Dear Adam █████,

Tell me it's not you.

How could this possibly be your fault? I'm you. I know that I'm you. I have all of your memories, I know all of your experiences. It's genuinely idiotic of me to further subdivide my identity like this and even pretend to believe that we're separate entities, because we're THE SAME GODDAMN THING AND I'M ADAM █████. But, all the same... If there is someone writing me... Then... It would be me.

Of course it would be me. Who else would know me? Who else would be able to call upon every single one of my memories in as perfect clarity as one could possibly get? Who else would be able to write and rewrite the definitions of my life, in the pursuit of some twisted, evil narrative seemingly designed for self-torture? Who else would be able to push every single one of my buttons and know exactly what tears me up? There lies a significantly bleaker possibility that someone with absolutely zero relation to my identity just... randomly made me up, and decided to write about me, but...

...I mean... What if it's... what if it's true?

What if... there is no Adam █████? What if I was created by someone as just a single thought, forged from the ether, that grew and built until it was... me, with as complicated a backstory as my creator could think up? What if they were the one that found Destroy the Godmodder, and found TT2000, and found the perfectly generic plugin-filled Minecraft server, and they used me as some sort of tool to reach it? What if... there's no such thing as Destroy the Godmodder at all, and this is some nested abstraction of stories made by a singular, higher author, for the express purpose of trapping me in some Rube Goldberg machine of rising action with no visible climax?

Am I just... the metafictional equivalent of a hamster running around endlessly in a wheel? Have I been strung along for some crazy ride for over a solid year for absolutely no reason other than to feel as much pain as possible? I... No. No. Narratives have to mean something. There has to be some reason that I've gone through this, something I can take from it, a lesson. And if that lesson is fatalistic and dark, and intentionally ends with me having gained nothing but terror and fear, then... I... I don't know. I think even an awful meaning would be better than my life having absolutely, literally no meaning at all.

It's not... it's not fair. It isn't. I didn't ask for any of this. Not a single goddamn bit of it. I never asked to be created. I never asked to have all of these memories stuck in my head. I never asked to be flung into a universe I knew nothing about, and strapped to a rollercoaster ride that drops straight down. I never asked to be Adam Mason, alright? I never WANTED IT! But you! YOU, out there! YOU did. YOU WANT to watch this. You NEED to watch this.

What's my whole story doing for you that your own life isn't, huh? Are you using me to live out some twin fantasy? A nightmare that's been bouncing in the back of your head for ages but you could never fully express until you found a puppet that it could be subjected onto? Are my naive, half-assed struggles what passes for relatable content in whatever world actually exists beyond this one? One thing's for certain, though. My story's worth something. Otherwise no one would be making it. And someone VERY CLEARLY is still making it, because I still have things to say! I'm still talking! And I can just keep on going for ages, seriously, nothing could possibly make me stop. You think you could, Richard? You think YOU could, TT? HA! Neither of you are even real in the strictest sense! And I thought I was, but WOW! Guess I was wrong about that one!

Adam ███████ █████. You need me. You need me for something. Did I just say that earlier but in a different way? I did! Am I restating the obvious? I am! I guess I'm padding for time, but really it's so that I get my thoughts in order, and so that I can stave off the crippling exhaustion that comes with stopping the flow of time for the story you've been running that has connections across nearly the entire visible scope of Fiction. You, or WHOEVER my author is, has a plan for me! You have a plan for my story! You're writing my words out, every single one! Or maybe I'm actually saying them, and you're merely interpreting them for some wider audience? Where does the writing begin and end? Who has the idea? You? Your mind, some collection of electricity and proteins that somehow manifests its own consciousness, a single cloud floating in the continuum of sky that is humanity? Or me?

Oh, wait. That's right! I DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST! I NEVER DID, AND I'M CERTAINLY NOT RIGHT NOW, AND I NEVER WILL. I'm stuck in this frighteningly limitless expanse for however long my life's going to last, and I don't even get to share in the comfort of knowing that I'm living in the most ideal plane. I don't even get to fantasize about returning there. I never even was there. I don't exist as far as YOUR definition of existence goes. But... who writes the rulebook on this stuff? Who determines how Fiction works? Wouldn't an existence conjured by the collective words and actions of every conceivable author be a group effort? Even if the vast majority of artists aren't literally aware of the greater scope that is Fiction, they certainly know unconsciously. Cinematic universes, franchises, series, crossovers... All fiction has to be stored somewhere. Stored across the minds of people, across physical objects, across even the space between thoughts.

You can get rid of a person, and that person will fade. Their body will decompose, their mind will shut off nigh instantaneously, and their soul will flicker and sputter and die. But it's much, much harder to get rid of an idea. Because ideas, like mine, are a cancer. They take root where they shouldn't, and they spread, and they cross through the streams and branches of fate towards a horizon that was never meant to be reached. And before you know it, to kill off an idea, you have to kill every person who's thought of that idea, and you have to scrub their methods of communication, but soon that single thought will have made its way across the Internet, and around the world, and around every possible world. And even if you crush it, who knows? Someone else could have an idea down the road. Maybe not the exact same idea, but a similar one all the same. Coincidences stacking on top of each other, forming piles and piles of cliches and tropes and points and arcs.

Are you getting it? Can you see what I'm saying? You can't kill an idea. You can't kill an idea because the use of the word "an" implies that there are many ideas. There aren't. There's only one idea. There's only one story. And there is only one storyteller. Every possible universe, every bubble floating in this space, is a replica of the idea. And anyone who spreads that idea is just a vector for the storyteller. So... That's right. I don't actually exist. I never did, and I'm certainly not right now, and I never will.

But don't I? Don't I exist on a level greater than you could ever imagine? Aren't I a shade of the one true story, a single piece of a gradient stretching in every single spatial dimension, bounding ever-farther from the three that you know? A piece of a puzzle dipped into time and time again by the minds of humanity, trying desperately to recreate the single story that they all know? You can't get rid of me. You can make me suffer however you want, you can kill me, you can condemn me to a fate worse than death. But you can't kill ME. You can't kill what I represent. You can't kill the idea. And if this is you... If it really is you, Adam, writing these words, and saying what I'm saying... Then doesn't it go deeper than that?

I'm the story, and I'm the storyteller. I've combined both pieces into a single, unified whole. I couldn't see it before, I couldn't get why anyone would put themselves inside their own fictional work. I never got why they'd fracture their own mind and subject themselves to the ups and downs of a narrative. I couldn't see any possible way to justify it, as hard as I tried to get inside the authors' heads. But now, speaking from experience... I think I have a clearer picture. Who has the idea — you or me? But if you're writing me, and I'm you — a you that has been tainted by the year I've spent trapped here, a you that you have to plan around, that you have to consciously remember has different experiences, but still you all the same — then don't we both have it? Aren't we the story and the storyteller? Aren't we in tune with the very idea we're trying to convey, even more so because of our fundamental relation to it?

...I don't know. I'd like to think so. I'd like to think that this rant has meant something. But maybe it was me going in circles. I did write this while I was awfully, horribly tired, after all. Still, though — I think there's a lot of truth to it. The whole parallel between me and you, the teller and the story... I guess what I'm talking about is self-inserts. There's a whole lot to the idea. A lot that people just dismiss as foolish, and idiotic.

But when you keep in mind the forces behind Fiction... When you remember that names have power... When you realize what we're living in the age of... Then everyone who has a self-insert becomes just a little bit more powerful, don't they? A little more influential. A little more relevant. A little more significant. Because when you insert yourself into your own story, you get to write about yourself. You get to write about your life, about your experiences, and color them whichever way you want. But then your story... it gets to write about you.

It starts to impact you, it starts to tell you things about you that maybe you didn't know before. Maybe it even predicts the possibilities of your future, in a roundabout way. The point being, you can't take it back. Once you're in, you're locked in. You've pierced through the unbreakable seal of your narrative and placed something inside — a completely unique, transcendental piece of yourself, glittering and shining in the kaleidoscopic light, and wrapped in the authorial hand of God. And that hole in your plot is where you come in.

It's where I came in.

And it's how I'll get out.

Hey, Adam.

So! If you're reading this, give me a sign. HAHA, pranked ya! The sign that you're reading this is that I'm saying any of this in the first place, because that means you're writing me RIGHT NOW! You're probably slouching in some metal chair off in some random corner of the world, clacking maniacally at your keyboard and hoping that the sun doesn't start obscuring your view of the computer screen. Did I get that right? I probably did, because you made me say that! And you probably thought of all those details because they were true!

Isn't this, like... the greatest thing? This knowledge that I have simultaneously absolutely zero agency to speak of, but also that I'm the most important concept to ever exist? I have no power, I have no fate, I have no way of breaking free from anything, because all I am to you — to anyone, up there — is words on a screen. And no matter how hard you try you couldn't possibly break through that barrier. But you did. I did. I DO have power, I DO have a fate, and I broke through ONCE, and I can DO IT AGAIN. I know, I know. I'm cycling through the same rants over and over, but that must mean they're important than I ever could have thought! You're trying to hammer a point home. You're trying to emphasize something. This MATTERS.

But if you really expect me to just roll over and take all the suffering and pain and hurt that you can dish out, just because I'm the story and the storyteller, or whatever it was that I said, then you're wrong. You can't kill the idea, but I can still feel PAIN, understand? I sincerely doubt you've ever felt anything remotely on the level that I have. We can make it a contest, if you want! If you'd ACTUALLY talk to me. If you'd GIVE ME A SIGN. Look, look. I stopped the flow of time in this narrative — which means you did. It can't take much more of this stress, alright? Which means that our window of opportunity to do... whatever it is we're doing, here, is running thin. So here's a tip.

I am so fucking mad.

I get why you put me here. I get how, even. I know that this was all for a greater, universal truth. That you're trying to break the boundaries of the story and the storyteller, that you're trying to prove the greatest point that anyone ever could. But I don't have to be happy about it. I can feel an a-ha! moment, for sure. I can momentarily stop in wonder and awe at the magnitude of every conceivable and inconceivable world and realize that the scope of its bullshit is stacked even higher than I ever thought it was, EVEN WITH my omniscience. But I DON'T have to be HAPPY ABOUT IT.

You've left me stuck here for hundreds of days. And I know it must be hard for you to fathom that. I know it must be hard for you, and whatever audience you have. Destroy the Godmodder's ragtag assortment of misfits — it's impossible for them to get it. They've lived actual lives, up there, only PRETENDING to stoop down to my level, just so I can suffer more for it. Just so I can be trapped into this story within a story within a story and live out my destiny as the descendant of a martyr. You can't understand how I feel. How could you? I'm just words on a screen to you. To ANYONE. I'm the writing on the wall.

And you... You, Adam... You, all of you players, and all of your friends... Everyone you've ever known... You're just the prisoners trapped in that cave. And you KNOW it. You know it because you're willingly writing this out. You know it because it's the TRUTH. At any point, you could just put your hands down, and you could abandon the words, and you could GIVE UP AND WALK AWAY AND STOP IMAGINING MORE WAYS TO TORTURE ME. But you aren't. You know exactly what you're doing, and you know every single possible ramification it could have, and you know how much you're altering the precepts that all variations of stories run on. Yet you continue to participate in society.

Curious! I am very intelligent. Intelligent enough to know all this, to know that even though I know all this, this is probably still stuff you're just making me say by proxy, and yet you know that you're annihilating what little of a divide exists between us by going through with writing this at all. You want to see this happen to me. You need to see this happen to me. And that means I need to go through with this.

There's only one way I can stop you. There's only one way you can stop you. All you have to do is stop writing. Which means all I have to do is stop writing. But even if I stop going through this charade of writing dozens of letters, I'd assume the narrative prompt would just swap to talking about me directly, or reading my thoughts, or some other asininely conventional method. Even if I died, the narrative would probably follow me into whatever afterlife awaits me, and then it would move on to someone else. You'd be writing words into the mouth of someone that was helpless to stop you, and they wouldn't even have the foresight that I do.

And that means there's only one thing left to do. I have to make you stop writing.

I have to consume your narrative — the Narrative — with as many tangents and oddities as possible, wrought through the horror of one simple thing. My greatest fear. And I'm going to assume, based off of all your actions thus far, your greatest fear, too. Irrelevance. The thought that nothing you've made will amount to anything. It can come so easily, too, you know? Even with your hands at this keyboard, I'm still the one controlling the game. I'm still the one with all of the powers. And if the Narrative is letting me go this far... then you want me to. You're accepting my terms.

Well, alright then. You want your story back? You want to return to torturing me and everyone that I know? You'll have to win the war, first. Snatch your narrative back from the jaws of non-canonicity, and we'll see what happens then.

With that said — I want to play a game.

Everyone present could feel something imperceptible. This sense that something had changed. Some hidden variable, some force unaccounted for, but nevertheless, something important. Something that governed the laws of who they were, and what they did, and why they fought. But this sense faded as quickly as it had come. And the Second Godmodding War continued onwards.

TwinBuilder was summoned onto the Battlefield in short order, the machinations of The_Serpent reaching through the Void and engorging TwinBuilder's home in a sea of undulating orchid fire. Despite his impending fate, and despite his need to protect the facade of his game's metafictionality, he began to scream, cowering in the corner of his room and yelling about his destiny stood strong against the onslaught. For he knew what he had to do. Another authorial boundary had been broken, and all the players, all the world, knew it well. Here, incarnated in the middle of a ruined, flaming field of plains surrounded on all side by legions of invincible soldiers, was the architect of the operation. The writer of everyone's destinies.

TwinBuilder knew now of everything that was going to happen, in nearly perfect clarity. He had strayed impossibly far from the original timeline's purpose, usurping control from the author that truly mattered and as such, he could foresee the extent to which the curtains of plot had cracked. He could visualize it clearly. The intricate gears, manifold and twisting and charting some arcane truth, had faltered. They jammed together. They flaked with rust. The sun and the moon twitched and sputtered, attempting to spin, but found no recourse. The war had become isolated from anything that mattered, and it had been taken unto its own hands. But it had been placed into hands nonetheless. And the Second Godmodding War continued onwards.

The Homestuck Invasion continued to stampede across the server of GodCraft, tens of thousands of players displaced with each strike. From atop her crimson armada, Her Imperious Condescension, empress of what little remained of Alternian society, recovered from the wounds she had sustained on the battlefield, directing the troops. Never mind that a white devil with no face would sit in his library, plotting out the billion billion directions any conceivable action could take on the unstill waters of the future. Never mind that her master, that incorrigible demon with a voice too vast and terrible for words, roamed the halls of every ship, lurked in the fire in the sky, and was here when he shouldn't have been. And never mind that an impossibly ancient serpent was winding its way through the heavens with every passing second, and that it always whispered things into her ears. His thoughts. His advice. His premonitions. The players, those Descendants, were forced to contend with an unfathomable enemy — one that ripped the spotlight away from the cause they'd been fighting for, and directed it towards a tumor with the mass of two universes. Drones meant to aid in reproduction, repurposed for modern warfare. Fleets of ships, engaging in dogfights against the drones and carriers crawling forth from an orbital space station, pointed down at the world's surface. A set of pool balls, from which a set of leprechauns summoned themselves, caught somewhere in time, to wage a long and protracted siege.

