“To nobody’s surprise, there’s been a catastrophic development,” Sophos prefaced the emergency meeting in front of Starcatcher. That single sentence would've plummeted our morale if we didn't think it was so damned hilarious. “My geniuses have been monitoring Sophia’s essence within the containment device. She’s decaying at a concerning pace.”

  And that's the punchline.

  Morgan turned his head toward the sky, surely gritting his teeth underneath his hood. “Dammit, okay, what’s the ETA?”

  Sophos glanced at her unfinished masterpiece; well, I shouldn’t say “unfinished” anymore. It looked almost ready. “We have approximately less than ninety minutes before Sophia completely vanishes. I believe we can have Starcatcher operational in forty, but these are our best estimates.”

  Aiden was gnawing on the inside of his cheek. “So what you’re saying is, as soon as Starcatcher’s online, we’re doin’ it?”

  Sophos tensed up. “...There’s no other choice, I’m afraid. I know we’re waiting on Kosmos, but we cannot afford an extra minute. Little Problem, I’ve already told your superiors this and they shared the message to Kosmos. He’s doing the best he can to tidy his affairs in Korea.”

  Morgan hissed a curse through his teeth. “Alright, it can’t be helped. Empress, go over the combat procedures with the team while I double-check the magic circle.” (“Roger.”) “And Conqueror?”

  I picked my eyes off the ground.

  “I believe you should return to Ordo. You’re in no state to fight—”

  “He should stay,” Sophos interrupted. “We already established this. The Mother knows his otherself—”

  “Are you suggesting we should use him as bait?!” Chie exclaimed, aghast. (“Not the worst idea,” Aiden muttered before Chie slapped him on the shoulder.)

  Morgan raised his hand to stop more interjections (Leo). “Do you understand what you’re trying to suggest? We have no idea what her relationship is with his otherself—”

  “I’m quite aware. Any under circumstances, I would send him home too, but we know for a fact that he’s connected to the Mother. His presence might work to our benefit—”

  “What about me?!” Rei suddenly spoke up. “Perhaps we can do, uhm, something with my sixth sense?”

  Morgan strongly shook his head. “You’re in a slightly less dire position than he is!”

  “And we don’t know how to manipulate your superpower, let alone having the time to figure it out,” Sophos curtly stated. “It’s not a feasible option.” (“But—!”) “I know you want to help your senpai, but we must be realistic. As much as I despise myself for saying this, Conqueror can—if ever so slightly—tip the scales toward our side.”

  Rei tightened his lips and shamefully looked down.

  “This is fucking ridiculous,” Leo snarled before shoving my shoulder. “Say something, Alex!”

  I’d been thinking about this, dammit. Everyone’s concerns were valid. We were in a time crunch. Sophia was not going to last ninety minutes despite our estimates. Knowing how quickly the Starcatcher was put together, the execution would be imperfect. Worst case scenario, we’d have an out-of-control Mother ready to kill all of us.

  To give us the best chances to succeed…

  “...I have to agree with Sophos.” (“Alex!”) “Once the Mother appears, all hell will break loose, but if there’s the slightest chance that we can control her behavior, then we should take it. That happens to be me.”

  Morgan tilted his head lower in resignation. “I suppose that settles it.”

  “That…” Leo muttered something in Korean, probably a curse. Despite her thoughts, she knew she was outnumbered. “Alright, fine. Sophos—”

  “Yes, I’ll do whatever I can to ensure his health. Now, are there any other concerns?” Sophos asked the rest of the team.

  Nobody had any.

  “Good. Let’s work until our bones fall off.”

  ***

  As reminded by Morgan and the others, my role was purely support. They wanted me off the front-lines for a good reason—I genuinely couldn’t fight at my best—so Sophos personally assured my safety: protection magic. She'd given me an S-Rank ward.

  Sophos Protection & Anti-Cosmic Ward

  Rank S

  Type: Ward

  Description: Drawn by Sophos, this is a physical ward that has been etched with a high-level magic circle of absolute protection. There are additional high-level protections against cosmic effects.

  When I tucked the [Ward] into my pants, my body was outlined by a golden sheen as if I was an important NPC in a video-game. Other than a subtle warmth, I didn’t feel any different. Besides from me, everyone participating in the Mother’s capture and subjugation also possessed the same [Ward]. The total rounded to around two dozen, and that included us Angels.

  The geniuses converted the testing grounds into an active warzone. They carved glowing glyphs of different designs and colors through the asphalt and into the soft dirt below. According to Morgan, the layout was ripped straight from the Society’s Department of War. Only the creator(s) could activate them, and a forced trigger would be “reasonably difficult.”

