Deep breath.

  In. Out.

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yeah. Why would the Emperor want that? It lives here with the rest of us. The Empire has… I don’t know how many exactly, but billions of people, agriculture, inventions- why waste all of that?”

  Amusement, again. From the Beasts- disdain, pity. From all around her, sympathy at the fear she can’t quite keep quiet.

  “Why wage a forever-war? Why divide the world along imagined lines? Why continue expanding and attacking beyond its walls? The Empire wants more. Always more.”

  “And… you’re saying that letting the world die for the sake of a few pretty palaces somehow gives it that?”

  “Or at least it believes so. I cannot attest to its mental state, or its intentions - my knowledge extends only to what I can feel, and I have felt the world degrade bit by bit. The Daemons breach into reality more and more often, eating away at the edges. I was alive at a time when you could travel in a straight line across the world and return to the point where you started. Now, wander too far past the edge, and if you can survive the collapse of the laws of existence, you end up… elsewhere. The stars used to be suns.”

  There is a pause, like an intake of breath. A moment of grief, transmitted so strongly that it makes Raika flinch, rocking a step back as it echoes.

  “Think on this, oh Beasts. The stars used to be suns, greater than the malformed fire that orbits now, so far away that light and heat enough to warm an entire world seemed barely a flicker to mortal eyes. One could travel for a million eons and never reach them, so far away were they. Now, the sky is a cage, a flimsy blanket of night, poked full of holes for infinite voyeurs to watch a prolonged death. There used to be stars- now, there are eyes, waiting and watching as we wither, eager to pluck choice morsels from the world when it breaks at last. Always there has been change, for such is life, but now there is Empire, ever-hungry, ever-feeding, and my brethren are taken from their cradles, farmed, broken and shaped until they are tools of the cage it has crafted for us all.”

  She can’t breathe.

  In. Out-

  In again. In. A slow inhale, like she can’t quite stop herself from doing it. Her Mind stutters over the implication.

  Tracking from her time in Cragend, the closest she’s been to the center of the Empire, she’s traveled for months. Differing speeds throughout, but moving at maximum velocity, fired continuously as a bullet from a Gun, it would still take a week or more just to traverse the space she’s walked.

  The entire Empire? Weeks more.

  The world? Months, just to cross it. To see it all? Maybe decades, maybe more.

  And it used to be bigger? More?

  A thousand thoughts. The Pillar, deep inside, begins to overheat, slowly but surely. Five other selves, traveling the world, almost perish to unseen dangers, the impression they receive from their origin so strong it leaks through the walls between them.

  Li Shu looks up past the borders of the array-anchors Raika set down, shooting a worried glance up at her avatar- and then picking up the slack.

  “You mentioned a bubble before. Does that mean that the Empire intends to escape? Keep everything within the Wall, let everything else collapse?”

  Many Mouths turns to look at her, some unknown aspect of the hovering orb focusing on the Core Formation cultivator and Witch. “Perhaps. It has changed much within itself. I do not know the details of its works, but the Wall is more than just violence and architecture. The Empire uses my family, shaping them into a barrier to powers direct and esoteric. The attention of the vultures above bounce off its surface, for we are Godflesh, and even Divines must respect our knowledge of what is and what could be. Perhaps it seeks to escape- while it has facilitated the end of all, time’s arrow had already struck this world.

  “How so? It was… there’s nothing to be done? It was always dying?”

  “Yes, little one. The lifespan of this world might have lasted a few billion years more, but not much longer, not without drastic change. But what was once a lifespan that encompassed more time than even I can truly comprehend has been turned to… perhaps decades. Perhaps years.”

  “But not centuries?” Raika asks.

  Her voice is quiet. Tight. Distressingly human.

  “...no, child. Not centuries.”

  She can’t breathe.

  Her Heart beats, confused, apologetic, afraid, sensing her distress more than what’s being spoken. Her breath trembles, unsteady, a perpetual inhale to lungs grander than even her impossible size should allow. Her Minds… shake. Just slightly.

  The golden band around her world aches, just for a moment. A phantom pain, a sense of awareness magnifying its presence inside her.

  It chained her. It chained the Hearts, shaping them into the same fortress cities that blew her brains out. It fostered the families that rule the empire, the sects that infest it, ruled over by its Law, changed by its presence somehow.

  Something ripples, from her inner world out through miles of flesh and weaponry.

  “WHY”

  The room echoes with the word. The weight of it. The fury radiating from it.

  The Pack, and its Apex, transmit back their own Intent.