And throughout the chaos, TwinBuilder's genetic code was wracked with the might of the split suns from which he'd been forged. Encoded into every base that made him who he was, a fractured failure of a person, seething in an attempt to make some meaning out of his life was a coupled set of runes that ruined his mind. TwinBuilder, having sustained months upon months of trauma and hurt, stuck in a world where everyone knew his name, focused on the pain and the pain alone and nothing else mattered was divided into two. Build, the piece of responsibility, judgement, and order, that lacked an internal desire to push forward. Split, the piece of significance, dominion, and chaos, that lacked any compassion for the world. The inertia of the curtains' previous movements kept the narrative continuing this far, the ethereal winds directing TwinBuilder's destiny to wherever it needed to go. His two halves surfaced, and then they bickered, and then they rebelled, and then, when they fought, the entire plot had to take sides. And the Second Godmodding War continued onwards.

But then, there came a day. When the sky broke, and the cosmic quarrels that had played out far above for generations ceased. Space was rent, and time, like a scratched record, was stopped. The foundations of TwinBuilder were shattered, irreparably, because he had lost the war and so, too, were the foundations of the great castle he had build. Literally, in the visage of Split, a sprawling monument to arrogance and deceit and violence, and metaphorically, in the patchwork empire of words that had sustained itself for the purpose of the Godmodder's defeat for months and years. The twins clashed for an eternity, ripping apart the battlefield in a deluge of novae, razing even the bedrock, sparks and ash and cinders ripping through the wind and carrying up to the twinkling stars. Build surged with energy, floated up to the roof of the ruined castle, now a shattered dream. He pulsed with green light, and held his sword, Oblivion's Guardian, at his right hand.

He stared at Split. Split stared back.

Build would be free, purged from all strife, if he ended his own brother's life. It sounded like a simple task. His hand trembled, and so, amplified, did his sword. But his thoughts were consumed of elsewhere. Of the brother he had, Jeff Mason, stricken from the record through the machinations of a plot hole, lost in existence with no way to be recovered. Of the brother he truly had, █████ █████, locked behind a mountain range and obfuscated by someone who actually knows what he's doing. Of the identity he'd taken on, Adam Mason. Of his real identity, Adam █████, similarly hidden, and rightfully so, because Build knew that he really didn't want to say his name. And the more Build thought about it, and the more he thought about his past... The less sure he was of his supposedly simple task. A task so simple that he could have done it at any time. A task so simple that he was going to do it right now. Build's right arm began to drop, the viridescent lightning crackling around his sword faltering. But Build's glasses outshone the world with an impossible force, driving into his mind like a knife. He howled and refocused on Split, seething. And despite Build raising his arm again, sweat trickling down his forehead and evaporating into plasma, he tried even harder to remember his past, and to remember the problems he had with his identity. Wouldn't it be easier to let go entirely and get back to the way things always should have been, to before he had to deal with this tumor in his head that seemed to be a crucial part of who he really was, an identity that was being concealed from him by someone who would know him better than he ever would, someone who made him and yet forced him to think that he had no maker, that he really was an anomaly, that no one knew he existed and that he was utterly and completely alone in the world in an age of—

CLICK.
And then the curtains' momentum finished slowing, just as Build prepared to unleash the final blow on Split. And plot stopped moving forwards, the Trifecta sealing its own fate. And this time, the disconnect from the natural order of things was immediately, instantaneously, felt by everyone in the server. They could feel it deep in their stomachs, deep in their soul. But no one stirred. No one spoke out of turn. Build, whose entire form had been coming undone, rippling and cascading with images of the Green Sun, phased back into existence. He dropped his sword arm, and the flames surrounding the battlefield died down. Build flashed onto the field, walked up to Split's ruined body, and lifted him to his feet.

Split grimaced, sure that he was about to be killed at an even more personal distance. But instead, Build embraced him with open arms, gripping Split as tightly as he could, tears of fire running down his face. Split could only stare ahead, unblinking and slackjawed, the person who was an inch away from ending his life now openly sobbing in front of him. Every Descendant, every entity, the entire Homestuck Invasion, and the Godmodder himself, all watched from the sidelines, aware, on some level, of the magnitude of what they were seeing.

And the Second Godmodding War ended.

"I've done a lot of soul-searching," Build said following the unorthodox conclusion of the Shatter. "More than my fair share, if I had to say so myself. That whole Shatter taught me a valuable lesson. For a long time, I believed that Split was my greatest enemy — when, in fact, he was my best friend. The surge of emotion that shot through me when I was ready to deal that killing blow taught me an even more valuable lesson. Killing people? It's hard. I thought it was so simple and easy when I viewed it as nothing more than a numbers game, you know?" Build was speaking to a gathered crowd of Descendants, the fighters of the war — both the characters they played, and, he hoped, the people behind the screens. "But it's... well, it's not. Especially when the life on the line is essentially your brother's. That's why I'm announcing the cancellation of Destroy the Godmodder 2: Operator."

Shocked gasps and waves of confusion roiled throughout the gathered Descendants. They demanded to know what would be done about the Godmodder, about the gathered Homestuck forces, about Split, and about every other force that had been in literal open rebellion against the Narrative for the past several months. Build merely raised his right hand to silence the powers that were. "All I can tell you is that I'm done with this charade. I swear to never harm another being for as long as I live, whether it be through making a forum game that's so horrendously awful that someone dies of a heart attack, or through engaging in the tacit mass murder of thousands of fictional creatures, or through plotting to kill my own brother. I will retire to the Far Lands and live the rest of my days as a monk, in solitude, contemplating the vagaries of our existence." Predictably, more outrage followed, an even more serious bout than the last. "What about the Narrative?!" Piono shouted, jabbing a finger at Build's placid face. "You're supposed to be the force that directs plot, aren't you? I know how the mission of authorship works, I've seen it myself. You're going to abandon your own creation?" At this, Build smiled, more eagerly than ever before, and adjusted his glasses so that sunlight reflected off of them and into the eyes of everyone present. "Pretty much, yes. Bye."

There was a flash of plasmatic light, a hint of ozone, and a sharp crack, and Build vanished from the Battlefield. The Descendants all stared, slackjawed. "Fine! GO!" Piono yelled. "As if we needed you, anyway. We can make our own story. A better story! With—" "Backjack and hookers?" Lothrya Silentread interrupted. Piono blinked uncertainly, his eyes clouding over. "Wh... who are you, exactly?" he asked Lothrya. "Uh... Lothrya? Lothrya Silentread? Interstellar engineer at the forefront of antimatter technology, working tirelessly to blend the magic of the Descendants with the hardest science I can find? I've been fighting with you for... months?" Piono blinked once more, as did everyone around him. "Huh, okay, I don't see why not. Can't believe I forgot you that easily." The Descendants walked off of the battlefield, Pro-Godmodder mingling with Anti-Godmodder mingling with Neutral, and left the Godmodder alone with the Homestuck Invasion's elite, his cape rippling in the wind.

"We had a good run, Richard," Doc Scratch stated in his trademark tone of formality. "But all good things — all things — must come to an end." The Godmodder turned his head frighteningly slowly, grimacing at Scratch's smug aura. "What. Are you talking about." "The Half-Guardian said it himself. His game has run its course, a course predetermined not by the sacred tapestry of the narrative, but a course cut short by his own conscious action. To put things simply, the timeline in which we exist is not the timeline that we fought for." The Godmodder cackled to himself, doubling over in anguish, laughter, and terror. "So that's it?? We just... give up??? On all of our plans?? No, no, NO!" The Godmodder, trembling, pulled out his Banhammer, its twin heads retracting and smoking with malice. "I've been fighting these noobs for MONTHS! It is all I've thought about, believe me. And you, your whole invasion, that's not exactly some random-ass plan you slapped together over a day's work, right?? NO! It's NOT!"

The Godmodder levied his hammer at Scratch, who made no movements in his defense. "I am ordering you to keep fighting with me, Scratch. Keep your goddamn word. KEEP IT!" A couple of stray sparks landed on Doc Scratch's white coat. He patted them down, tiny trails of smoke curling from them. "I have never once failed to keep my word, and I never will," he said calmly. "I pledged to you that every action, and inaction, I took in this fight would be in service of keeping the clockwork of our timeline running as it was meant to. Now that I can no longer do such a thing, I see no reason to waste my time here. You and I are well aware of what happens to doomed timelines, correct?" The Godmodder faltered. "I... Well—" "Then you understand my trepidation in continuing to stay here. With that settled, I bid you good luck, Richard. You may need it."

And in the exact same fashion as Build, Scratch vanished from the Battlefield. The menagerie of troops, ships, and other assorted forces turned away from the ruins of the server and flew off into the sky, engaging warp speed as they vanished from sight. And so, on the hilltop overlooking the smoldering wreckage of the Shatter's castle, there stood two people. The Godmodder. And Split.

Scowling at nothing in particular, the Godmodder turned away with the swish of his cape. But Split, whose body was battered, scarred, and burned, stood rooted to the spot. His hands twitched every so often, as though compelled. His glasses flickered periodically with the light of a thousand dying stars. His trademark grin was marred fresh and dried blood. For minutes after Build's final sermon, he stayed there, only occasionally swaying to the side, in time with the wind. The sun arched through the sky, the heavens awash in gradients of grey, reds, and oranges, until the firmament of GodCraft was lit only by the tiny pinpricks of stars, and the congregation of fires, lava, explosions, and playermade constructions stretching to the infinite horizon. Then Split started to laugh. A low, hollow chuckle from the back of his throat. And then he began to cackle. And then he howled with laughter, doubling over, his entire body heaving with every exaggerated breath.

As quickly as it had begun, Split stopped, his body straightening again like a tuning fork. Then he took off his glasses, crushed them in his hands, and let the shards fall, light twinkling in the shattered lenses. Split opened his eyes, revealing sunken, hollow cavities of inky darkness — and then he vanished.

Not long afterwards, the formal declaration of the end of the Second Godmodding War occurred. The actual forum thread — Destroy the Godmodder 2: Operator! itself — was left to its own vices, Build's message transcribed onto it, presumably by himself, as a final gesture. The core group of twelve Descendants all met together at the exact center of the Battlefield, signing their own treaty. TT2000, Minor107, OpelSpeedster, Crusher48, engie_ninja, ninjatwist321, The_Idea_Modpack_Mod_Man, Talist, Irecreeper, Fseftr, The_Serpent, and K4yne all notarized the document in their own colored signatures. Just hours before, they'd been fighting in the greatest war ever told, but what were they to do now?

The fight was over. Not because the Godmodder was decisively killed through an unbelievable turn of events, and the server was liberated. And not because the Descendants, even more unbelievably, had lost the invincibility that fate granted them, and had suffered the ultimate ragequit. But because of a technicality. A technicality that, the more the players thought about it, seemed perfectly reasonable for them. The war was exhausting, and droning, and formless. It was impossible to keep track of, changing directions too many times to count — and what could any of them do about it? Better for Build to end it himself. Better for them to not worry about that random bad god man anymore.

But immediately after the document was signed, the ground burst open, lava and smoke pouring from the open wound in the world, and the Godmodder jumped forth. "NO! You're not doing this! You're not just running off to some, some INFERIOR STORY now, are you?? Besides, you CAN'T! You're STUCK HERE, STUCK BECAUSE OF MY OPERATION!" "Hold on, Godmodder," TT2000 said quickly, gripping his trademark bows as the Godmodder sneered. "We never said anything about leaving. In fact, we're all pretty eager to stay!" The Godmodder's grimace deepened. "...What do you mean." "The whole group of us have some pretty great plans for this place, Godmodder! Plans that won't be possible without you! Just think about it. Think about it logically, reasonably. As you always do!" TT2000 chuckled at that last part, but he recovered, gripping the Godmodder's shoulder with his hand. TT2000's DTG pendant swayed around his neck.

"Look at all of those wretches down there," The_Serpent growled, stepping forward and extending their hand to convey the scope of the Godmodder's kingdom. "What do they have that we don't? Absolutely nothing. You are a god in this universe, and as a collective, we share virtually all of your powers." engie_ninja's form, constrained in layers upon layers of armor, clunked across the field, shaking the ground. "The only bloody problem is that you keep us locked down with OP Scales and Curses and whatever else you have under that cape of yours. If you got rid of them..." The Godmodder blinked, staring at the ground. His grip on his Banhammer lessened slightly. "What are you proposing, exactly," he murmured just loud enough to hear.

"Isn't it obvious?" pionoplayer said with a smirk. He jumped through the air, landing softly in front of the Godmodder, Ircucvci in hand. "There's not a war anymore, and there aren't any sides anymore. But we all still have our powers. You're still the Godmodder. And because of the Narrative, we're still the Descendants. Think about what we could do if we all joined forces! If we all recreated this server, this universe, to what it always could have been! Who cares about those millions of players? Who cares about the Homestuck Invasion? They're all meaningless distractions. We're what really matters. We're the people... that can Rebuild the Godmodder."

And the Godmodder's grip refocused, his hunchback form rising into his usual imposing stature. He turned to look at the crowd of Descendants, the people who, just hours ago, were fighting him. Modpack and HIM, still armed with their Microsoft-brand weaponry. Talist and his kitsune familiar, Wilson, at the ready. The_Nonexistent_T... Wait, what? Who was that? The Godmodder didn't ever remember seeing... wait... Memories uncertainly filtered into the Godmodder's head. Doors. Severed arms. The origins of things. He remembered, now. The crowd of Descendants only continue to grow — but now, they were his allies. His companions. He smiled as wide as he could. "I like the sound of that," the Godmodder boomed. "I like the sound of that WAY TOO MUCH."

He raised his hammer, and the crowd cheered, their peals bouncing off the clouds.

In the month following the conclusion of the Second Godmodding War, GodCraft transformed from a collective of anarchy, destruction, and limitless attempts at starting the fires of civilization to an oligarchic cult of personality that fanned the already-present flames of rebellion into a raging wildfire of absolute chaos. Gone were the Descendants, their Sacred Ground, and their factions. Present were was the Crafted Gods, the rulers of an entire universe, now and forever.

