The shrieking rage that emanated from Joscur was as deafening as it was heart rending.

  “MARISIA!” Daniellex boomed, not registering what had happened just yet, barely heard over the horrible din of his friend.

  Lucifer was unfazed. Both hands gripped his obsidian blade, emaciated muscles bulging against gray skin in defiance to the corpse he held on his sword as ornamentation.

  William stared, horrified, paralyzed with shock! Where had Lucifer come from? He looked so much worse than he had in Mirage now…

  Joscur rushed forward recklessly, spear gripped tightly in his hand with lethal intent on the mind. Daniellex was only two steps behind him. Their approach snapped William out of his bewilderment, who threw himself in front of Joscur and trying to hold him back from unknowingly committing suicide. Blind to all but his daughter’s body and her killer, the now empty father resisted William, raised his spear, threw it over the eidolon before him while screaming in agonized frenzy!

  The lobbed weapon went far over Lucifer, not even coming close to harming him. Unblinking, he lowered Marisia’s body horizontally in front of him, bringing her feet back in contact with the ground, just as Daniellex was stepping around his maddened friend and holding up his gauntlet to fire! He hesitated, his god daughter’s body acting as a shield for Lucifer.

  Not that he needed a shield. Or wanted one, for that matter, a fact he displayed as he lifted his bare foot up and mercilessly kicked Marisia off of his sword and sent her body tumbling forward, crashing to the ground, and skidding in the sandy dirt while his three frontmost adversaries watched.

  Joscur would not be contained. He threw William’s arms off of him despite his protest – “NO!” - and dashed forward, kneeling down at his daughter’s side and picking her up into his lap.

  “Marisia? Marisia!?” he yelled, voice breaking as he shook his daughter’s shoulders. Her blood flowed from her wound like freshly dug well water and cascaded down over her father’s legs, warm and soft.

  She yet lived! If only just, and fading fast, she struggled to pull in air as one of her lungs had collapsed, blood rapidly filling it and welling up in her throat. Weakly she reached up for her father’s face. She couldn’t hear him properly as he shouted her name. Her hand trembled.

  “Stay with me! Stay with me!” Joscur begged, not even hoping for an impossibility but instead wishing for an unreality in which this had not happened.

  From the simple, devastating act of slaying Marisia had Lucifer sown chaos. William was stunned, Daniellex equally so, the ningen and bloodling host behind them bubbling with confusion, shock. Even the animunculi, who had been the most diligent in keeping vigil, were surprised that this had happened and, though mechanical, needed just as much time as any of them to recalibrate and decide what to do next.

  Some were quicker than others.

  “PLUMBATAE!” Luff called for action, acting more on ingrained instinct drilled into him from training years ago than making an active choice. He saw their foe before them, he saw a chance to make him dead. He fumbled for his flammable darts in the same breath he ordered others to do the same so that he could be killed.

  “No! STOP!” William yelled, turning back to Luff and the others, trying to wrest control of the situation. So much panic. So many acting off of instinct and reflex. So little choices. He saw how many were fumbling with their weapons, bloodlings starting to shift their forms. Saw the fear in their eyes.

  He whipped his head back around to see Lucifer, standing there, black, jagged blade dribbling Marisia’s blood onto the thirsty earth. And the look on his face. The expression he wore!

  Lucifer’s face was contorted into a wickedly grinning death mask. Lips drawn back unnaturally far, like an ape bearing its fangs threateningly, the skin on his face at once wrinkled at the cheeks, nose, brow, and eyes and pulled too tight over his skull. His eyes were interstellar pits with naught but the corona of his irises to illuminate them. There was no warmth in that smile. No enjoyment. Only contemptuous, uncaring mockery at the suffering and confusion that he had caused. It was a look beyond evil, transcendent of hatred. William saw only a yearning for pandemonium in that visage and he in no way recognized his fellow eidolon anymore.

  Then Lucifer turned his back on all of them and began to walk towards the darkness of his domain, and as he did, eyes aplenty sprouted from the entrance of his dark palace like so many flowers blossoming.

  Oleum spilled forth like a hive of insects protecting their home. They emerged from the dark and crawled on the walls, cascading out into the dimmed forest like an onrushing river. They engulfed Lucifer as he faded back into the dark in their screeching multitudes. Any hope of order William had vanished as terror burst through the hearts of all who saw their malformed, bleeding bodies sprinting towards them, maws wide, limbs outstretched, bodies broken, purpose clear.

  All save Joscur, who cradled his dying daughter as she touched his face. Her fingers were already growing cold. They seemed to ignore him. He was sobbing.

  The element of surprise that William had been hoping to turn on Lucifer was reversed and the bedlam that followed was carnage. Too quick for nearly anyone to react, let alone defend again, the oleum were on them, a flurry of tooth and fang and claw that crashed into the screaming crowd like so much water and rushed through them, biting and slashing and spilling blood and ichor as they went. Some were quick on the draw after the initial collision, raised their gauntlets, let out a billowing stream of flame that smote the shrieking monsters only to then be snuffed out themselves by the ones who charged in after. Disorganized efforts at defense caught one ningen in the crossfire, who died screaming along with the oleum that had latched its maw onto their shoulder.

  Sixty-five had been reduced to fifty-eight within the first three seconds.

  William raised his sword and stabbed it into the skull of an oleum that veered towards him, dragging it down to the ground in front of him where Daniellex was quick to set it on fire. Choice withdrew his sword as the horrid thing writhed and twitched as its body acted as its own pyre. It had once been a unicorn but was now entirely unrecognizable as such so deformed and mutilated was it beneath the fire. Such was to be said of all of the monsters spilling out from Lucifer’s citadel or dropping from the walls. None of them could be identified by what they once were, all of them bleeding, oozing masses of desecration.

  Twilight whipped in the direction of the volunteers who were being overtaken by the oleum, trying to sort out any conscious choices being made in all the chaos. So many voices screaming in barely coherent, overlapping fright, some in Imperial, most in Mirage-Tongue.

  “What do we do?”

  “Captain!?”

  “Burn! Burn!”

  A scream of agony.

  “Forward!”

  “Back! Back!”

  “Protect the wagons!”

  Shrieks and hisses from the oleum as they continued to rapidly encircle the volunteers.

  It went on and on. The eidolon had scarcely been in situations that were this far out of his control in the past, but that didn’t mean he’d never been in this situation before. Out of all of them his was the first mind to calm and still itself, to sharpen and focus on the task at hand. Lives had been lost – were being lost – but if the rest were to be saved, choices needed to be made. Sacrifices. Order wrested from the hands of chaos.

  The second mind to gain such focus was Daniellex, who, instead of looking back, had looked forward to his friend and dead goddaughter. He wanted to choose to go to him, to protect Joscur with all he had.