  Glyphs weren’t the only countermeasure. They’d set up combat turrets and similar constructs, covering everywhere and letting not a single centimeter go uncovered. Not every construct went pew-pew, however, as Chie had enlightened me. To name an example, the corners had constructs that would erect a barrier if someone entered the vicinity.

  You had to admit: to set this up within half-an-hour was impressive.

  Ironically, the safest place was around Starcatcher. No glyphs, no turrets, just a questionably-built machine.

  With the battlefield made, all that remained was our flawless, risk-free strategy: throw Sophos into harm’s way while I distract the Mother with my handsome face. Sophos, as an SS-Rank Slayer, could likely do the subjugation by herself, but doing things overkill was standard business practice.

  I had to admit: I was fucking nervous. The wait was killing me. It was killing all of us. This wasn’t any normal breacher—including Essies even. The Mother would be unlike anything we had fought before, from someone as inexperienced as me to a seasoned mage like Sophos.

  Anything could happen.

  What else is there to do, but trust that we did our job and continue to do them?

  “It’s complete!” Sophos exclaimed so everyone could hear. “All non-essential personnel, evacuate!”

  The non-essential personnel—the ones who weren’t outlined in gold—rushed to pack their belongings. A small team of geniuses stood near teleportation circles, making sure the non-combatants were ported out of the facility. Within a couple minutes, only we remained: the poor saps in charge of seeing this thing through.

  We stood around Starcatcher as Sophos manned the console. A few geniuses, who had been conducting one final check, gave a thumbs-up. Problem gave a clear nod from his station, the Alternate tracker. Sophos reciprocated with a nod herself.

  We all collectively gulped. Leo discreetly put her arm out in front of me as though saying, “Don’t do anything stupid, lovely.”

  “A-Activating the replica of [Thousands, Thousands Worlds] in three, two, one—!” Sophos pressed a button.

  There was no ceremony. No light, no sound, nothing that could indicate success. However, I blinked and the Starcatcher was concealed inside a black box about the size of the magic parchment's area—no, this was far more complex structure. It wasn’t that the magic circle had produced a black box, but rather, it had deleted an entire space and thus rendered it nothing.

  The box had no sense of depth or scale; to our imperfect eyes, it was simultaneously two- and three-dimensional. It had shape but it was shapeless. It had tangibility but it was intangible. It was nothing, but it was something. After stripping down the natural laws of the World, this was what came of it: space, the cosmos, and multiverse.

  An environment that Sophia could exist in.

  Although the replica produced no sound—it wasn’t producing anything sensory—we were all understandably freaking out. Internally, at least.

  “It’s holding!” Problem said, his voice trembling. “Ha, that old hag has finally proven herself useful!”

  Sophos gritted her teeth. “Releasing phenomenal energy! Emitter one and two, release!” She flipped two levers, and above, an LED light turned green. “Emitter three and four, release!” Another flip. “Five and six!” All green.

  She saw the green lights and laughed at the wondrous sight. “My goodness, it’s working! It’s actually working! I really am a genius, haha! Now…” On the center of the console was a larger lever, and she firmly grasped it. “I’ll make you proud, Sophia!”

  She slammed the lever down—

  Pixels flushed throughout the “box,” discoloring the “surface” into a million shades of gray. It was like staring into a wall of static but without the sound. The brightness burned my retinas, and my brain was firing blanks. It so desperately wanted to register something: a sound, a sensation, even smell—but the only thing we had was the pixelated void, flashing white and gray and black until we would go blind.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The “box” seemingly grew larger, rising over us like a looming giant. Was it swelling?

  It was fucking swelling, holy shit.

  Sophos exclaimed, “BARRIERS—!”

  Below our feet, light rose from the asphalt.

  Then boom.

  I shielded my face, expecting debris and wind but nothing dragged across my skin. I heard the latter, however, coursing around me similarly to the collateral damage during Archknell's fight against "Silverhonor." A transparent blue barrier thankfully protected us. Thank you, glyphs. Looking up, I saw…

  Starcatcher, destroyed. It didn’t look destroyed—no stray scrap metal or nuts and bolts—but rather, it leaned toward looking unfinished, like someone had deleted random areas without rhyme or logic. Underneath, though, the parchment for the magic circle was paper shreds. I couldn’t see the container that’d stored Sophia anywhere. What remained, though, were the six "arms" faintly glowing with a nonsensical, eldritch light.

  I think Sophia's gone.

  I… I don’t know what happened.

  One genius broke the silence, “Our constructs' sensors are on the fritz.”

  Another genius replied, “Reboot them. All of them.”

  “DId it work?” Firebrand asked everyone, but he couldn’t see a conclusive answer on our faces. “C’mon, it had to work, right? Problem, Sophos? What does the tracker say?”