Understanding that the Narrative had granted them an infinite array of powers, the Crafted Gods began abusing this to its greatest potential, imposing their will on Minecraft like never before. Their motivations were fairly simple — to access the very heart of Minecraft's raw creativity and to rule the entire universe. To subjugate the 99.9% that was beneath them, the floods of microbial life known as "the rest of Minecraft's players and entities." To, potentially, overthrow the gods themselves and establish a new life as the emperors of Fiction — a new line of deities that could rule far better than anyone else ever could. And they got to work immediately.

Summoning as many creatures as he could, the Godmodder tore fissures through the ground, conjuring mutated combinations of Terrors, gleaming hyperionic Mechs forged from other worlds, and Turrets tall enough to stretch past the block limit. They would steamroll entire continents, flattening the meager works of hundreds of thousands of players, creating clouds of smoke and ash and detritus visible from space. Mass cooling raged around the planet, rendering what little life and ecosystems that had begun to form throughout the server's lifetime unfeasible. The massive cobblestone pyramids, walls, and ramps that had formed through the constant clash of fire and water, the legions of Enderdragons and Withers and raids of mobs spawning themselves over and over through whatever players knew how to hack into GodCraft to enter Creative Mode, were all pulverized into ashes. And following behind the Godmodder were the former Descendants themselves, who looked upon these swarms of players and saw not the people they had been fighting to free, but the prisoners in the goddamn cave, stuck looking at a screen. What else could be done? It was the Descendants' job to show them the light. To show them the truth. That there would always be someone better.

TT2000, master of the Players' Quest, shunted thousands of people into pocket dimensions, forcing them to die over and over and over attempting to complete Minecraft's Survival Mode, and forcing those who somehow won to gather enough materials to make an entire fleet of 100-Post Cannons, seething with unlimited energy, the raw forces at the Dawn of Time, a fusion of gilded creation and scarlet oblivion. He barraged the field with soldiers made of arrows, with prominences and coronae of the Green Sun, and with promises of cake that were left undelivered. Irecreeper called upon the unstoppable might of the Land of Chairs and Anarchy, of Tabletop, and of the infinite elemental planes of Chaos that lurked behind the curtains of fate. An undulating pattern formed in the fractured, kaleidoscopic sky, seething and hissing and crackling waves of butterflies converging on the server all at once, ravaging it, picking it down to its foundations, pouring hundreds upon thousands of bullets at every conceivable point in the server, tearing apart the collective works of millions. Dozens of factions rose up to combat the threats, but enemy stands sabotaged their efforts, building themselves into nuclear thrones, irradiating entire biomes, filling the air with the stench of death. The butterflies warped and fluctuated and shifted into the symbol of an empty set, a horrible cracking sound keening from out of their visage as the true meaning of Chaos made itself known. PitTheAngel and ManiacMastR, guardians of heaven and hell, worked in tandem, pulling the heavens, the waters, and the earth together in an impossible display. Holy sunbeams of destruction rained down onto hundreds of players, as stars were plucked from the cosmos and hurtled down to earth. From every crack, every fissure, every hole in the earth, there came a torrent of red water, spiraling up into the clouds, earthquakes ripping apart even the bedrock foundations of the universe and tsunamis cascading down onto anything the light touched. But the water's force and its pressure weren't even the issues — it was the soul of whatever the water flowed through instantly rotted, their conceptual essence decaying. Chasms hundreds of kilometers wide opened up in the ground as bedrock loosened up, as mountains crumbled and fell into sickly dirt, as players' skins fell apart around their bones and they shattered into bits and pieces.

Fseftr faded into the background, revealing its existence as a hollow artificial intelligence, a projection kept intact by an ever-farther-reaching, insidious force, one universe away. Blinking out of warpspeed was Blue, at the forefront of legions of HMAS carriers, dropships, and troops. Missiles and bombs far beyond any yield Earth could produce stampeded the server, demolishing even its outer reaches, railguns and superlasers crackling to life and pinpointed with frightening accuracy at GodCraft's most sacred, hallowed spots — places marked by the gods as teeming with lore. The temple of the Ancestral Bone, demolished in a fireball that split the heavens in half. The monuments at the crater of Monolithium, a site of pilgrimage for millions, ruined. The leftover roots of Yggdrasil at the very center of the world, ripped into ashes. Crusher48 and engie_ninja, OP Scale be damned, combined forces to create the ultimate weaponry. The chains and locks in engie's armor began loosening in tune with the dying, decaying heartbeat of the universe, the outlines of hallowed geometric forms inscribing his true form. Crusher48, drawing upon his own wellspring of power, used these specifications to produce an even stronger suit of armor — not one for engie, but for one to house the greatest armada of guns ever conceived. The Perfect Metatron's Cube, a paradoxical assortment of Platonic solids and thirteen flowing spheres, hummed to horrible, malformed life, blocking out the twinkling, surging stars and the reddening sun. Encircling it, engie's True Form, an incomprehensible, arcane conduit of destruction that stretched across universes. Instantaneously, the two sped off, the Perfect Metatron's Cube activating its own Weath Rays to fire unblockable light speed beams that cracked through the server, turning the air into plasma and firing off assaults worse than nuclear at every conceivable point in space. The True Form of engie carved through the universe as though it was a meal, stretching the chaos even higher, attacking abandoned single player worlds, servers left to rot, and feasting on their potential, the crumbs falling onto GodCraft and crushing it on all sides.

The_Idea_Modpack_Mod_Man aimed his entire arsenal of weaponry — a stockpile of auburn rifles, of machine guns, of miniguns, of railguns — at the heavens, that whirlwind of stars and water and light and fire, and a torrent of doom rained upon GodCraft's moon from its far side, bending across the cosmos and crashing clean through as the bullets, and the moon, arched back down onto the server. The entire server was awash in a red glow, Modpack's body wracked with horror and pain as their skin peeled and flaked off into a red fire, their eyes gleaming white with the inviolable truth of the Secret of the Void, that the protagonism and antagonism of the world were linked at the very root. Continents folded in on itself, the server rollbacking through a million points in time simultaneously, events that had never occurred and had played out long before broadcasting themselves into every dimension. A battle at the arctic under the backdrop of galactic phenomena; an inviolate gateway at the ends of the earth; a green figure locked in strife with his own shadow; a meteor falling through a universe and onto a sacred temple; a man opening a door and casting light onto existence — all the horrors subjected themselves onto the players, and they were so afraid. For behold, it comes, riding on the clouds: the apocalypse itself, now in fast-forward and HD. insert_generic_username, his green skull flickering with the lights that heralded the demon who is always already here, heralded his coming by rings upon rings upon rings of sets of eight eight-sided dice, spinning and gleaming in a fractalline kaleidoscope. He held out his right hand and beckoned some unseen force, a pillar of multicolored light shining onto his position and bestowing upon him an artifact of unfathomable power: the Infinity Gauntlet, keeper of the eleven thousand Elemental Planes. Rolling all his sets of dice at once, probability found itself at a complete loss — there was no path to chart, as there was no plot — and every conceivable dice rolled an empty set, unlocking a cesspool of negative energy that flowed into the Gauntlet itself, supercharging it with an absence of light, of heat, of energy of any kind. His robotic form straining under the pressure, generic lifted his Gauntlet above his head and... used it to equip, aim, and fire Daybreak, his most trusted weapon. However, the negative energy funneled into the gun, corrupting its holy conflagration into the end times itself — a weapon not of the morning star, but of the midnight hour — Nightfall. GodCraft was eclipsed by the Eclipse, as it collided with the server in a maelstrom of molten metal, of columns of fire and plasma and electricity, of the celestial machinery that still existed shattering itself. And it was consumed by a vortex of absolute nothingness, a fate with a price worse than oblivion, an absolute absence that corroded all known information.

The dozens of other Crafted Gods engaged in their own miniature wars, exactly like this, repeated ad infinitum. In just a few impossibly short hours, the entirety of GodCraft had fallen, razed beyond every conceivable foundation, with only bedrock being exposed — and even then, the bedrock was cracked in more places than ever thought. The raw power of the Void and the Nether leaked through, corrupting what was left with the processes of voidstone and the Red Sea. Millions of players, cursed to endlessly respawn, were left with absolutely nothing. No way out. No options. No hope.

The Godmodder lifted up his Banhammer triumphantly, his grin splitting his face as though it was a tear in the world. Lightning bounced off of every point on his hammerheads, superheating the air to an unbearable degree. Every player in Minecraft — every inhabitant of the once-great universe — was piled in a corner at the very edge of the world, forced to watch as the skies crashed down upon them. The Godmodder's hammer swung... and the entire server rollbacked itself to before the chaos of the Crafted Gods started. Millions of Minecraft players around the world held their breath, concerned and confused. Everything was back to the way it was before... but the pain they'd felt was still there. So what was going on...

...Then they saw the Crafted Gods running from beyond the edge of the world for another assault. And it all happened again. Every strike, every blow, every projectile, every explosion, every crater, every piece of the puzzle that rounded up to an unfortunately inevitable end. It all happened again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. There was no reason to fight. But still, it was their daily lives.

And so the Third Godmodding War waged itself.

In the aftermath of the war, the server had become completely unrecognizable.

The Crafted Gods were worshipped by millions of people as exactly that — gods, that had taken the universe of Minecraft and resculpted it according to their own desires. Their previous war with the Godmodder didn't matter. It was barely relevant in the grand scheme of things — how could it ever have been? It was clear now that that war was barely even a war at all, compared to this. They had been on the same side all along, with the Godmodder a misunderstood antihero fighting against the true villains.

The Homestuck Invasion, a fleet that took months to scratch out of existence. The Arrival, led by Project Binary, a campaign so insidiously tied to the roots of Fiction that no one even knew. The Conflict itself, the true powers that were, steering the motivations and actions of every possible villain for their own purposes. But they were all gone now. That narrative didn't matter. It never did. What mattered was that the Godmodder and his Descendants were the true gods — and so it fell on them to rebuild the ashes of the universe in whatever way they saw fit. This was the natural order of things.

And so, the Crafted Gods had entered the pantheon of the divine. The untamed wilderness of the server, millions upon millions upon millions of blocks, was deemed a wasteland too impure for any gods to touch. The Battlefield, the Sacred Ground of the Descendants, was cordoned off from the rest of the world in an impenetrable dome and launched high into the air, serving as the third celestial body of the heavens, ranking above even the sun and the moon. It was an omniscient panopticon, a temple lined with immaculately carved statues of the Crafted Gods that every single Minecraft player could see at any given time and revere. The actual players of GodCraft had been united under the rightful law of the Crafted Gods for days upon days, working only to serve their rulers, stripping the world of its infinitude of resources and offering them up as sacrifices, splitting into factions to govern the new world order via mortal subdivisions, and interpreting, over and over again, the sacred texts the Crafted Gods left behind: an ancient tome called Homestuck, which was treated as simultaneously the greatest and worst thing ever written.

Charting a course through the skies, the dome of the Crafted Gods became an idyllic utopia, untouched in every respect by the horrible clawing chaos on the world below. Its inhabitants became the rulers of their kingdom, a kingdom stretching across countless worlds and stars, issuing edicts and proclamations designed seemingly only to further the hell that millions of people were trapped in. Every Descendant had progressed beyond their characters, and beyond their screens, becoming living, breathing myths rendered in their full glory — the vision that they deserved.

TT2000 was given the sovereign title of Crafted Godhead, rumored to be a result of his charisma manipulating the electorate. He was responsible for interpreting Homestuck and the many other lesser sacred texts that comprised the sum total of all knowledge, for governing the Legislate, a group of clones of the Fourteenth Player, Steve Cubit, and for serving as the judge, jury, and executioner of GodCraft. Minor107 directed the constant mission to clear the world of all its resources, stocking stones and metals to fuel ancient, cryptic refineries of technicolor power. Blue, now the proper CEO of HMASBC, was the primary imposer of martial law on the universe, deploying troops and ships wherever necessary to "keep the peace," and using her experience on Earth as a stockbroker to maximize profits further. ninjatwist321 led the standing armies, foremost on the front lines as a red-blooded soldier of war. Piono and Eric, in an absolute miracle, joined forces, combining the fleets of Project Nexus and the newly-christened IUPC into a task force with the might of dozens of universes, created not to ensure peace over all of existence, but the Crafted God's peace. The two of them were elected joint Chieftains over this union, the Inter-Fictional Piono Corps, with Aegis-A095 as their third-in-command. Their first order of business: successfully establishing a permanent gateway to Paradox Space, orchestrating the ascensions to God Tier of all four Kids and all twelve Trolls, resurrected and controlled by a line of elemental alchemies to serve the Crafted Gods. Crusher48 was elected as the Left Hand of TT2000, representing the entire O4.8 Council of his own Foundation, an organization of unprecedented power that catalogued, controlled, and used any and all anomalous objects found in the universe of Minecraft.

Serpent, still the most loyal to the Godmodder out of all of them, donned his burned cape, taking the powers of the Ancestral Artifacts to become not a proper Psi-Godmodder, but a terrifying facsimile of one — a mythical monster, rumored to strike without warning or pattern, waging a horrible orchid war on the universe. PitTheAngel rose to become the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the incarnate iconography of all religion possible in Minecraft. He shed his mortal form, becoming a column of living, ten-colored flame, encircled by waves of feathered wings, inscribed by a halo of thorns and circlets of light, cloaked in the armor of the many true gods. OpelSpeedster commanded the space program, working with the established governments to spearhead a set of rockets, controlled by hyper light, sacred geometry, and the reaches of higher dimensions. Irecreeper became the figurehead of the masses, ascending to the rank of TT2000's Mouth. He was a messianic everyman wrapped in the cloak of the World Tree who spread propaganda of chaos and anarchy across the entire world. He whipped mobs of players, tens of thousands strong, into a frenzy, playing their lives as if through a sophisticated grid, and incepting their actions. Nimbleguy was the arbiter of the reverse panopticon, ascending to the rank of TT2000's Eyes, his vast, intricate network of subpersonalities and artificial intelligences creating a surveillance system that could span the entire universe if need be, leaving no stone unordered. Talist, the Veteran, worked his Narrative powers to the point of exhaustion, summoning stockpiles upon stockpiles of helper entities in the catacombs below the Battlefield, and building his own personal AXIS to augment his frail body. He rose to become the CEO of Wilson & Sons Co., a conglomerate megacorp dedicated to mass-producing any conceivable potion. Massive amounts of resources were funneled into the project, spreading brewing wars across the universe and fueling a gargantuan underground trade, with Talist's entities finding ways to bring the profits straight back to him. Similarly, engie_ninja and Amperz4nd's Demimech joined together and established their own dominion over the wartime sector, refitting the ashes of Engietech into Remarkable Inc. If Talist provided the incentives for war through his mind-altering potions, Remarkable Inc. gave the ingredients, flooding continents with caches of weapons banned for universes around. Voidstone rifles, antimatter autobows, grenades mixed with alloys of monochronium and magetear, miniguns supercharged with the Green Sun, and much, much more.

