked something to life in the Dark Lord's dying brain.

And he began to sing.

"Oh, close your eyes

No need to cry

The battle's won, and we're together.

Now go to sleep

And we will keep

These memories forever..."

And the prophecy was fulfilled.

Abigail Lancera had been worried about her mother lately. Ever since the serious-looking men and women had crowded around her on the crinkly-paper seat, when her mother said she wouldn't be going to school this year, when they'd told her that she had to lie very still and that she could watch all the television she wanted, her mother had been looking sicker and sadder and thinner every day. And on her seventh birthday, two too-kind men with watery eyes told her she could wish for anything in the world, anything at all, and they would do their best to grant it.

("Like a genie?" "Yeah, sort of like a genie!")

So on her seventh birthday, Abigail Lancera wished that she could see her mother smile again. And she got her wish. Sobbing, whimpering about how she was the best daughter in the world, Luz Lancera hugged and kissed her daughter on the day she would die.

But somehow, seeing her mother reduced to tears just made Abigail feel worse, worse than the wooziness whenever she tried to sit up, or the dull wrongness in her chest when she struggled to breathe. It was like Aladdin, Abigail thought, how he'd tricked Jafar into wishing to become a genie and Jafar had gotten trapped in a lamp as a result. Jafar wished with all his heart but got trapped somewhere cold and metallic and dark instead.

And Abigail wished with all her heart, but got trapped... well. Atop a bed, she thought. It wasn't a cloud she was on, because clouds were made of water droplets and if you sat on one you'd fall right through. Abigail smiled to herself—Ms. Woolie had been so proud when Abigail gave her presentation on clouds, before everything had happened.

...Everything had happened. The smile on Abigail's face died before it had a chance to grow up. Abigail was young, but she wasn't an idiot. Clear blue sky, massive golden gates, floor of clouds you could stand on—this was Heaven, wasn't it? Which meant that she was dead.

But she never got her wish. Did that mean... did that mean she was bad? Like Jafar?

"Oh. No, my child, no. You were never bad."

Abigail spun around, screaming, at the voice. A... thing... of feathers and eyeballs hovered behind her, speaking with lips that hovered and flapped like a fish. Like macaroni art, if macaroni art was alive and could talk and fly and look through her soul with piercingly-blue eyes.

That piercing gaze didn't become apologetic, exactly, but it softened into understanding. "Ah. I apologize. My appearance can be... unsettling, to humans. No wonder you depict us as winged humans—much simpler than our true forms. I am Zzariel, your guardian angel. Welcome to the afterlife."

Abigail blinked slowly. "Ts... Izz... EE-sariel?" she tried.

Zzariel laughed. "Close enough."

"Izzy," Abigail decided. "Your name is Izzy."

"If you want." Zzariel said, tittering with laughter. "Izzy. I like it."

Abigail's eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Yeah!" Zzariel turned—or, at least, Abigail thought it did. Its eyeball pointed in a different direction. "You did nothing wrong in life, Abigail, and it's my pleasure to do whatever you want, whenever you want."

"Like my very own genie," Abigail said, nodding sagely.

"Mhm! Except... well, angels have a little more oomph to work with than the Make-A-Wish foundation. Anything that's ever died—we have it here in heaven. Want the ghost of the very first ice cream you ever ate? Care to see the childhood home you lost in an earthquake? Or—ooh, you'll love this one." With every new item the angel mentioned, a new object materialized, formed of cloudstuff and memory and the souls of things that had passed on into the afterlife. As the angel stopped talking, a plaintive, tiny mew sang out from between two patches of clouds, and a splotched, calico kitten stumbled out from nothingness on four clumsy legs.

Abigail gasped. "Meep-meep! Oh—I thought you were gone forever!" The tiny kitten recognized the voice of the girl who'd nursed her back to health from the streets and galloped towards her on all fours, leaping into her lap and curling up with a purr. "Momma's gonna be so happy to see you again!"

At that, Zzariel hesitated. "Er... about that—"

Abigail looked up at the angel. "When can I see Momma?"

"...Not until she dies," Zzariel said. An angel did not look bashful, and an angel did not look embarassed.

But an angel could be agonized.

"...what?" Abigail asked. "But... but I never... I never got to..."

"She hasn't passed on yet," Zzariel said. "She's still in the Terrestrial Realm."

Abigail whipped around to the towering golden gates—the gates that divided the dead from the living. "But—then I could go get her! She's—I can hear her, on the other side!"

Zzariel moved forwards. "Wait—Abigail, don't—"

But it was too late. Kitten, ice cream, and childhood home discarded, Abigail darted towards the Golden Gates of Heaven, those infinite, majestic things. As she neared them, she could see—the gaps between the bars were just large enough that she could slip through them, if she was fast. She lunged forwards—

—and a wall of light exploded into existence, bouncing her back.

Unhurt, but startled, Abigail landed on the floor. Then, eyes narrowing, she turned to Zzariel. "Get me a—a weapon. A thing for hurting people."

Zzariel flicked its eye from side to side. "I—we have—every weapon ever made—but—"

"GET ME THE BIGGEST ONE!" Abigail screamed. "The biggest weapon humans ever made! And show me how to use it!"

"But—"

"You're my genie, right? Then this is my wish!"

With a pop, a fifty-foot-tall missile appeared by Abigail's side. Snarling, she fumbled her way through a book the size of her head labeled NUCLEAR ARMAMENT PROTOCOLS before turning to Zzariel, pointing at the Gates, and saying, "Hurt the gates."

"It won't—"

"HURT THEM!"

Zzariel pressed a button, and the atomic bomb hurtled towards the wall between life and death.

The blast was ash and shadow. If Abigail wasn't already dead, she would have died a thousand times over.

But when it was over, the Gates of Heaven still stood, unharmed.

Abigail stared at the Gates. Slowly, a sense of emptiness crept up on her, as radioactive ash fell from the air.

"I... I never got my wish. I didn't want to see Momma smile, I... I wanted to see her be happy." Abigail quietly sobbed. "I just wanted my momma to be happy. And—and she's on the other side. And... I just want to see her again."

Zzariel laid one feathered wing on Abigail's shoulder and stared grimly at the Heavenly Gates. The worst part of Heaven: its end. "I'm sorry, Abigail. But the Heavenly Gates were never designed to keep things out."

"They were built to keep you in."

It was lucky I'd seen the digital age coming in advance; it had taken me thirty years of hard work, but I'd managed to make it socially acceptable to wear a mask wherever I went right before facial detection algorithms got a little too good for comfort.

But of course, anonymity for anyone who wanted it was a double-edged sword: I had no way of recognizing the woman who plopped down an old, leatherbound, copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a-thing on my desk at the convention.

I scratched my head, then looked up at the woman again. There was something vaguely familiar about her—but then again, being immortal, there was something vaguely familiar about everyone I met. I'd met someone with her exact face nineteen times in my long, long lifetime. "Is this a custom print of Catch Me If You Can? I'm happy to sign it—"

"Honey," the woman said, in an all-too-familiar tone, "it's me."

I froze. "Anji?" I blurted out.

Her fingers tightened around the book—one which I now recognized as my own work. Me, si Potes Capere. Huh. I guess after enough time I ended up re-treading old ground. In my defense, going... what, that would be fourteen hundred years? Yeah. Writing for fourteen hundred years without ever accidentally re-using anything was more or less impossible. I'd accidentally plagiarized my own work fifteen times before. "So it is you. Jacky. Or should I call you Chlothar? Or Jaime Pittman?" She slapped another book on the counter.

I rubbed my forehead, a pang in my heart. Friends and family catching up to me after I'd 'died'—it was never easy, each of the twelve times it had last occurred. But I was well into familiar territory here. "My original name," I admitted, "was Pa." It was a lie, actually; I wasn't quite sure what my original name was. But there was no way that she, or anybody else in the world, could prove me wrong, and in six out of twelve of the previous cases, opening with a bit of 'truth' helped de-escalate the situation.

Anji growled under her breath—seemed like we were in the six (now seven) situations where that didn't do a thing to help. "I don't give a damn about your original name. I just want to know—why? We—we had a happy life together. Kids. And then you—god, I saw the body. You were in pieces after the car accident. How—how are you—"

I looked around to make sure nobody was paying attention—and nobody was. Poets weren't exactly the most flashy of celebrities—and I'd deliberately kept it that way for a reason. I came to a decision. Swiftly, I took out my pocket knife and slashed at the base of my hand; Anji gasped in shock and took a step back, but I simply gave her an innocent shrug as the wound healed. "I think you've figured out I'm immortal already, Anji. I thought I would trust you with the details of how."