  William needed him elsewhere, though.

  The burly ningen turned his back on his friend, raised his gauntlet and let spew a stream of fire onto the closest oleum around him without aiming at the crowd of squirming, frightened ningen who were yet to gain their senses. He didn’t understand why he was doing this, but there was no time to think in the maelstrom of howling creatures and dying comrades.

  “SPEARS!” William shouted over the din, grasping his blade in both hands and slashing at the legs of a passing oleum to send it tumbling forward over itself, into others, making those that came behind it stumble as they trampled its body to get past. One turned to attack the eidolon, only to be met with fire as Daniellex stepped beside him and blasted the monstrous thing. William hand to side step it as it came crashing by, his back to Daniellex’s momentarily, repeating his cry of “SPEARS!” as he whirled and raised his sword. In the violet desert twilight, his tyranny over choice was all the stronger.

  Some heard his call for spears and were not panicked enough that his words couldn’t reach them. They chose to man their weapons and stab them into the bodies of the monsters who tore through their comrades – two, three at a time – the impacts breaking the fragile casing of chemicals and searing the bleeding flesh of their foes as their ruined flesh caught flame. Their acts of coherence were as beacons for others to follow.

  They were not the only ones to gain their senses. The animunculi had finished configuring with a flash of blue light each. One of them had been toppled over as several oleum threw themselves at it, the heavy body falling backwards and landing atop some unfortunates who could not move in time.

  The rest, however, moved to action in ways that none of them had ever seen before! The usually serene, gentle giants showed what power their metal bodies had as they turned on the oleum, grabbing a hold of any twisting monstrosity they could and slamming them into others as they tried to rush past as bludgeoning instruments, smashing them into the ground, throwing them into and shattering mirrored trees! Even the one that had been toppled reached up and crushed the skull of one ichor-infested beast as it tried to pass over it to get to the ningen, punching another and sending it barreling off of it as the metal giant sat up to continue fighting. William didn’t need to control their choices; the animunculi knew no fear of infection from the oleum unlike the others. It was precisely the reason they’d been brought along in the first place.

  The violence of the animunculi, the few who chose to use their spears and began to form a fiery perimeter around the defenders of Mirage, Daniellex, and William were all the first steps in fighting back against Lucifer’s horde.

  A handful of seconds had passed. Fifty-eight had become fifty. The counterattack began in earnest.

  “RALLY-HO! And burn the shite out of them!!” came the rallying cry of Teutna, who had managed to survive the opening seconds of fear and confusion. She raised her gauntlet and slung flame at the closest oleum who threatened her and those around her.

  “Why do they fucking stink!?” Vivicetti demanded, not far away from Teutna as she, too, torched a monster. Her question was asked with the rage-filled indignity of one who achieved ruthless clarity from the death of a friend. One of her fellow bloodlings had been among the fifteen to just die and their death had given her and the other bloodlings the focus they needed to fight back. “It’s like a tar pit and rotting meat!” she commented as she, and a couple of other bloodlings, chose to overlap their fire while backing up, others pushing forward behind them to level their spears over their shoulders.

  Further back a ningen who had thrust his spear into the hide of one of the foe withdrew the flaming weapon and chose to hurl it over the heads of those around him to strike at an oleum approaching William on the left, who, in turn, gave a quick stab into the side of the thing before pirouetting to let Daniellex finish it off with flame.

  “Where is Joscur!?” Daniellex roared.

  William grabbed a plumbatae and slung it into an oleum, his back once again pressed against Daniellex’s. He could feel the cold of the fuel tank through his leathers. “Focus on the fight! Get back to the others!” William replied, knowing that, though they were only a few steps away, they were exposed and needed to regroup with the others if the two of them were to survive. Despite his pragmatism, his eyes darted over to where Joscur had been kneeling.

  Joscur was gone. Nowhere to be seen. Marisia’s body lay motionless not far from a flaming oleum. There was a trail of fiery bodies leading into Lucifer’s citadel.

  “Joscur’s gone inside!” William blurted out.

  “What!?” Daniellex scoffed, immediately wanting to go after his friend but choosing to continue backing up towards the others.

  “Stay out here. Get everyone to focus their fire on the oleum, don’t let any of them escape, and burn anyone who gets bled on!” the eidolon commanded as he separated from Daniellex and sprinted forward, following after Joscur. He wasn’t doing so to protect him exactly but out of pursuit of Lucifer who he knew would easily best the grief stricken father. William ignored all calls for his return as he charged forth along the fiery path Joscur laid. Everyone else would have to fend for themselves while he passively controlled their choices for them in the most optimal outcome as was possible each and every passing moment as the unpredictable, uncontrollable oleum laid into the invaders.

  The citadel awaited with open maw and William vanished into the shadow of its interior.

  ***

  The world around Joscur was sepia. His ears were ringing, his rising and falling breaths the only thing to cut through the omnipresent piercing noise of his anxiety. Somewhere off in the distance the earth shook. He could feel it in his shins. Thunder rolled by but it was all as meaningless as the rest to him.

  His daughter lay in his arms, bleeding out, reaching up to touch his face. She looked so confused as she struggled to breathe. Every breath caused her excruciating pain and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “Hold on, my sweet, hold on!” he begged her. His mind scrambled to think of something to do. A million words and images blurring together into a blinding, incoherent static. His eyes felt so dry as he frantically looked back and forth between his daughter’s face and the wound in her torso, each time tearing his gaze away from the bloody hole as it was too awful a reality to look at. Yet he knew that something needed to be done about it. The bleeding had to stop! The wound needed to close, otherwise Marisia would…! Against the incomprehensible noise within his mind struggling to find an answer one horrible thought became more and more clear with each second that passed:

  There is nothing you can do for her.

  His world had been reduced to the sunset glow of forbidden trees and the stuttering flicker of bodily gore and his daughter’s face.

  Her fingers touched his face – his mask, which he scrambled to remove the instant he realized so she could touch him. His goggles came with it so that he could see her clearly in this moment; her last. Her touch was cold. He brought his hand up and pressed her palm to his face, trying to use his hand to warm hers.

  “Baba…” she gurgled, an awful splatter of blood jumping from between her lips and landing as bright red dollops on her deeply brown skin.

  Joscur shushed her. “Save your strength, my child. Save it…” He couldn’t finish his sentence. Voice breaking. Throat closing. A sob where courage should have been. He squeezed her hand tighter.

  “Baba… it… hurts…” she uttered faintly. Her breath quickened. Fear began to overtake her as the world started to grow quiet, the way it did when she was falling asleep. Only the agonizing fire in her belly remained in crystal clear focus. Even the warmth of her father’s face was fading.

