Moonmaker 109 - Line of Infinite Ends Finite Finishing
GraftingBuddha
Retired Pooh-Bah
109 - Line of Infinite Ends Finite Finishing
They reached Russia, and Taylor found herself thinking about nothing but the smell of mountain pines. All was one and one was all and all was one, and that meant that in a mountain pine she ought to be able to find all the truths of the universe, and she knew she could, if only she looked, smelled, and possibly licked it a few times. In hidden interiors she found ambiguity. In the death of plants around the tree, poisoned by its roots, she could find struggle and the desire for evolution. In the spreading of pollen at acceptable times she found rigorous order and a refined adaptation to seasons. In the sap she found sweetness and with sweetness came perceptions of sweetness and the arbitrary distinctions of taste into category and preference. In a mountain pine she could find the universe. In a mountain pine she would find the universe, if only she could dive down and find one.
A request denied by Contessa with firm certainty.
Feh.
They crossed over silent streets and silent apartment blocks and silent cities, and Taylor did nothing but murmur to herself about the way her thread felt when she tied it around herself. Determined fate, she said to an increasingly grey-faced Vicky, was a thread in a labyrinth, and the thread could tangle around you over and over and over, until it scraped against your scars and tickled your throat. It was a warm thread, or it was cold, or blunt, or sharp, or golden or silver or iron or nothing else and nothing besides - more accurately, it was all extremes, it was the final stimulus. Taylor, and Vicky, and Contessa, and most certainly Chorei, had been influenced by tiny nudges throughout their entire lives. Emotional impacts, minor alterations, near-misses and almost-seens. They swam through oceans of unfelt meanwhiles, guided by the tiniest of pressures from the inevitability of now. Fate, thus, had a tendency to feel like all of those nudges compressed into one. And you realised that it wasn't - it was the accumulation from which they descended. Like an onion being peeled one layer at a time, infinitely thin layers tickling against one's skin, providing those imperceptible and accumulative nudges...
And the thread was the prime source from which those nudges all descended, it was the accumulation of layers of stimulus. Every kick, every prod, every nudge and every tweak, compressed into a solid weight that boiled and chilled and gnawed and thrilled and scraped upon her scars like she was being constricted by a living thing. She could feel it, she could feel it so keenly.
She relayed this. Vicky nodded. But she didn't understand. Taylor knew she could make her understand. Peel her mind open and force her to experience revelation. Almost wanted to. Maybe this was what she'd get, after all this was over. A mad woman, stumbling through the streets of ruined cities. Stay away from that one, don't listen to her odd words, don't pay attention to her silvery skin or her fleshy clothes, and whatever you do, don't let her touch you, don't let her grab you and force you to see what she sees. Inverted gorgon - a gorgon was a being who's sight you feared being cast upon you, but Taylor would be someone you feared sharing the sight of. Seeing what she saw, instead of being what she saw. For a second, she even imagined grafting a few snakes to her head, just to really complete the image. She already flew, she already had sinuous elements in Chorei, and she existed in a (visible) trio. And it got even better! The Medusa was an image that was once used by revolutionaries, reflecting the paralysing, infinitely destructive nature of truth, the Medusa-Truth that everyone fled from, and what did she bring but truth, what did she see but truth, and why else was Vicky growing so very frightened of her?
Gorgon. Onomatopoeia, almost. Like the growling of an animal. She tried it out on her forked tongue - another thing to complete the image.
"Gorgon. Gor-gon. Gorgon."
A sharp-toothed smile - more completion of the image.
Hm. Gorgons... they used the image of those to ward against evil, once. Frighten it away with the sight of something so hideous and vulgar and vile that it deserved to be shunned, demanded shunning. And Taylor was a creature which warded the others, wasn't she? Not quite human, and much less human than them. Hm. They swooped low to the ground, and Taylor laughed quietly, her one remaining eye flaring with peculiar lights.
"...hey, Vicky..."
"Yes?"
"...I'm your Gorgoneion."
Vicky smiled slightly.
"Sure. Whatever that is."
Taylor understood that all was one and one was all and all was one (three repetitions made that mantra stronger, resonating pleasingly with invisible strains of significance). She saw the Medusa-Truth. Ha. Had a name for the path she now walked - the Gorgon-Road to Medusa-Truth. She'd passed through the domains of the sea and had been cursed by forces she didn't understand and hadn't intended to provoke, and now... and one side of her dripped venom, courtesy of Chorei, and another dispensed life, courtesy of Chorei. The image was forming, the mythological imprint, she could feel her boot-print slipping into one made before her, made in imitation of her, time was a fucking illusion and the Greeks had been writing about her all this time, yes, everything was foreshadowing for her emergence, foreshadowing, four, as in, four people here, four fore four fore, her thread of fate was the thread of human history, she was the culmination of years of prophecy and-
Settle down, Taylor.
Fine.
Feh.
...and she'd been decapitated yet remained powerful, so there was even more to complete the image, and...
***
Russia crossed below them. A rolling plain marked by great fields of snow, slashed by concrete roads packed with clotted masses of abandoned cars. In the distance, she thought she could see Moscow... no, no, it was much too far away for that, but she liked to imagine that she'd do what needed to be done in the shade of Kremlin domes, split open like broken Fabergé eggs by Behemoth's arrival. Where was the old bastard? She hadn't been sure, but... he'd been accompanied by a metallic tree that harvested the dead. In the interminable distance, she thought she could glimpse shapes... her agents were more scattered out here, burning out or running dry. Simply getting stuck as the land became harder and harder to traverse. They were leaving signs made out of burning gasoline, their bodies curled up and frozen to death beside them, wearing clothes they'd stolen from washing lines. Dead with the same expressions they'd held in life. Warnings were emblazoned in fire and smoke - others were coming. Tohu and Bohu, the Twins, an Eidolon imitator and a city-shaper moving to intercept.
Bohu shaped cities, she was likely to be guarding the Sleeper from all approaches.
Taylor already had a plan for that. Contessa had told her that the Sleeper's containment had been flawless, as in, done in a self-perpetuating style. There were no pylons to break or convenient weak points, the containment was now sustained by the event horizon of the man himself. Been a good piece of work, one of the Grid's better moments. Of course, no containment was perfect - but this came close. Tayor wouldn't have her teleportation screwed with by any Grid structures, that much was for sure. Teleport past the endless array of traps, and get to the Sleeper immediately. She'd vomit blood and go a little mad, she knew that, but focus always helped. Focus always made teleportation easier, it was when she teleported just to cross large distances, her goals vague and more symbolic than anything else, that she ran into trouble. Once she saw the Sleeper, she felt like she'd be fine. So, bypass Bohu, avoid Tohu, and reach the Sleeper. Then... do something.
You sound like you have a plan. Your thoughts are tinged with it. But you're not... expressing it, even to me.
Why? Is it secret? Do you not know yet? Come now, we've been partners for nearly half a decade, why not... give me some insight? Let me help. Please.
Not a question of helping.
She focused on the present, and some of her lingering transcendence, no, madness, drifted away, like huge fog banks parting to reveal a wave-spattered shore. Still there, but... parted. Moved away from the object of her attention, and lingering around the periphery. The Sleeper had perhaps begun in Stalingrad, now Volgograd, but it hadn't remained there. Much like Angrboda, really. Both had started their journey in one place, gathered what they needed, then moved elsewhere to finish the job. Angrboda had obtained her razor under Naaktgeboren Ridge, and could have used that same comet to try and do what she needed. But she chose to move, migrating eventually to Brockton Bay's own comet, where she executed the final stages of her plan. The Sleeper had gotten slightly further than she had. Begun in Stalingrad, underneath an old church which had concealed the comet in its crypts. Then, moved, and ascended out in Tunguska, Siberia. Based around yet another comet. Nice and isolated, no-one to bother him. Then, he'd moved again, shifting significantly westwards, tearing up anything in his wake. Leaving behind a daisy-chain of anomalies leading right back to his birthplace. Wound up settling in Mordovia, when the Grid had managed to contain him properly. He emanated poor physics.
A green zone where minor anomalies could be observed, the consequence of stark reality violation happening in the distance. Yellow zone, where the effects became more pronounced, and frequently fatal. And a red zone, which constituted the body of the Sleeper himself. Taylor would've been more worried about mutation, but... she'd handled it before, knew how to deal with it. And the Grid had done a very good job keeping this nice and contained. No major population centres hit, and people could still live in Mordovia, as long as they remained outside the green zone. People could still enter that zone, too - the egg of a new universe, and the Grid had reduced it down to minor physical mutations in people nearby.
Time to crack it open.