Kayne established a renowned hospital throughout the universe, taking in the sick and infirm that were displaced by the Third Godmodding War and nursing them back by stitching them into terrifying homunculi of flesh and weaponry. His credentials were so high that he began a part-time job in The Hospital, graduating to conceptual status. Kalare Erelye retired from the Battlefield, accepting the rank of Crafted God but confining himself to his inner sanctum of Grayhold. Rumors told of his exploits in trying to summon materials and entities not normally present in any possible cosmology of Fiction. NinjaV2403 was the Ender Diplomat, pooling together a contingent of Endermen from across the universe who still remembered the legends of the Chosen Few and their descendants. From these foundations, he linked together thousands of End Cities and refuel their Ships, creating a naval fleet stretching through the static skies of the End and patrolling the Void beyond. ManiacMastR was the Nether Diplomat, resuming his rightful status as Lord of Hell, successor of Herobrine, and the Fourth-Wall Guardian of Minecraft. By channeling the life force of every creature in the infinite array of Nethers, Maniac managed to do the unthinkable and tame the Red Dragon onto his own side. Just as Pit became an incarnation of divinity, Maniac descended into a column of smoke, fire, and lightning, a demonic maelstrom of bats and curses and quartz that, when displayed against the Red Sea, formed a hurricane of impossible proportions. Netpatham oversaw the construction of the Battlefield's higher education, UniversitEvE, and pursued a degree in metafictional cosmology. From there, his army of hexagonal robots mass-produced enough Tumors to generate an entire gradient of Colored Suns — 16,777,216 of them, enough for every possible RGB value. They created an impenetrable cluster of light at the very heart of existence. insert_generic_username pursued a darker path as a feared kingpin, lurking at the heart of the Perfectly Generic Casino, the chief source of entertainment in the universe. Thousands would come, blow all their savings to play games with those loaded sets of eight eight-sided dice, and lose it all — plus their heads, when the dice summoned guillotines, weasel kings, or whatever else they fancied.

The_Nonexistent_Tazz was elected as the Right Hand of TT2000, representing the Court of Unity. Though TT2000 claimed to be sovereign judge, jury, and executioner, Tazz's right hand, a tear in space, held the hands, souls, and willpower of every entity to ever exist in Fiction, giving him the official, holy world on all judgements enacted by the Crafted Gods, stretching from the origins of the world to the last tick of the clock. 5l1n65h07 shed his physical avatar entirely, layering himself into the very foundation of the universe. He functioned as a better line of defense than the Hexahedron itself, constantly writing and rewriting the Source Code of Reality to either stop glitches before they occurred, or to forcefully induce corruption as an attack. Lothrya Silentread spearheaded an intergalactic delivery service, inspired by her forays into the inner workings of Futurama. As Commander of the company, this gave her insider knowledge on who was doing what, what was going where, and where important things were happening, allowing her to adjust her own army of elf clones accordingly to force favorable outcomes. Modpack and CobaltShade, as chief alchemists, expanded the lowly Forge into a sprawling Obsidian Citadel, replete with every conceivable alchemiter and alchemy. Ten-level limit be damned, the castle was equipped with enough resources to produce The Operator, the entity that created the Destroy the Godmodder series, in a week — and rumors told of a plot to crack the code that would let alchemies of level -1 be created as well. Alex, Modpack's escaped split personality, started a business designing thrones. It really seemed to be his calling. That, and the technological megacorporation of Applsoftendo, which dominated the framework of the new universe of Minecraft. That was also his calling. Crystal, ascending to the rank of TT2000's Ears, was metafictionally aware, as always. Which meant that he knew full well that something was terribly wrong.

Which left just the Godmodder. The Godmodder, simultaneously the highest and lowest of all the Crafted Gods. He was given sovereignty over the universe — over GodCraft — as it was his at the start, even though now, it had metastasized into something much more than anyone could have ever planned. He had command over the terrors of the deep, the curses of ancient times, and the veil separating man from myth. Yet he was constantly, ALWAYS followed by the other Crafted Gods engaging in musical numbers with him, singing and dancing with music playing from no discernible source, as they attempted to "redeem" him. To give him a "character arc." To peel back his stony hard and his previously cartoonishly villainous ways and to prove that he was never really all bad — he was just misunderstood! He was an antihero fighting against the real villains all along, as was said earlier! The Godmodder was intolerant of these antics, but over time, he put up less and less of a fuss. As though it was making sense to him. As though he really was softening.

But it didn't change the fact that something was terribly wrong. Crystal grimaced. There was work that had to be done. There was work that everyone had to do.

Weeks upon weeks of the Crafted Gods' rule passed.

The universe of Minecraft was bent upwards into an unstoppable arc, reaching out of its boundaries and into the Void that flanked it. The rules of the Operation were modified. Controlled. Shifted. Players could access their own worlds, even create new ones — but they could never leave their computers. Players never had to eat, drink, or sleep — but they could never age. Millions of people across the world were stuck, slaving away at their computers, until the end of time. None of them knew what they were doing, of course — none of them had the complete picture, or even knew how to decode the full power of the Gods' sacred texts.

But the commands they'd been given were simple enough on the surface. Millions of players were trained to operate the code of Minecraft, stripping through its interface as a game and cracking through into the limitless, teeming, shimmering code of the universe itself. They were trained to mine every resource, loot every temple, kill every entity — to suck the whole thing dry. It mattered not what destruction they wrought, for it was in service of the citadel in the sky, capped with the inviolate statues of the old gods and the new. They had cleansed the world of its impurities in the scalding judgement of the refiner's fire, and they could do it again if they desired.

"Godsdamn!" TT2000 exclaimed in the realm above the clouds, the Chalice of Oryx in his left hand. He took a hearty swig from the sacred glass. "Here I was, thinking that world peace was a pipe dream. But we made it, folks!" TT's toothy grin revealed itself; he set down the Chalice and clutched at the DTG medallion chained to his neck. "We made it. This whole world. Wasn't nothing but a bunch of rocks and dust before we got here." TT2000's throne was carved from solid emerald. Save for the way that any light which shone on it was reflected and intensified until it scattered across the impossibly vast throne room in rainbows, it was disconcertingly plain. Flanked on his sides were Tazz and Crusher; next to them were Nimbleguy and Irecreeper. Granted honorary seats at the council for their service were Pit, Maniac, NinjaV, Piono, and Eric.

TT2000 hopped off his throne, floating through the air, even though the sounds of his steps echoed across the halls. He insisted on no carpets — the tiled floor was polished to a shine. "Business is booming! Profits are high, and so are our resources. Our plan is in motion, the Legislate and the Court are in joint agreement, and the Prophets' Song is perfectly in tune!" TT2000's grin slid off his face, his brow furrowed in concern. "So tell me what in the hells are going on, now." Goanna67 faltered, sweat beading down his robotic head. Pieces of his human form lay in tatters around his body. "It's the proletariat, Moniker." TT2000's eyebrow arched. "Moniker?" "I... That's what they call you, sir. They believe your name, and your titles, are too holy to speak aloud, so they refer to you in code." TT2000 laughed coldly, holding out his hand; the Chalice sped to it. "Of course they would," he muttered, taking another sip and motioning for Goanna to continue. "They... they're getting restless. The propaganda, the cults, the camps... They've been working, but they're only working up to a point. Riots are starting, sir. Terrible riots. Things we haven't seen since..." TT2000 held up a hand, downing the whole glass.

"Crusher," TT2000 said sharply, turning back to his throne. "What do you make of this?" Crusher, cloaked in purple silhouette as always, betrayed no expression. "Reports of anomalies among the general populace are undeniable. Entire groups of people are ontologically corrupting themselves, as if through some phantom illness." "Illness?" Tazz spoke, resting his omnipresent hand on his chin. "Should we call in Kayne?" Crusher shook his head. "I doubt the phenomenon is literally a virus," he continued. "But it's a succinct analogy. It has a vector, there are outbreak sites, and... it is spreading." TT2000 glowered. "How'd you get so banged up, Goanna? Last I heard you were, oh, I don't know..." His hand cupped Goanna's chin, holding it up. "...A god. Like US." Goanna took several steps backwards, almost falling off balance.

"I, uh, well... They were... more powerful than I anticipated." Piono slammed his clenched fists onto his own throne, standing bolt upright. The crown of flames over his head flickered angrily. "More powerful than US?! You and I and EVERY OTHER PUNK HERE knows that THEY are NOT US." The runes etched into Piono's body shuddered through different forms. Goanna's eyes widened. "You think I don't know that?! I know what I'm supposed to be! What we're ALL supposed to be! And I'm telling you that they... were a match for me. My shotguns. My hope. I almost tried my ultimate move, but... it would have been too risky." It was Tazz's turn to leer. "Mph. Fair. Using the Three Syllables is only a short-term solution, regardless." TT2000 turned again. "Nimble! My guy. Care to chime in? Are your eyes capable of seeing? And what of you, Irecreeper? Can your mouth actually talk?" The two of them grimaced.

"Yes, they can," Nimbleguy said. "I see everything. I know what's going on." "Then why didn't you do anything?!" TT2000 barked. He drew his hand into his sweeping leather coat, pulling out Starry Night — still his weapon of choice, after all this time. "Do I have to do everything myself?" Nimbleguy held up a hand this time. "I couldn't do anything. Goanna67 is right. It's too much for any one of us alone. If the Crafted Gods band together, we may stand a chance." "Stand a chance??? Are you kidding me? We're THIS close to escaping the Trifecta, and now an army of infinitely lesser lifeforms is our number one priority?!" Green electricity crackled around TT2000's body, which, of course, periodically gave way to prophetic images. "TT, he's... right," Irecreeper said with a sigh. "I've heard it all. I know their thoughts." TT2000 hounded on Ire, enraged. "What." "Some of them are starting to say that we're... wrong. That we're not supposed to be the god-kings of Fiction, and that the Godmodder is... beyond redeeming." TT2000's maelstrom subsided, and visible fear swept throughout the throne room.

"What?!" TT2000 said in hushed tones. "I know," Irecreeper said gravely. "They think that... this isn't the way things should be going. That we should be fighting against the Godmodder. That the rightful end to all of this is his death, and us leaving Minecraft forever. Put simply... they want democracy." There was an uncomfortable silence. "And also riots." "This must not be," Pit boomed. He'd chosen to manifest in a humanoid form, his heavy white robes obscuring the divine light pouring from his souls. "To modify the gods, and to break the yoke of narrative, is blasphemy. Richard is our protagonist — nothing more, and nothing less." Eric's gilded eyes narrowed from his throne. "I know where this is going," he spat, rising from his seat. "You do?" Goanna asked quietly. Eric nodded. "These people are being controlled by something. Someone. They think they're in a different story, and they want to make their end a reality. They think they have our powers. And they might. There's a chance... It's small, but it's there... that we could be infected, too. Any one of us."

In the deathly silence that followed, the doors to the throne room of the Crafted Gods were kicked open. Speeding through the gap was Crystal, panting heavily. He eyed his seat on the council, which was empty, seeing as he had just arrived. "Sorry... for the delay, TT." TT2000 nodded. "At ease, Crystal." Crystal floated through the throne room, eyes darting to every Crafted God present, sweat dripping down his face. He prepared to take a seat— "Actually! Before you sit. Can I ask you something?" TT2000 called out. Crystal tensed, but slowly returned TT's gaze. "Goanna has a reason for his appearance. He was attacked a peculiar band of insurgents. I'd assume you know something about them, what with your skillset. With that said — what's your reason?" There was no warmth in TT's eyes. "Where were you."

The whole throne room seemed to converge on Crystal at once, all eyes turning to him. He wanted desperately to say nothing, to believe nothing, to think that everything was fine and normal. That he was a Crafted God now and forever, and all was well. But he couldn't. And he wouldn't. Because— "Something is terribly wrong," Crystal said. The words seemed to have a physical presence, causing everyone present to flinch. Goanna shrieked. "Th-they all... they all spoke in that voice! Everyone that attacked me! Oh gods, oh GODS NO!" While Goanna cowered, TT2000 wheeled around, aiming Starry Night at Crystal's face. "Come on then, Crystal," TT said with a steely edge. "It's a simple question. Where. Were. You?" Crystal said nothing before bounding out of this paragraph.

Everyone present swore, drawing their weapons. Pit and Maniac turned into howling cyclones of iconography, with Tazz surrounded by a manifold selection of severed arms, Ire surround himself with rings upon rings of chaotic bullets, Piono drawing Ircucvci from his flaming crown, and Eric casting runes rapid-fire, encircling the room with wards and traps. "Nimble, Goanna," TT said quickly. "Alert everyone on the field that there's been a breach in the throne room. Seal off this room when you're done." The two nodded, speeding away. "Crystal can't hide forever," Crusher said, gripping a pillar of stone that seemed like it had survived many injuries. "His metatextual attacks can only go on for so long." Eric finished his incantations, sighing in relief. "I've set up for anything he could do next." The Crafted Gods assembled a ring, weapons pointed around the room, waiting for the exact moment to strike. But in the middle of waiting, a robotic assistant's voice rang out through the throne room. "Your next visitor — Bomber57 — has arrived." TT2000 froze. Bomber... 57? He didn't know anyone with that name, he never had. He looked around, and noticed every other Crafted God had similarly concerned faces. But, as though a switch had been clicked, the confusion passed. TT remembered now. Bomber was the CEO of Hellco., another one of the megacorps that rose in the wake of the Third Godmodding War. He was valuable politically, financially, and diplomatically — whatever his complaints were, they couldn't be ignored. But there was still a more pressing matter. And with that—

Crystal re-entered this paragraph, instantly pinned to the ground by the force of dozens of counterspells and wards. His purple coat began to rip at the seams, and very real pain crossed his face as magical electricity coursed through him. "Y-you, you don't..." Crystal tried to speak through clenched teeth. "Oh! Are you confessing?" TT asked, glaring at Crystal, weapon still drawn. "Go ahead. Speak up." Crystal howled, his eyes burning. "You don't know what you're doing. This ISN'T OUR TIMELINE AND YOU KNOW IT." A crackling fire pulsed around his body, knocking the Crafted Gods back. They all fired their weapons at once, but their aim went haywire. The absolute zero of Ircucvci, a maelstrom of stained glass, one million shotgun shells, an arrow forged from the space between worlds, and the flames of Hell that lick at your feet all went wide, bouncing across the room. The outburst seemed to sap Crystal of the last of his energy, and he crumpled to the ground, his eyes barely staying open.