  She was gone then. A last breath left her body and with it her form went limp, sagging in her father’s arms. Her body felt heavier, just a little bit. Her arm was only held up by her father’s grip.

  “Marisia? Marisia!?” Joscur pleaded, shaking her shoulders. Her head fell back and rolled to the right. Unresponsive. Gone.

  The tears came then to Joscur, who curled in around his daughter and pressed his forehead to her chest. The thunder grew louder and there was something else on the air like a whisper of how he was feeling. All was drowned out by his wail of agony. Joscur put everything he physically had left in him into that scream – the air in his lungs, the compression of his abdomen. He screamed until his body shook, until his ribs ached. His vocal chords shredded themselves. Tears mixed with the blood on her clothing.

  What rose from that spot was not a ningen or a father but a machine of rage and hatred. Violence was all it knew and all it cared about save for the gentle respite of what had once been its daughter on the ground in front of it. Its face was ire, teeth bared, eyes wild, sobbing breaths exhaling mad growls.

  The first thing it saw was one of the monsters who had taken his son away from it. With a howl it grabbed one of its plumbatae and slung it at the oleum as the machine stood up. The impact was a brilliant starburst of fire that hid the metal dart sinking into its pallid flesh. It screeched and whirled around, maw wide as it shambled nightmarishly towards its assaulter with terrible intent!

  There is nothing you can do for her.

  It was met with fire spouting from the gauntlet of the raging machine. The oleum reared up and writhed before falling over and convulsing. Joscur kept the stream of fire on it for several seconds longer than necessary before killing it and kneeling down to grab the spear it’d dropped when it went to its daughter. With a broken voice the berserk father hurled it into another oleum as it tried to run past him on his left, leaving it to run away as flame erupted across its deformed body as the machine turned its flamethrower onto another of the monsters.

  There is nothing you can do for her.

  The static was gone now. The machine’s breathing, shaky and rattling, was still the loudest thing in its ear, but it could hear the scream of others behind it and the shriek of the oleum as they ripped and tore their way through the other ningen and bloodlings or were burned by them. It didn’t care. There in front of it was another of the things, different in form, but fundamentally the same as what had taken its wife. As it marched forward its gauntlet rose and spewed its life ending fire upon the near mindless oleum as it snapped and wriggled in what should have been cathartic agony.

  But there was nothing. Only rage. Only hatred.

  There was nothing you could do to save them.

  Even as the latest oleum fell to the ground and the fire consumed its corrupt flesh, the flamethrower snapping closed with a wild wave of the machine’s wrist, it walked over towards the burning carcass, raised a boot, and stomped down on the burning head of the creature. Repeatedly. Rapidly. So fast that there was no time for its leg to burn. The black blood of the oleum splashed, sizzled and splattered with each impact as flesh sloughed and bones cracked. Every stomp accompanied by a flash of a memory.

  Vamenco playing with his sister.

  Syla laughing on their first date.

  Marisia taking her first, confident steps around the house after learning where everything was.

  The four of them together, sleeping in the cushioned den, dreaming blissfully.

  When it started screaming it didn’t know. It didn’t even realize it was until its boot slipped, it caught its balance on the other side of the smashed skull, and had to step back as the heat finally began to be felt. It should have been cathartic. There was void instead.

  You could not protect them.

  Movement caught the machine’s attention out of the periphery of it’s hazy vision. Head whirling, it froze as the gray form of Lucifer emerged from the dark, his orange eyes bright pinpoints against the black curtained by dirty blond hair.

  Its blood froze, breath caught in the throat petrified in the sudden freeze. Visions of its daughter became all consuming, flickering between her dying moments and all the ones before.

  Its teeth ground together, the sound like snapping bones in its skull, nostrils flared, eyes widened, pupils dilated.

  Lucifer smiled. He chuckled.

  The corrupt eidolon raised his arms wide, a silent invitation. “Come,” he seemed to say without so much as opening his ichor-oozing lips, “embrace me!”

  The machine roared, grabbing another plumbatae and hurling it with all of its might at the figure whose sword was still slick with its daughter’s blood.

  The dart never made contact, Lucifer’s form swallowed by the oppressive darkness as he fell backwards into it as though being submerged by water, vanishing from sight.

  It gave chase. Forsaking all others for the selfish, dark urge to have a revenge which will forever be disproportionate to the deed which wrought it, Joscur sprinted into Darkness.

  Kill! Kill! Kill!

  ***

  Outside of the palace of dark every second was a struggle for survival. The initial onslaught had brokered many casualties, but with strength of will of the few, and the aid of the animunculi and eidolon on their side, the retributive invaders were managing to stem the flood that was the oleum. Yet for each monstrosity burned into shrieking, crispy carrion there seemed to be a dozen more to take their place. It was like trying to beat back the tide with sticks. Every small victory was pushed back against by the oncoming tide.

  The unpredictability of the oleum proved to be their greatest strength besides the hazard of their blood. Clamoring, shambling over each other one moment in a frenzy to bite and claw and bleed over whoever they could reach, the next twisting and maneuvering around with frantic, jittery movements as misplaced limbs allowed them to jaunt in uncanny ways. There seemed to be no easy and repeatable way to slay these things. Each kill was gained by some mixture of luck, timing, and the right choice made at the right time.

  One oleum had another in its jaw, clambering up one of the mirror trees and dragging its fellow monster with it kicking and hissing through a clamped throat. It climbed out onto the branches and dangled the other oleum over the crowd, positioning itself, then biting through the throat of its compatriot to send black ichor raining down in a wicked spurt along with the gushing corpse of the now rapidly dying oleum, who fell atop the ningen below an instant after many of them were dosed with the corrupting fluid from above!

  “Dinnae touch it! Torch it!” Teutna cried out, her panic barely smothered by adrenaline fueled clarity. She had been only a few feet away from where the oleum had landed. It occurred to her that that could have been her as she turned her fire upon the still flailing body of the ichor fountain, burning oleum and friend alike with tears in the corners of her eyes without really knowing why.

  Someone chose to throw a plumbatae into the eye of the oleum in the tree, whose head erupted in fire and fell down into the pyre that Teutna was creating while others joined her in dosing fire inward as others aimed their spouts of flame out.

  All was chaos. No mundane mind could comprehend everything that was happening. It was just too much. The only clarity came from new horrors spawning into reality which only served to solidify how dire the situation was. No one was certain where anyone else was at save for the ningen or bloodling at their back and beside them. There was only fire, and blood, and ichor, and metallic giants who were simply not enough to contain the flood.

  “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Luff was heard crying out, to whom it was impossible to know specifically. Perhaps it was all of them. Perhaps only himself.