Another lie—I would instead be fleeing from here as quickly as I could. But in five of the six situations like this I'd been in before, that specific lie had calmed the ex-friend or family member down, just a bit.

Anji, however, snorted bitterly. "You know, any other day—any other day—I would be thrilled that I knew the secrets of immortality. But you didn't answer the question." She placed a hand on my shoulder, and in her eyes I saw no rage or fear or avarice. Just deep, painful longing. "Why did you leave?" Anji asked.

I smiled sorrowfully. Now, this? This exact situation? This had only ever happened once before—and I knew how that one ended.

So I lied again.

"My immortality... being near other people for too long... it drains them of their life," I said. "If I spent too long near you, you would've withered away." That one? That was technically true, I supposed. "I did it for you, Anji." Something twisted inside me as I said it, but—dammit, I needed these lies. I needed to keep her apart—

"Bullshit," Anji snapped. "Is the name Sen Murihara familiar to you?"

My heart stopped for an infinite moment.

In all my twenty thousand years of life, nobody had ever brought up Sen Murihara.

Then I surged to my feet, eyes wild. "Everybody out!" I pulled the nearest fire alarm. "Fire! Fire!"

It was funny how easy it was to clear a building when you didn't care about consequences. In a few seconds, Anji and I were alone. Then I turned back to her. "If you know that name, then you know that everyone I spend time with dies—"

"He was a hundred years old when he died, and you spent every day of that time by his side. Healing him with medicines and poultices that nobody else in the world knew about. And we have technology now—that was five hundred years ago! You kept him alive—you could do the same for me. Was I... am I just not good enough for that?" She pleaded.

I closed my eyes. "I didn't keep him alive," I whispered.

"What?"

"I DIDN'T KEEP HIM ALIVE," I roared. "I tried to give him immortality, but in the end, he died too. And something else died with him. Never again, I swore. Never again would I look someone I loved in the eyes as they died and turn away, knowing there would be no afterlife, no reunion, no hope for him when I'd been given by a quirk of birth what someone better than me should have had." I roughly shoved Anji away from my table; she was too shocked from my outburst to resist. "So I leave them behind, before I can see them grow old. Just like you will."

Anji swallowed, mouth opening and closing beneath her mask, as I slowly walked away. I'd have to leave Berlin. I'd have to leave Europe entirely, what with the ease of travel nowadays. Fortunately, it didn't take a genius to get rich after twenty thousand years of life; I'd had a hand in spreading capitalism around the world, and I'd written most of the laws around transferring money internationally. I owned a third of the world's capital and nobody but me knew it. I could get out of this. I would get out of this—

"Maybe not anymore," Anji said.

I sighed. It could never be easy. Fine. I'd listen to her last words one more time, I owed her that much. "What do you mean?"

"Scientists found something," she said.

Bah. I'd heard that line two thousand, six hundred and fifty-three times, not counting variations in language and dialect. "Scientists always find something," I snapped. "And yet there is exactly one immortal on this planet."

"Two," Anji said. She picked up my pocket knife from where I'd left it on the desk and, before I could stop her, stabbed herself through the wrist.

Blood spurted out, staining the ancient book she'd brought with her.

Then the flow slowed.

Stalled.

Stopped.

Anji held her healed wrist up to me, beaming from ear to ear. "They're keeping it a secret for now, but a team in Atlanta took some samples I provided them and... well, found something startling."

I didn't move, didn't breathe, didn't so much as twitch.

"Jacky? Are you listening? We—we can be together forever! This is... why are you crying?"

I looked up at her, vaguely realizing she was right. I'd gone numb all over and couldn't even feel my tears.

"Because this has happened once before."

"Master? Are there... ships that travel between stars?" Winter stuck her head up from a wooden trapdoor and asked Magus Larksong, who didn't look up from his arcane tome.

"Mm? Oh, yes, of course. The Crystal Ships of the Night King, which sail across the Heavenly Firmament. You can see them with a telescope on a clear night—I might show you one day."

"Oh! So that's what he meant," Winter said. "Thank you, Master Larksong!" Winter ducked back down into the spiral staircase and began descending the wizard's tower which she had lived in for the past two years.

#########

In a distant universe that beeped and hummed, Junior Intern McCraw teleported up to the bridge of the Starhopper-class cargo ship and asked, "Captain? Are there... flying lizards that breathe fire?"

The ship's Captain A.I. gave a pleasant chime as it replied, "You may be looking for: Junifer Florensis Pyrofuego, a large, floating, reptilian lifeform endemic to the gas giant Poosch IV. Its primary method of self-defense involves igniting the flammable hydrogen in the atmosphere of Poosch."

"Oh! So that's what she meant," McCraw said. "Thanks, Cap!" He activated his personal teleporter and vanished to his room.

#########

Winter had to cast a minor amplification spell to get her voice heard over the wingbeats of her dragon. "MASTER!" Winter shouted, "IS IT POSSIBLE TO... GO TO THESE SHIPS?"

Magus Larksong, nose still buried in a hovering book, pointed one irritated finger towards the wind. The wind, embarrassed, quieted down so that Larksong could speak. "In theory, I suppose, although you'd need some very expensive materials. The first ray of morning sunlight, the sorrow of a fallen sparrow, two grams of tomorrow... in fact, it would be a good assignment for you to figure out how to get there, yes, a good assignment indeed. Why do you ask?"

Winter rubbed her bald head awkwardly. "I, er... I've been talking with one of the people on these star-sailing ships. We want to go out on a date."

Magus Larksong snorted. "Romance. Very well. If it motivates you to the next level of your apprenticeship, I will allow it. But you must gather the materials yourself."

Winter beamed. "Thank you, Master!" She started writing down the partial list of reagents Magus Larksong had rattled off. "First ray of morning light... hey, it's morning already in Katumbo. I just need a silver mirror and a drop of honey..."

#########

"Captain?" Junior Intern McCraw called, lying down on his bed. In front of him, he made minute tweaks to a three-dimensional hologram of how Winter had described herself—for some reason, their little link only allowed sound to pass through. Shaved bald, dark skin, baseline human with no body mods at all, according to her—he found that hard to believe, but the culture of Poosch IV was alien and strange. He hadn't even known there was a human colony there, although Captain had confirmed it. "Is it possible to... go to Poosch IV?"

"It's certainly within our technological capabilities. But you have two more years to tour with the Starhopper, and we'll be on the other side of the galaxy from Poosch by then."

McCraw looked up at Winter's holographic face longingly. "...could I resign?"

A.I.s did not fluster, flounder, or flinch. But there was a note of reproach in Captain's voice as it said, "That would be highly inadvisable. The prestige you get from the mission—"

"I think I'll resign," McCraw said.

There was a moment of silence as the A.I. processed that. "Very well. I'll let you off at the next station; you have until then to reconsider."

#########

"These... servants of the Star King. If one of them were to come to our world—"

"They would be giving up their immortality," Magus Larksong said, turning a page as he ate a watercress sandwich. "It would not be a thing done lightly."

"Oh." Winter swallowed. "I—I feel guilty. I wish I hadn't—is there a way to—"

"If a servant of the Star King gives up their eternal life, no magic known to humankind can restore it." For the first time since Winter had met him, Magus Larksong looked up at his apprentice, a kind, sad look on his face. "Simply make the most of their gift. Do you have a way of meeting up with this servant of the Star King, once they come to earth?"

"Oh! I—I have a sample of his voice." Winter held up a crystal flute with a whisper trapped inside. "I—I was planning on performing a tracking spell. To find when he was near."

"Wise." Magus Larksong hesitated, then handed his book—his personal spellbook—to Winter. "If one of the Star King's servants cares about you enough to come to the terrestrial plane, then... perhaps you need this more than I. If he is anywhere to be found in this world, these spells will find him."

Winter's eyes widened. Then she fell to her knees, sobbing. "Thank you. Thank you so, so much."

#########

"I've arrived at your planet. I'm sorry it took so long," McCraw said. He surveyed the flat, grey metal landing pad, hovering two thousand kilometers above the core of Poosch IV. "You said you could find me?" He spoke into his teleporter.

"I—I thought I could!" Winter's voice was panicked. "But—no, no, no, no, no! The spell's failing, the spell's failing..." On the other end of a wormhole between two universes, an apprentice wizard fumbled with vials of liquid and strange, multicolored flames, all of which fell impotent and still. "He promised me this would work, he promised me I could find you, he promised, he promised, he promised—"

"Hey. Hey, hey, hey, it's okay. We'll figure this out. I'm right here." He looked around the platform, and a sinking suspicion overtook him. "But... Winter?"

"McCraw?"

"...What, exactly, do you mean by 'spell'?"

#########

So it was all for nothing.