  Problem was shaking his head, his small fingers flying over the tracker. “It’s useless! It was knocked down with the rest of the constructs!”

  Shit. None of us felt anything different with the air. Today was, on the surface, an ordinary summer day.

  Sophos stared down her busted console, teeth and fists clenched. “All the moving parts worked. They worked, I’m sure of it!”

  “Then, we should’ve attracted the Mother!” Firebrand exclaimed—

  “Perhaps our theory was wrong! We might’ve approached this from the wrong angle!” Sophos sputtered, her words racing together. “If this didn’t work, then…”

  I couldn’t listen to the conversation anymore. I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed that Starcatcher failed. Or… Maybe it was too soon to call the race. The tracker may be down, but didn’t we have our secret weapon?

  “Rei—?”

  Rei had his head down.

  He clamped a hand over his mouth, and he was pale, sweating, and shaking.

  “She’s here,” I muttered.

  Empress perked her head up, then she saw Rei too. I could see color draining from her face, matching his shade. “SOPHOS—!”

  A woman stood on Starcatcher’s half-deleted platform—correction, she was levitating a couple inches above it. She silenced the world. Our voices were stolen, the wind was still, and birds were songless. As the strange demesne from earlier, her existence was irregular. Freakish. By the very nature of her presence, the logic of our souls was tested and our sanity with it.

  The Mother of the Alternates.

  She was undoubtedly a woman. Had been a woman. Her whole face—not half like what Lyressa had said—was “shrouded with a veil of depthless pixels.” Here, it was more like a tunnel that led infinitely deep into nothingness. Lyressa was correct about one thing, though: her hair was the color of a starry night. A gorgeous combination of nightly blue and midnight black, with pixels scattered across her locks like sparkling accessories.

  She wore a dark gown that defied physics: eternally flowing as though suspended in water. The bottom-edges phased through the platform. Her skin was much like Sophia’s: pixelated; however, it was blindingly white and much worse than a corpse. She was “alive” in the loosest sense.

  The Mother didn’t seem to acknowledge us. Instead, she turned toward the emitters, reached out, and touched one.

  She siphoned an inky blue, gaseous substance; it poured onto her right hand, washing away the pixels and leaving behind smooth flesh. A real, human hand. The Mother looked at it in disbelief.

  Sophos gasped. “She’s after the remaining phenomenal energy! Don’t let her—!”

  A deafening scream rang, louder than a hurricane siren and more distorted than a broken speaker. Yet through the distortion, I heard a woman’s lasting pain. She’d been screaming for a long, long time, and we were the first ones to finally hear her.

  The Mother held her human hand toward the sky, clutching it, like it was engulfed in an invisible fire. She continued to scream, and while my ears wanted to bleed, so badly I swore—I swore it—I heard words.

  Then, floating above her palm, something appeared: a strange card. It rotated, showing a double-sided depiction of a winged man playing the trumpet, captivating an audience of men, women, and children.

  She crushed it.

  [J▕d▆me▍t]

  We became her audience, and she played a trumpet of death.

  Knees drummed the asphalt in response. A single knee, nothing more. Our heads were tucked low and toward the cracked gray and black surface, darkened by our own shadows. Our hands flanked the peripherals of our vision, arms shaking, but regardless of their fright—they were not ours. We could not move them, as with the rest of our bodies.

  We could only control our own breaths and our heartbeats.

  “I-I can’t move!” someone shouted. “I can’t move!”

  “Sophos!” someone else cried. “SOPHOS!”

  She did not respond.

  We knew that even she, a True Mythos Slayer, was affected by the [Skill].

  If anyone could break free, it’d be her.

  But we didn’t hear or see anything from Sophos.

  We kneeled, ignorant to the world. During our paralysis, we couldn’t stop the Mother from siphoning the rest of the emitters and absorbing whatever this “phenomenal energy” was. We only knew this fact because of small hints of light appearing at the top of our vision, a gentle humming, and finally, a long, much-deserved breath like a corpse brought back to life.

  “...alive,” softly said the voice. It was gentle, vulnerable, and sweet. “Not…enough. No—no—no—no—not enough—not enough!”

  But she was still ruined. Her voice sounded human for just a few syllables before regressing into the distorted static that marked most of her Alternates.

  “I must—the world, sacrifice!—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Your fortune—! Live, Faelight, live! Don’t cry! Where are you?! Save—me—! Why—?! I don’t… Forgive you, Caelum—! You—aren’t—a—mistake—!"

  I…

  I don’t know what she was saying, but my heart twisted on her behalf.

  How long have you been this way?