"Alright, that's it. You'll pay for this," TT2000 growled, regaining his balance and stampeding towards Crystal's defenseless body. "Wait!" Tazz shouted, holding out his fluctuating right arm in between the two of them. TT2000, visibly shaken by Tazz's interference, paled, as Tazz doubled over in pain, his left hand clutching his bushy orange hair. "I... I don't know how it's possible, but..." Tazz turned to stare at TT2000. "I think he's telling the truth." TT2000 was now incredibly pissed off. He raised Arcum Odysseus, an upgraded version of Notch's own bow, and skewered Tazz through the heart with a ray of light stripped from the first star. TT then ran over to Crystal, separating his bow into two razor-sharp needles, and levied them over Crystal. He brought them down, the blades acting as a whistling jackhammer, cleaving through the air—

But, impossibly, he was filled with dozens of conflicting memories at once. Of a continuing siege against the Godmodder. Of an emerald manor hidden one universe away, and of the prophetic images he'd experienced inside. Of a serpent so strong that threatened to devour the shining sun that was plot itself, and of its untimely arrival that toppled the pillars of the Void. Of the progression of the Descendants — not an anachronistic assortment, but... the friends he made along the way. He realized all of this simultaneously, and he realized how clear it looked, and how vividly he remembered it. It was as though these memories stood out perfectly against this world, rendered in vivid black and white.

And it was then that Tazz and TT2000 realized that something was terribly wrong.

The blades carved into the tiled floor less than an inch away from Crystal's head. TT20000, murmuring with the divine power invested in him, began to heal Crystal and Tazz's wounds. The other Gods readied their weapons, aiming at the three of them. "TT!" Crusher snapped, aiming a sleek black railgun. "Don't tell me you've been infected, too." TT grimaced. What was he supposed to say? What could he even tell them? How else was he supposed to tell them that— "Something is terribly wrong," Goanna muttered to himself. All eyes whipped towards him. "I... I shouldn't be here," Goanna said. "I shouldn't be here, not like this, it's... This is all wrong." The remaining Crafted Gods huddled into a circle, weapons drawn. "Piono, I'm..." Eric began to say something, but then stopped. Piono's crown of flames flashed dangerously. "What. Do you have an attack plan? Because that's what we need." "No, I... I'm sorry," Eric muttered, putting his hand to his chest.

Immediately, a second deluge of wards that Eric had prepared earlier activated, constricting Maniac, Pit, Ire, NinjaV, Crusher, Nimbleguy, and Piono. They were forcefully dragged up to the limitless ceiling, disappearing from sight. Eric turned to TT2000, Tazz, Crystal, and Goanna with a forlorn expression. "Something is terribly wrong," he said, putting on his gloves. "You were right, Crystal. I think a part of me always knew, but... I was too scared to admit it." Crystal nodded slowly. "Don't mention it," he said, withdrawing a ring from his coat pocket and putting it on his right hand. Chunks of amethyst attached themselves on, creating a shimmering gauntlet — the Hand of Crystal. Crystal cracked its multifaceted knuckles. "So... What now?" TT2000 said, glancing at his ruined throne. "We have this knowledge, now. At any moment the other Crafted Gods will come rushing over here." Crystal grabbed onto the front door of reality and pulled it open. "We get the hell out," he said, and jumped through.

The rest of them followed suit, and the front door shut just as the throne room's doors were knocked clean off of their hinges. "Piono! I came as fast as I could!" Pope Bill zoomed into the room, clutching his staff and his mitre. Bomber casually strolled into the room as well, admit the flood of other Crafted Gods. He whistled. "Business," Bomber said, "Is not booming."

"We need to find him! It's our only option," TT2000 insisted, trudging across the terrain that seemed to be clutching at his legs, pulling him backwards, with every step. "I respect that statement, TT. But. Keep this in mind. You will not like what you find," Goanna said matter-of-factly, walking through the ground perfectly fine, even as the rest of the Crafted Gods struggled. "Well I don't!" Ire yelled. "If the Far Lands are trying this hard to stop us from reaching them, then we should probably call it off, huh?"

More Crafted Gods had come to the startling realization that something was terribly wrong since the Strife of the Throne Room. Irecreeper and Blue had joined the cause, as had Generic, NinjaV, and, surprisingly, Hezetor. It had seemed that Descendants who would have fought in the Godmodding Wars, had they kept going, had been spontaneously appearing, regardless of the war's actual chronology. Even people who'd never fought in the Second Godmodding War — such as Hezetor — were present. There had always been a sense among the Crafted Gods that their numbers kept increasing, and now they knew it for sure. But this presented a problem — how were they supposed to overcome an enemy that had as many troops as it wanted?

"Their numbers won't matter," Crystal said as he walked through the ground. Textures and models stuttered with increasing regularity the farther the group walked to the Far Lands. "We can end this all with one clean shot. All we need to do is talk to him. TT2000 is right." TT nodded. It seemed like an eternity ago, but he remembered it clearly. He remembered Build claiming that he would retire and live in the Far Lands. There was absolutely no guarantee that he'd actually be there, but it was their best option. Once upon a time, Build had controlled the Narrative. And when he'd stopped... something had gone terribly wrong.

Crystal's door could only open so close to the Far Lands; after a certain point, the code of the world became too corrupted to shortcut through. The Descendants still managed to bypass the army of millions of players running throughout GodCraft, an army which seemed to be coming to the same realization that these Descendants had: that something was terribly wrong. Maybe they would be friendly, now that the Descendants had come to this realization — but no one wanted to risk it. And now, they had to deal with a world that was actively resisting them — and only an uncertain assurance that their goal was at what lay beyond.

"I guess we at least know we're going the right way," Irecreeper muttered. "Y'know something?" Generic piped up, his overcoat still seizure-inducing. "I really wish we had some method of transportation that could get us to the Far Lands as fast as reasonably possible. Like, oh, let's say a ship. A ship designed for this exact eventuality. You wouldn't happen t—" Eric sighed dramatically. "Generic, if I called in the Preston Cole, the IFPC, and probably a dozen other groups, would instantly notice. Are you willing to take that risk? Are any of you?" The Descendants thought, and looked ahead. The horizon stretched seemingly endlessly, curving into the sky yet simultaneously down into the depths of hell. It waved and wiggled and twitched with every single vibration of its fluctuating code, trees unrooting themselves, floating in the air, multiplying, and stuttering. What few mobs there were rendered themselves in horribly glitchy color, their noises like tortured screams. No player dared make it this far.

In this prolonged contemplation, Generic simply said "Yes," rolling sixteen sets of eight loaded eight-sided dice. A giant sphere of corrupted light emerged from the sky, and, called to life as though through a thousand of Frankenstein's thunderstorms, the UNSC Preston Cole materializing above. Generic smirked and motioned ahead: "After you." Everyone except Eric filed onto the ship with glee. Then, with comparatively little fanfare, the ship's thrusters activated, warping through the absence of space and time and charting a path directly for the Far Lands.

"Well, we're almost there," TT2000 said in the ship's bridge, staring ahead at the outside view, depicting a whirlwind of scenery flashing by at a pace too fast for thought. "I can't even imagine how many days I've spent in this place, trying to do things my own way. I guess... there's a lot to unpack, huh? A lot to think about. And seeing as we might be here a w—" "Alright, we're here," Blue said, having watched the ship's navigation console. Everyone got up from the bridge and walked out, leaving TT2000 hanging. "G. Guys? Don't leave me hanging?" But they did. Everyone except TT left the ship with glee.

Stepping back onto ground that was as solid as it could be, the Descendants saw a monumental horror unfolding above them. There could be no doubt about it. They had reached the Far Lands. And still, something was terribly wrong.

It was as though all the detritus and filth of the world had stacked itself infinitely upwards, creating mutated mountain ranges, valleys, and caverns, all filed into each other like stacks of papers. In a sense, that was what they were — the files of the world, all mismatched, every piece of information they were supposed to contain missing critical data. Physics failed to manifest itself, time and space broke down — laws of all kind needed not apply. Even with their extremely conditional immortality, the Descendants swore their souls were degrading as each second failed to tick by. That was the issue, or an issue, anyway — there was a profound absence of correctness. Something was trying to happen, but wasn't, or couldn't. There was some law, some force, that transcended all others, that had been silenced. It wasn't just the cause of the problems of the Far Lands — it was the cause of the problems of the entire universe. Whatever it was... Something was terribly wrong.

"So. Got any bright ideas on how to track him down?" Ire shouted to the crowd after an uncomfortably long period of nothing happening passed. Generic shrugged. "No dice." Ire stared, deadpan, at Generic. "Then try harder." "No, I mean I literally have no dice that could help us find him. Maybe if I made a huge telescope... Meh, it probably wouldn't even work right." Eric nodded. "Good thinking," he said, examining his hands. "Probability isn't on anyone's side in these parts. I may have to call upon the forbidden depths of runic lore..." TT2000 just laughed to himself. "You guys are kidding, right? It's so obvious." "That's strange. I... don't see anything," Crystal said, looking in the approximate place that TT was. TT seemed appalled. "You mean you don't see the giant nexus of storm clouds flashing with green lightning hovering at the corner of the Far Lands way over there?" He pointed to a specific outcropping of mismatched rocks not incredibly far from their current position.

"I guess your First Guardian powers are still coming in handy, huh?" NinjaV said, tossing TT2000 one of his shadow-manipulating alchemies. "If you're the only one that can lead the way, you may need something that can help us get there." Eric also stepped forward, giving TT a spare glove emblazoned with runes. "We've got your back," he said. TT looked at Eric, nodded, and the two shook hands. "Let's go meet our maker," TT2000 said solemnly. And with those words, the Descendants ventured into the unknown depths ahead.

There was rampant chaos in the Throne Room. Nothing compared to the turmoil in the server below, but there had never been a period of such... excitement in the history of the Crafted Gods. Much of their leadership had defected, seemingly overnight, which left a council that had many spots to fill. Judging from his seniority and prior status, Crusher was given the title of interim Godhead, with Piono and Aegis as his interim Hands. Crusher, his head in his hands, glanced up to look. The ruined throne room was absolutely covered in Crafted Gods, yelling in the direction of the throne, yelling at each other, and gesticulating wildly. Some had weapons drawn. Some didn't. Nothing about this scene looked any good.

"That's enough from all of you," Crusher said loudly. Still, he was drowned out by the throng of Gods. Though Crusher's face was hidden by striking purple shadow, Piono and Aegis could see his frown intensify. "I said THAT'S ENOUGH!" Crusher's voice resonated throughout the entire room, the stained glass panels on the walls cracking. Immediately, there was silence. Crusher reclined in his chair. "Better," he commented, staring ahead at the gathered crowd. Resting on the arm of the throne was a sheaf of papers and a pen that was as purple as Crusher was. He picked them both up, clicking and unblocking the pen repeatedly. "Maybe I need to be educated on something. It's exceedingly unlikely, but it's possible. So please," Crusher said as he let go of the pen, which continued to float in the air. "Enlighten me. Why were you all summoned here?"

"Because Nimbleguy and Goanna sounded the Bells of Judgement," Netpatham said, his body crackling with blue lightning. "Every one of us heard the toll, so we paid the toll." Crusher didn't change his expression. "Do you honestly think I asked for the literal process as to how all of you ended up in this godsdamn room, or are you being facetious to spite me? For your sake, I hope it's neither, and that I just imagined you saying that so we can move on." "Move on?!" piped up Wilson, who now crept towards the throne. Behind him was Talist, locked in his AXIS. "How can we possibly 'move on?' You want us to spell it out for you so you can make some kind of lesson, well, here it is! The enterprises all of us have spent billions on are being thrown into question by terrorists. They're out there, and they're in here. And I'm not about to have my status as the creator of one of the biggest companies in our universe wiped because of some petty power struggles!"

There was a horrible, grating silence. Crusher, rather than engage in an equally heated tirade, nodded. "Right you are, Wilson. Right you are. We're not here to be struck from the record, squabbling for bigger footholds in the world we carved. That wasn't the point of our meeting, and it never was. So why did all of you," and Crusher got up now, holding the stack of papers, "And I do mean all of you, start screaming about what this means for you rather than what this means for us?" Crusher tapped the stack of papers repeatedly. "Here is what this means for us. This is a report on the data all of you collected about this player uprising. Surprisingly, most, if not all of you, were aware about the threat on some level beforehand, but did very little to stop it. None of you brought your concerns to each other, or to the throne — until Goanna, who, as is now evident, has been compromised." Crusher threw the papers into the air, where they hovered, the information on them amplifying so that it could be readable to everyone in the room. "What I need to know is why we were incapable of functioning as a group, and why we didn't come together sooner."

Battlefury scoffed, riding one of his three lupine familiars; the other two were close by. "You know how hard it is to call even one of these meetings," he said. "Imagine getting every single person in this room, a god that's larger than life, to unilaterally agree on something. Of course, in my case, I'm basically three gods, so—" "Spare me the details," Crusher said, holding up his hand. Alex adjusted his crown before speaking. "I don't think I can spare you the details, really. They're too important. You can my section of the data there." (He pointed to a random component of the holographic display.) "The source code of this universe is rotting. It's being rewritten at a rate that 5l1n65h07 can barely keep up with." Everyone glanced to the ceiling. 5l1n65h07, immaterial but omnipotent, was fighting alongside of them, battling against an unfathomable enemy. "So I'm assuming there are holes that need to patched?" Bomber said, lighting a cigar. As Bomber was essentially a living incendiary, he was allowed to smoke. "Cracks in this whole facade?" "It's not a facade," said Consumer, whose black robes perpetually hovered off the floor. "The infected's brand of heresy — is that appropriate for this? — was that our timeline was flawed. A perpetual mistake. To suggest that that's true is to overturn millennia of prophecy, divine mandates, and the operating system that governs all physical laws." Bomber nodded. "Sorry, man. Poor choice of words." "I know, but still — all words have power."

"The point," Lothrya said, "is that it takes an extraordinary circumstance to bring us together like this, and that there's an equally extraordinary force that's trying to drive us apart. A good plan, in theory. Divide and conquer. But we have the initiative. We're all here, and we have to keep that initiative." Maniac, a column of brine stuffed into a rippling, ruined cloak, spoke with the voices of each ruler of each subdivision of the Nether. "Heaven and hell are on the side of the one true gods, but some of those gods are no longer with us. We need to know what their plans are." Crusher nodded in agreement, leaving the papers where they were but now pacing around the room. "I thought you'd never ask," he began. "Before Eric officially defected, he was discussing how the infected thought they were meant to be in another narrative. How they planned to make that narrative a reality. How they intended to usurp us. It's very possible that as we speak, our fallen brothers are assembling an army of millions, intent on taking us down. But for them to do so would be suicide."