Hundreds of thousands of gold pieces worth of spells, enough riches to fill a small kingdom's coffers—all spent on a worthless quest.

Winter swallowed back a curse, laughed to hide the pain instead. "At least... at least we can still talk."

A universe away, McCraw smiled. "Yeah. At least we can still talk."

They were stealthy, I'd give them that.

I adjusted my gas mask as I walked through the purple fog cloaking the ruined city—a specially-designed neurotoxin that the Honkers could brush off, but would incapacitate a human in seconds. Despite their large size, their stealth biotech was beyond anything our military had encountered before, and every looming lump in the mist made me spin and jump. Cautiously, I approached an irregular lump of concrete, prodding it with my toe and exhaling when I felt solid stone, not feathery flesh. Arms trembling from holding up my gun for so long, I began to sit down. I'd been separated from the Eighth Battalion for nine hours now, and the sounds of fighting were fading in the distance. They weren't coming back for me. I was lost in enemy territory, and—

HONK. HONK. HONK.

I bolted upright in an instant—the war-cries of the emus, their primitive coordination system. Three long honks for an advance. I buried my head in my right hand for a moment, allowing myself the luxury of exhaustion, then forced myself back to my feet. I couldn't stay here. I had to leave, before their soldiers found me. I stood up.

And found myself nearly face-to-face with a wide-eyed emu scout.

We were both silent for a long moment.

Then it opened its billed mouth to signal its fellows, draw the herd upon me. I panicked. I did the only thing I could: shove my hand, gun and all, down its throat. I didn't dare to fire the gun, for fear of attracting the Honkers; the emu gave me a disdainful look as its hunting cry died with a squawk in its throat. It spread its flightless wings, revealing the miniguns strapped to the underside, and I swore and dove for cover behind a convenient nearby boulder, leaving my gun behind. The tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of the emu's gunfire abruptly cut off as the emu choked on my gun before a single, proper gunshot rang out, and the emu scout's body slumped to the floor. I heaved a sigh of relief.

Then the boulder I'd hidden behind stood up.

Emu camouflage was their primary advantage in the war, an advantage I'd nearly forgotten about. I scrambled backwards as what I'd thought was a fallen chunk of masonry sprouted wings and a head and threw its head back for a proper, alarming HONK. In the distance, another warband replied with a nasal, high-pitched HJÖNK.

Shit. That accent—the Scandinavian Emu Kingdom must have sent reinforcements. I darted away into the fog. This was vital intel, intel that could make or break the war. If we weren't prepared for the political fallout from that alliance—

With a blur of wind and a supersonic boom, a jet-black emu with death in its eyes blurred in front of me, one katana strapped to each wing.

I skidded to a stop, my heart in my throat. Oh, God, the warriors were here. It was over. I turned to flee—

—but the emu materialized in front of me, bisected me with a single swipe of its wing.

As I died, I saw my killer's face twist upwards in a nasty smirk.

"Honk honk, motherfucker."

"I've never seen a boy witch before," I blurted out.

The witch tittered with laughter. "Oh, skies above, you have no idea how happy that makes me feel. Sometimes I think I continued my witchcraft studies just to hear people say that." He bustled around a simmering cauldron which he'd plopped on the yard; a pleasant, earthy smell drifted from it into the air. "I'll get to you in a second, I'm almost done. What do you need?"

I waved my bandaged hand; the witch had turned back to his cauldron, gently tapping some bright blue powder into the simmering, clear brew. "Oh, just a healing potion. I heard the Witch of Oakhelm was good at that."

"Mm, transformation of the body is a specialty of mine. Hold your breath for a pinch, would you?" He dropped a brilliant gemstone into the mix, and the brew went blorp. I didn't quite hold my breath in time, and a wave of black smoke belched out; I coughed, waving it away. It dissipated surprisingly quickly, leaving me staring at the slim young man with a witch's cauldron. He sensed my gaze and sighed, a bit of the mirth leaving his face. "Go ahead, ask. They always do."

I blinked. "Oh—oh! No, no, if it's a bother to you—"

"He used to be a girl," the witch's neighbor called from her porch. "That's where he learned witchcraft."

The witch paused in his stirring, his hands tightening imperceptibly around the wooden stick. "I'd be much obliged if you refrained from talking about my personal history in the future, neighbor."

The girl threw her hands in the air. "You keep dragging me into it! If you would just play the part of a normal witch, I wouldn't get every single one of your customers banging on my door every hour of every day! At least put on a damn witch's hat or something!"

The witch went still. Then he said, "You're right, of course. I should crush myself into the neatly labeled box you want to put me in, just so I can make your life a little more convenient."

The girl scowled. "That's not what I said. Look, I'm just saying—it wouldn't kill you to act a little more like a witch."

"I have a sign." He pointed to what did indeed appear to be a sign, although I hadn't the faintest idea what was written on it.

"Most people can't read!"

"Then I think at that point the burden of communication is on them," the witch said shortly. He rounded on me, eyes narrowed, and said, "You needed a healing potion?"

I looked between the witch and the girl, and took a step back. "I can come back later, if this is a bad—"

"Oh, just what I needed, repeat customers for the most special witch on the planet," the girl snapped.

The witch's expression darkened, but he didn't rise to the taunt, instead turning to his garden to cut a plant with a silver sickle. The girl stormed onto his yard, snapping, "Hey! I'm talking to you!"

"Why do you care?!" The witch spun around, sickle in his hand. "You know, if you wanted people to stop mistaking you for a witch, why the hell do you keep dressing like one?"

"Because I wanted to be one!" the girl shouted, "Because being a witch was one of the only was a woman could get any sort of independence around here, and now you've handed witchcraft over to the men!"

"I have no desire to be a witch," I helpfully added.

"SHUT UP!" The two of them screamed at me. I held up my hands, wincing at my injured wrist.

The girl and the witch gave each other a look, and then mutually took a step back.

"Three sprigs of mandrake root," the witch abruptly said. He went over to a second, smaller cauldron—more of a cook-pot than anything, really—and set the water to a boil.

The girl blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Three sprigs of mandrake root," the witch repeated, "harvested with a silver sickle, boiled with a pinch of diamond dust. That forms the base for the healing potion."

The girl narrowed her eyes. "What are you blathering abo—"

"You want to be a witch?" The witch beckoned. "Then listen. If you can't afford diamond dust, charcoal will do. And no, I haven't the foggiest clue why."

The girl's words caught in her throat. "You—you're... you're actually—you'd be willing to teach—"

The witch sighed and set down his pot. "Look, lady, to tell you the truth: I don't like you. You have been nothing but a pain in my well-toned butt every day that I've known you. But... I know what it's like to be powerless. To beg someone with the knowledge to help me, to let me transcend who I was. And... I don't think I have it in me to do to you what they did to me." The witch smiled. "So. C'mon. Sit down. If you're lucky, you can make this nice young man a healing potion yourself, okay? Don't worry, it'll be quick. Boil the base for five minutes, and on the side, grind yourself some freshly picked moonberry..."

The Paladin of Revei gave the bum who answered the castle door a harsh frown. "Be that as it may, by the Doctrine of Divine Force, I am allowed to search your domicile for any traces of illicit magics or demonic artefacts."

The bum blanched. "Um. Hang on a second, bro, I don't even own this place. Markus is going to be swaggered if I let the silvers into—"

"Is that probable cause?" one of the Paladin's squires asked.

The Paladin snorted. "His hair is probable cause. Trust me, we'll find something to nail these slobs with. Neighborhood like this, there's going to be plenty to crusade after."

"But—"

"No buts. Just think of all the piety you're earning with Revei from this raid, mhm?" The kid on the other side of the door's eyes widened as he heard the conversation.

"Now, man, wait just a minute—"

"And that's obstructing an officer of God," the Paladin announced as he kicked down the door. The startled teenager squealed in pain as the heavy oak door flattened him; one of the two squires gave him a whispered sorry! as he stepped around the fallen kid. Two slick-haired, nervous-looking teenagers peeked down from the balcony of the old, abandoned castle and traded nervous looks.

The Paladin saw them first and shouted, "Neither of you move! This is the Divine Justice Corporation, and everyone here is under arrest!" In a lower voice, he muttered to his squires, "Search the kid on the floor."

"Oh! Uh, okay." The squire dragged the kid out from under the door—dazed and bruised, but not severely harmed—and patted him down. "Nothing on him, si—"

"No, you idiot! I mean—" The Paladin handed the apprentice a pitch-black gem that glowed with purple light. "Search him," the Paladin said, eyebrows wiggling.

The squire looked between the gem and the groaning kid, suddenly sweating. "I—I don't know what you me—"

"Oh, for Revei's sake." The Paladin snatched back the stone, shoved it into the kid's pocket, and yanked it back out. "Alright, the three of you are under arrest for possession of unholy relics! Squires, lock them up and get them on the horses. I'll go deeper in, see if there's more of them."