  Suddenly a fiery explosion towards the rear pelted many in flame, threw many more onto the ground, cracked or outright shattered trees. The wagons, with all of their extra supplies, was gone. The oleum had managed to get to it, tore into the flimsy covering of sand whale skin and wood. The only grace of the moment was that many oleum had been caught in the blast, but how much of a comfort would that really be to those who remained if they even knew?

  Teutna had been one of the ningen flung down to the ground. She scrambled to get back up onto her feet, choosing life instead of submission with ears ringing as did many others. As hearing was restored the horrid shrieks of the oleum persisted through the roar of many fires.

  “Get up!” barked Daniellex, pulling on Teutna’s arm and helping her to her feet from beneath another ningen, who he proceeded to help in turn. “Help those you can! Do not let them get close!” he directed, helping someone else with one hand while the other sprayed fire at another oily monster. He, like Teutna, did not know why he chose the words he did, the people he chose to save, or why he was bothering in the first place instead of going to help his friend.

  The line was reformed with a fraction of the number to maintain it while an animunculi slammed an oleum into a broken tree’s trunk, impaling it and soiling the splintered mirror with pitch blade liquid. How many were ningen and bloodlings were left? How many oleum? How long could they hold out?

  How were they going to survive?

  ***

  Stepping into Lucifer’s citadel was as surreal as walking into the forest had been. Where outside had been a shadowless maze of light and insightful trees, within the confines of the dark it was cold. So cold that it might have thrown William’s body into shock were it not for the patches of fire left behind by Joscur which radiated heat and dully illuminated the dark inside. They were the only source of light within. The darkness forbade any outside light from entering, rejecting the very physical law that would have otherwise allowed light to trespass upon this place. Such was the domain of Darkness.

  It was quiet, as well, William’s footsteps muffled and the sound of his breathing muted. The fires did not crackle for they burned nothing but their own semi-liquid fuel. William held his sword at the ready in both hands as he darted forward from one fire to the next, following the path they traced through the inky dark. Mere footsteps behind Joscur. But where was he? It was as though walking through an abyss within the cold, eerily serene confines of the citadel. There were no walls, no floor, no ceiling within sight to give Choice his bearings. There was only the fire of a father’s rage to guide his way.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Joscur!” William exclaimed. His voice, too, was muted, as though there were a physical wall mere inches from his face that prevented the sound from traveling far. The immense size of the citadel suggested an echo, but Darkness seemed to reject this, too, as he did any outside light.

  But nobody responded.

  William’s running slowed to a jog and then careful walking the further in he went. His eyes were peeled, looking for any sign of movement in the deep, perfect dark. He collected himself. Focused. Lucifer could be anywhere, and Darkness was all around him. If he wanted to survive and have any chance of getting Joscur to safety, he needed to be observant. Even at twilight, there was very little that he could do in here that Darkness and Discovery couldn’t do better…

  He started by analyzing the floor. He stepped closer to a fire on his left, scuffed his boots on the ground. The meager light of the flame revealed that there was stone of some sort, or possibly glass as black as the obsidian of Lucifer’s blade. It reflected almost no light and beyond a distance of half a foot or so there was no light at all. Every step forward beyond that to get from one fire to the next was a gamble of encountering Lucifer where he had the overwhelming advantage. In a way, William realized, it was akin to being in the belly of a whale that could bite you from within without warning. Twilight and Choice never could have imagined Darkness and Discovery to be so sinister. They had always been such a kind Ultimatum, after all…

  Next was the ceiling, or perhaps lack there of. Removing the goggles from his face, William tossed them straight up into the air and watched as they vanished beyond the limited range of sight. He waited, listening, to see if it would land nearby. His hope was that, despite the smothering dark, keeping still and holding his breath would let him hear the goggles make contact with the ceiling at the very least.

  The goggles never returned below. William pressed on.

  Deeper into the abyss he traveled. Paranoia and disorientation began to assert themselves in ways that were vastly different from the forest outside. There were no images of past selves to torment him here. Within the citadel there was little else but the all encompassing cold to take note of. Blindness would reign were it not for Joscur’s fires, a pale trail to be followed. If he had had more time, Twilight might have thought to harness some of the fading sunlight as a light source. Lucifer had outwitted him in that, too, by inciting such an outburst from the onset, he -

  A noise from behind, wet and tactile! William whirled around and there stood behind him at the last patch of flame was Lucifer, his form only half illuminated by the fire light, staring straight at him. Twilight inhaled sharply with surprise, raising his blade to defend himself!

  Unblinking, Lucifer slowly raised a finger to his lips, shushing as he stepped to the left and vanished into the dark, the flame extinguishing itself with a sound like the wind being sucked out of a vacuum. With Lucifer’s passing William realized with heart stopping horror that the other fires that had lead him this fire were gone now, too. There was only solid blackness behind now.

  With no way but forward and increasing trepidation mounting, William pressed onward.

  His next discovery was that of a wall, visible only because of the large fire that burned beside it. It was only marginally brighter than the others because of its size, said size revealed within the center of the blaze as William approached. There, huddled together, charcoal gray and cracking, were the huddled corpses of what looked like ningen.

  Puzzled, at first, as to why Joscur would burn other ningen he came across, the truth was revealed as his eyes caught sight of one body which had escaped the blaze just on the edge of where the light bloomed. It’s visibility was so only by the grace of the edge of the firelight dancing over it’s oil-slick body, ichor seeming to pool and ooze forward from the corpse onto the floor. When he realized this, Choice looked to his feet and stepped back, having too late discovered that the oleum ichor was on the floor in front of him and the bottom of his boots were covered in it! He realized, then, that Joscur had burned them, perhaps, out of necessity. An attempt to broker further passage, or maybe to simply stop the infectious spread however he could. It was unclear if they had been alive when Joscur came along, no more clear than the one he had missed was currently.

  ‘Where did they come from?’ he thought to himself, almost to immediately realize the answer. They were likely reavers who Lucifer had captured and brought here for some purpose. To try and turn them into oleum, it would seem, as had happened in Mirage. Had he failed? Had he succeeded? Were there new terrors besides the living embodiment of darkness and discovery themselves to fear where eyesight failed?

  “Lucifer!” William shouted into the dark, sword raised, back to the fire. “Lucifer, enough toying with me. I’m here! It’s just us now! Can’t you talk with me? Just a word? Or are you just going to skulk around like you’re some sort of coward!?” he challenged, falling into the old habit of presenting his foe with a choice to bait them into the course of action he desired. He was met with only silence. He knew that, so long as his back remained to the wall and the fire before it, Lucifer would have to show himself somewhere in front of him beyond the light…

  It didn’t take long for Lucifer to show himself. Stepping out of the shadow and into the barest touch of fire light, he stood with a face devoid of mirth and stared at William, who snapped his blade over to prepare to defend himself.