  Not sympathy this time. Empathy. The weight of their own experience reflected through her.

  And then, the most dreadful question.

  “Does it matter?”

  She keeps inhaling. Forcing herself to breathe out- and failing. Again and again.

  No. It doesn’t.

  “Now you know why we fight,” whisper a hundred lives, speaking on behalf of an existence millenia old. “Many of the Pack fight for the sake of it. Many of us seek vengeance, or carnage. Many of us fear death and domestication, to be taken by the Empire and made into tools, things to be farmed or kept in preserves, hunted at leisure. But I, and those who follow me, fight because there is no other choice. Because to do otherwise is to allow the end of the world. In the long view, this is all there is. To rebel against the iron grasp on the throat of the world, or accept strangulation from its hold. I have suffered millenia here, hidden away, protecting what little I can reach, but that is no longer enough. We must do more, even if it risks everything- because everything is already at risk, whether or not we fight.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Aurick, off to one side, has his hands in that same prayer-crown. Sakihebi shuffles, a childish desire to deny fear kept in hold. Even the Thief Of Many Wings is quiet, its haughty aggression gone silent for the moment.

  And in her protection-

  Li Shu, silent, her Sacrifice hovering protectively around herself and Jin.

  Jin sits there, still as death, his breathing ragged and unsteady but his eyes wide open.

  Many-Grasping is openly crying, emanating something like religious dread, a conception of a world grander than she thought possible- and dying.

  Even Ko and Aria are stunned, their synapses running through justifications, confusion- and fear, absolute and undeniable. Whatever the Republic of Morae has in terms of its great powers, she doubts that they’ve met anything grander than the Apex before them, and it speaks every word with the ringing agony of truth.

  But it’s not just them.

  Raika can feel so many lives. Little villages and settlements she’s launched pieces of herself near, creeping outwards and experiencing their lives as flashes of sensoria. Singheart, full of tens of thousands of lives, all of them scarred and afraid and many of them guilty- but all of them alive.

  Paleblossom City. Cragend. The Hungering Roots sect. The Fortress Cities and the millions of lives grown in around them. Wayun Village.

  A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the world. The lived experiences of one woman, one being, less than thirty full years of age. And yet so fucking vast that even now, as she is, she hasn’t seen all they have to show, hasn’t met all who live in them. The rebellious alliance, hidden in Cragend’s sects, trying to fight for their people and their half-forgotten past; the farmers of Wayun village, trying to eke out a living and care for each other; the poor and sick and passing-by of Paleblossom city who offered a drop of what they had to a woman who had nothing. A hundred more places she’s passed through or glimpsed, a million million more she’s never seen, may never see.

  It would be easier if the Apex spoke with human voices, mortal voices, through the lives it created or summoned. But it doesn’t. Its words are true, true as Truespeak, communication saturated by Qi and made divine just as flesh so saturated can break steel and lift mountains.

  She keeps inhaling, the thought spiraling, the depth of what she’s seeing-

  From deep around her core, a note. Faint, drained of energy, barely there- but at her side nonetheless.

  Dink.

  A small head, lying on her lap, flavored by peaceful death. A hand on a part of her flesh, carrying memories of intimacy shared. The scent of her friend, hovering protective over the child they have brought with them.

  And that note, rippling through her.

  She exhales. A long, careful process, pushing out clouds and clouds of carbon dioxide into the air and away from her.

  “Why now?” she asks.

  “We do not know. The Emperor has-”

  “No. You. Why now? Why not a hundred years ago? A thousand? I’m an exception, not the rule, but even still most cultivators don’t need however many millenia you’ve been hiding to build up their nerve. Why now? What’s changed, to bring you into the fight?”

  “Opportunity. Aurick?”

  The humanoid centaur steps forward, his gait reverent and his eyeless gaze downcast. “Yes, Apex. We are reaching what can best be considered a pivotal moment. The Cold Sun stirs, not just once a year, but frequently enough that we believe it interferes with divination, and thus, the Empire’s Division of Divination itself. It has also elicited out of hiding a group which rarely moves- the Fallen Kingdom. One of theirs has joined the Pack as an Apex- the Corpse Martyr. Through it, they have become allied to us, and have committed necromancy and the arts of life and death and End against the Empire for the first time in living memory. They believe that, at some point in the next three years, there will be a breach in the Cold Sun, something they greatly fear, and their reaction, so far, has been to find allies. Our Apex, the revered of Many-Mouths, has chosen to move for the first time openly, which, in turn, has motivated the other Apex to move.”