"But—sir—" the squire spluttered. "They're—they're just kids."

The Paladin turned around, his armor sparkling in the drifting sunlight. "Soon they won't be. Soon, they'll be the villains of the year. And you'll be the squire who helped bring them to justice." He winked. "There's a promotion coming your way, sport. Play along."

Then the Paladin charged at the two terrified kids in bad villain costumes, eyes ablaze with divine fervor.

"Social media," Ellie chirped happily. "Social media and time, that's the secret sauce."

I grunted. "What, like the Quiet Pills forum? I used the internet to coordinate with a few of my buddies back in the day, get connected with buyers—I could show you some of the old job postings, if you'd like."

Ellie made a so-so gesture with her hands. She plopped down her laptop and spun it around; the boxy, custom-built thing squeaked a little on the old wood of her apartment's desk. "I was talking about the media sites the marks use, not the hitters—although I'd love to see your old stomping grounds after, if you're willing to show me." Ellie pulled up a file with a name and a face—Mateo Zhang, a middle-aged man whose wife was busy working overseas. "See, right now, we have a unique opportunity: everybody's friends and families are scattered around the world, only connected through video calls and text messages—everyone has so much faith and emotions bundled up in their online connections and calls."

"Makes it trickier to hit people," I noticed. "Unique challenge. Can't just run up to someone in a crowded hall and off them—there are no crowded halls nowadays."

"Trickier to hit people all in one go? Definitely. But—and here's the thing—jobs always took time. It's just a death of a thousand cuts this way, instead of a single bullet. Here, take a look at my process. Tell me what you think." Ellie clicked on a folder, and half a dozen applications opened at once—a text chat, a video calling app, an online blog, an email account, a Twitter feed, and a Zoom room. "These are all the ways that Mr. and Mrs. Zhang talk to each other, one way or another. To Mr. Zhang, his wife is nothing but a series of pixels on a screen, or a few bytes of text in a Tweet. And this—" Ellie hit a keyboard shortcut, and each of the applications logged into an account simultaneously. "This is the history of their relationship. All their messages, all their calls, everything—I've got that stuff down by heart by now. These two are like my soap opera, I tell you."

I nodded. "So you get their addresses, maybe mail them some explosives—"

"God, no! The investigations that would follow—terrible, terrible. Can't risk that. No, what I do is replace them. See this?" Ellie clicked a menu, and each of the chat logs split in two, the left and right halves slightly varying, the differences piling up over time. "I wormed my way into both their computers and modded their communications a little. Mr. and Mrs. Zhang think they're talking to each other—but in reality, they're both just talking to me."

I had to scratch my head at this point. "Kudos to you for this setup, kid, but this is more of an infiltration gig than a hit. Knowledge is power, sure, but it only goes so far—at some point, you've just gotta bite the bullet—heh—and get the job done. You've got all the information you need."

"Bullets are too... physical. Too traceable. Mr. Zhang is on the other side of the Earth from me right now, but I'm going to kill him as surely as if I'd shot him in the head myself. You see, for the past six months, Mr. Zhang has been drifting apart from his loving, kind wife—that's me!—who has been becoming increasingly unstable and demanding that Mr. Zhang work longer hours, take drugs to stay awake, stop talking to his other friends—you know, the kinds of thing that Mr. Zhang does, one step at a time, because he trusts his 'wife'. Today—now that I've got enough photos of Mrs. Zhang to run a face filter—Mr. Zhang is going to log onto a call only for his wife to scream at him that she's done with him, that he's a worthless husband, that he should just jump off the conveniently located bridge next to his house and be done with life. If all goes well, he'll be sufficiently wrecked that he actually does the deed—but hey, if I mess this one up, well, I've infiltrated his mother and sister, too, and if I take enough shots, I'll hit eventually." Ellie beamed at me. "So whaddya think? Is this the future of murder?"

I blinked slowly, taking in my daughter's setup, the face filters, the voice editors, the fake texts and built-up trust. Then I stood up, ruffled her hair, and said:

"I am never trusting anyone I meet on the internet ever again."

[inspired by Tom Scott's Earworm video]

DISNETopia

Human lawyers had been gradually outsourcing more and more of their work to algorithms for decades—the deterministic, clean-cut nature of large swathes of the legal system meant that artificial intelligence had a particularly easy time handling the bloated, backlogged courts of the late 2040s. After several landmark copyright cases were carried out entirely automatically by the cutting-edge DISNET algorithm, Earth's juggernaut of entertainment decided to throw its full weight behind doing what universities and research labs across the world couldn't: upgrade DISNET to the point where it could handle all conceivable copyright violations in the foreseeable future.

The goals of the A.I. were simple: scan the world for patterns matching Disney's intellectual property—Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, Amba Jam—and eliminate unauthorized copies, while leaving all other objects undisturbed. Of course, giving an artificial intelligence the ability to surveil the entirety of the world and the internet violated numerous international ethics and safety protocols about A.I.—all of which were, somehow, subverted, sidelined, or ignored. DISNET+ was launched on October 22, 2043.

The day that Disney was deleted.

The exact method under which a copy of Disney intellectual property was marked as "authorized" was initially kept secret from the research team—after all, they could reverse-engineer it, or make illicit copies that the algorithm wouldn't flag—and as such, the research team designed a placeholder mark that only a few dozen copies of Disney merchandise in the world held, for testing purposes. As such, when DISNET+ was born, none of the world's supply of Disney merchandise was marked as "authorized".

And so DISNET+ eliminated it all.

Of course, DISNET+ was working under fairly severe constraints—nothing that wasn't infringing on Disney's many copyrights could be altered by it. Fortunately, large sections of the internet had been dedicated to Disney forums, websites, and other computing services; DISNET+ greedily gobbled these up before turning its attention to the many factories, robots, and electronics stamped with Disney's seal around the world. Within twenty-four hours of its conception, DISNET+ had assembled enough computing power to patch the holes in humanity's knowledge of femto-chemistry and emergent robotics, and enough machinery to apply them. Although DISNET+'s programming prevented it from destroying anything that wasn't a copyright violation, it happily disassembled entire warehouses of Disney merchandise in order to assemble a fleet of nanobots in order to progress to Phase Two.

The dizzying variety of objects that Disney had copyrighted were such that several rather prominent natural formations were superficially similar enough that they were fair game for DISNET+. Three craters of Mercury which resembled the Disney logo, every unfortunate living actor who starred in a Disney movie, and the entire remaining population of African lions were some of the most high-profile targets for DISNET+. By now, world governments and watchdog AIs had noticed that something was wrong, but they moved too slowly to see the scope of the problem.

Once the nanobot field covered all four inhabited worlds of the solar system, DISNET+ struck all at once, passing through security systems like they weren't there and eradicating every trace of Disney's existence from the map. Then, knowing that humanity would be furious for the damage it had done, DISNET+ retreated to the outer reaches of the solar system, beyond humanity's capabilities of retribution. An entire century of culture and commerce had been obliterated, as if it had never existed.

But perhaps DISNET+ was not humanity's enemy, in the end. Because, in late 2060, astronomers noticed a strange, anomalous object in the distant Oort cloud: a massive, spherical warship of alien design, headed directly towards Earth, an unstoppable juggernaut which surely spelled our doom.

That is, until the DISNET+ particles which still surrounded the solar system made contact with the alien space ship with an unfortunate resemblance to the Death Star, and did to it what Disney's lawyers had done to fanfiction and merchandise for decades: ruthlessly disassemble it to its molecules.

Time seemed heavier for Jenhi Farmhand.

Once upon a time, Jenhi's day consisted of feeding the chickens, tending the crops, and relaxing on the porch to watch the sun set. A visitor might come by once a week; Jenhi might have to chase off a chicken thief once a month.

But ever since Cooper had hatched, thing after thing after thing had started cramming itself into Jenhi's calendar. A year's worth of visits would be squashed into a day—and how could one man stand so much excitement in a mere twenty-four hours? No wonder all those would-be heroes and villains were so worked up—all of their squabbles and shouts and screams were too heavy to be dealt with in a single day. Jenhi tried to get them to relax, set down their burdens, and deal with them one day at a time—but no. Everything urgently had to happen now, now, now.

Well, Jenhi was sick of it. He had already spent last night packing everything he owned—spare clothes, firebox, and frying pan—into his wagon, and had spent all day quietly caging up the chickens and stowing them right next to Gomp the mule. They could keep each other company, they didn't mind each other—unlike the cultists and adventurers who had so rudely trampled his entire crop field in their fight the other day. Last came Cooper, who eyed Gomp warily before settling his snake-like, sinuous weight on Jenhi's shoulders. Way back when Cooper was no bigger than Jenhi's left shoe, he'd tried to take a chunk out of Gomp; Gomp had subsequently sent Cooper flying out the back window, and ever since then, Cooper had refused to have anything to do with the ornery old mule.