  “Promise! Have…hope! Sacrifice—I will!—save you, rescue you—you promised! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye! Forget—everything! I—believe—in—you. I’m—scared.”

  All I needed to do was say my name and she would recognize “me,” but what would happen? Could I kneel here and wait for her episode to end? Would saying “Conqueror” or “Alexander Shen” be enough to bring her to lucidity?

  If… If I could approach her some other way…

  Something popped into my memory. A single word, one that we all ignored and brushed aside in favor of greater questions.

  “Astraria,” I said loud enough for her to hear.

  She stopped speaking, and the weight of her gaze fell upon me.

  Somehow, I could move my head. My neck stiffly wrenched upward. I found everyone kneeling, including the silent and tearful Sophos. Astraria firmly stood on Starcatcher's platform with her two human legs and had two human arms at her sides. Her skin, though, was pale and thin and malnourished. Pixels still covered her face, but the phenomenal energy had revealed one thing: her narrow and blue lips.

  I couldn’t see her eyes, but I felt them. Something inside her brain—whatever remained of it—stirred.

  “Astraria!” I shouted louder. “We… We finally found you, Astraria.”

  “—Alex...ander?” Astraria’s mouth was wide, and she sounded clearer. “You…are…here. Conqueror… Alexander… It’s been so…long…”

  “I know, but we found you. You…” I gulped. “You can be with us again.”

  Astraria exhaled and pressed her lips together. “I…can’t… I told you… Do not…look for me… I’m…long gone…”

  “But you were out there, somewhere. You’re one of us. We… We had to look for you and bring you back home.”

  “You...dolt...” Her mouth twisted into a knot. “Our home…no longer…exists… We can never…return to the way…things once were…”

  Slowly, her [Skill] was weakening its hold on me. I could move my shoulders. “We can try, Astraria. We can always try—”

  “We’ve tried…for hundreds of years… Everything ends in…despair… Over and over… Our greatest hope…is gone…”

  So many questions were running through my head—about what any of this meant—but I pushed them aside.

  “Astraria,” I said, “we can still rebuild everything together. We can still… We can still find whatever we’re searching for.”

  “No…” Astraria’s voice was getting weaker. “Not…me… I’ve done…my duty… Forget…about me… I beg you… Alexander… My foolish... Ah…”

  Her head suddenly twitched to the side. The lucidity was wearing off, and pixels began spreading across her skin like the plague.

  I did everything I could.

  “Conqueror… Conqueror—Alexander—Conqueror—I’m sorry! Leave me, forget me, abandon me—go, run, flee!”

  “Astraria!” I broke free from her [Skill], rising to my feet. “Wait—!”

  “I—don’t—want—to—hurt—anyone.”

  She sluggishly raised her right hand. It was reverting back to pixels, yet it retained enough humanity for Astraria to summon another strange card. Not like the first one. There weren't any depictions on either side: just a bunch of pixelated textures, but it represented something.

  Astraria showed what it was.

  She threw the card behind her, and it expanded into the size of a door. The card collapsed inward and disintegrated, taking reality with it. What remained was a portal leading to somewhere that wasn’t on Earth nor any alternate Worldlines. The space on the other side was mind-bendingly contorted, showing our human eyes colors and shapes we were never meant to see. It was a realm that existed between Worldlines—the crack in the multiverse—and most of all, it was her home.

  The imaginary space in which disqualified, simulated futures were stored.

  “Good—bye.”

  The Mother of the Alternates, the one who’d brought violent doppelgangers belonging to our broken and tragic pasts, walked through the doorway without so much of a fight. Everyone else remained kneeling, still affected by her [Skill] but it would wear off soon.

  All our preparations were useless.

  She… She never had hostile intentions if she could help it.

  Everything she did was an accident.

  She only wanted to escape, and we unintentionally gave her one.

  Is this… Is this how everything will end?

  The truth of the Previous Worldline, about her, about me—would these questions go unanswered forever?

  Would Astraria stay in that space for eternity? Watching over the failed simulations, observing the same tragedies and heartbreaks as her body remained forever fractured? That's worse than death.

  Can we really let her walk away and leave her alone to this terrible, terrible fate?

  Can I let that happen? For a woman I didn’t know?

  I…

  I stepped toward the doorway.

  “Alex…?” Leo muttered where she kneeled. “What are you doing?”

  I took another step.

  “Senpai…?” Rei was struggling to look at me. “She’s gone…”

  Another step.

  “I-It’s over, Conqueror…” Morgan grunted through clenched teeth.

  I couldn’t let Astraria suffer anymore.

  “Conqueror?” Sophos was the first to stretch her neck. “What are you thinking—?”

  I began running for the doorway.

  “CONQUEROR—!”

  I chased after her.