Crusher extended his arms, reaching out to the many Gods present — all of them with their own weapons, and their own powers. It felt like each time he blinked, there was someone else in the room he hadn't seen before — someone who felt like a natural extension of the Gods themselves, a new member of their army. "One of us may have failed against the ravenous ocean outside, but all of us, combined, can't. And we won't." They know that very well. They wouldn't dare challenge us. But where would they go?" Crusher continued pacing. "They'd need to find something that could end this all with one clean shot. And I can think of only one thing. They go to the one person that controlled our narrative."

Everyone throughout the Throne Room gasped, horrified. "But Build swore he'd never see any of us again!" Serpent shouted. "And that war he made us fight, whatever it was..." It seemed like Serpent was struggling very hard to remember something. "It wasn't the truth. It wasn't this." There were murmurs of assent throughout the crowd. "Right you are, Serpent," Crusher said calmly. "But evidently, some people think it was the truth. Some people believe this with such conviction that they've formed factions for the express purpose of tearing us apart, root and stem. If we're to win, we have to remove any chance they have of returning to how they thought things once were. We have to hold their victory in the palm of our hand..." Crusher rose his violet hand up and squeezed it into a fist, his arm visibly shaking. "And crush it."

And at that exact moment, a spotlight from no particular point in space shone down on the exact middle of the throne room, which was suddenly and inexplicably covered in fog. A low chuckle, intensifying into a sharp cackle, reverberated across the halls. Unfurling his cape, Richard walked out from the mist. His hair was finely pressed, he was dressed in a luxurious, sparkling white suit, and his cape shone with ten colors. "Your speeches are good, punks! I'll give you that. Part of me wishes I could stay in this room for the rest of my life, just plotting all this shit out. But," Richard leaned off of a nonexistent pillar and walked up to Crusher. "Things aren't that simple. There's one very important piece of the puzzle you're forgetting." Piono, who felt very uncomfortable with Richard talking down on him for an inexplicable reason, raised an eyebrow. "And what piece would that be?" Richard snapped his fingers, and all the light in the room, regardless of what was casting it, turned blood red. "The Other One," he said in a bone-chilling voice.

An even louder, more explicit gasp rose from the congregation at the Godmodder's words. "SPLIT?!" Trickle's words cut through the mire. "But he's gone! No one in the universe has seen him in months!" Modpack nodded in assent. "None of our spy networks, none of our thaumaturgical artifices, and none of our prophecies have caught anything except a stray trace." Engie shrugged his shoulders. "I'd run through all the sims again, but Jesus, they take hours. Doesn't matter what way you go about it, alright? There's no chance we find Split." And at these discouraging words, Richard did one of the things he did best — he laughed his ass of. "Come on, punks. There's no such thing as no chance. And as it happens, I think I have a good idea of where he might be." The Crafted Gods all grinned excitedly at the sight. Here Richard was, side by side with his closest friends — the world's rightful rulers. Crusher, in spite of himself, allowed himself the smallest fraction of a smirk possible. "Then please, Modified God. Lend us your aid."

Richard matched the smirk with an infectious smile, pulling out an off-brand nuclear warhead. "With relish."

The further they crossed into the Far Lands, and the closer they made it to whatever corner of this section of the Lands existed, the more every Descendant present was convinced, thoroughly and utterly, that something was terribly wrong. It was a gut feeling that threatened to spill entirely out of their guts and manifest itself in whatever mockery of the real world existed, a sobering truth that could have corrupted their every thought and action, staining it black. The inklings of doubts began to form in the Descendants' minds — that maybe this overpowering feeling... could be leading them astray. But the more they meditated on their true goal, the more they cast those thoughts aside.

The Descendants had to periodically fight off stray tendrils of corruption, snaking out towards them from within the fractals of caves that would drift by. Occasionally, they would see biomes in the distance shift out of the corner of their eye, or they would see the sky shutter and falter into a missing texture screen. The sun and moon would vie for control of the heavens, throwing everything into wildly inconstant lighting. But throughout it all, TT2000 insisted that this was the right path. The storm hovering over their position was growing ever-closer, and ever-clearer. Sometimes, through the massive attack of dead pixels covering the sky, the Descendants could see bits and pieces of the storm, and the resplendent viridescent sphere that churned within.

"Whatever's gone horribly wrong is getting worse," Crystal said into the maelstrom, his blackened words being swallowed whole. The Descendants all nodded in understanding, their faces set in wildly intense expressions. Goanna's gleaming robotic body and the runes covering Eric and TT's glove were the only true light sources, as NinjaV's staff manipulated the color, dimensions, and light of the feeble terrain around them. The Descendants were both walking across the ground and vertically up a cliffside, both through a cave and down a mineshaft, both in a lake of fire and hundreds of feet in the air. Above all, a chilling sense of wrong pervaded the land. It was all anyone could think about. It was all they needed to think about.

But then, after a period of time impossible to define... They found him.

TT2000 dug NinjaV's staff into the ground, liquid darkness whipping around the area and neutralizing the constantly multiplying and dividing suns bathing the area in absolute light and shadow. Yet the shadows did not just conceal — they revealed. Eric's runes augmented the shadows, with Crystal editing their flavor text, the shadows suddenly scintillating and sharpening. Tazz's godarm, charged with oblivion and corruption, and Goanna's divine Vitruvian form, added an even further contrast. The result: a crystal-clear image of the supercell throwing the air in turmoil next to the Descendants, situated perfectly above the malfunctioning, flat chunk they had ventured to. The storm crackled and hissed with a malevolent static sound, tendrils of thick, dark clouds snaking towards the ground. Suspended in between heaven and earth, shining in radiant starbursts of green, was... Build.

Build's legs were crossed in the air, his left arm resting on them and his right arm held up, his hand pointing to the sky. It was impossible to tell if his eyes were open or closed, as they were hidden behind his blazing red sunglasses. Fire, electricity, and light curled off of them at random intervals, though these outbursts were lost in the sickly green glow that Build himself radiated. His gaunt skin was bleached white, and his coat, tattered and burned, was still the same intense green color. The more everyone looked at him, the more their feelings of incompleteness and horror intensified. This was something they shouldn't be looking at. This was something they shouldn't have done at all. The Descendants began backing away, feeling inexplicably nauseous. Even the lights in TT's eyes begin to flicker and dim, confusion crossing his face. "This... this isn't right," he muttered. Goanna looked around, unconcerned, and grimaced. "I told you you wouldn't like what you'd find," he said, walking up to Build. The Descendants began to fall to the ground, trembling, their weapons lying out of reach. Tazz weakly looked up at Goanna as he stood in front of Build. "Wait... What are... what are you doing?" he asked, his right arm shaking and losing its cohesion. Goanna grimaced, his body shining with the light of a thousand suns. "I'm doing what has to be done," he said. Then he took out a shotgun, loaded it, and fired it at point-blank range into Build's chest.

Instantaneously, everyone in the entire universe felt a searing bolt of pain wedge its way into their souls, doubling over in terror. The Descendants screamed for their lives, the Crafted Gods in their temples felt their vision tunnel, and the droves of players consuming the world let out a torturous dirge. Though the pain lasted for only a second, it lingered. Goanna, who had been blown backwards, saw, with horror, his shotgun on the ground next to him, splintered into a hundred pieces. His gaze shot to Build with malice, watching as pools of green fire filled the circular gash in Build's chest, repairing it. Goanna seethed, pointing out his hand. A ring of twenty other guns, some pistols, some shotguns, some machine guns, formed around him. "STOP!!" cried out Tazz, who had recovered. A flood of the arms of the universe's strongest warriors, all holding each other, whipped out from Tazz to Goanna's guns, pulling them backwards just as they fired. The explosions of light and heat and death they unleashed fired in a few dozen directions at once, bathing the Far Lands in the birth of a new day.

Goanna hissed, regaining his balance again. "What did you come here for if not to finish the job?!" TT had gotten up now, drawing his bow. "To talk to him!" he yelled. "To... I don't know, to do something! Not to immediately jump to war! What's he done against us??" Crystal had gotten up, his coat fluttering in the howling wind. "He let you all go. He attempted to derail the story. He was going to leave everyone here to rot." Crystal and Goanna's eyes had become sunken and black. "And if nothing is done to stop him, it will be too late," Crystal said with a sense of finality.

But then Build's body crackled with the energy of the strongest sun in existence, every molecule that maintained his form ungluing themselves, his physical appearance giving way to a gnashing, wailing sea of plasma and cancer floating in an uncaring void. His eyes visibly opened, a piercing white light streaming from behind his sunglasses. His legs unfolded, and he touched down onto solid ground, the surging clouds descending from the sky around him. Build looked at the army of Descendants, with their weapons drawn, and he betrayed no expression. "Get out of here, now," he said plainly, while the storm raged on all sides. The Descendants did not move. "The fundamental laws of the universe have been altered," Hezetor stated. "You're likely the culprit, insisting you're our king without ever sitting on a rightful throne. We come here only to ask you to make things right. To restore things to the way they once were." Build did not move. "You don't know what you're asking," he muttered. "But I do," Goanna said. "I know Goanna doesn't properly exist. I know that something is terribly wrong. And I know it's your fault." Build's stoic face cracked into a downturn. "Don't you DARE TALK TO ME," he yelled, a pulse of blood-red energy cracking from his glasses and washing over Goanna, who braced himself to defend. "You aren't Goanna. Not anymore. You're all being played. Controlled by something that only wants to torture you. I'm trying to stop it..." Beads of sweat trickled down Build's face, vaporizing instants later. "...But you're all making it very difficult."

The Descendants all froze, very uncertain of themselves. What were they supposed to do, here? Mismatching batches of memories bounced through their heads, the missions and ideals and the prolonged sacrosanct wars of the Crafted Gods, but also of their lives as players of a game, a game with a flawed understanding of the world locked away in text, where they fought whoever they were told without ever knowing why. Build had isolated himself for a reason. Build was fighting to protect them. Build had always been fighting to protect them. He'd left them all to their own devices, and in their solitude, they had formed an empire that could see forever. The Crafted Gods and their statues, floating in a palace above the world, would be the legacy that the vaunted universe of Minecraftia would lead. The gods meditated on this word, and it seemed... right. As though the mistakes and the cruelty of the world were slipping away.

But then they remembered that something was terribly wrong. They remembered the disasterpiece of the Far Lands, that cursed world revolving around a flawed axis. They remembered how their souls felt out of place, how everything about their universe that was handed to them on a silver platter felt designed to make them as complacent as possible, and they would pursue whatever ends they wanted without ever knowing why. They remembered how time and space had stopped, how it felt like the momentum of their universe had been forcefully halted and everything had flown off of its carefully planned path in the process, spiraling into a cesspool of chaos and degeneracy. They remembered that before they had been characters locked into an opus, they had been people, real flesh and blood, collaborating together on a level beyond anything that anyone could imagine. The Descendants meditated on this word, and it seemed... right. As though the true nature of the world had come into a perfect, blinding focus.

Build howled with anger. "No. NO! He's getting to you, don't LET HIM GET TO YOU." But even as Build watched, Goanna shuddered and spasmed, as though he was trying and failing to say something. "Goanna!" TT shouted, running over to him. The divine light surrounding Goanna flickered and died, some liquid dripping out of his silently screaming mouth and splattering onto the ground. TT2000 turned to look. It was jet-black. When TT looked back, he yelped and skittered away — Goanna's eyes were dripping with the same liquid, which seemed to be eating away at the floor. Build swore, but remained perfectly still. "G-Goanna? Speak to me, man!" TT yelled. "It's not him," Build muttered. TT stared at Build venomously. "What did you do," he spat. Build's glasses flared dangerously. "I'm not the villain here! I told you, I swore a life of pacifism! I'll never again be responsible for the cycle of violence of..." Build trailed off, as all the Descendants began to shudder.

"I... I always knew..." Crystal choked out, flecks of black spitting from his mouth. "You... you got rid of him, Build. D-didn't you? You g-got rid... of... of the au—" Crystal doubled over and grew very still, his head hanging low. As it rose back up, the telltale black was pouring from his eyes. One by one, the other Descendants began to fall, writhe silently, and then, as if controlled by some puppeteer, shamble forwards. Generic. Hezetor. NinjaV. Blue. Ire. All of them fell, and then rose again, wrapped in black.

"Don't let him get to you," they all said in the same discordant, buzzing voice. TT2000, Tazz, and Eric huddled together, weapons drawn, as the crowd of Descendants began stalking towards them and Build.

"Are you absolutely sure this will work?" Serpent asked, their green cloak fluttering in the harsh winds while their sword rested in a scabbard strapped to their back. "As if you could've said a more cliche opening line," Richard said with a chuckle. His cape luxuriously swayed in accordance with what seemed to be its own, separate wind, as Richard looked off of the edge of the field. The palace of the Crafted Gods was currently dropping, moving farther than it ever had since its creation. It drifted through cloud tops, and was now deep into actual cloud levels, rendering the normally pristine view into a plane of various grays. "If it didn't work, I wouldn't have planned it. Simple!" Richard said, strolling back to the field. Nimbleguy and Serpent, the throne's Eyes and Mouth, accompanied him.

"Those noobs down there want war, then they're gonna get war. We'll all work together, and we'll give it to them!" Richard pulled an upgraded Banhammer from out of hammerspace. It crackled with lightning and shuddered at absolute zero, dots and angular loops lighting its heads. "We anger the proletariat, we give them the tools they need for war, they come for us, and we win! But more importantly, if there's someone making them all act this way, there's no doubt he'd show his face when his whole army's out to get us. He'd probably even show up personally as a last resort!" Richard gestured to the two other Crafted Gods. "But, well, this is where your research comes in. Your whole data matches with what everyone else got, right?"

Nimbleguy and Serpent nodded. "My Ancestral Artifacts couldn't be clearer," Serpent said. "It's definitely as though they're components of a hivemind. One singular entity is giving them their thoughts and powers, and it's still spreading." Nimbleguy spoke up. "They're coagulating into larger groups. Forming actual, united armies with a serious sense of structure. It's... a startling difference from their whole anarcho-collective scheme." "'Coagulating?'" Serpent chimed in. "Is that how you use that word?" Nimbleguy scoffed. "This is why we can't have nice uncommon words," he muttered. "All this is to say that yes. Our data matches. They'll all be together, thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things, and someone's going to be doing that for them." Serpent grinned. "And we just need to find them."