They flew, and slowly but surely, Bohu's influence started to show itself. The ground was twisted and malformed, hills repeated over and over and over in identical shapes, the surfaces smoothed over unnaturally. She thought she'd be walking into some brilliantly structured fortress, but... the madness showed itself after only a minute of eerily regular hills devoid of life or construction. The Sleeper was here. And Bohu had strayed too close. A sacrifice to a greater purpose - one Endbringer in exchange for countless miles of insanity. In the distance, a black monolith - the creature itself. Tall, so very, very tall, larger than any skyscraper, black as night with narrow, shining eyes. Hair that hung down to her 'waist' in cables thicker than a human's entire body. She looked like a piece of the night sky cut out and stapled messily. And behind her lay something... else. It shimmered in the dawn. Time was running short. Scion would be dead soon, the Grid knew it. And Taylor had seem him thrashing around like a child in Hungary, he was on the verge of simply... stopping. He moved like someone who could barely muster the effort to do so.
But even so, she'd... rather like it if he speared from the sky now, flung golden light around effortlessly, wiped out Bohu and let Taylor on through with a wave and a smile.
No such luck.
Bohu shared the dreams of the Sleeper. Through her, the new universe was picked out in great rings. No more green, yellow, or red zones - the division had faded. Where one form of madness ended, the other form extended it, intensified it, imitated it.
A city lay before them.
A great, brass city.
It was splendid.
A lake of raw oil lay beside it like an unfurled slug, wet and puckering, life twitching under its surface. Rivers flowed through the streets, moving with lazy coils. Sometimes things emerged, twitching and multi-legged, half-formed by bitumen wombs. Larger than cars, and burning with ghost lights. The city was a parody, a mesh of impossible physics and conventional architecture. She saw ziggurats, and thought of Teotihuacan, the Sumerians... but then they were made out of soft brass, gleaming dully in the morning light of Russia's sun, and the rainbow shimmer of the city's own, personal star. The ziggurats were marked with enormous murals depicting shapes that made her eye ache, even now she'd seen so much and was immune to most eye-aching things. The ziggurats breathed, and she saw arteries and veins of tin and copper flowing from the surface, feeding a pulsing pyramid-heart, draining nutrients from the oil rivers and oil lake. Factories were low and squat, and creatures shambled into them in great ranks. Pumps sent out the resulting liquid to feed the ziggurats, the other buildings, all of it. Ribcage-skyscrapers. Cathedrals of yellow-stained glass, where wet, red things squirmed in shells of fool's gold, ammonites that breathed plasma and sang infrasonic hymns. Gas flares emerged from sewer grates emblazoned with soft brass inlay that formed itself into faces, her face, with bloody dreadlocks and one eye torn, and from that missing eye came the gas flares, illuminated in blue and grey and orange and all the shades of hallucination. Garbage heaps swelled and moaned like sea cows, organic garbage that fused and coalesced and became one, undulating thing that crashed itself upon the factories and was harvested by mosquito-things which emerged from pools of blessed mercury, held by basins which thrummed like reactors and glowed a sharp electric blue. Amidst the organic garbage piles there were fungal crocodiles, teeth like dentist's drills and eyes replaced with flowering cordyceps and green-banded broodsacs, gnawing upon great mounds of conjoined hearts, plunged their snouts into ventricles the size of vestibules while aortae grew teeth and gnawed at the crocodiles but only grew infected and swollen with fungal pustules and incendiary spores. Creatures crawled and spat and slithered and flew, the city was a creature and she saw mechanical viruses with steel-wire legs and protein cases made of solid ever-blazing magnesium scuttle crab-wise outwards. She saw tunnels that moaned when they were entered. She saw trains which wept metal.
Slowly, she settled down, lowering to the ground. Perspective of the whole scene only made it worse.
The city was... oh, it was something, all right. And above it, there was its queen. Dark and tall and with eyes like stars. No sign of her sister, maybe she wouldn't get close. Afraid of the consequences. The Sleeper's Bride stood tall and perfect, and around her she bred a city in the shade of her divine husband. It was reality and unreality struggling to coexist... reality and unreality as husband and wife, sometimes affectionate, sometimes conflicting, sometimes mating with rabid glee. Codependent and radioactive. The horizon... something was wrong with it. Around the Sleeper, the horizon seemed to shift and bend, twisting... the sky turned into conflicting pieces of cloud, moving along peculiar angles. And Bohu almost seemed reflected up there, two dark figures extended to meet in the middle. A mirage, purely a mirage, but... space wasn't obeying the rules it should.
She could see the madness she'd expose herself to, in that thing. Teleportation was an option, but she imagined coming out of a maddening teleport, already a fraught enterprise, into that place. And had ideas.
Contessa nodded to her.
"It might be time, Taylor."
"Yeah. I know."
Vicky gave a small, frightened smile.
"So, time for that master plan you've been all coy about?"
"More or less."
"Mind if I ask for the details?"
Taylor paused.
"Best not."
Her voice dropped.
"I'm sorry."
"Why are you-"
And then Taylor got to work.
The plan she'd worked out with Contessa, growing on the main one. She had no future. Contessa neither. Madness was going to trace her every thought, and Contessa had already resigned herself to dying. Coming close to death hadn't exactly given her a renewed lease on life. They were both burned-out bulbs shambling onwards like there was no tomorrow. Taylor extended Chorei from her back, and ordered the nun to remain still while she scraped a few scales loose. Chorei was saying something... Taylor ignored her. She knew she could get to the centre of that city, she knew she could. But afterwards... no getting out. Anything she left behind at the event horizon would be dead meat, churned up by that mad place. She looked at Vicky, at her scars, at her missing eye, at the replacement she'd had stapled in, at all the things she'd been through, largely because of Taylor... and she worked faster.
She'd done this once before.
In Senpou. And there, she'd been alone. Working with long-dead materials. Hadn't gone so far down this path, where everything felt so simple.
Now, she had a potent influence of the Wolf-Divided, a wolfish star, existing just over the horizon. With the Wolf came mutation. And from one came all and all came one and one came all.
Taylor, what are you doing? Why are-
No response. Taylor was working. Growing it. Letting the scale bloom with mutations that she slowly began to sculpt, burning it from time to time, grafting it, allowing it to swell larger and larger, differentiating... one cell reduced to a stem by the Flame's unification, then mutated outwards, and she had all the ingredients she needed. She knew Sigismund had accomplished the task of harbouring multiple centipedes at once. She knew this was possible. In the end, it was... calming, to slowly grow a new centipede in her fingers, nurture it from infancy to completion. Chorei was talking, faster.
That won't help, the unification of another centipede may give you more pincers, but it won't make you stronger. Why are you doing this? Why did you apologise to Victoria? Taylor, please, just answer me, why won't you...
Taylor finally spoke.
"You... you still have a future. Vicky, you've got a family."
Vicky's voice became low and dangerous.
"What are you talking about, Taylor. Don't do anything stupid. You know I'm with you to the end."
"I'm aware. Which is why I have to do this."
Vicky started to try and move, seize control... Taylor ignored her. This was her body. She ruled it. And she was comprehending... so very, very much. Vicky couldn't do anything to stop her. Nor could Chorei. Contessa watched with sad, dark eyes.
And Taylor's new centipede was almost the length of her forearm now, twitching as neural signals woke up. The mad city beyond gurgled and spat, frothing with odd-coloured flames, the oil lake frothing with rainbow-sheen foam. Bohu hadn't noticed them... or was content to wait for them to come. They couldn't exactly just turn around and leave. At least, Taylor couldn't. Contessa couldn't. The centipede was almost done... she tossed it upwards as it continued to grow, letting Contessa grab it with both hands. She did it without flinching at the many, many legs that clicked and clattered away, at the pincers which dripped juvenile venom. She spoke quietly and firmly.
"Chorei, you know what I know. Vicky, removal will be easy to achieve if both parts are consenting to it."
Stop it, Taylor. Stop it, you're scaring me.
"Taylor..."
Her bag. The limbs she'd collected. And in the snow... yes. They'd done what she said. Back in that facility, she'd ordered her agents to move out here, to scout, to supply information, and for a few... to come to the Sleeper, and stop. Find shelter, then do nothing. And here they were. Pale and odd. Invariably female. She grabbed one, tugging it over... picked the sizes correctly, at least. Flesh was pale, but the internals were functional, the Grid built this sort of model to last. And ultimately, she had a means of stabilising it for a very long period of time. Taylor seized control of her own arms... and lifted both razors. Sharpening them against one another, letting the white metal gleam...
"I'm sorry."