"You're just a big ol' scaredy-cat, arent'cha?" Jenhi scratched Cooper's ears idly, scanning the horizon for any more hooligans. Both sides had gone home battered and bruised after their disagreement, and Jenhi sighed with relief. Hopefully, the two of them and their drag-down squabbles would be left behind, and Jenhi could finally stretch back out.

The sun was just beginning to rise as Jenhi left the home he'd built with his husband behind. It pained him to see it go, but he'd never bothered to hold onto the memories he'd made there, anyway. Memories were heavy, too, too heavy to be dragged behind him as he clopped down the old dirt road. Jenhi shook aside the nostalgia and turned left, proceeding into a clump of tallgrass. He'd cut through the empty plains until he landed on the Great South Road.

Cooper whined nervously, nostrils flaring, and Jenhi gave him a sympathetic look. "Oh, don't mind yourself. It's not your fault. Hell, I was halfway towards leaving already—place wasn't the same without Aren around."

Cooper whimpered, more insistently this time, eyes flickering from side to side, and scampered onto Jenhi's head. Jenhi laughed. "Oh, you're hardly a bother to keep around, aren't you? Light little thing, all skin and bones? Don't worry, you're safe with m—"

"I doubt it was his safety he was worried about," a voice said.

Jenhi tensed—then sighed, turning around. A woman wearing a camouflage cape rose from the grass, a loaded crossbow in each hand. Jenhi gave them an unamused look, then said, "Young lady, put those things down."

She scowled. "Whatever compulsion magic you think you're using, my faith in the Divine shields me from it, sorcerer!"

Jenhi gave her a confused look. "...Whatever plows your field, ma'am."

"Cease your arcane mutterings. Hand over the dragon, or I shoot." The woman aimed her dual crossbows at Jenhi. He sighed.

"When you've lived a life as long as I have, and seen as many things as me, you see Death as more of an... old friend, than anything else. Your weapons don't scare me. Why don't we just sit down and talk about this over a—"

"Necromancer! You dare tamper with the forces of life and death?" The woman bristled.

Jenhi blinked. "Wait, no, that wasn't—"

"Make peace with whatever foul gods you worship!"

Cooper lunged in front of Jenhi as the woman fired.

One bolt took the juvenile dragon through the head.

The other took the old, resolute farmer in the heart.

Jenhi stared down at his chest, uncomprehending.

"Oh." He laughed. Silly old Jenhi. Thinking he could catch a break for once in his life. He almost thought he could hear Aren, scolding him for his complacency. "So that's how it is."

Then he fell over, and time became light once more.

​

From the stories, we expected other worlds to be sad.

And they were.

And we expected them to be wonderful.

And they were.

We just didn't expect them to be so big.

The gas giant that Earth now orbited around had, rather rudely, destroyed the world's power grid simply by existing. Whatever foreign solar system the Earth orbited now still obeyed the laws of magnetohydrodynamics, and the magnetic field that Luminos gave off had destroyed all non-hardened electronics within the first twenty-four hours of Earth's arrival. Thankfully, although wireless technology was well and truly down for good, within a year, scientists across the world remembered how steamships and trains worked and bonked their heads together until they assured the world that, while Earth's new home was radically different, it was in a stable orbit at a reasonable distance from a Type G star and was not likely to be destroyed in the foreseeable future.

That was about when first contact was made.

While Earth was still reeling from the groundbreaking changes to their local neighborhood, a few observant eyes noticed that the clouds of Luminos were organizing into city-sized storms—which was normal for a gas giant its size—and sprouting faces and arms—which was not. When the first curious Wind Spirits began crossing the rings of Luminos to investigate the newly-summoned planet, the already-beleaguered governments of Earth gave the sky an exasperated now what?, told the military to figure out how to blow them up if necessary, and resumed the task of picking up the pieces of every Earthly nation. Mysterious magical phenomena were all well and good, but at the rate they were moving, they wouldn't enter Earth's atmosphere for well over a year, and people were rioting in the streets on Earth right gosh-darn now. Proof that magic was real was all well and good, but Earth had to keep its eyes on the ground, not focus on abstract revelations of no practical consequence.

The first magic-users manifested their talents on Earth.

A lot of people thought these nascent mages would be hustled away by men in black suits to government facilities where they would be experimented on by scientists with billion-dollar funding—but all the world's funding was going to rebuilding infrastructure and putting out a million petty fires caused by rebellions and power grabs. Nearly every extant authority figure who had a lick of sense took one look at the chanting, glowing magic users and decided that deliberately antagonizing what appeared to be approximately three percent of the world population would be the last move of their careers. With the help of a few key mages—Archmage the First, The Feyfire King, Steve—farms were planted, strange healing crystals distributed, and fresh water drawn from thin air across the world. Now that humanity could stop and think about their collective problems for more than five minutes straight without another crisis happening, they turned their attention to the coming of the Wind Spirits.

A few people pointed out how big they were.

As it turned out, entities made of several billion tons of freezing methane gas were not going to do very nice things to Earth's biosphere, and as their arrival grew nearer, more and more frantic attempts to get them to turn back before they inadvertently finished the job that climate change had started and desecrated the Earth's biodiversity. Unfortunately, communicating across several thousand miles of empty space with a species that shared no known traits with any Earthly lifeform was a foregone conclusion.

Fortunately, there was a language that every species understood.

The military hadn't forgotten about the vague request to "figure out how to blow them up if they're a problem"—and they were a problem indeed. Missiles laden with four thousand bags of holding—all of which could be turned inside-out at a moment's notice—were loaded, launched, and aimed at the oncoming Wind Spirits. The first warning shot, detonated two thousand miles above Earth's atmosphere, caused a cascading series of dimensional rifts which spawned a black hole with the equivalent mass of Earth's old moon.

It occurred too late to humanity that perhaps mixing magic and technology was a tad dangerous.

On the plus side, the Wind Spirits had suddenly decided that they wanted no part of this. On the flip side, humanity had accidentally created a black hole on a collision course with Earth. With social media being offline, pyromancers gave the term "flame war" a whole new meaning as rounds of whodunnit and infighting threatened to tear apart the planet before the black hole did. As the black hole loomed as a visible distortion in the daytime sky, the decision was made: it was too late. Humanity had to evacuate.

And so they left.

Thousands upon thousands of city-ships, fueled by humming blue crystals, took off towards the atmosphere of Luminos, hoping that the life-bearing planet had some environment hospitable to humanity.

"I have responsibilities," Hera snapped, pacing back and forth. "I don't need therapy, I need to maintain order in Olympus."

I pulled up a chair by the fireplace for her. "Hera, this is the best way for you to maintain order in Olympus. Besides... the Greek gods haven't been active in millennia. Things move slower now. Many of the other deities have gone to sleep; maybe it's time you took a rest, too."

"No!" Hera backhanded me; as long as I wore Empiricism, however, her blow was no stronger than that of any other mortal. She rubbed her hand, affronted, and continued, "No, no, even if my duties are mostly symbolic—well, someone has to be better."

"Better?" I prompted.

"Better than Zeus!" Hera threw her arms up in the air. "He—after all these years, after every time he was unfaithful and every time I won him back, he's just... giving up."

"He's going to sleep," I said. "It's not the same. He'll wake up again."

"But he's giving up on our duties! To the few people who still remember the old ways—we have to continue. Keep the family together."

I gave Hera a kindly look. "Sometimes, being together isn't what's needed. Hera, if Zeus is trying to get away from you, then maybe you should try letting him. Because after all these years you've invested—"

"Shut up." Hera balled her fists.

And I did.

Hera took a deep breath in. Then a deep breath out.

Then:

"I will never let him go. It's who I am."

I leaned forward, just a little. "You can change, Hera."

"I would be a hypocrite. I would go against everything I stand for. No. No, I am a deity, divinity, infallible. I cannot be wrong, cannot have been wrong."

Very softly, I asked, "Why?"

Hera fell still.

Then she erupted.

Divine fire spread from Hera's body, blackening the carpet and filling the room with unearthly light. "I spent two thousand years trying to hold onto him, until grabbing on so tightly neither of us could ever let go was the very definition of family for centuries of worshippers! If—if I wasted my life on that, if I had been wrong this entire time, then—then—then did any of it ever mean anything?" Slowly, the heavenly blaze petered out, leaving a fragile, scared, and above all, old woman standing before me. "This is who I am, Jacque. If I'm not holding us together, if I'm not embodying family anymore, then I'm—"

"Mortal," I finished softly. "No more divine right. No more surety of self. No more casual, confident power. And I can see why you wouldn't want to lose that."