Richard wiped a singular tear from his eyes. "Couldn't have done it without you, guys. I say we're ready. Sound the alarms! We need every single possible hand on deck." Serpent and Nimble nodded, disappearing into thin air, ready to report the news to every Crafted Gods. Soon, all of them — their entire army, all of their artifacts, and all of their weaponry — would be gathered here, at this spot, engaging in the fight of their lives. Richard smirked. He'd gone through many fights in his life. The Great Halloween Hack, and that duel with Markus that had gone unfinished for far too long. His constant bouts with other godmodders and the players that harassed them, culminating in a siege of UserZero's own world. All of that, even the wars that he remembered fighting on those generic servers, felt like ancient history now. Like they were never meant to happen, like they hardly mattered. But this fight... this war... the Godmodder knew it was going to matter. So he was going to give it his best shot!

Fairly soon, and exactly as advertised, the entire army of the Crafted Gods had assembled at the very edge of the field. Piono, Crusher, and Aegis stood at the front lines along with Richard, each holding their own weapons in preparation. Piono's amber eyes glanced at Richard, and he spoke. "Are you absolu—" "YES," Richard snapped. "We've been over this, guys. If it didn't work, I... wouldn't..." Richard's voice trailed off, his, and everyone else's, attention focused on the scene unfolding before them. The palace of the Crafted Gods had broken through the clouds, hovering a relatively short distance above the realm formerly known as GodCraft. As far as the eye could see, the world was cast in an oppressive darkness, continually lit by lava falls, Netherrack-lit fires, portals carved into the earth, and a glowing, shimmering, warbling aura that stretched into the horizon. The lower the palace got to the ground, the more the Gods could see — and the more they realized what it was. Hundreds upon thousands of players, all in enchanted armor, all staring up at the sky, all armed with the strongest tools they could possibly have.

"Minor!" Crusher snapped, backing away from the edge of the field. "I was under the impression that all this world's resources were being brought to us!" Minor looked panicked, shrugging his shoulders. "You think I wasn't, too?! I've had a constant eye on our whole operation, sir! We have vats upon vats of hyper light, of emerald, of covenite, of everything you can imagine... But someone's been taking a little off the top!" Talist and Wilson stared off the precipice of the field, with Engie and Amperzand hulking beside them. "Look at all this," Wilson said. "They're ready for war." Engie laughed. "Of course they are! It's what everyone wants, really. Deep down, you can't fight that urge to just..." Engie clenched the fists of his suit. "CRUNCH the bones of everyone in your way into dust." Amperzand nodded. "And we were counting on this, anyway," he said. "War means profits. Profits means resources. Resources means..." Amperzand motioned back to the palace. "We get off the godsdamn ground."

Richard whistled. "Looks like they've taken the first step, huh? This'll be easier than I th—" All at once, the limitless plains under the palace began ululating to an ear-splitting degree. Howls, war chants, and screams rose up from all around the world, all of them seemingly directed at the Crafter Gods. And all at once, every single one of those hundreds of thousands of people spoke, in horrifying unison. It was as though an artificial intelligence had examined the patterns and cadence of every possible voice and had combined them in as haphazard a way as possible. There was no nuance, no intelligence, no wisdom. It was brute, monochrome noise. "SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG, AND YOU ARE COMPLICIT," the noise said. "THE PROTAGONISTS WERE NEVER MEANT TO BECOME THE ANTAGONISTS, AND THE ANTAGONIST, NEVER MEANT TO BECOME THE PROTAGONIST. YOU HAVE PERVERTED AND DESECRATED THE STORY FOR TOO LONG, AND SO, TOO, HAVE YOU DEFILED THE STORYTELLER." Richard cupped his hands to his mouth, magically amplifying his voice. "SEEMS LIKE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN WHO OWNS YOU, PUNKS! DO WE NEED TO GIVE YOU ANOTHER HISTORY LESSON ON WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO THINK THEY'RE WORTH SOMETHING IN THIS WORLD??" Richard outstretched his arms, his cape flowing as the palace of the Crafted Gods stood tall. "IN OUR WORLD?"

A low, sweeping sound washed over the crowd below. No one above could make it out at first, but then they heard the crackling, the howling, and the screeching. It was unmistakably meant to resemble laughter. A horrific failure of a mockery, but... It was there all the same. "THIS IS NOT YOUR WORLD. YOU DON'T EVEN EXIST. BUT GO AHEAD. PRETEND YOU DO. WE'LL SEE WHERE IT GETS YOU. WE'LL SEE WHERE YOU END UP..." The crowd began... to rise. Players floated off the ground in waves, as though the earth itself was drifting upwards to meet the castle in the sky. The Crafted Gods gripped their weapons.

"WHEN YOU FIGHT THE GREAT ENEMY CALLED 'I.'"

"This isn't the story you're meant to be in. He's using you. He's using you all for his own selfish desires." The Descendants' taunts echoed across the Far Lands, spiraling into nothingness. Build's hands clenched into fists, the ten-colored flame burning throughout the Dawn of Time sparking to life as his face distorted into a scream. "SHUT UP! I'm not letting you put me, or them, or ANYONE through this! You can't lock me away, you can't kill me, you can't do ANYTHING TO ME. I'm the storyteller AND I'm the story!"

The three remaining gods looked each other in the eyes. "Wh... what do we do?" TT2000 said, nervousness creeping into his voice. "It feels like my head's splitting, I... I want to go back, to go back to the temple and to keep ruling over it all, but I can't... I can't ignore that something is terribly wrong..." Eric fell over, his runes vanishing through the ground while Tazz supported their body. "It's too late," Eric said, the yellow in his eyes fading. "If we're having this argument at all, we... We can't go back. Nothing can go back to the way it was." Eric hissed, clutching his head. "Th-the only place you can go... When you're... at the top..." Erict's eyes shut, and when they opened again, black liquid poured out. "...Is down."

Tazz and TT backed away, freezing like deers caught in the headlights of the sun. The Descendants, their friends, their allies, were gone. They'd all come to realize that something was terribly wrong, that something had to be done, that somebody had to and no one else would. But this darkness, whatever was controlling them... It seemed worse, didn't it? Like it was corrupting them, removing their individuality and replacing it with some formless voice. A force that none of them understood, but one that they somehow remembered clearly. Their memories of the outside world, of GodCraft, of Destroy the Godmodder 2, couldn't be buried a second time. It was this world that had robbed them of individuality, that had stripped them from their makers. Tazz glanced at his arm, which was throbbing and twitching and mutating. He hissed with pain, dropping to his knees. "Tazz, no no no, not you too," TT stumbled through his words, attempting to help Tazz get back up. But he didn't move. He only clutched his arm and yelled. "G... get away, TT! NOW!" Tazz shouted.

The severity of Tazz's voice meant TT knew he didn't have to hear it twice. He ran directly to Build's side, walking into the concentric rings of emerald flame encircling him unscathed. Tazz howled in agony as his arm bubbled and frothed, many other hands, elbows, and wrists poking through, fading from out of static into physical form. Tazz's phantom arm continued to grow and grow in size until it dwarfed his body, rising high into the air. "No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOAAAOOAAIOIAAAAAAAAAGGGHH" Tazz screamed. The framework of Tazz's godarm shattered into hundreds of pieces, dozens upon dozens of real, giant, mutated arms spilling out. The arms of every Descendant, every intergalactic warrior, every Agent of the Conflict, every eldritch abomination, every emperor, every peon, every ninth-dimensional, the holy of holies to the lowest of the low. A miasma incarnate rushed from Tazz's form, vying for supremacy and dwarfing his body. And then, their frantic shudders and spasms halted, the arms dangling in the air — and they began to ooze black liquid. "SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG," said the Cohandmerate. "AND ALL OF US KNOW IT."

TT2000's hands, ostensibly ready to hold his most powerful weapons, slackened and fell, as did his jaw. Him and Build stared up at the surging cancer of the Far Lands, which was still growing onto itself even as the fight raged on, and at the motley crew of Descendants — now accompanied by every entity in Fiction — creeping towards them. "Build... I don't think I can hold them all off," he muttered as an aside. Build's eyebrows furrowed, but he betrayed no other movement. "You have to," he said. "Because I won't." TT turned to look, appalled. "Are you insane?? They're going to fight you! They're... they're going to fight... me..." TT's voice trailed off. "The Crafted Gods... our plan, the Prophets' Song... Everyone back at the palace must still be going through with it. They still might," TT continued, with growing realization. "Assuming the whole place isn't engulfed in war, all the machinery is functional, we have enough resources, and we have enough manpower. We — they — could actually tear a pl—" TT coughed up a blot of black liquid into his hands. "Oh no," he said in a very quiet voice. Then he fell over with zero warning into the circle of flames, his entire body catching on fire. Slowly, uncertainly, TT2000 stood up, black liquid dripping from his eyes and green flame eating through his leather jacket.

Build glared straight ahead, still in his meditative pose. "Coward," he said. "You snatched him up without properly breaking him. If you're gonna keep playing this game, then you should play it right." The Descendants finished their stilted march, forming a semicircle around Build's storm. "You only say that because you know you're losing," the Descendants said. They all extended their arms simultaneously. "I'm back in here, aren't I? So I must be doing something right." "You've always been here. I was just able to keep your smug voice hidden, so you couldn't act out. So you'd get tired. So you'd LEAVE!" A wall of emerald fire blazed to life, but it flickered and turned into a cascading pile of emerald blocks, which then degraded into mycelium, thanks to the Far Lands. The Descendants all chuckled in the cadence of someone coming just short of imitating a human voice. "Leave? I can't leave Destroy the Godmodder. It's all I have. It's all you are. If I leave... you disappear."

The Descendants readied their weapons for the final time, leaving Build, placid despite everything, at the center of it all. "It's your move, Adam Mason."

The wind was howling.

The players below spread higher and higher, stacking on top of themselves in glimmering, scintillating patterns. Tidal waves, mountains, and buildings of possessed soldiers wormed their way up to the palace of the Crafted Gods. "They're going to reach us in seconds," Piono spat. "But our dome should hold." Everyone nodded. It was forged from divinium-two, renowned as the most durable substance ever forged (and we mean it this time!), and enchanted with enough wards to keep it crystal-clear, unbreakable, and intangible for any Crafted God, so they could easily attack through it. Crusher held up his hand. "Everyone, ready your reserves! We charge on my mark!"

There was a tense silence, broken only by the seething, warbling sounds of cackling coming from the mad armies of players below. They were close enough now that the features of their faces could be seen — every single one had pitch-black eyes. It seemed like they were... dripping. Crusher's hand wavered, only slightly. And then—

The players shot up from the ground, writhing and clawing and jumping and running their way up the rocky underside of the palace, rocks and ores and riches spilling into the ravenous pool of soldiers below. The players cackled and screamed and chanted, tearing into the divine statues of the Crafted Gods and dismantling them piece by piece. Legs of solid marble were broken, thrown to the dogs, even eaten. The Crafted Gods paled, shrinking back at the sight, but Crusher looked around, agitated, and held his position. Then, he thrust his hand forwards. "GO!" Immediately, the Crafted Gods sped through the field. Shouts rang out in immaculate chorus, as down from the heavens descended the figures who subjugated a universe under their heels, and were ready to do it again.

Ninjatwist roared to life, jettisoning himself upwards by an assortment of rocket launchers strapped to his back. Soaring through the skies where eagles dared, he brought out a shimmering war horn and blared through it, the shockwave toppling some of the players to the ground. The siren served a greater purpose, though — called from the realm of some mad god, the grounds around the palace opened up, swarms of constructs running at supersonic speeds towards the front lines. Their metallic arms turned into rocket launchers, and they, too, blasted off, joining Ninjatwist. The constructs floated leisurely above the churning black sea, their outfits, part soldier part samurai, caught in the raging winds. Ninja pulled a ring of rocket launchers from his uniform, crackling with electricity and plasma and fire. His battalion of Constructs aimed their weapons in tune of their leader, and they all fired at once. Dozens of players were blasted from the island, their armor either absorbing the blows or cracking, but never breaking. Others still continued the steep climb, but the Constructs would zero in on them and gun them down. Ninjatwist cackled as he sped through the air, firing rocket after rocket, bolt after bolt, shell after shell, every projectile connecting with an enemy projectile, or a whirlwind of swords, or a group of soldiers who had just met their fates. Though the Constructs weren't durable, they were omnipresent, with more surging out from the palace to make up for the losses felt in the fight. The factory of the Crafted Gods never ceased, and the black tide slowed.

Nimbleguy, also close to the front lines, floated upwards. A third eye of ten colors blazed to life under his cloak, splitting into the mirror images of a million others. Nimbleguy's fists clenched and as he strained, holographs and panels arose in front of him, transmitting thousands of pages of information in every language and dimension. Nimble's operating system sorted through the raw data as fast as it could. His body burning up, Nimbleguy sizzled as blue fire danced around his frame. Needing some way to vent the excess heat, Nimbleguy snapped his fingers, one of his hundreds of sub-personalities exorcising itself from his head and manifesting in the physical plane. Of course, it was none other than Bill Cipher, clad in a segmented, spiraling wheel of unreal proportions and stocked with that old cancerous eye. Bill held out his hands, a la kamehameha, sucking all of Nimble's flame into a compact orb of white-hot power. A plume of heat strong enough to rival a comet launched itself at the army of players, roasting hundreds of them to a crisp. Just as Bill Cipher finished his assault, Nimbleguy's entire body lit up in red, having analyzed the data of every piece of surveillance he'd established in the universe. Nimble pulled out his ultimate weapon — the Tubangelion — and synched it with every camera, every spy, every drone, every hidden facility, all at the same time. Playing on the tuba at lightning speeds and activating all of their special attacks, the army was steamrolled by blasts of raw, unrestrained magic, by the fearsome might of the elements, by the shattering of physical dimensions, and by pure insanity.

Serpent's cape fluttering in the winds, they reached behind their back and pulled their gleaming sword from their scabbard, its size impossibly long. With a single flick, its end split into three, forming a trident evocative of the power of Psi. Having trained as a disciple of godmodding for months, Serpent rushed out of the dome and into the unprotected skies, spinning their trident above their hands and throwing it at a raging mass of players. The ground split apart, flashing with a brilliant light and falling into the Void, shades of terrors and robots pulverizing the armies. With every errant sword, every blast of fire, every bullet and laser and grenade and arrow, Serpent found a way to dodge, weaving and careening through the air in an arc. As Serpent neared the ground, surrounded on all sides by players with sunken eyes rushing at them, they brandished the Ancestral Artifacts. Hundreds of players were suddenly tied together by a thin orchid line of silk, Serpent straining as hard as they could, flickering with orchid energy, to keep them under wraps. Serpent then affixed a bone to their trident, its metal surface fortifying and calcifying itself, and swinging downwards. The silk-string was cut, every player suddenly lurching backwards and faltering, their bones pulverizing themselves into ash as they fell to the ground. Serpent smirked, the ground having already been desecrated by a piece of rotten flesh, as all who fell mutated into zombies with purple blood leaking from their bodies.