  Slowly, Lucifer raised his obsidian sword into a roof guard stance, sliding his bare right foot forward as both hands gripped the handle of his weapon.

  William maintained his plow guard and position, saying the name of his foe with conviction: “Lucifer, please…”

  Step by deliberate step, the bleeding eidolon marched forward and swung his blade in a downward stroke, forcing William to meet him a step forward, rotate his wrist, and bring his own sword up to block it with the edge, putting the two of them in a bind!

  Lucifer pressed forward, applying pressure in the bind with a flex of his sinewy muscles as he lurched his upper body forward. William leaned back, weakening his position, wary of Lucifer so much as spitting on him, ready to move as needed.

  Lucifer capitalized, adjusting his weight onto his right leg as he brought his left foot up and drove a powerful kick into William’s stomach, forcing a break in the bind that sent Twilight faltering backwards and falling into the fire, leaving a black footprint on his stomach! His body falling broke the charcoaled exteriors of the would-be oleum’s bodies and exposed the as of yet unburned exteriors.

  Frantically, William rolled to his right – both to get out of the fire and avoid the unburned oleum to his left – got onto his hands and knees and looked up to find Lucifer standing over him, obsidian sword raised high, poised and ready to chop down into Choice’s soft flesh!

  “Stop!” Twilight begged, rolling onto his back and holding his blade up to defend himself as Lucifer brought his sword swinging down, then -

  “Yoooohoooo!”

  Lucifer froze in place, his bright gaze locked upon William, body arched in mid swing. The fire, too, had stopped moving. Only William displayed any motion, his chest rising and falling with each rapid breath he took, staring back at Lucifer. It took a second for him to comprehend that he had heard something that wasn’t Lucifer, wasn’t Joscur, or any other monstrous thing that might have been skulking in the dark. He recognized that voice!

  Turning his head to the left where the voice had come from, Choice beheld none other than Mr. Wink, standing beside the two other eidolons with a Cheshire grin. Time and Change stood with his hands behind his back, wearing a black velvet swallow tail suit jacket whose twin tails extended down to his ankles, whose front ended at the ribs and was adorned with gold trim and gold buttons. Beneath it he wore a crimson vest with gold buttons, tightly fastened, and a white cravat which blossomed out like a flower beneath his chin. A black pair of velvet knickerbockers adored his lower half, loose and puffy at the thigh, with golden buttons meeting a pair of gaiters the same shade of red as his vest, also with gold hooks. His feet were covered by a pair of polished black poulaines whose tips curled upwards towards themselves and whose heels rose four inches high. Atop his head sat a top hat with a crimson band, and from the brim hung a monocle which he held with his right eye, and identical one attached to the breast pocket of his coat on the left.

  “You appear to be in quite the conundrum, Twilight and Choice,” Mr. Wink noted, rocking casually back and forth. His voice was as jovial as it was high pitched. “Might I offer you some assistance?”

  “Time? What are you…” William turned to look back at Lucifer, still frozen. Held in place in time, he realized, with Mr. Wink standing right there. He slowly pushed himself up onto his feet.

  “Ah ah ah, careful now,” Mr. Wink said, holding his left hand out in front of him and making William flinch as he looked at his fellow eidolon. “Your clothes are a little… soiled, shall we say. Let me just…” Mr. Wink trailed off, rotating his wrist to the left. The ichor that was on William’s front and back, his sword, vanished as Time changed them back to what they had been before the infectious oil touched them.

  “There, that’s better,” Mr. Wink proclaimed, returning his hand behind his back and resuming his rocking.

  “What are you doing here?” William asked, throwing another glance to Lucifer to be certain of his state before looking at Time and Change. “Have you come to help?” A pause. Realization. Anger. Twilight raised his sword and pointed it at the fancifully dressed eidolon. “Where is Cornello? Why did you send me here?” he growled.

  Mr. Wink laughed and held up his hands, elbows bent at his sides. “Excellent questions! Questions for another time. I’m afraid we have an appointment to keep, the three of us. All will be revealed in Time!”

  “Don’t play games!” William shouted. His voice carried nowhere, even more quiet than within Lucifer’s darkness.

  “I’m not! I swear!” Time and Change insisted through his laughter, head tilting to the side as he kept his hands up. Looking at Mr. Wink was uncomfortable. Everything about his physical form was uncanny compared to how things looked this time around. His fingers were longer than they should have been, mouth wider, his expressions just slightly off, his proportions disorderly from the rest of the universe. Life had not looked like Mr. Wink for a very, very long time.

  “Where is he!?” William demanded, stepping over towards Mr. Wink and away from Lucifer, who, in turn, stepped back away from William.

  “He’s here! In this time, just not this place. Come, Choice, I’m not Space and Perspective! How should I know exactly where he is?” Mr. Wink asked, still in the midst of a giggling fit. They both knew he was lying. Time was just as omnipresent as space. He knew, he was just playing the fool.

  Time stopped his backward retreat and lowered his arms, the smile dropping from his face as he reached out and casually pushed the tip of the blade away from his face with his fingers. “Really now, Twilight. We have somewhere we need to be. Darkness wants to speak with you!”

  William scowled, lowering his sword and turning to look back at the frozen eidolon.

  “He hasn’t said a word since I’ve seen him like this…”

  “Hm? Oh, yes, that Darkness and Discovery wouldn’t. He’s not who I’m referring to.”

  Twilight was befuddled, letting out an exhausted sigh as the tension that had built up all throughout this encounter from the moment that Lucifer impaled Marisia left him. All that remained was the visceral feeling of adrenaline pumping through his veins. He brought his hand up to his eyes and pressed into them with the tips of his fingers, knowing full well that as long as Mr. Wink was there and didn’t choose to be fickle, he could be in this time and place for as long as he wanted. Trapped but allowed to move by the grace of the other eidolon, who could take away that grace whenever it pleased him to.

  The thing of it was – Choice didn’t know if Mr. Wink would be that fickle or not. Since the Second, Mr. Wink had been rogue. The only eidolon to do so. Time and Change had been off doing his own thing for so long that it had been a genuine surprise to Twilight and Choice when he had shown up, whisked Cornello away through time and sent him to follow shortly thereafter. Despite the cryptic messages of the Dandy Man, Mr. Wink’s minion and spokesperson, his herald, William still did not know what his plan was, even now. How could he trust anything that he said or did?

  Yet he found himself in a position where there was no choice but to trust him. At the very least, Mr. Wink did not have his blade on his person. Twilight and Choice knew that meant very little for a being such as Time and Change, though.

  “Alright. Mr. Wink. Where is the Lucifer that wants to talk to me?” he asked, wearily.