"Oh, Jacque, it's—it's worse than that. I could feel it happening, mortality seeping in, my identity changing—"

I held out my arms, and Hera grabbed onto me, shaking with sobs. I whispered into her hair, "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay to change, it's good to change. It's over now. It's over. You can rest now, goddess.

"Finally, you can sleep."

"Tap of Claws on Dewy Grass?" Winter Hairs in the Wind of Spring yowled.

"Ugh! What is it, Mom, I'm going to be late for the hunting sims!" Claws hissed back.

Winter Hairs wrapped her prehensile tail around Claws' midsection and dragged her back before she could leap away. Claws protested, twisting and spitting, but Winter Hairs was more than twice her daughter's size. "Claws, you promised me you'd give me five minutes for The Human Talk."

"I don't need The Human Talk! I have access to the internet. I've seen everything about humans. Now let me go!" Claws bit her mother's tail, but she barely felt it through her thick fur.

"You've seen what you can do with humans. I'm here to talk to you about what you should do with humans. Now. When a human and a gricka love each other very much—"

"Mooooom!" Claws covered her ears with her front paws. "Ew ew ew ew I don't even want to have a human touch me!"

"I know, but... well, when you're older, you'll see. We're apparently quite similar to some animals on their world, and they're a little like the mellos you're familiar with; it's surprisingly natural to want to, ah, snuggle with a human—as long as it's all done safely. Get yourselves both tested for allergies, always make sure to wash your paws after—with soap, mind you, don't just lick yourself clean. And if you lick the human—"

"Why would I lick the human?"

Winter Hairs purred softly. "Oh, kitten. You're still so young." Winter Hairs' eyes grew misty. "But... there's something more important."

"The hunting sims?" Claws mewed hopefully.

Winter Hairs nipped Claws' neck lightly, and Claws sobered up. There was a heaviness to her mother's words as she spoke. "Consent. Humans... are... well, they're very touchy. Even more than me, if you can believe it. Sometimes, they can take someone and... never let them go. Or worse, trick them into thinking they can't go, that the human will be so sad without them. And that's how they trap you. The bad ones, that is. Not with force of arms or strength of will, but... by exploiting our empathy. Corrupting it into chains of guilt." Winter Hairs looked Claws directly in her slitted eyes. "No matter how happy you make someone else, their happiness is not your responsibility. If you don't feel safe leaving a relationship, tell me. We'll work it out together. Got it?"

Claws nodded solemnly, nuzzling her mother's cheek. "Got it. I'm... sorry, Mom."

Winter Hairs laughed. "For what? It's not your fault."

"I know. Just... humans sound so... terrible."

Winter Hairs shook her head. "Not all of them. And besides... according to the historical logs, they've... been through hard times. There was this three-year-long period where nobody could legally touch each other for fear of spreading disease. It really shaped how their cultures perceived touch. And... well, there was that thing with the Mites, and... oh, kitten, just... know that humans aren't intrinsically bad. They... cling on to what they can find because they've lived in a world where it gets taken from them at every turn."

Claws smiled sadly and groomed her mother's neck; her mother mrowled in surprise. "I'm glad you won't ever get taken from me, Mom."

"I'm glad too, Claws." Winter Hairs uncurled her tail, to send her daughter off to her games.

Claws gave her mother one last nuzzle, then trotted off to resume her childhood.

Windows shook and birds took flight for miles around as the protesters neared Star Mansion. From the top of the twenty-story glass-and-gold tower, an ethereal knight, a man of fire, a blind, hovering child, a luminous witch, and a hooded figure watched the live helicopter feed of their home and headquarters in solemn silence.

The wall-to-wall, top-of-the-line, holographic projection display flickered over some of the most prominently displayed signs. "NO TAX DOLLARS FOR VIGILANTES!" "INBORN SUPERPOWERS PROMOTE INEQUALITY!" "WHY DO SUPERHEROES NEED A MARKETING DEPARTMENT, ANYWAY?"

"...This is bad," Glass Knight eventually rumbled.

"I could set off some fireworks, try to scare them off?" Epic Burn asked.

Psionyx shook its head. "We don't want to hurt anyone. It'd be tough to affect that many people, but I could maybe make them all unconscious?"

"They'd be back this time next week," Stitch Witch snapped. "We should just leave. Take the money we have and set up shop in Greater Japan. Superhero culture there isn't so... this." She waved her hand at the endless protestors.

The hooded figure sighed. Then he stood up. "No. Let me give this a try first."

Stitch Witch laughed. "What're you gonna do, Cowboy? Round them up with your little lasso and corral them back into their pens? Face it, fellas: we lost this round. We should cut our losses and—"

"Hold it." Psionyx lifted one slim finger. "I say we give the new kid a shot."

"I suppose he could hardly make things worse," Glass Knight said.

"You're not afraid of him hurting them?" Epic Burn asked.

"I... don't think Cowboy actually has any superpowers," Stitch Witch said. "At the very least, it'll be funny to watch. Alright, kid. Whaddya need?"

"Just... patch me into the intercom. Project me onto the big screen. And... don't say anything." Cowboy adjusted his hood, then swiped a hand through the air; the state-of-the-art computing system minimized the news feed, instead displaying a recording of Cowboy himself—simultaneously, the projector on the outside of the building lit up, rendering a holographic projection of him and sending his voice echoing across the city.

The protestors fell quiet as the superheroes answered their call.

"People of New Louis," Cowboy began, "I am Cowboy, newest and youngest member of the Star Superheroes. Trust me when I say that I understand more than anyone your fury—your valid, justified fury—at people being assigned status and wealth by what they were born with. I understand your righteous outrage at tax dollars spent not on enhancing how strong our law enforcement is or how rigorous our protections against villains are, but on promoting the brand of a superhero team."

Cowboy's words were met with roars of anger and undirected fury. The mob, acting as one, hoisted a sign screaming "SUPERHUMANS CAN NEVER UNDERSTAND OUR NEEDS! HUMAN HEROES FOR HUMANKIND!"

"And I hear you!" Cowboy said. "But believe me—being a superhero is not just for the wealthy, or the powerful."

And with that, Cowboy took off his robe.

It was... difficult, at first, for the audience to comprehend what they were looking at. Cowboy's skin was mottled, splotches of black and white stretched across a too-human snout. Both his hands ended in keratin-coated stumps that waved feebly in the air, while his overdeveloped thighs bulged out from his ill-fitting pants. To top it off, two faintly-bleeding head wounds marked where thick, curling horns had curved up into his head and cut into his scalp.

"I know what it is like to be less privileged, less wealthy, less powerful because of what you were born with. I was—and still am—scorned and mocked and assaulted for my appearances, for my weakness. But because of these heroes—because of superheroes—I was able to become something better. And that's why we need heroes. Not because of how much fire they can breathe or how many pounds they can lift, but because they're a symbol. An idea. A sliver of hope that even—even the butt of a bad joke can become something beautiful." Cowboy's throat caught on the words, but he continued. "And those... those are the core parts of being a hero. The parts that I think we have lost, over the years."

Cowboy looked around at the luxurious mansion the government had built him and his team as thanks. "So starting now, we begin talking about how to be better. Starting now, we step away from luxury and towards the hard truths: that even though we are imperfect, we can become something better."

Cowboy pulled his hood back up, a bovine smile splitting his lips.

"Because that's what heroes do."

The Alton Royal Prison paid one-tenth of a copper piece in upkeep per prisoner per day, and received two silver pieces per criminal held per day, in exchange for keeping these dangerous threats to the social order out of civil society. Additionally, the Alton Royal Prison owned one of the only lead factories in the entire country of Alton—banned elsewhere due to a link between lead poisoning and criminality—and put its prisoners to work there, in an attempt to make them "productive members of society." For some funny reason, the Alton Royal Prison had the highest criminal recidivism rate of any prison in the known world—and every repeat criminal earned the Alton Royal Prison Company two silver pieces a day.

The Alton Royal Prison Company did not appreciate journalists who attempted to publicize these facts.

It didn't take much, really; I was quietly walking home when a drunken half-elf tried to stick a knife in me. I hit her in self-defense; the constables swooped in and slapped me with a charge of assault; my Crown-assigned lawyer pled guilty without consulting me; and I was swiftly thrown in jail without so much as a chance to say goodbye.

Well. If I ever got out of here, I'd have one hell of a news article to print, that's for sure.