And she began to carve. The agent's body was... workable. But there were a few elements that needed removal. Particularly, the head. She had far too much practice with this. Knew how to pop the skull off from the spinal column in such a way that the spinal column was still basically intact. Like an exposed wire in an unfinished house. Chorei lunged... and Taylor grabbed her out of the air, stopping her from savaging the body. She could feel what was happening. Her voice rose, becoming a scream in Taylor's mind. She was terrified. Taylor was too. But she wasn't dragging more people down.
She raised her razors...
And drew on the knowledge she'd gained. Days of grafted contact with Vicky. Days of sharing her dreams. And days of experiencing deliriously wonderful revelations.
"I'm not... I'm not sending you to that ocean. You don't deserve it, not yet, it's not for you."
Her mutterings were frenzied and halfway incomprehensible, her teeth were so gritted that she could only speak with muted vowels. Vicky was screaming at her, telling her to stop. Wouldn't. She didn't deserve the ocean, with those black birds and that flat white sky. Taylor had seen the afterlife, and she'd tasted its waters, and she didn't want to send more people there. No more than was necessary. Contessa, on instinct, passed her the centipede. Wriggling and lively. Completely viable. The agent in front of her was technically alive, just... mostly brain-dead. She made a small incision in the chest, allowed the centipede to squirm in. Chorei saw the plan. And she loathed it. Taylor did too, in a way. She forced the centipede down into the ribcage, let it hook around the spinal column. Not a full graft, but it was integrating, forming part of a living biology, hunting eagerly for a mind to join with. A Senpou centipede desperate for a proper host.
Time to give it one.
"Taylor, don't, please, I want to stay, let me stay, I-"
The Fool's Razor burned in her mind...
And with a twitch, she severed Blondie. Didn't need that shield getting in the way. Easy to ignore the tattered fractals on the ground, shivering and shining. She'd seen more than enough - ceased to surprise her in any way.
The second slice didn't need anything esoteric.
Just sharpness.
A single cut.
And Vicky's head fell free from Taylor's shoulder, landing steaming in the snow. Mouth still moving. Taylor had to move fast, and did, picking her up and plugging her into the agent's body. Mismatched stump, but... she grafted. Yes, yes. Life in the mind, life in the body. Head could still survive briefly beyond the body, and Vicky wasn't exactly natural. Hooked up to a perpetually regenerating centipede had its perks. The head was still warm when she aligned the spinal columns and grafted them together. When she grabbed that centipede and compelled it to do exactly what she damn well said. Usually, these things would be more picky.
She denied it that luxury.
She forced it to join.
The body began to shift, heart racing, slowly waking up...
And Taylor's knife flashed a third time.
Taylor, don't, you're my only friend, I can't lose you, I won't lose you, all I ask is you let me go with you, that's all, that's all I want, just let me-
"Chorei. Tsuta. You said you've lived more in these last few years than you did in the last few hundred. I remember you telling me that, once. Well... I think it's time for you to keep on living. I'm doomed. I'm not taking you down with me."
Her voice dropped.
"I... can't kill you again."
You wouldn't be killing me, Taylor, I trust you, I truly trust you, I don't care where you go, I'm with you. We're in this to the end, aren't we? Please, I'm too old to start again, I need you, I need us, don't let me go, I can help!
"I can't kill you again. And I don't trust myself enough to get through this. If we lose, it's all doomed anyway. But..."
But on the off-chance that she won and died? Or won and went mad, because madness seemed to be her fate right now?
She wasn't dragging people down with her.
She'd lost too many. She'd dragged people to her level and broken them, piece by piece. So many of her friends with lives ruined and minds shattered, she wouldn't let it happen again. So many bodies already made by her own actions. That city was a landscape of madness, the Sleeper was likely to mark her grave, and if she could get anyone out of this alive and with an intact mind, then she would. Even if it meant...
Meant hearing Chorei cry like a child.
Meant seeing Vicky struggle to gain control of her new body, enough control to wake up properly and stop Taylor.
"I'm sorry, Chorei. I'm sorry. And thank you."
She sliced for a third time.
A final time.
And she felt a mind leave her centipede. She held that mind in her hands, pliable and intangible, a role pressed into a flickering construct... easy enough to lower, carefully, into the body before her. Into the centipede which coiled mindlessly around the spinal cord.
She could feel how the centipede changed when Chorei's mind entered it.
Could see how Vicky's expression shifted.
She could remove Chorei if she needed to. Chorei would go willingly. Taylor wanted to imagine her getting another body and moving on, having another life, a happier life, doing all the things she'd denied herself in the past few centuries. She imagined Vicky moving on and living, having a family, repairing what was damaged, properly reuniting with her cousin for more than a few hours, and doing something. Being sane. Sane as anyone could be. Her attention shifted to Blondie... no, one more thing. Contessa. She remained mounted in Taylor's back, impassive and grim. Taylor didn't need to cut. They were all one creature, and Contessa's mind simply... abandoned her body with the same ease of removing a hat. Flowed into the centipede that Chorei had recently been evicted from. The body collapsed forwards, nothing left in it. Need to cut it free soon, but until then...
Taylor spoke. She knew Blondie could hear her.
"Choice. Stay with her, and maybe you kill her by accident when this all goes up. Come with me, and we try and solve this mess together. I need your flight."
Immediate refusal, a flash of warning red.
"You love her, I know you do. But here's the thing. You're new. Monitor told me. You're newborn, you're still learning how this all works. You love Vicky now, how many reincarnations until you stop? What happens when she dies and you need to move on? How long will you love her, how long until you're as cold as Monitor was, or the Butcher?"
Hesitation.
"She was cold by the end. Monitor burned through host after host over countless cycles, she didn't care about any of them. They were just tools to her. You're the same basic matter, both of you. How long until you're like her? You're still getting used to possessing people, you love Vicky because she's the first. If you stay with her, maybe you kill her when your whole network crashes down. Maybe you just get to keep her company for a few hours until the world ends. Maybe you keep her company, then vanish after the network dies, and that's it. Or maybe you come with me, help me do my job, and we maybe leave a world behind which she can live in."
Her eye narrowed.
"I love her too. That's why I've had to cut her out of me. That's why I've cut Chorei out of me."
The fractals squirmed. Conflicted. But Taylor... she knew. Contessa was murmuring secrets in her ears, all the observations of these creatures the Grid had done. And the Grid had analysed them plenty, at Contessa's behest. Taylor had slept under the same blanket as Blondie back in Madison, she'd seen Blondie have continuous breakdowns over the fact that Vicky might not want her. That had stuck. Vicky had voluntarily abandoned her, and only taken her back when there was literally no other option. Blondie had dragged Vicky away from Monitor, disobeying the orders that Vicky would've wanted her to follow. She was growing more independent. Capable of deciding what was good for Vicky, and then acting towards that good. Even if Vicky didn't personally want it.
And she could see the decay.
She could see how her entire system was burning to the ground. Once, her species would've survived this planet and moved on to conquer thousands more. Now, they all died here. Each and every one of them. Monitor had responded to that lack of purpose with desperate scavenging, doing everything she could to restore a version of the status quo. Blondie? Blondie wasn't old enough to know a status quo, and she clearly held it lower in priority that helping Vicky. Blondie had no higher calling now, nothing else to suborn her.
Independence. Lack of higher purpose. Fanatical devotion. Doomed world and species.
All four combined.
Her own little fourfold revolution.
And Blondie's shivers ceased.
Taylor integrated her without a second thought. Feeling a shield reluctantly form around her limbs, an aura start to emanate waves of... loss. She was deeply saddened, as sad as one of her species could be. An invisible hand reached out to caress Vicky's cheek, and the body on the ground thrashed desperately, struggling to gain muscular control. She'd be fine. Chorei would already be fixing it all.
Taylor stood, and her new centipede derisively tore Contessa's body from her back, letting it fall into the snow. Scars filled over the gaps before she could blink. Contessa coiled around her shoulders, pale imitation of Chorei. Her tiny dark eyes glittered like jewels in the morning light. Even now, she looked sad. Chorei was gone. Victoria was gone. The world might be gone, too. She had no reason, now, to hold back. She was free to go as mad as she liked. Threads of fate were already driving her onwards, and she was eager to follow, but...
Just before... before the end.
She bent down. And planted a small, chaste kiss on Vicky's forehead. An invisible shield-impression of Vicky's face moved after her, doing the same. One kiss beside the other. And Taylor whispered.
"I'm sorry. Both of you. Vicky, you're my best friend, and... and without you, I'll feel like half a person. Chorei, you've earned another go at life. Vicky, get her a body, I don't care how you do it, just get her a body. Go and find yourself another Sigismund. Do it for me. Time to live life with your own body, right?"