  Mr. Wink clapped his hands, rubbed them together. “Closer than you might think, further than you’d suspect! Come, I’ll take us there… now!”

  Just like that, the abyss around them was gone. Replaced by a location entirely different and new and altogether unfamiliar, William blinked and they were in a world of grayish blue light. Something akin to mist snaked along what may have been a floor, or perhaps it was nothing at all, and above them was a mirrored reflection of this. Off in the distance, to either side, were great pillars stretching out in rows into seeming infinity. There was no source of light visible and yet it permeated everything with an inoffensive glow.

  Twilight looked around him at this strange place until his eyes befell upon Lucifer – not the one still statuesque, obsidian sword raised high, but another, not so far off in the distance, standing with his back turned to the three of them.

  “Discovery! Darling! I told you I’d be back instantaneously!” Mr. Wink proclaimed loudly. His voice echoed throughout the mysterious hall into the infinite, becoming a droning buzz that never seemed to quite go away. Somewhere unseen, the sound of churning gears and the thunk of a clock milled the noise to pulp and then silence.

  Lucifer turned around and saw Mr. Wink walking past William and over towards him, arms outstretched. The expression on his face was a shocked bewilderment. To William’s eye, he looked… good.

  Darkness and Discovery was nothing like the version that had been fighting William impossible moments ago. His skin was flush and tan, hair luscious and clean. His eyes, though still that same bright orange, were not curtained by black. His clothes were unsullied and colorful, soft blues and muted purples fading into each other as they hung loosely off of his body. It was the sort of dress that was worn in Mirage.

  Lucifer smiled and his expression was soft and sad. “You brought him…” he said, voice warm and baritone.

  “I sure did! I said I would, didn’t I?” Mr. Wink asked as he stood beside Lucifer and placed a hand on his shoulder. “And it didn’t even take a moment of your time for me to do so! Man, am I good, or what?”

  Lucifer chuckled, looking down to the ground as he reached up and gently brushed Time’s hand off of his body. “Enough joking, Change… I need to see.”

  “As you like,” Mr. Wink said, gesturing with one arm behind his back towards the darker toned Lucifer held in mid strike.

  Taking a deep breath, Darkness walked over to his duplicate and stood inches away, staring. Reaching up, he gently brushed his thumb over his own cheek, wiping away a trail of ichor falling from the corner of his eye and smearing it across his dark gray skin. “So cold…” he noted quietly, even that near-whisper becoming a drone as it reverberated in the strange air. He looked back to Mr. Wink, asking, “Is that your doing?”

  “Sort of, a bit,” Time and Change responded with a shrug. “Endothermic reactions are an ongoing process, so freezing said process removes the heat. That said, I’m not sure how much of what you’re feeling is because of my influence, or just from blood… ichor…? Blood loss, let’s go with blood loss.”

  Solemnly Lucifer nodded, turning back to himself. He held up a lock of his duplicate’s dirty hair, rubbed it between his fingers, let it go. The hair hung in place. He walked around himself, placing a hand on his back and running it down over the protruding spine. “This is how it ends, then…” he said quietly.

  William watched silently as his fellow eidolon examined himself, stopped in the place where Twilight himself had been before Mr. Wink made his sudden appearance, and placed a hand on top of his frozen self’s head. “I couldn’t possibly have known it would be so terrible…”

  Lucifer turned to William then, smiling in a way that brightened up his entire demeanor. “Twilight. It’s so good to see you,” he said, turning his back on himself.

  “Darkness… help me to understand. What’s happened to you? Why are we here?” William asked, gesturing to the space around them. “Where even is here?”

  “This would be my crib, my cradle, my pad, as it were,” Mr. Wink chimed in. “Do you like it? A special little dimension all my own of my own making. Still bound within the universe, of course, but entirely made of time, crystallized, moment by moment! Stolen on a quantum level and painstakingly arranged into the realm you see around you! Think of it like a garage attached to the house that is the universe, except only I have the fob that opens the door.”

  “That’s the where, now let me tell you the why,” Lucifer replied seamlessly, drawing William’s gaze back to his. “We’re here because of me. Because I asked Mr. Wink to bring you here. We’re here because you need to know what it is that we’re up against, and what has happened to me…”

  Darkness and Discovery paused, head lilting, eyes turning to the side in an effort to look upon himself once more. He resisted the urge to turn away from William.

  “Yes, you see, it’s all Darkness’ fault that I came and snatched you away!” Mr. Wink chortled. “For me and my plans I was perfectly content to let you play revolutionary with your funny little band of thieves and ne’er-do-wells, but, our dear compatriot Discovery, in his own venture… Well, he blundered, to put it mildly, and when our paths intersected, as was bound to happen this time around because I had need of him, he curried my favor to bring you, specifically, here and now, so that you might help him correct his misgiving!”

  “And you couldn’t have just brought me here directly? You had to separate Cornello and I and fling us both three thousand years into the future?” William growled, hand gripping his sword tightly as he side eyed Mr. Wink.

  “Yes to the first, no to the second, and yes to the third,” Mr. Wink jovially replied. “I’m afraid that when you refused to come willingly of your own accord, I simply had to give you some, incentive, let’s call it. And while, yes, I could have brought you right here, right now, to this very moment, I felt that some context for the urgency of the situation was in order, and so allowed you to see what a farce it’s become out there!”

  “I ought to murder your eidolon and force you to reincarnate like the rest of us!” William snapped, bitter anger bubbling over at the game he was being forced to participate in. Mr. Wink just laughed.

  “William,” Lucifer said softly, drawing the angered eidolon’s attention back to him. “I know we technically have infinite time here -”

  “And no time at all!” Mr. Wink added.

  Lucifer smacked his lips, held a hand up, did not look to Mr. Wink. “- what I need to tell you is of the utmost importance. Believe me, I wouldn’t have had Mr. Wink bring you here if it wasn’t so.”

  “If you needed the help of an eidolon, why not just have Mr. Wink help you?” William demanded. “What I was doing might have avoided all of this together!”

  “No it wouldn’t have.” Another thunk of a distant, invisible clock. “Sorry, not to give you spoilers or anything, but, I’d looked ahead already, as a courtesy, you know, to make sure that what you were doing would stop Cathedral Terra and, no, it wouldn’t have. As for why I wouldn’t do-”

  “He wouldn’t help me himself,” Lucifer interrupted with a sigh.

  “Why not!?” William shouted, looking between the two of them.

  “Secret!” Time giggled.

  “So why not anyone else then, huh!? Why me specifically?”