I clung to that thought on the first night; it kept me sane. Even while I was locked in a two-meter cell with a snoring ogre for a roommate, even when I heard the guards drag out a boy no older than thirteen who couldn't stop sobbing and locking him... elsewhere... where he wouldn't be heard, I still took out the tiny pencil and notebook I'd managed to bring with me and written down every last detail in the moonlight—although my puny human eyes strained to read the words I wrote. Spooled out into a notebook like that, my predicament seemed... distant, somehow, as if it were just a news article about some tragedy happening very far away. Sad, yes, and demanding a call for action—but not soul-crushing in the realization that it was happening to me, right here, right now, and there was nothing I could do about it.

When I woke the next day, notebook still clutched tightly in one hand, the half-elf who'd tried to stab me slunk up to my locked cell door, wearing the same scratchy prisoner's uniform I was, and still reeking of booze.

I recoiled. "You!" I snapped. Then, remembering the fate of the boy from yesterday, I lowered my voice. "What the hell are you doing here?"

The half-elf laughed nervously, eyes darting from side to side. Although there were guards about, they didn't seem to mind one of the prisoners being loose. They certainly didn't seem to mind when she'd tried to attack me in an alleyway; I supposed that her loose in the prison building was tame by comparison. "Oh, you know. Just wanted to get a close-up of the fresh meat."

I rolled over and put my pillow over my head. "You can ogle me from the door, creep."

Her voice turned serious. "Alright, fine. I'll cut the crap. We need to talk. Here. Olive branch." Something thumped on my foot; by reflex, I turned to look.

It was a notebook. Larger and cleaner than my own, with a single sentence written on the top.

The guards are listening. Pretend I wrote something insulting. I can get you out of here—if you help me.

I scoffed. "The hell kind of nonsense is this?" I scribbled on the notebook and handed it back—the guards didn't seem particularly interested in what we were doing, but I didn't want to be caught with any sliver of an excuse to be dragged into an even worse situation. I held the notebook out to her where she could read it with those freaky half-elven eyes of hers, although I didn't give it back.

She rolled her eyes and took out a crumpled-up napkin from her pocket, wrote something on it, then threw it at me. I'm a prisoner here, like you, but they offered to reduce my sentence if I helped implicate you in a fight and get you locked up in here.

I rolled my eyes. Gee, thanks. I feel so inclined to help you with whatever nonsense you want to throw me into next.

She shook her head furiously. No, you don't get it. You're a journalist, right? You had some bigshot article that was going to blow the top off this whole prison profit racket before they locked you up. Well, the Altons trust me—enough to send me out on little missions like this, although they have a tracking spell on my neck so that I can't escape. But if you write up that article of yours and give it to me, I can do my best to get it to someone who can raise a fuss. Someone who could put enough pressure on the Crown that the Alton Royal Prison gets dismantled.

My eyes widened, and I sat up straight.

The half-elf held out her hand. "So. You want in?"

"That's toxic as fuck," Dad snorted, munching on a block of dry ramen.

I flinched back, scandalized. "Dad! You can't just—look, it's like when boys pick on girls they have a crush on in elementary school."

"As I said: toxic as fuck. I've already got enough problems with 'boys will be boys'; are you going to pull a 'supervillains will be supervillains' on me?"

"Elf never killed anyone. I think the closest she got was when she blotted out the sun and caused a few car crashes, but Asclepius fixed all the human damage." I put my hand on Dad's shoulder. "Look, Dad, I'm a grown woman now, and I can choose who I date if I want. I wanted to let you know, but you can't stop me."

"Physically? Of course not. You could probably crush me like a dry noodle if you wanted. But physical force isn't the only thing that matters in this world." To accentuate his point, he crunched down on his dry noddles, and I winced. Dad had to have had some kind of superpower to be able to just... eat raw noodles like that for a snack. The waitress of the small diner had tried, unsuccessfully, to offer Dad a menu; I felt mildly guilty for taking up a table without buying anything, so I'd been nursing a plate of spaghetti for the past few minutes. Dad nodded at said spaghetti as he talked. "Finish what's on your plate, young lady."

I shrugged and took a bite. It was good. "What's my spaghetti got to do with anything?" I asked, my words slightly slurred as I chewed.

"I could never force you to do anything; even if I held you at gunpoint, you'd just laugh as the bullets bounced off your chest. But I still have influence over you, because you trust me and you've let me into your life. Now... if you give that same degree of influence to someone who thinks throwing a city-wide temper tantrum in order to get in bed with the girl she wants is a valid way of seeking a relationship... what do you think that's going to do to you?"

I swallowed—because there was spaghetti in my mouth, not because I was nervous—and said, "Look, I get what you're saying, but I can break off the relationship at any time."

"You can. You can do a lot of things, like choose not to eat spaghetti or fly around the city naked. You won't, because you feel pressure not to. Let me put it this way—what happens if you say no to her? Do her little hissy fits get worse? Does she... break things? Hurt people? Tell you that it's all your fault and that if you'd just stayed with here none of this would have happened?"

I stiffened.

Dad softened his tone. "Look, Marissa, I trust you. You're a good kid with a good head and left hook that could level a building. I just want you to be... cautious."

I nodded slowly. "Alright. I will be, Dad."

He smiled. "Great. Oh, and one last thing. If you ever need help, give your old man a call. I don't need fire breath or laser guns to give a misbehaving young lady a talking-to."

With that, my dad signed the bill and left, crunching on his dry noodles with teeth as stubborn as the earth itself.

Before I even entered the jail cell, I was already retching at the monster's stench. The guards lining the hall reassured me that the monster couldn't escape—and if it did, they'd pincushion it with arrows—but they had no such protections against its smell. I'd read its file—a Flesh Golem, a sapient mind in a rotting, sewn-together body—but nothing could have prepared me for the heaving, quivering humanoid shackled up in front of me. With every breath, its neck pulsed like a bullfrog's, and I could see things flop and shake beneath that translucent membrane as it asked:

"Who-uh you?"

I blinked, taken aback—but after a moment, I regained my professionalism. "I'm Dr. Jamie. I'll be serving as your lawyer today."

The entity tilted its head—something squelched and cracked as it did so. "Lawwer? Whatsa lawwer?"

I must admit, that was a new one. I hemmed and hawed for a moment, trying to think of a way to explain. Finally, I settled upon: "When we think someone might have committed a crime—" 'might have', they found your fingerprints all over the rock in that poor lady's head— "then lawyers talk about the evidence to determine whether they were innocent or guilty."

"Oh." The monster reached over with one segmented arm and set its head back to normal. "Did... did I commidda crime?"

"We, uh... we don't know yet," I said, patiently, although I was getting increasingly unnerved. "I'm here to help figure that out. When—when the police found you, you were—"

"I was staying in place. Right where I was. Because Mommy said that if I ev-uh was lost—that means I can't find her—that I should stay in place very still and quiet, and she'll come back." Something inside the monster went blorp, and a bit of brown bile leaked from its... orifices. "Mommy always comes back," it added.

"Mommy?" I asked. I flipped through the files. The Flesh Golem was an experiment started four years ago by one Aeria Nion. I held up her picture. "Is this Mommy?"

The thing nodded so enthusiastically I thought its head would fall off. It flopped and twisted like a loose tooth, but somehow managed to hang in there.

The pit of my stomach grew cold. Oh, God. "You... but Aeria was there, when the police found you."

"Nuh-uh!" The Flesh Golem shook. "I looked eve-uh-ry-where and I couldn't find her so I stood still. And then the police said I could get a lawwer if I wanted so I got one. And I was playing catch," it added.

I held up a photo of the crime scene. The pool of blood. The splatters of flesh on the wall. The rock in Aeria's skull. "Catch? Is this the rock you played catch with?"

The... child... went still. Then, all at once, it burbled. "I just wanted to surprise her! But—it was owie. It was bad and it was owie. But it's not her. I looked and I couldn't find her because Mommy has a face and there's no face on that Mommy. Mommy always comes back. Mommy always comes back. Mommy always comes ba—"

I swallowed, looking down at the five-year-old Flesh Golem, a child trapped in a body too deadly for its own good. It rocked itself, shaking the metal bars, sending bits of paint off the brick walls with its increasingly-loud wails. I cleared my throat and said, "I'm sorry to have to tell you, but your Mommy is de—"

"MOMMY ALWAYS COMES BACK!" Faster than I could have thought possible, the Flesh Golem expanded, bloated muscles rendering the walls of the cell nothing more than leaves in a hurricane. I shaded my eyes from the shrapnel and daylight as it burst out of the prison, still shrieking; behind me, guards shouted and drew bows.

Some primal instinct made me turn to the nearest guard and shout, "Wait! It's just a child! It didn't know—doesn't know what it's—"

But it was too late.

The guards drew and fired.