Her smile was weak.
"I love you both."
VIcky finally managed to gain some control over her breathing, her voice...
"...T-Taylor, please..."
But Taylor was already moving.
Into the mad city. Into the gaze of the city-shaper. Into the glow of the Sleeper's false sun.
Vicky was starting to stand when she left. But she lacked the speed or the power to properly pursue. Chorei was healing everything with desperate speed, getting the body working as quickly as possible. Taylor could imagine her crying without end. Crying and furious all at once. Taylor would miss her, miss her voice, her mannerisms, the way she coiled up around her heart... she'd hated her, once. Now it was hard to imagine living without her.
But now...
Now Taylor was free to go mad.
Now Taylor was free to give it all up just for the slimmest chance of winning.
She dropped one razor. Vicky's. A final goodbye.
And began to float onwards.
***
No, no, no, no, no, no, no... Victoria, get her back, get her back, please, I need her, I can't live without her, I need her. You need her too, yes? We can get her back, if we move quickly, graft suddenly. I can show you how, let me put the memories in your head, just stay still and I'll give you the right information. You can graft, I can get inside, maybe try and push out that Italian hussy, it's my body, I should have more command over it than she does right now. As for you, you can... use your razor, it's over there, we cut out your power, you put it back on, now we're on even footing! Force her to take you, but importantly, force her to take me back, I...
I... I can't live without her.
I need her.
Vicky struggled up from the ground. The plan was good. She moved as fast as her new limbs would allow... not fast enough. She was so clumsy, so fucking clumsy. Could feel metallic organs shifting around, black blood was being circulated... it was an agent's body, but it was working with her, all the adjustments had been made and Chorei was harmonising the whole system. She was operational. Why couldn't Taylor have done this ages ago, split them apart, given her a new body? Because she didn't want Vicky to be prepared for this. Wanted her uncertain. Not happening, not letting her go. They were in this to the end, they'd promised never to go too far, but... goddammit, she couldn't even hate her for this, she could understand every decision, why wouldn't she take her? They were best friends, she could still feel the warmth of her kiss on her forehead. Not fair. None of this was fair. She stumbled onwards, coughing up a little red matter - her head, purging whatever red blood lingered in it, replacing it with black. Idiot, idiot, she needed a human body, she couldn't...
She ran through the snow. Knee-deep. She'd not realised when she was flying, but... knee-deep. The body was only wearing scavenged clothing, the cold was piercing quickly, and... didn't matter. Chorei was warming her. She moved without tiring, she moved without ceasing. Taylor was floating away, moving faster by the second, getting used to using the power on her own. A centipede coiled around her... Contessa. Contessa had done this. That cunt. She'd manipulated her, lied to her, done something, convinced her to go along with this insane death-wish, all of this was Contessa's fault, and... and...
...she respected Taylor too much to say that.
She knew Taylor had come up with this plan. Contessa had probably contributed. But in the end, both of them...
Tired. So very tired. And sadder than they let on.
Both of them just wanted it all to end.
Vicky did too. Vicky did too. Taylor had a dad, she had a family, she had friends, why was she...
...she'd dreamed about her dad.
Vicky had seen them. Lived in them. During their journey here, she'd lived in Taylor's dreams from time to time, and she'd seen...
They were distant. Liked each other. Loved each other, even. But they weren't part of each other's lives, not really. He was moving on, she'd long-since changed beyond his capacity to adapt. They loved each other, but they weren't...
No, stop it, stop justifying it.
She kept running.
But Taylor and Contessa were already dots in the distance, approaching the Sleeper with reckless abandon.
The city was rising to fight them. Monsters rising from the streets on steel wings. The Endbringer overhead starting to slowly move, bearing down on her with furious purpose. And Taylor...
She's...
She's beautiful.
Light was blazing from her. Not just Frenzied yellow, but reds, browns, blues, all the colours of all the forces she'd encountered. No idea what her face was like, but... she imagined it locked into a rictus scream. Embracing all the things she'd been fighting back for the last week, since... changing. Fighting back for Vicky, for Chorei. Maybe... maybe this impulse had been there, longer than she wanted to think about. Since she came back from Senpou Temple, the same kind of... helpless desperation. Willing to cause a localised disaster at Lomonosov, willing to summon Scion to have a long look at him, willing to run around causing catastrophes, taking risks, gambling over and over. She must've known her luck would run out. How long had she been thinking about this, about leaving her alone? What had happened beyond that portal? Her centipede, no, Contessa, Contessa was lashing around her, snapping with inhuman precision. The swarm was coming, the city itself was pulsing and rising, building lifting themselves on thick-trunked legs, the ziggurats unfolding to expose long, armour-plated bodies and ravenous jaws, the air shimmering with rainbow colour like an oil slick... physics was breaking, the city was exposing all its horrors at once, and Endbringer was coming, and none of it could touch her.
She was pushing onwards. Teleporting freely, emerging without the customary self-damaging madness.
She was glorious.
Held back until now. And had... changed, so very much.
...we can't... can't reach her, can we?
Vicky shivered as a body moved slowly amidst her organs. Still growing. But already frightfully powerful. Despite it all, she couldn't feel more than unease, revulsion was absent. Different to having Patience up there. Seemed more... regulated. Contained.
This was every nightmare at once.
This was... she was stuck, knee-deep in cloying snow, as she saw her best friend fly away while blazing with impossible light, her voice rising to a scream as she crashed into the horde, flickering through it, tearing it apart like a child tearing clumsily through a piece of paper. She wasn't even thinking. She was just... acting, a flowing, mindless creature pursuing the path she'd set herself. She'd abdicated the ability to choose in favour of the ability to achieve.
Nothing could stop her.
No-one could stop her.
Not Vicky. Not Chorei. Not Blondie. Not Bohu. Not anything else. Something moved amidst the clouds, a force beginning to come down...
Vicky knew how she could survive this, just... hide, she knew how, Chorei had learned a huge amount from Taylor, Vicky knew a huge amount of her own, she knew how to hide. But she didn't want to.
She didn't want to miss seeing her best friend's last moments.
She watched, tears staining her cheeks.
Sole human witness to the end.
If she couldn't help, then at least she could watch.
Taylor/Contessa was moving faster, faster, bright, brighter... carving through brass-armoured abominations, crushing magnesium-plated viruses in her fiery hands, little pops of aching white light that paled in comparison to what had made them. The lake of oil burned, and fires spread through the city, heating buildings until they started to soften and melt. Creature upon creature, monster upon monster, a horde without number or reckoning. For each one that died, a dozen more took its place. Junk heaps heaved up on stilt-like legs, and blasted out waves of choking spores, while crocodiles the size of buses dropped from their sides, teeth bared and venom spraying with reckless abandon. None survived contact with Taylor. A sweep, and she'd obliterate whole ruined mounds. The city was trying to form a body to crush her, buildings aligning into arms, legs, heads, shaping itself into a titan. A final battle, something that would appeal to the Endbringers, as conflict-obsessed as they were, and... and none of it worked. Taylor, gibbering and screaming, simply evaporated them, or more often ignored them. Slipping through the reaching fingers of the great shadowy woman, dancing over the tops of rainbow-coloured trails, extending through the air and warping everything they touched. Coming closer to her goal. Moving faster than she had until now, so much faster, and so much keener. Sanity had been a shackle, sanity had bound her to a world with rules rigged against her. The Sleeper was...
He was a whirlwind of rainbow shades. He was an impossible storm. He was another universe aching to be born, stuck in the birth canal. A plan centuries in the making, abandoned at the last moment. Vicky had never expected to see him like this, to see his full scale.
Didn't care. No attention to be paid to the false sun.
All she cared about was Taylor.
Didn't want to live without her. Didn't want to live in a world bought with her death.
Didn't want to be alone.
Chorei was weeping. Impossibly, in the confines of her mind, the nun curled up and wept. Vicky didn't. She didn't have the luxury of tears right now, they'd stop her from looking.
Looking as Taylor performed a final teleport, crashing through an assembled mass of leering ziggurats bristling with spikes and humming with arcane weaponry.
She'd not been hurt once in the approach.
And Vicky watched as she reached...
Reached for the storm...
Her fists clenched and her eyes watered from the strain of staring at that thing... the Simurgh was coming, descending rapidly through the air, no expression on her face but nonetheless reeking of panic. Her last-ditch effort had failed, she hadn't anticipated Taylor doing this, becoming so fast, so versatile. Vicky could see fields of countermeasures rotting in that mad city, none of them worth a damn in the face of what Taylor had become. She watched...