  “You were the only other eidolon on this planet this time around. I incarnated here because I felt there was something new to be discovered, and spent my life working towards that discovery. And I found it! I wish I hadn’t. You see the results of my discovery, even though you don’t understand them just yet,” Lucifer explained, half turning and gesturing to his frozen, future self. “I don’t know why you were here yourself, or what it was you were doing. Three thousand years ago, I was somewhere else in the universe entirely… It’s… It’s hard to remember exactly what, now, but…”

  “Alright, alright,” Twilight said, huffing out a sigh as he turned and began to pace. “So I was the only choice because Mr. Wink is being a fucking child, doing who knows what -”

  “Stopping Cathedral Terra, same as you!” Mr. Wink interjected.

  “Shut up, Time!”

  He did, although his grin spoke volumes.

  “Tell me about the oleum. What are they? How can they do this to us?”

  Lucifer hesitated. The moment had come at last, and he didn’t want to say it. Saying it made it true. He swallowed his fear and said what he had brought William here to say.

  “William… brace yourself. The oleum… they’re an Old Dead One.”

  Twilight stopped his pacing. He sat down onto the misty nothing, planted his sword across his lap. He was so incredibly tired all of the sudden, his head fuzzy.

  “Not another one…” he lamented. He turned to Mr. Wink, who, now, was no longer grinning. “You knew?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Time replied, removing his top hat from his head. His short, dark, wavy hair fell fell in two perfectly split curtains on either side of his face as it tumbled out from under his hand. His monocle remained in place as he held the accessory in front of his chest. “I have known all along. Being Time and all that, I was there at the moment of it’s stillbirth.”

  “How? How is an Old Dead One not important enough for you to deal with it yourself if you were the first to know!?” Twilight and Choice demanded, snarling in disbelief at Mr. Wink.

  “My chief concern is, has been, and always will be, addressing the cause, not the symptoms. You other Ultimatums can handle those cancers when they rear their ugly heads while I focus almost all of my attention on averting Cathedral Terra. If that stops, no more new Old Dead Ones. A simple calculus.”

  “Twilight, look at me,” Lucifer said, kneeling down in front of William. His hands moved to touch his fellow eidolon but stopped, remembering the ichor on his thumb. Better to not risk it. “I know. I know it’s frustrating, I know he’s frustrating. He vanishes and goes off on his own for eons, then shows up and tells us that he already knew about the very serious, universe ending threat but refuses to deal with it? What sort of sick joke is that?” Darkness chuckled, despite how tired and sad he sounded. “Whatever Mr. Wink is doing is his own business and doesn’t concern us, same as it never has before. He’s trying to stop Cathedral Terra his way, and we’re doing it ours. Right?”

  “I… it’s just… another one?” William asked, harrowed.

  “I know. Listen to me, Choice. It’s up to you now, there’s no one else that could easily do it save for maybe Space and Perspective, but I’m sure you can guess…”

  “Time and Change isn’t going to tell them about this,” William replied bluntly.

  “Correct!” Mr. Wink chimed.

  “That doesn’t matter though, does it? You’re an eidolon, same as the rest of us. You have the power to stop this before it gets any worse. We caught this one early! It can be contained or eliminated, and then from that day forward, we’ll know what to do about it! What’s one more problem to solve in a life like ours?” Lucifer asked encouragingly.

  William choked back his tears. Took a breath to steady himself. He looked over Lucifer’s shoulder at what Lucifer would eventually become. “You’re already infected?”

  Darkness nodded. “Yeah. Were you able to make it to Mirage? Did you find out about how all this started?”

  William nodded in kind.

  “Oleum One was the first specimen I came across and had a chance to study, but I knew it couldn’t have been the first oleum unleashed. Growing into adulthood took as long as it always does, and in that time, I knew that there had to be others. The trouble was finding out where in the world they could be. Something like this… something as horrible as these things, on a planet this populous with sapient species. It was impossible that they hadn’t been noticed before, but I heard nothing. I found no evidence of them anywhere. So I kept discovering…

  “By the time it became obvious that the oleum were escaping and infecting others, it was already too late for me. I just didn’t know it yet. Foolishly, I thought that my nature as an eidolon would save me from what I thought was a simple – or maybe not so simple, considering it mutagenic properties – disease, and purposefully exposed myself to it so that I could study what it did to my own body. By the time I realized that it was no ordinary virus, there was nothing to be done except slow it down. When I came to realize exactly what it was, an Old Dead One, my mind was already beginning to slip. I destroyed what I could and left Mirage. I headed south to find out where Oleum One had come from, and I found it…”

  “Where?” William asked.

  “The Black Isle, you know it?” Lucifer replied.

  William shook his head.

  “To the east of the continent containing the Wastes, there is an island that is completely quarantined from the rest of the world. There are walls that perfectly surround it, climbing high into the sky and reaching deep into the sea, and a bridge that encircles that wall and connects to Golem’s Isle, a neighboring island they call Necropolis, and a small continent further east. Long ago, there was something like a cult that took up residence there sometime after we kill the Duke of Flies. I think that’s when this thing was stillbirthed.” Lucifer paused, turning his orange eyes to Mr. Wink for confirmation, who merely shrugged with his hands held behind his back.

  “At one point, those ningen caused a lot of problems for the rest of what remained of the world after the Duke was taken care of this time around, and so ningen, animunculi, dragon, and arbora came together, stopped them, and contained the nascent Old Dead One from spreading – but not killing it. They couldn’t have known it needed to be killed, and even if they did, I don’t think it would have been possible for them. Quarantining was their only solution, and for thousands of years it seems to have worked. Not anymore. Somewhere that island has been breached, and I’m certain that Oleum One isn’t the only oleum that escaped. It was just the one that I found first.”

  “You know this as fact? You’re certain?” William pressed.

  “I… I think so,” Discovery admitted, eyes darting down as he ran a hand through his blond hair. “It’s… difficult to call up many specifics anymore. You don’t know what it’s like, having this thing inside of you. I can feel it, even now, working to corrupt my physical being. I’m doing what I can to hold it at bay within the darkness of my own body, but this Old Dead One… there’s only so much that can be done against it. It’s so… persistent.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Twilight asked.

  Darkness looked back up at William. For a moment there was a flickering in his pupils, like they became amorphous for a moment. He blinked and they were as normal again. Lucifer looked as though he hadn’t heard what William asked, or had immediately forgotten upon hearing it.

  “You have to find a way to destroy it. You know that it’s the ichor, right? Their black blood?”

  William nodded.

  “Okay, good. You have to go to the Black Isle and kill them all somehow. Make sure not so much as a drop remains, or there’s a chance that it will come back. Do you hear me, Choice? Not so much as a single drop can be allowed to exist! This thing propagates when it’s inside of a living host. If anything touches it, a person, and animal, an insect, then it’ll return. Do whatever you have to to insure that it happens that way!”