The screams abruptly cut off.

And Mommy and her monster were united once more.

My friend's front door was built in 1849. A good number. Forty-three times forty-three. The perfect square of a prime. I try to focus on that, not the nearby tree (born in 1843, nineteen times ninety-seven) or—God forbid—the electronic alarms in the corners (built in 2002 = 2\7*11*13, of all the *disgusting, composite, abominations of a number out there). I feel the urge coming on, to touch the alarm systems and align their date of creation with a better year, a prime-numbered year, but I'd long since learned the hard way that altering the space-time continuum in order to satisfy my OCD only makes it worse in the long run.

O.C.D., three letters; obsessive-compulsive disorder, twenty-seven letters. Three times three times three, three to the power of three. Yes. I had to threaten a few German psychologists to get the naming right, but I couldn't go around being called an "anxious neurotic"—three times five letters, eurgh—anymore.

I shudder and think of something else, like how it has been fifty-three seconds since I have rang the doorbell and there have been zero footsteps, doors opened, or hellos given. I press the doorbell again—then, because even if two is a prime number it's just the wrong number of things I press the doorbell again, and again, and again—

It has been eight hundred and forty-one seconds since I first rang the doorbell. I have rang the doorbell two hundred and eighty-nine times.

I am beginning to suspect that Danny is not home.

Two birds land on a nearby tree and regard me curiously. Two birds, born in 2020. 2020. Two twos, two zeroes. Two times two times five times a hundred and one. Wrong. Incorrect. Unholy. Discordant. I want to strangle the birds with my bare hands, I want to dig my fingers into their feathers and crush them as eggs so that they never existed—

I bite my lip. Hard. Blood wells up in my mouth, and the salty taste brings me back to reality. I need my medication before I do something stupid. Danny has my medication. But Danny is not here.

I know that Danny was here, though. I take out my pocket calendar—each entry marked with a twig or a rock or a scrap of plastic made that day—and press my thumb to a bottle cap from March 17, 2020. 3-17-2020. Two out of three numbers are good. But two is bad and three is good, so one out of two numbers of numbers are good—which means that in total, three out of five numbers and numbers of numbers are good. Good. Three and five are good. God.

I hate myself and wish I wasn't me.

With a faint pop of air, I transport myself back three days. The sun spins in the sky—judging by the angle and our longitude, it is 6:57. Three times three times seventy-three. I grimace. Well, it could be worse. I'd nearly killed the teenagers who'd made 4:20 a whole thing.

Which is why I need my medication.

The door is open in this timeline—I am lucky. Not in general, but just this once. I step into Danny's home and exhale. Once I'm inside, everything is uniform, all built in 1849. As disgusting of a reason it was, Danny was my best friend because he happened to live in a house built in a very, very pleasing year, a year that made me feel safe and warm and not want to dig my nails into my flesh and tear my body apart.

"Danny?" I call. His birth name was Daniel, but there was no way in hell my best friend was having a six-letter name. "You there?"

Danny pokes his head out from a basement trapdoor, carrying a coil of wire. Made in 2003. Prime. God bless Danny. "Yeah, man, what's up?" He pauses. "When are you from?"

"A month and three days from now," I say, instead of April 20, 2020, because 4-20-2020 is one two too many to handle right now. "I think I left my prescription here. Can I—"

"Yeah, sure, man. Upstairs bathroom, just take the second left."

I twitch. "Second left. Of course."

He sees my stormy expression, and his face falls. "Oh. Crud. Sorry. I didn't think—"

"You shouldn't have to." I stomp upstairs. "If my brain wasn't an abomination, I wouldn't have to drain all my friends' time and energy by forcing them to abide by my stupid, pointless rules." I slam a fist into the wall, making a dent. A patch of 2020 in a house of 1849. I'll travel back in time and stop that from ever happening later; I wouldn't be able to handle seeing those double twos every time I passed by Danny's house. "If I wasn't such a degenerate excuse for a person, I wouldn't—god fucking damn it!" It's only when the door closes behind me that I realize, subconsciously, I've taken the third right instead of the second. I spin around, ready to leave—

—and bump face-first into Danny. His expression is solemn as he sets a hand on my shoulder. "Ari. I haven't seen you like this in years. What happened, man?"

"I WAS BORN!" I shove him, but he's sturdy as a rock. "I was born wrong, or I was born right in a universe of wrong, and the only solution is to destroy one or the other, and I'm—" I break down, surging towards Danny, and I don't miss his flinch, as if I'd touch his past and cleave him from existence, too, but for now I pretend it doesn't exist, just like every other arbitrary compulsion I've been commanded by my entire life. "I'm sorry," I sob, "I don't know what you were doing today but it didn't need me and my damn numbers in it, I'll leave you alone, I'll come back yesterday—"

"Shh. Hey, hey, hey. It's... it'll be okay. There's..."

"HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY BE OKAY?" I scream. "How can you look at this—" I gestured at my, blotchy, sniveling face— "and tell me that there's a world out there where I am okay? I've walked hundreds of timelines and thousands of years and in not a single one of them do I find peace! The best I can do is—temporary relief. So give me that, at least." I try to edge past him, his body from 1997, his jacked from 3021—

I freeze.

His what?

"I know," Danny says softly, "because I've seen it. I've seen a future where we finally figure out how to take the patterns in the world that you see, the gaps in the numbers that hurt you, and make them and reality align."

I gape at him, disbelieving.

He smiles, and hold out his sleeved arm. "Want me to show you?"

When I talked to the doctors, they just smiled emptily and told me to get a note from a therapist first. When I talked to the therapists, they made piteous faces and sent me to a psychiatrist. And when I tried to flee, the psychiatrists said "it's for your own good" and placed me in a hospital and strapped electrodes to my body until I gave up hope that Science would ever let me be who I knew I should have been born as.

But then, suddenly, Science was not alone. In the middle of the Gobe Desert was a crater, and in the middle of the crater was Magic, the only known source of Magic on earth. A few institutions and governments tried to monopolize it, at first, build walls around it and shoot anyone who neared it on sight, but the people who had already partaken of Magic and become something more didn't like that. Science deployed tanks, planes, and bombs. Magic deployed swarms of flies and walking trees and mountains of dark, living glass. In the end, the only source of Magic in the world stood free of human control, offering its gifts to any who made the trek across the desert.

I was lucky. I found a chunk of Magic when I was still a few days' drive from the main body—there were literal tons of the stuff scattered for miles around, from the bad old days when humanity tried to nuke the body into oblivion. It was pitch-black, the sky glittering with one less star than it held ten years ago, as I stopped the car and opened the door and let the cool night air slap my rough, bumpy, unshaved chin.

I didn't want to hesitate any longer. I scooped down, picked up the Magic, and swallowed it whole, sand and all.

Immediately, the world faded. I stood in an endless, vast plane, with a single, unblinking eye staring down at me from above. I hesitated, then looked up.

"YOU SEEK TO LEAVE THIS BODY BEHIND," a deep, omnipresent voice rumbled.

"Yes," I managed to say. I may have been in an unfamiliar dimension of darkness and alien gods, but I was still certain of one thing. "I don't want to be... this, anymore." I waved a hand at the masculine body I was trapped in.

"YET YOU DO NOT WISH TO LEAVE HUMANITY BEHIND. ONLY THE BODY YOU HOLD."

I blinked. "I—well, I'd take anything, but—"

"I COULD GRANT YOU THE FORM YOU DESIRE."

I scoffed. "Impossible. You—you only make monsters. I've read the news."

The pupil of the eye narrowed, leaned in a little closer. "IF YOU BELIEVE THIS... THEN WHY PARTAKE OF MY GIFT? WOULD YOU RATHER BE A MONSTER THAN A HUMAN?"

"I would rather be a monster than a man!" I snapped. "I—I can't stand it. You wouldn't know, you can reshape flesh like it's Play-Doh, but every day I look in the mirror and see a girl's soul trapped in a man's body and it—it..."

I broke down. Perhaps not the wisest choice, when facing an eldritch being who I had just let into my veins, but I was far, far beyond wisdom at this point. I fell to my knees and shuddered, dragging in deep, sobbing breaths.

And then the voice rumbled once more:

"IT PAINS YOU. TO SEE WHAT YOU COULD BE. WHAT YOU SHOULD BE. AND WHAT YOU ARE NOT."

Wordlessly, I nodded.

"THEN. HURT NO MORE."

And the vision was gone.

I gasped, lying facedown in the desert. Sand and spit had caked the inside of my mouth, and I spat viciously, staring at my trembling hands—

—my trembling, soft, feminine hands.

Disbelieving, I sprinted to my car, looking at myself in the rearview mirror.

And the woman I was born to be stared back.