And Taylor made contact.
She made contact.
She made contact.
They reached Russia, and Taylor found herself thinking about nothing but the smell of mountain pines. All was one and one was all and all was one, and that meant that in a mountain pine she ought to be able to find all the truths of the universe, and she knew she could, if only she looked, smelled, and possibly licked it a few times. In hidden interiors she found ambiguity. In the death of plants around the tree, poisoned by its roots, she could find struggle and the desire for evolution. In the spreading of pollen at acceptable times she found rigorous order and a refined adaptation to seasons. In the sap she found sweetness and with sweetness came perceptions of sweetness and the arbitrary distinctions of taste into category and preference. In a mountain pine she could find the universe. In a mountain pine she would find the universe, if only she could dive down and find one.
A request denied by Contessa with firm certainty.
Feh.
They crossed over silent streets and silent apartment blocks and silent cities, and Taylor did nothing but murmur to herself about the way her thread felt when she tied it around herself. Determined fate, she said to an increasingly grey-faced Vicky, was a thread in a labyrinth, and the thread could tangle around you over and over and over, until it scraped against your scars and tickled your throat. It was a warm thread, or it was cold, or blunt, or sharp, or golden or silver or iron or nothing else and nothing besides - more accurately, it was all extremes, it was the final stimulus. Taylor, and Vicky, and Contessa, and most certainly Chorei, had been influenced by tiny nudges throughout their entire lives. Emotional impacts, minor alterations, near-misses and almost-seens. They swam through oceans of unfelt meanwhiles, guided by the tiniest of pressures from the inevitability of now. Fate, thus, had a tendency to feel like all of those nudges compressed into one. And you realised that it wasn't - it was the accumulation from which they descended. Like an onion being peeled one layer at a time, infinitely thin layers tickling against one's skin, providing those imperceptible and accumulative nudges...
And the thread was the prime source from which those nudges all descended, it was the accumulation of layers of stimulus. Every kick, every prod, every nudge and every tweak, compressed into a solid weight that boiled and chilled and gnawed and thrilled and scraped upon her scars like she was being constricted by a living thing. She could feel it, she could feel it so keenly.
She relayed this. Vicky nodded. But she didn't understand. Taylor knew she could make her understand. Peel her mind open and force her to experience revelation. Almost wanted to. Maybe this was what she'd get, after all this was over. A mad woman, stumbling through the streets of ruined cities. Stay away from that one, don't listen to her odd words, don't pay attention to her silvery skin or her fleshy clothes, and whatever you do, don't let her touch you, don't let her grab you and force you to see what she sees. Inverted gorgon - a gorgon was a being who's sight you feared being cast upon you, but Taylor would be someone you feared sharing the sight of. Seeing what she saw, instead of being what she saw. For a second, she even imagined grafting a few snakes to her head, just to really complete the image. She already flew, she already had sinuous elements in Chorei, and she existed in a (visible) trio. And it got even better! The Medusa was an image that was once used by revolutionaries, reflecting the paralysing, infinitely destructive nature of truth, the Medusa-Truth that everyone fled from, and what did she bring but truth, what did she see but truth, and why else was Vicky growing so very frightened of her?
Gorgon. Onomatopoeia, almost. Like the growling of an animal. She tried it out on her forked tongue - another thing to complete the image.
"Gorgon. Gor-gon. Gorgon."
A sharp-toothed smile - more completion of the image.
Hm. Gorgons... they used the image of those to ward against evil, once. Frighten it away with the sight of something so hideous and vulgar and vile that it deserved to be shunned, demanded shunning. And Taylor was a creature which warded the others, wasn't she? Not quite human, and much less human than them. Hm. They swooped low to the ground, and Taylor laughed quietly, her one remaining eye flaring with peculiar lights.
"...hey, Vicky..."
"Yes?"
"...I'm your Gorgoneion."
Vicky smiled slightly.
"Sure. Whatever that is."
Taylor understood that all was one and one was all and all was one (three repetitions made that mantra stronger, resonating pleasingly with invisible strains of significance). She saw the Medusa-Truth. Ha. Had a name for the path she now walked - the Gorgon-Road to Medusa-Truth. She'd passed through the domains of the sea and had been cursed by forces she didn't understand and hadn't intended to provoke, and now... and one side of her dripped venom, courtesy of Chorei, and another dispensed life, courtesy of Chorei. The image was forming, the mythological imprint, she could feel her boot-print slipping into one made before her, made in imitation of her, time was a fucking illusion and the Greeks had been writing about her all this time, yes, everything was foreshadowing for her emergence, foreshadowing, four, as in, four people here, four fore four fore, her thread of fate was the thread of human history, she was the culmination of years of prophecy and-
Settle down, Taylor.
Fine.
Feh.
...and she'd been decapitated yet remained powerful, so there was even more to complete the image, and...
***
Russia crossed below them. A rolling plain marked by great fields of snow, slashed by concrete roads packed with clotted masses of abandoned cars. In the distance, she thought she could see Moscow... no, no, it was much too far away for that, but she liked to imagine that she'd do what needed to be done in the shade of Kremlin domes, split open like broken Fabergé eggs by Behemoth's arrival. Where was the old bastard? She hadn't been sure, but... he'd been accompanied by a metallic tree that harvested the dead. In the interminable distance, she thought she could glimpse shapes... her agents were more scattered out here, burning out or running dry. Simply getting stuck as the land became harder and harder to traverse. They were leaving signs made out of burning gasoline, their bodies curled up and frozen to death beside them, wearing clothes they'd stolen from washing lines. Dead with the same expressions they'd held in life. Warnings were emblazoned in fire and smoke - others were coming. Tohu and Bohu, the Twins, an Eidolon imitator and a city-shaper moving to intercept.
Bohu shaped cities, she was likely to be guarding the Sleeper from all approaches.
Taylor already had a plan for that. Contessa had told her that the Sleeper's containment had been flawless, as in, done in a self-perpetuating style. There were no pylons to break or convenient weak points, the containment was now sustained by the event horizon of the man himself. Been a good piece of work, one of the Grid's better moments. Of course, no containment was perfect - but this came close. Tayor wouldn't have her teleportation screwed with by any Grid structures, that much was for sure. Teleport past the endless array of traps, and get to the Sleeper immediately. She'd vomit blood and go a little mad, she knew that, but focus always helped. Focus always made teleportation easier, it was when she teleported just to cross large distances, her goals vague and more symbolic than anything else, that she ran into trouble. Once she saw the Sleeper, she felt like she'd be fine. So, bypass Bohu, avoid Tohu, and reach the Sleeper. Then... do something.
You sound like you have a plan. Your thoughts are tinged with it. But you're not... expressing it, even to me.
Why? Is it secret? Do you not know yet? Come now, we've been partners for nearly half a decade, why not... give me some insight? Let me help. Please.
Not a question of helping.
She focused on the present, and some of her lingering transcendence, no, madness, drifted away, like huge fog banks parting to reveal a wave-spattered shore. Still there, but... parted. Moved away from the object of her attention, and lingering around the periphery. The Sleeper had perhaps begun in Stalingrad, now Volgograd, but it hadn't remained there. Much like Angrboda, really. Both had started their journey in one place, gathered what they needed, then moved elsewhere to finish the job. Angrboda had obtained her razor under Naaktgeboren Ridge, and could have used that same comet to try and do what she needed. But she chose to move, migrating eventually to Brockton Bay's own comet, where she executed the final stages of her plan. The Sleeper had gotten slightly further than she had. Begun in Stalingrad, underneath an old church which had concealed the comet in its crypts. Then, moved, and ascended out in Tunguska, Siberia. Based around yet another comet. Nice and isolated, no-one to bother him. Then, he'd moved again, shifting significantly westwards, tearing up anything in his wake. Leaving behind a daisy-chain of anomalies leading right back to his birthplace. Wound up settling in Mordovia, when the Grid had managed to contain him properly. He emanated poor physics.
A green zone where minor anomalies could be observed, the consequence of stark reality violation happening in the distance. Yellow zone, where the effects became more pronounced, and frequently fatal. And a red zone, which constituted the body of the Sleeper himself. Taylor would've been more worried about mutation, but... she'd handled it before, knew how to deal with it. And the Grid had done a very good job keeping this nice and contained. No major population centres hit, and people could still live in Mordovia, as long as they remained outside the green zone. People could still enter that zone, too - the egg of a new universe, and the Grid had reduced it down to minor physical mutations in people nearby.
Time to crack it open.