  “Discovery, what is this Old Dead One, exactly?” William inquired quietly.

  “It’s corruption incarnate,” Lucifer replied gravely. He turned and looked upon his future self, shivering at the sight. “Some hybrid between an oil and amniotic fluid that corrupts the very cells of a host’s being, down to the DNA and RNA, I’m pretty sure. You’ve seen others, right? Other oleum? How twisted their bodies are…”

  “Yeah…” William whispered.

  “It’s self inflicted,” Darkness revealed, turning back to Twilight with horror in his eyes. “They do it to themselves, Choice. All of their mangled bodies are the result some sort of impulse this Old Dead One has to pervert anything it comes into contact with. Look at me, Twilight. Look at what I become, how far I fall because of this evil inside of my vessel. Can I even speak like that? Is there anything left of me in there…?”

  William did not reply.

  “It’s a bane of anything progressive, Twilight. Even now, in this place where time is strange, I feel my mind slipping, bit by bit, brain cell by brain cell. I can’t remember how long it’s really been. I can’t fathom how long it will be before I’m… that…” He couldn’t look at himself again. Lucifer turned to William, pleading in his eyes.

  “Listen to me: You have to kill me. Do whatever you need to to do it. Know that I am not there anymore! All that’s left is that thing, inhabiting the body of my vessel…”

  “That can’t be true,” William whispered. “It – you – have used darkness like only you’re able to do. This… Old Dead One, it might be what it is, but it’s not one of us! They can’t do what we can do, so part of you has to be left-”

  “No,” Darkness cut across sharply, slowly shaking his head. “No… It is taking over every part of me, and if it’s used darkness like you said, that means it has learned how. Don’t you understand, yet? To it, we’re the most powerful weapons in the universe it could possibly possess! I can see that you and my husk were fighting before you were brought here by Time, and if its as capable as you say it is, then it isn’t trying to kill you, William. It’s trying to assimilate you. Through me, it must recognize you as another eidolon, and it must know that with our eidolons under its control, it’s only a matter of time before it can finish its nihilistic work upon the universe! So you have to kill my eidolon. If you do, there’s a chance that I can incarnate into a new body, and even if you’re unable to stop this bane, I can get the others to help. If nothing else, we can defeat it like we do the Duke of Flies each and every time!”

  A harrowing prospect to think about. William understood the level of cosmic annihilation that Lucifer was pleading for all too well. In all the times and all the Old Dead Ones they’ve dealt with, only the Duke has ever come so close to destruction as to warrant the Ultimatums, not their eidolons, to come together and obliterate the threat. Each time it happened, their eidolons are spent and they must incarnate anew. All of them except for Mr. Wink, that is, somehow. A price that each of them are gladly willing to pay in order to avoid universal imbalance.

  “And if you’re unable to incarnate?” Twilight posited. He looked into Lucifer’s eyes with a pained expression. “If your corruption is so complete, that even the Ultimatum is compromised…?”

  “It’s not powerful enough to accomplish such a feat,” Time and Change interjected, the high pitch in his voice reduced to reflect the seriousness of his words. “Nor will it ever be, if you do what Lucifer says. Slay his eidolon at any cost, and destroy all that ‘lives’ on the Black Isle, and the universe will once again be spared premature annihilation.”

  It was hard not to believe Time when he spoke so assuredly. Despite the eons apart, there was once an epoch when Mr. Wink was with the rest of the eidolons. So much time spent together made it impossible to forget the mannerisms that each other adopted, even when an eternity had passed between their last meaningful meeting. When Time and Change declared something could be done in this way, it meant that he had looked ahead and foresaw a way for a future to come about. If Time itself said it could be done, who was Twilight to say otherwise?

  Exhausted beyond measure, Twilight and Choice climbed up to his feet, using his word as support while Lucifer rose as well. “You’ll do it?” he asked, pleaded.

  “Alright… we’ve never had to kill each other before, but it should be the same as any other time our eidolons are killed, right? Just a quick bit of death for the body, and then you’re free to pick your next vessel to be your eidolon thanks to my Ultimatum. It’s like clockwork.”

  Mr. Wink snorted. “Good one!” he giggled.

  William and Lucifer both ignored him as best as he could with his laughter echoing as it did in this place. The invisible clock churned once more as Twilight and Darkness looked into each other’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry to make you do this. If there was any easier way…”

  “No, it’s okay. I understand. We all lift together, right?”

  Lucifer smiled, nodding. “Share the load. The work is easiest that way. This is just another complication of the task at hand. Nothing we haven’t dealt with before. You’re smarter than this bane, more capable than it can ever be so long as I’m the only one it’s allowed to corrupt. Don’t give it time to learn and grow and infect others. Purge it from the universe like the abomination it is!”

  A moment’s quiet passed between the three of them. William looked at the deformed and physically mutilated version of Lucifer. It was so much skinnier than the Darkness that stood before him. He wondered how long before his arrival in the Wastes this Lucifer was from compared to what the thing he would be fighting to kill soon was now. How long had he been silently fighting this thing in isolation?

  “Well, my fellow eidolons, if our business here is concluded…?” Mr. Wink trailed off, leaving his proposal hanging in the air for interpretation.

  “Any tips on how I’m supposed to kill you?” Twilight asked, his stomach twisting in ropes at asking that question to a being he very much considered family.

  “I… don’ t know. Where are you fighting me, exactly?”

  “Inside of a building you made out of darkness, I think. Light doesn’t pass through it, and any light inside is dulled, like the dark is hungry and eating it before it can go anywhere.”

  “I see… and when are you confronting me?”

  “Dusk,” William clarified.

  “Then that should be all you need, Twilight. Those walls of dark aren’t indestructible, I’m sure you can break through them with a bit of ingenuity. Take advantage of your strengths and the time of day, get creative, force the light inside. Dusk is your time. Brief though it is, you’re more powerful in the fading light than I am in the dark. It probably knows that, which is why it wants to fight you where it has the best chance of infecting you. Don’t play its game. Dominate it. Show it what you can do!”

  “I can’t influence it’s choices. It’s not making any…” William muttered insecurely.

  “You rely too much on that fancy trick of yours. Always have!” Lucifer smiled, placing his clean hand on William’s padded shoulder. “Think creatively. We’re all of us more capable than any of these cancers. The only reason it has me is because I let it in my ignorance, a mistake none of us will ever make again, I promise you. Once I incarnate I’ll make sure to let all the others know! Now go on, I know you can do it.”

  As Lucifer said this, Mr. Wink appeared behind both William and Lucifer each, two identical bodies placing their hands upon the other two eidolon’s shoulders.

  “Time to go,” both Times said, and immediately they were gone from that uncanny place with one final tick of a distant clock.