  “I am mother and father and home to Beasts. The overgrowth is an extension of me, a vulgar display of my ability, and most of the eastern world relies on me and mine to maintain their existence. When nature itself moves against intrusion, Beasts move with it.”

  “Quite so. Those that previously refused to participate, or sought dominance above all else, are instead in active competition, moving forward against a joint enemy. The Fallen Kingdom’s sudden activity promises that what is coming is closer than ever, and offers the opportunity for an alliance. The final push came from the Empire itself, actually. Their assaults past the Wall have grown more frequent, and recently, something that reeked of DIVISION left a scar across the world fighting a Daemon, summoned out of desperation and unbound. Those that call themselves Feng have grown more aggressive, bolder, killing more and more- in the end, the aggression was timed such that we used it to draw others out of seclusion and to war.”

  She almost-

  No. She does laugh. A tired, angry, bitter little chuckle.

  Feng. Of course. Far be it from her luck to have the end of the world not to involve the fucks.

  “The Fengs,” she says, still chuckling. “Always at the center of whatever bullshit I stumble into, aren’t they?”

  Aurick gives a half-shrug, transmitting Intent of empathy. “Their presence is… ubiquitous. Such is as must be, when a single group is elevated beyond others and given free reign on cruelty.”

  “But why? There are other noble families in the Empire. The Liao, the Ming, the Wei. Why always the Fengs?”

  Aurick opens his hands, helpless. “You would know better than I. I’m not exactly a frequent visitor past the Wall. I know that their children are often at the forefront of their armies, acting as officers or potent killers. In a place that so worships war, perhaps its no surprise that those that most avail themselves of it find themselves with more power than others.”

  “No. There is more.”

  Raika turns back to the hovering orb, staring back at the Apex. “What is it?”

  “It is… hard to explain.”

  “Try,” Raika growls.

  A sense of amusement, of gentle reproach. “It is a difficult topic, child. For all that the Emperor harvests from drying wells and bleeds a dying world, it also has sunk anchors into its flesh, prolonging our existence in some ways. One such way I have already mentioned- the sun in the sky, which was once our closest star, has been replaced by that thing. Its existence now depends on one of the beings the Emperor holds in confidence- a Titan.”

  “...the Titan realms of the Empire.”

  “The same. To my knowledge, the only Titans that remain in this world bow to it- all others are hunted down before they can reach such heights, most often by its Blades, or have already ascended, plucked from this world by the vultures in the sky or escaped to other planes. I believe the Fengs to be related to one such entity.”

  “The Fengs have a Titan-realm?”

  “Or are under its protection somehow. There are… threads. Subtle ones, ones that even I struggle to discern, and I can see the molecules of the cells of your body as you move. They all tie back into some other, stranger knot, atop that distant plateau. The Fengs are not a family, they are a clan, tied together on some level deeper, and whatever holds them in its dominion grants them power and privileges that others do not possess.”

  She laughs again, the sound bitter. “Gods fucking damnit. Great. Just great. Nevermind saving the whole planet, now even my trauma-payback is tied into a goddamn Titan. To the fucking Empire itself!”

  She laughs. She giggles, chuckles, breaks down into genuine, open-mouthed, breathless gasps.

  “It’s too fucking perfect! Really, it is! Get strong enough to survive, and everything’s dying. Get strong enough to fight back, and someone’s daddy shows up with another mountain to drop on me. FUCK! Why not!”

  A touch of concern is transmitted from the pearl above. “It is not hopeless. Together, we have the greatest chance we’ve ever had. Destroying the Empire is distant, but if we breach the Wall fully, damage its plans enough, things will change, give us room to-”

  She waves a hand, straightening from the laughter, sighing and cracking her neck as she rises. “No need for the pep talk. Seriously, I needed a good laugh like that.”

  A hundred lives and three Beasts (the Thresher, as always, stays quiet) all transmit confusion, worry, annoyance, each in differing amounts- but she doesn’t pay them any bother. She looks up at the pearl, the core of Godflesh from which whole biomes have sprung. She emits a ripple, coming from deep, deep down, tinged with the radiation of the stars in her Soul and the force of all that she is, a Mind of hundreds of brains in perfect agreement with each other.

  It tastes like certainty, echoing in the space around her, to the Apex and her allies and the Beasts of the end-times that surround her.

  “World’s dying, and we’re gearing up to bother the fuckers that own the sun and most of the planet and just about every weapon you can consider. Sure. I could use the workout. Count me in.”

  TWENTY FOUR CHAPTERS AHEAD FUCKOS! YAAAAAH

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