They flew, and slowly but surely, Bohu's influence started to show itself. The ground was twisted and malformed, hills repeated over and over and over in identical shapes, the surfaces smoothed over unnaturally. She thought she'd be walking into some brilliantly structured fortress, but... the madness showed itself after only a minute of eerily regular hills devoid of life or construction. The Sleeper was here. And Bohu had strayed too close. A sacrifice to a greater purpose - one Endbringer in exchange for countless miles of insanity. In the distance, a black monolith - the creature itself. Tall, so very, very tall, larger than any skyscraper, black as night with narrow, shining eyes. Hair that hung down to her 'waist' in cables thicker than a human's entire body. She looked like a piece of the night sky cut out and stapled messily. And behind her lay something... else. It shimmered in the dawn. Time was running short. Scion would be dead soon, the Grid knew it. And Taylor had seem him thrashing around like a child in Hungary, he was on the verge of simply... stopping. He moved like someone who could barely muster the effort to do so.
But even so, she'd... rather like it if he speared from the sky now, flung golden light around effortlessly, wiped out Bohu and let Taylor on through with a wave and a smile.
No such luck.
Bohu shared the dreams of the Sleeper. Through her, the new universe was picked out in great rings. No more green, yellow, or red zones - the division had faded. Where one form of madness ended, the other form extended it, intensified it, imitated it.
A city lay before them.
A great, brass city.
It was splendid.
A lake of raw oil lay beside it like an unfurled slug, wet and puckering, life twitching under its surface. Rivers flowed through the streets, moving with lazy coils. Sometimes things emerged, twitching and multi-legged, half-formed by bitumen wombs. Larger than cars, and burning with ghost lights. The city was a parody, a mesh of impossible physics and conventional architecture. She saw ziggurats, and thought of Teotihuacan, the Sumerians... but then they were made out of soft brass, gleaming dully in the morning light of Russia's sun, and the rainbow shimmer of the city's own, personal star. The ziggurats were marked with enormous murals depicting shapes that made her eye ache, even now she'd seen so much and was immune to most eye-aching things. The ziggurats breathed, and she saw arteries and veins of tin and copper flowing from the surface, feeding a pulsing pyramid-heart, draining nutrients from the oil rivers and oil lake. Factories were low and squat, and creatures shambled into them in great ranks. Pumps sent out the resulting liquid to feed the ziggurats, the other buildings, all of it. Ribcage-skyscrapers. Cathedrals of yellow-stained glass, where wet, red things squirmed in shells of fool's gold, ammonites that breathed plasma and sang infrasonic hymns. Gas flares emerged from sewer grates emblazoned with soft brass inlay that formed itself into faces, her face, with bloody dreadlocks and one eye torn, and from that missing eye came the gas flares, illuminated in blue and grey and orange and all the shades of hallucination. Garbage heaps swelled and moaned like sea cows, organic garbage that fused and coalesced and became one, undulating thing that crashed itself upon the factories and was harvested by mosquito-things which emerged from pools of blessed mercury, held by basins which thrummed like reactors and glowed a sharp electric blue. Amidst the organic garbage piles there were fungal crocodiles, teeth like dentist's drills and eyes replaced with flowering cordyceps and green-banded broodsacs, gnawing upon great mounds of conjoined hearts, plunged their snouts into ventricles the size of vestibules while aortae grew teeth and gnawed at the crocodiles but only grew infected and swollen with fungal pustules and incendiary spores. Creatures crawled and spat and slithered and flew, the city was a creature and she saw mechanical viruses with steel-wire legs and protein cases made of solid ever-blazing magnesium scuttle crab-wise outwards. She saw tunnels that moaned when they were entered. She saw trains which wept metal.
Slowly, she settled down, lowering to the ground. Perspective of the whole scene only made it worse.
The city was... oh, it was something, all right. And above it, there was its queen. Dark and tall and with eyes like stars. No sign of her sister, maybe she wouldn't get close. Afraid of the consequences. The Sleeper's Bride stood tall and perfect, and around her she bred a city in the shade of her divine husband. It was reality and unreality struggling to coexist... reality and unreality as husband and wife, sometimes affectionate, sometimes conflicting, sometimes mating with rabid glee. Codependent and radioactive. The horizon... something was wrong with it. Around the Sleeper, the horizon seemed to shift and bend, twisting... the sky turned into conflicting pieces of cloud, moving along peculiar angles. And Bohu almost seemed reflected up there, two dark figures extended to meet in the middle. A mirage, purely a mirage, but... space wasn't obeying the rules it should.
She could see the madness she'd expose herself to, in that thing. Teleportation was an option, but she imagined coming out of a maddening teleport, already a fraught enterprise, into that place. And had ideas.
Contessa nodded to her.
"It might be time, Taylor."
"Yeah. I know."
Vicky gave a small, frightened smile.
"So, time for that master plan you've been all coy about?"
"More or less."
"Mind if I ask for the details?"
Taylor paused.
"Best not."
Her voice dropped.
"I'm sorry."
"Why are you-"
And then Taylor got to work.
The plan she'd worked out with Contessa, growing on the main one. She had no future. Contessa neither. Madness was going to trace her every thought, and Contessa had already resigned herself to dying. Coming close to death hadn't exactly given her a renewed lease on life. They were both burned-out bulbs shambling onwards like there was no tomorrow. Taylor extended Chorei from her back, and ordered the nun to remain still while she scraped a few scales loose. Chorei was saying something... Taylor ignored her. She knew she could get to the centre of that city, she knew she could. But afterwards... no getting out. Anything she left behind at the event horizon would be dead meat, churned up by that mad place. She looked at Vicky, at her scars, at her missing eye, at the replacement she'd had stapled in, at all the things she'd been through, largely because of Taylor... and she worked faster.
She'd done this once before.
In Senpou. And there, she'd been alone. Working with long-dead materials. Hadn't gone so far down this path, where everything felt so simple.
Now, she had a potent influence of the Wolf-Divided, a wolfish star, existing just over the horizon. With the Wolf came mutation. And from one came all and all came one and one came all.
Taylor, what are you doing? Why are-
No response. Taylor was working. Growing it. Letting the scale bloom with mutations that she slowly began to sculpt, burning it from time to time, grafting it, allowing it to swell larger and larger, differentiating... one cell reduced to a stem by the Flame's unification, then mutated outwards, and she had all the ingredients she needed. She knew Sigismund had accomplished the task of harbouring multiple centipedes at once. She knew this was possible. In the end, it was... calming, to slowly grow a new centipede in her fingers, nurture it from infancy to completion. Chorei was talking, faster.
That won't help, the unification of another centipede may give you more pincers, but it won't make you stronger. Why are you doing this? Why did you apologise to Victoria? Taylor, please, just answer me, why won't you...
Taylor finally spoke.
"You... you still have a future. Vicky, you've got a family."
Vicky's voice became low and dangerous.
"What are you talking about, Taylor. Don't do anything stupid. You know I'm with you to the end."
"I'm aware. Which is why I have to do this."
Vicky started to try and move, seize control... Taylor ignored her. This was her body. She ruled it. And she was comprehending... so very, very much. Vicky couldn't do anything to stop her. Nor could Chorei. Contessa watched with sad, dark eyes.
And Taylor's new centipede was almost the length of her forearm now, twitching as neural signals woke up. The mad city beyond gurgled and spat, frothing with odd-coloured flames, the oil lake frothing with rainbow-sheen foam. Bohu hadn't noticed them... or was content to wait for them to come. They couldn't exactly just turn around and leave. At least, Taylor couldn't. Contessa couldn't. The centipede was almost done... she tossed it upwards as it continued to grow, letting Contessa grab it with both hands. She did it without flinching at the many, many legs that clicked and clattered away, at the pincers which dripped juvenile venom. She spoke quietly and firmly.
"Chorei, you know what I know. Vicky, removal will be easy to achieve if both parts are consenting to it."
Stop it, Taylor. Stop it, you're scaring me.
"Taylor..."
Her bag. The limbs she'd collected. And in the snow... yes. They'd done what she said. Back in that facility, she'd ordered her agents to move out here, to scout, to supply information, and for a few... to come to the Sleeper, and stop. Find shelter, then do nothing. And here they were. Pale and odd. Invariably female. She grabbed one, tugging it over... picked the sizes correctly, at least. Flesh was pale, but the internals were functional, the Grid built this sort of model to last. And ultimately, she had a means of stabilising it for a very long period of time. Taylor seized control of her own arms... and lifted both razors. Sharpening them against one another, letting the white metal gleam...
"I'm sorry."
And she began to carve. The agent's body was... workable. But there were a few elements that needed removal. Particularly, the head. She had far too much practice with this. Knew how to pop the skull off from the spinal column in such a way that the spinal column was still basically intact. Like an exposed wire in an unfinished house. Chorei lunged... and Taylor grabbed her out of the air, stopping her from savaging the body. She could feel what was happening. Her voice rose, becoming a scream in Taylor's mind. She was terrified. Taylor was too. But she wasn't dragging more people down.
She raised her razors...
And drew on the knowledge she'd gained. Days of grafted contact with Vicky. Days of sharing her dreams. And days of experiencing deliriously wonderful revelations.
"I'm not... I'm not sending you to that ocean. You don't deserve it, not yet, it's not for you."
Her mutterings were frenzied and halfway incomprehensible, her teeth were so gritted that she could only speak with muted vowels. Vicky was screaming at her, telling her to stop. Wouldn't. She didn't deserve the ocean, with those black birds and that flat white sky. Taylor had seen the afterlife, and she'd tasted its waters, and she didn't want to send more people there. No more than was necessary. Contessa, on instinct, passed her the centipede. Wriggling and lively. Completely viable. The agent in front of her was technically alive, just... mostly brain-dead. She made a small incision in the chest, allowed the centipede to squirm in. Chorei saw the plan. And she loathed it. Taylor did too, in a way. She forced the centipede down into the ribcage, let it hook around the spinal column. Not a full graft, but it was integrating, forming part of a living biology, hunting eagerly for a mind to join with. A Senpou centipede desperate for a proper host.
Time to give it one.
"Taylor, don't, please, I want to stay, let me stay, I-"
The Fool's Razor burned in her mind...
And with a twitch, she severed Blondie. Didn't need that shield getting in the way. Easy to ignore the tattered fractals on the ground, shivering and shining. She'd seen more than enough - ceased to surprise her in any way.
The second slice didn't need anything esoteric.
Just sharpness.
A single cut.
And Vicky's head fell free from Taylor's shoulder, landing steaming in the snow. Mouth still moving. Taylor had to move fast, and did, picking her up and plugging her into the agent's body. Mismatched stump, but... she grafted. Yes, yes. Life in the mind, life in the body. Head could still survive briefly beyond the body, and Vicky wasn't exactly natural. Hooked up to a perpetually regenerating centipede had its perks. The head was still warm when she aligned the spinal columns and grafted them together. When she grabbed that centipede and compelled it to do exactly what she damn well said. Usually, these things would be more picky.
She denied it that luxury.
She forced it to join.
The body began to shift, heart racing, slowly waking up...
And Taylor's knife flashed a third time.
Taylor, don't, you're my only friend, I can't lose you, I won't lose you, all I ask is you let me go with you, that's all, that's all I want, just let me-
"Chorei. Tsuta. You said you've lived more in these last few years than you did in the last few hundred. I remember you telling me that, once. Well... I think it's time for you to keep on living. I'm doomed. I'm not taking you down with me."
Her voice dropped.
"I... can't kill you again."
You wouldn't be killing me, Taylor, I trust you, I truly trust you, I don't care where you go, I'm with you. We're in this to the end, aren't we? Please, I'm too old to start again, I need you, I need us, don't let me go, I can help!
"I can't kill you again. And I don't trust myself enough to get through this. If we lose, it's all doomed anyway. But..."
But on the off-chance that she won and died? Or won and went mad, because madness seemed to be her fate right now?
She wasn't dragging people down with her.
She'd lost too many. She'd dragged people to her level and broken them, piece by piece. So many of her friends with lives ruined and minds shattered, she wouldn't let it happen again. So many bodies already made by her own actions. That city was a landscape of madness, the Sleeper was likely to mark her grave, and if she could get anyone out of this alive and with an intact mind, then she would. Even if it meant...
Meant hearing Chorei cry like a child.
Meant seeing Vicky struggle to gain control of her new body, enough control to wake up properly and stop Taylor.
"I'm sorry, Chorei. I'm sorry. And thank you."
She sliced for a third time.
A final time.
And she felt a mind leave her centipede. She held that mind in her hands, pliable and intangible, a role pressed into a flickering construct... easy enough to lower, carefully, into the body before her. Into the centipede which coiled mindlessly around the spinal cord.
She could feel how the centipede changed when Chorei's mind entered it.
Could see how Vicky's expression shifted.
She could remove Chorei if she needed to. Chorei would go willingly. Taylor wanted to imagine her getting another body and moving on, having another life, a happier life, doing all the things she'd denied herself in the past few centuries. She imagined Vicky moving on and living, having a family, repairing what was damaged, properly reuniting with her cousin for more than a few hours, and doing something. Being sane. Sane as anyone could be. Her attention shifted to Blondie... no, one more thing. Contessa. She remained mounted in Taylor's back, impassive and grim. Taylor didn't need to cut. They were all one creature, and Contessa's mind simply... abandoned her body with the same ease of removing a hat. Flowed into the centipede that Chorei had recently been evicted from. The body collapsed forwards, nothing left in it. Need to cut it free soon, but until then...
Taylor spoke. She knew Blondie could hear her.
"Choice. Stay with her, and maybe you kill her by accident when this all goes up. Come with me, and we try and solve this mess together. I need your flight."
Immediate refusal, a flash of warning red.
"You love her, I know you do. But here's the thing. You're new. Monitor told me. You're newborn, you're still learning how this all works. You love Vicky now, how many reincarnations until you stop? What happens when she dies and you need to move on? How long will you love her, how long until you're as cold as Monitor was, or the Butcher?"
Hesitation.
"She was cold by the end. Monitor burned through host after host over countless cycles, she didn't care about any of them. They were just tools to her. You're the same basic matter, both of you. How long until you're like her? You're still getting used to possessing people, you love Vicky because she's the first. If you stay with her, maybe you kill her when your whole network crashes down. Maybe you just get to keep her company for a few hours until the world ends. Maybe you keep her company, then vanish after the network dies, and that's it. Or maybe you come with me, help me do my job, and we maybe leave a world behind which she can live in."
Her eye narrowed.
"I love her too. That's why I've had to cut her out of me. That's why I've cut Chorei out of me."
The fractals squirmed. Conflicted. But Taylor... she knew. Contessa was murmuring secrets in her ears, all the observations of these creatures the Grid had done. And the Grid had analysed them plenty, at Contessa's behest. Taylor had slept under the same blanket as Blondie back in Madison, she'd seen Blondie have continuous breakdowns over the fact that Vicky might not want her. That had stuck. Vicky had voluntarily abandoned her, and only taken her back when there was literally no other option. Blondie had dragged Vicky away from Monitor, disobeying the orders that Vicky would've wanted her to follow. She was growing more independent. Capable of deciding what was good for Vicky, and then acting towards that good. Even if Vicky didn't personally want it.
And she could see the decay.
She could see how her entire system was burning to the ground. Once, her species would've survived this planet and moved on to conquer thousands more. Now, they all died here. Each and every one of them. Monitor had responded to that lack of purpose with desperate scavenging, doing everything she could to restore a version of the status quo. Blondie? Blondie wasn't old enough to know a status quo, and she clearly held it lower in priority that helping Vicky. Blondie had no higher calling now, nothing else to suborn her.
Independence. Lack of higher purpose. Fanatical devotion. Doomed world and species.
All four combined.
Her own little fourfold revolution.
And Blondie's shivers ceased.
Taylor integrated her without a second thought. Feeling a shield reluctantly form around her limbs, an aura start to emanate waves of... loss. She was deeply saddened, as sad as one of her species could be. An invisible hand reached out to caress Vicky's cheek, and the body on the ground thrashed desperately, struggling to gain muscular control. She'd be fine. Chorei would already be fixing it all.
Taylor stood, and her new centipede derisively tore Contessa's body from her back, letting it fall into the snow. Scars filled over the gaps before she could blink. Contessa coiled around her shoulders, pale imitation of Chorei. Her tiny dark eyes glittered like jewels in the morning light. Even now, she looked sad. Chorei was gone. Victoria was gone. The world might be gone, too. She had no reason, now, to hold back. She was free to go as mad as she liked. Threads of fate were already driving her onwards, and she was eager to follow, but...
Just before... before the end.
She bent down. And planted a small, chaste kiss on Vicky's forehead. An invisible shield-impression of Vicky's face moved after her, doing the same. One kiss beside the other. And Taylor whispered.
"I'm sorry. Both of you. Vicky, you're my best friend, and... and without you, I'll feel like half a person. Chorei, you've earned another go at life. Vicky, get her a body, I don't care how you do it, just get her a body. Go and find yourself another Sigismund. Do it for me. Time to live life with your own body, right?"
Her smile was weak.
"I love you both."
VIcky finally managed to gain some control over her breathing, her voice...
"...T-Taylor, please..."
But Taylor was already moving.
Into the mad city. Into the gaze of the city-shaper. Into the glow of the Sleeper's false sun.
Vicky was starting to stand when she left. But she lacked the speed or the power to properly pursue. Chorei was healing everything with desperate speed, getting the body working as quickly as possible. Taylor could imagine her crying without end. Crying and furious all at once. Taylor would miss her, miss her voice, her mannerisms, the way she coiled up around her heart... she'd hated her, once. Now it was hard to imagine living without her.
But now...
Now Taylor was free to go mad.
Now Taylor was free to give it all up just for the slimmest chance of winning.
She dropped one razor. Vicky's. A final goodbye.
And began to float onwards.
***
No, no, no, no, no, no, no... Victoria, get her back, get her back, please, I need her, I can't live without her, I need her. You need her too, yes? We can get her back, if we move quickly, graft suddenly. I can show you how, let me put the memories in your head, just stay still and I'll give you the right information. You can graft, I can get inside, maybe try and push out that Italian hussy, it's my body, I should have more command over it than she does right now. As for you, you can... use your razor, it's over there, we cut out your power, you put it back on, now we're on even footing! Force her to take you, but importantly, force her to take me back, I...
I... I can't live without her.
I need her.
Vicky struggled up from the ground. The plan was good. She moved as fast as her new limbs would allow... not fast enough. She was so clumsy, so fucking clumsy. Could feel metallic organs shifting around, black blood was being circulated... it was an agent's body, but it was working with her, all the adjustments had been made and Chorei was harmonising the whole system. She was operational. Why couldn't Taylor have done this ages ago, split them apart, given her a new body? Because she didn't want Vicky to be prepared for this. Wanted her uncertain. Not happening, not letting her go. They were in this to the end, they'd promised never to go too far, but... goddammit, she couldn't even hate her for this, she could understand every decision, why wouldn't she take her? They were best friends, she could still feel the warmth of her kiss on her forehead. Not fair. None of this was fair. She stumbled onwards, coughing up a little red matter - her head, purging whatever red blood lingered in it, replacing it with black. Idiot, idiot, she needed a human body, she couldn't...
She ran through the snow. Knee-deep. She'd not realised when she was flying, but... knee-deep. The body was only wearing scavenged clothing, the cold was piercing quickly, and... didn't matter. Chorei was warming her. She moved without tiring, she moved without ceasing. Taylor was floating away, moving faster by the second, getting used to using the power on her own. A centipede coiled around her... Contessa. Contessa had done this. That cunt. She'd manipulated her, lied to her, done something, convinced her to go along with this insane death-wish, all of this was Contessa's fault, and... and...
...she respected Taylor too much to say that.
She knew Taylor had come up with this plan. Contessa had probably contributed. But in the end, both of them...
Tired. So very tired. And sadder than they let on.
Both of them just wanted it all to end.
Vicky did too. Vicky did too. Taylor had a dad, she had a family, she had friends, why was she...
...she'd dreamed about her dad.
Vicky had seen them. Lived in them. During their journey here, she'd lived in Taylor's dreams from time to time, and she'd seen...
They were distant. Liked each other. Loved each other, even. But they weren't part of each other's lives, not really. He was moving on, she'd long-since changed beyond his capacity to adapt. They loved each other, but they weren't...
No, stop it, stop justifying it.
She kept running.
But Taylor and Contessa were already dots in the distance, approaching the Sleeper with reckless abandon.
The city was rising to fight them. Monsters rising from the streets on steel wings. The Endbringer overhead starting to slowly move, bearing down on her with furious purpose. And Taylor...
She's...
She's beautiful.
Light was blazing from her. Not just Frenzied yellow, but reds, browns, blues, all the colours of all the forces she'd encountered. No idea what her face was like, but... she imagined it locked into a rictus scream. Embracing all the things she'd been fighting back for the last week, since... changing. Fighting back for Vicky, for Chorei. Maybe... maybe this impulse had been there, longer than she wanted to think about. Since she came back from Senpou Temple, the same kind of... helpless desperation. Willing to cause a localised disaster at Lomonosov, willing to summon Scion to have a long look at him, willing to run around causing catastrophes, taking risks, gambling over and over. She must've known her luck would run out. How long had she been thinking about this, about leaving her alone? What had happened beyond that portal? Her centipede, no, Contessa, Contessa was lashing around her, snapping with inhuman precision. The swarm was coming, the city itself was pulsing and rising, building lifting themselves on thick-trunked legs, the ziggurats unfolding to expose long, armour-plated bodies and ravenous jaws, the air shimmering with rainbow colour like an oil slick... physics was breaking, the city was exposing all its horrors at once, and Endbringer was coming, and none of it could touch her.
She was pushing onwards. Teleporting freely, emerging without the customary self-damaging madness.
She was glorious.
Held back until now. And had... changed, so very much.
...we can't... can't reach her, can we?
Vicky shivered as a body moved slowly amidst her organs. Still growing. But already frightfully powerful. Despite it all, she couldn't feel more than unease, revulsion was absent. Different to having Patience up there. Seemed more... regulated. Contained.
This was every nightmare at once.
This was... she was stuck, knee-deep in cloying snow, as she saw her best friend fly away while blazing with impossible light, her voice rising to a scream as she crashed into the horde, flickering through it, tearing it apart like a child tearing clumsily through a piece of paper. She wasn't even thinking. She was just... acting, a flowing, mindless creature pursuing the path she'd set herself. She'd abdicated the ability to choose in favour of the ability to achieve.
Nothing could stop her.
No-one could stop her.
Not Vicky. Not Chorei. Not Blondie. Not Bohu. Not anything else. Something moved amidst the clouds, a force beginning to come down...
Vicky knew how she could survive this, just... hide, she knew how, Chorei had learned a huge amount from Taylor, Vicky knew a huge amount of her own, she knew how to hide. But she didn't want to.
She didn't want to miss seeing her best friend's last moments.
She watched, tears staining her cheeks.
Sole human witness to the end.
If she couldn't help, then at least she could watch.
Taylor/Contessa was moving faster, faster, bright, brighter... carving through brass-armoured abominations, crushing magnesium-plated viruses in her fiery hands, little pops of aching white light that paled in comparison to what had made them. The lake of oil burned, and fires spread through the city, heating buildings until they started to soften and melt. Creature upon creature, monster upon monster, a horde without number or reckoning. For each one that died, a dozen more took its place. Junk heaps heaved up on stilt-like legs, and blasted out waves of choking spores, while crocodiles the size of buses dropped from their sides, teeth bared and venom spraying with reckless abandon. None survived contact with Taylor. A sweep, and she'd obliterate whole ruined mounds. The city was trying to form a body to crush her, buildings aligning into arms, legs, heads, shaping itself into a titan. A final battle, something that would appeal to the Endbringers, as conflict-obsessed as they were, and... and none of it worked. Taylor, gibbering and screaming, simply evaporated them, or more often ignored them. Slipping through the reaching fingers of the great shadowy woman, dancing over the tops of rainbow-coloured trails, extending through the air and warping everything they touched. Coming closer to her goal. Moving faster than she had until now, so much faster, and so much keener. Sanity had been a shackle, sanity had bound her to a world with rules rigged against her. The Sleeper was...
He was a whirlwind of rainbow shades. He was an impossible storm. He was another universe aching to be born, stuck in the birth canal. A plan centuries in the making, abandoned at the last moment. Vicky had never expected to see him like this, to see his full scale.
Didn't care. No attention to be paid to the false sun.
All she cared about was Taylor.
Didn't want to live without her. Didn't want to live in a world bought with her death.
Didn't want to be alone.
Chorei was weeping. Impossibly, in the confines of her mind, the nun curled up and wept. Vicky didn't. She didn't have the luxury of tears right now, they'd stop her from looking.
Looking as Taylor performed a final teleport, crashing through an assembled mass of leering ziggurats bristling with spikes and humming with arcane weaponry.
She'd not been hurt once in the approach.
And Vicky watched as she reached...
Reached for the storm...
Her fists clenched and her eyes watered from the strain of staring at that thing... the Simurgh was coming, descending rapidly through the air, no expression on her face but nonetheless reeking of panic. Her last-ditch effort had failed, she hadn't anticipated Taylor doing this, becoming so fast, so versatile. Vicky could see fields of countermeasures rotting in that mad city, none of them worth a damn in the face of what Taylor had become. She watched...
And Taylor made contact.
She made contact.
She made contact.