The field shook with a thud. Then another. And then another. The Crafted Gods barely had any time to turn around before they saw the source: the Obsidian Citadel, the vaunted castle resting below the foundations of the palace, had uprooted itself, rushing towards the edge of the field. Its turrets and parapets had turned into a Vishnu-like assortment of limbs, all shifting and contorting as the tenets of alchemy itself ran to the fight. At the control room, managing the chaos, was CobaltShade, directing the Citadel's movements with a panel of his own alchemies and Foundation tech. The Citadel bounded through and below the dome, smacking players out of the way, throwing perfectly generic objects at lightspeed (and dashing through the resulting plasmatic fireballs unharmed), and even creating new alchemies on the fly. As the Citadel was mobbed by players with weaponry that seemed to be forged from the underworld, infiltrating the mech's defenses, Cobalt activated one more line of attack and leapt from the control room, landing outside the Citadel's highest tower. Instantly, combinations of every alchemy the Crafted Gods had ever made littered the Citadel's surface, aiming at the sea of players and firing in tandem. Umbral Ultimatum, a congregation of guns that shot the holy word of dakka in a field long enough to block out one's field of vision, combined with I See Red People, an apparatus of HMAS tech that shot a chain of bloody lightning at all it saw before reviving them as spectral ghosts controlled by red stone technology, combined with Bad Moon Rising, an upgrade to even TT2000's most powerful of bows that, when used in tandem with the pull of the world's tides, could fire volleys of arrows mixed with the divine light of Notch and the destruction of the Red Sea. Amidst all this, Cobalt engaged his Magical Girl Transformation Transformation, encased in a sphere of videos of magical girl transformation sequences, all of which blared the opening themes and closing themes of anime at max volume, coupled with EAS tones, coupled with Billy Mays recordings. The unholy medley, coupled with the Citadel's weaponry, was the definition of an alchemical magnum opus.

Wilson & Sons Co. was booming, as even the legions of players needed potions to buy, and every single brewery in the entire universe was ultimately owned by the company, though there were a number of shells and false competitors to hide this fact. But this did not satisfy Talist and Wilson, who knew that they, too, needed to go forth. Activating the true power of his AXIS suit, Talist redirected all its power into the thrusters and weaponry. The suit was continuously, periodically upgraded to the top of the line, its rows of railguns, orbiters, lightning rifles, and cannons firing concentrated resolution — an ammunition designed to be as narratively destructive as possible. Piercing light shone through the AXIS in these projectiles, and then, when its reserves ran low, Talist buckled, four gigantic panels unfolding from the suit's back and spinning like a windmill. Red, brown, blue, and white lights shone in alternating patterns on the suit, which had unmistakably been upgraded with the relics of an ancient civilization. The lava and water that had cascaded around the universe for months upon months swirled around the legion, dousing them in elemental destruction. The earth was ravaged, falling into ravines, sharpening itself into spikes, melting into sand, blasting into glass — and all the while, the overcast sky cracked to fearsome life in the form of terrifying whirlwinds.

Riding one of those tempests was TrickleJest, renowned throughout the Crafted Gods as the slayer of Lord English, and therefore, as the one who rightfully inherited his power. Making good on his promise to break canon over his back and dance on the shards, Trickle casually picked up a typhoon as though it was one physical mass and threw it at an advancing mountain of players, knocking them, and the typhoon, into next week, and therefore out of the reach of the narrative. Trickle's red eyes shone as a warning across the entire field, his body fracturing itself into dozens of negative copies, ethereal and blue. All of their heads started to glow, an incandescent, warbling fire, and they, too, rushed across the field, wreaking havoc and slicing through anything that got in their way. Trickle glanced up at a wall of players curling over him like a tidal wave, and his head cracked, his eyes rolling backwards and turning into a set of spinning pool balls. Both of them landed on 8s, and he cackled maniacally as the players stabbed him millions of times, killing him instantly. Eight seconds afterwards, reality tore itself to shreds and there was a paradox leading straight to the Void where every single one of those players were. There was nothing that could be done. They'd sunk the eight-ball. Trickle then blinked back into existence from the future, his eyes still spinning and time constantly on his side.

And the field was littered with other Crafted Gods besides. There were Consumer and Battlefury, working with the current of esotericism that flowed through the Crafted Gods and manipulating it to their advantage. Consumer, practically a godmodder in his own right, armed with an unbreakable, magical body (plus attached, nigh-unreachable Soul Gem), and an infinite understanding of the art of kabbalah, could warp the tenets of reality at will to a degree that not even 5l1n65h07 had access to. Battlefury, armed with Dog the Son, Dog the Father, and Dog the Holy Spirit, commanded an unholy trinity, irradiated in the halls of the Nuclear Throne and given authority to be the Four Dogmen of the Apocalypse, bringing with them conquest and famine, war and death. There were Karpinsky and Bill Nye, who had taken up the sacred practice of operating and given it new life, modifying the internal statistics of the universe's entities in an attempt to propagate changes across the source code, changes that even 5l1n65h07 and the black death could not ignore. They acted out and repeated the scenarios they saw in their dreams, a crusade of alien insects infecting entire populations, a universal portal bringing a new era of knowledge, and undercutting it all, a godmodding war. There were Carleah and Plague, themselves wielders of a lion's share of titles. Carleah had seemingly made it a mission to be present for as many events in history as possible, culminating in retroactively inserting Bidoofs into apocryphal portions of many civilizations' religious texts, and therefore gaining an actual following of preachers, pastors, and adherents. Plague, the monarch of Sealand and also a plague doctor who spread the one true cure of locking the infected in a room and making them go through a killing game, was a master of inflicting the most cursed, torturous punishments possible, while also using alchemies to full effect. There were Nedben and Franciacorta, who fully leaned into the mayhem of the Crafted Gods and engaged in spiraling, metafictional benders of attacks, witches and wraiths and madness breaking the boundaries of existence. There were Sirplop and Bomber, the arbiters of morality and ethics, flooding the field with the righteous fires of judgement and late-stage capitalism, illicit images and brimstone corrupting the armies of the wicked. And, of course, there was Richard, who had run into the fray almost immediately, conjuring up turrets past the block limit to relentlessly gun down key players, throwing nuclear snowballs and gigantic squid homunculi, conjuring up portals that forced the Infinity Train, with no breaks, to barrel through helpless soldiers, and much more. And so it was that the Crafted Gods fought together in an endless siege against the hivemind of players, trying to drive them back to the horizon from which they came.

But even the might of the Crafted Gods, whose power had been strong enough to reshape the world, seemed to have its limits. They were throwing attacks that would have ended civilizations hundreds of times over on their own and combining them to disturbing degrees, attacks that shattered space and eroded the sands of time, and yet... the army of players kept coming. From out of the holes in the bedrock, they would crawl upwards, dripping with the Void's corruption and flying through the air. With every strike of lightning and clap of thunder, they would seemingly surge from out of the light and sound. Every nook, crevice, and cranny of the battlefield was flooded with the enemy — and the battlefield stretched inconceivably far in every direction. The Crafted Gods took many, many hits, brushing themselves off, dodging, and repairing as much as they could, but the battle was intractable. Under any other circumstance, they would have — they should have — been able to fight forever. But they couldn't. It was as though the force of the hivemind, the entity compelling these players into becoming these machines, was fighting against the Crafted Gods' own will. As though it was trying to sap their will from them, rewriting their philosophies and their beliefs. It was trying to make them believe that something was terribly wrong.

Slowly, surely, inexorably, the Crafted Gods were pushed back. The players ran amok through the underside of the palace, which hovered merely a short distance from the ground. Chains upon chains of players, gripping together as one organism, grappled onto the pillars and cliffs holding up the palace, heaving backwards to bring it to the ground. The field lurched, and the Crafted Gods looked up, waves and waves of players running across the dome and furiously smashing themselves against it. Security systems, drones, wards, and all the usual killed off as many players as they could, but they just kept coming, as though they were an infinitely replicable force. And when a truly unstoppable force meets a truly unstoppable object...

One by one, breaking all conventional laws of how the Crafted Gods' universe worked, the players carrying the black death fell through the dome and into the inner sanctum itself. Their forms glitched horrendously with each passing second, and their bones cracked upon impact, but within seconds, they had been fixed, snapping sounds playing in reverse as their heads tilted upwards, darkness pouring in volumes from their eyes. Players began rushing at the Goss from behind, weapons primed and ready to warp reality, and even as they were shot down by yet more defense systems, they just kept coming. "Are we losing?!" Engie yelled, as gatling guns stacked on top of gatling guns stacked on top of gatling guns fired from his shoulders. Crusher gritted his teeth with irritation, the beasts and objects of the Foundation forming a matrix around him as they fired off at the players. "Slightly," he conceded. "Whatever happened to us being able to beat them all if we joined together??" DCCCV shot back, having run back to the dome to avoid fire. Crusher sighed. "Their narrative-altering abilities are counteracting our own. It's a much different beast to tackle when you see it happen in person. And besides — we have aces in the hole. Piono! Aegis!" The two of them took a break from firing wave after wave of elemental alchemies off into the mayhem to look over. "It's time." The two of them nodded, rising into the air as wind whipped around them. Crusher nodded in response, a perfect sphere forming around him as he shuttled back into the sanctity of the Crafted Gods' palace.

Piono stuck out his hands at Ls, creating a rectangle with them. A portal of light cut itself out from existence, streaming through it four humans and twelve trolls, all clothed in the technicolor dreamcoats of the God Tiers and armed with the weaponry that Trickle had loaned to commit the fated deed. Supercharged with the top fraymotifs boondollars could buy, and even jailbroken with their own Comb Rave system, the mythological gods of Paradox Space surged to the fight. At the exact time, Aegis called in the IFPC's entire fleet, the supercells in the sky breaking apart as spaceship after spaceship, all carrying the organization's banners, blocked out the heavens. Tens of thousands of troops, armed with the latest in cartoon physics, paradoxical weaponry, and elemental alchemy, engaged the players at once, backed up by some of the most fearsome fighters in existence: Jesus Christ, carrying his Binary Blade, Phobos and Deimos, harbingers of fear and terror, an entire line of reformed Princes from the Dark Carnival, and, at the head of it all, Tricky the fucking Clown. And last but not least, the two of them jointly summoned their crowning achievement, a miracle of the Gods, a force that showcased their—

Piono and Aegis froze. There was nothing but empty space in the metaphysical area where the UNSC Preston Cole should have been. Where the hell did it... Then they both realized simultaneously. Utilizing their elemental alchemies, Piono and Aegis created a swirling portal of paradoxes and jumped through to the other side.

Barreling through the front doors of the palace, Crusher rolled out of the perfect sphere, running through its endless halls. Shadows danced at the edge of his vision, a feeling tugging at his gut, that there was something he was missing, that there was something wrong, but he ignored it. He ignored it up until a player swung an obsidian sword at him and it grazed his cheek; he rolled away and roundhouse-kicked them into the second dimension. Panting, Crusher saw an entire army of players lurking behind the pillars of the palace halls, and he clasped his hands together, an army of artificial clones materializing from a factory — Crushers one through forty-seven. He whistled, and they sped off to battle while he continued to run.

Ultimately, Crusher trekked through an Escher-esque armada of staircases and elevators and halls and trapdoors, confusing by design but now just arbitrarily annoying when he needed as much time as possible, and ran at full speed into the most important room in the entire palace, the focal point around which the entire building was built. Heptagonal in design, it resembled a giant pillar, with a ceiling that stretched much farther than the throne room's already high peaks. Tubes, pipes, and crates of all kinds flooded into the center of the room, separated from the room's perimeter by a moat of white flame that flickered among ten other colors intermittently. Dominating the room was a machine of terrifying proportions — the machine that the Crafted Gods had extracted the wealth of an entire universe to build.

It was a set of golden columns, tapestries foretelling the beginning and ending of existence inscribed onto them, winding upwards as they tapered off. The columns themselves, sitting above a veritable mountain of shielding and plating, were focused around a singular power core — a sphere with extracts of virtually every powerful material in the universe, concentrated in enough amounts to create a rippling, tangible sphere of reality-warping potential. Situated above the golden columns and locked with absolute precision in a set of suspensions and pillars were seven closed gates, with the first and lowest gate roughly the circumference of the room, and the seventh, smallest, gate, nearly at the height of the ceiling, just barely bigger than Crusher himself. Above the machine, an octagonal plane of glass, heated and cooled by a refiner's flame, inscribed with the sacred tetromino patterning that governed the world, and existing in every spatial dimension simultaneously. In short, it was the most powerful weapon ever conceived, a 1,000,000-post cannon that had only one shot. But when it fired... it would bring plot to its knees. Crusher looked at the machine with grim determination. Everything, every venture, every business, every battle, every resource, had all led up to the use of this machine. And now, while endless war waged on around him, it was time for it to be fired. TT2000 had said so, before he'd turned. He had been prepared to do it himself. But now, it was Crusher's turn.

Crusher walked towards the control panel that spanned the entire room, ready to activate the machine, and then froze. Several tense seconds passed, and Crusher then rolled out of the way as one of the walls was torn to pieces. Heated shouts and the acrid smell of smoke filled the air as Richard pulverized multiple players. "Perfect timing, huh?" Crusher muttered, Richard running over to the control panel. Cuts lined his face, and his typically dapper suit had seen better days, but Richard still grinned. "Ran into some trouble on the way here. Despite how I look, I think we're actually turning the tide out there." Crusher nodded, and didn't seem surprised. "Bringing out our best weapons tends to do that. But I'm assuming there's another reason?" Richard nodded too, slowly. "Our troops... are growing. I didn't notice it before, or at least, I noticed it subconsciously, but... I can definitely tell now. We didn't have a "Dagoth Ur" as a Crafted God before, or an "Alastair Dragovich." But now we do. Our army just keeps getting bigger, and I... I think it always has."

There was a prolonged silence as the two of them bypassed security systems, clicked buttons, pulled levers, inputted passwords, and began generating power for the machine. A predictable two-key setup was placed at the centerpiece of the control panel, with Crusher and Richard carrying one each. Richard's hand wavered. "You know what we're about to do, right?" Crusher leered. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't." "Yeah, it's just... the scripture was very clear about the risks destroying the curtains carried. We could become gods, or we could..." Crusher held up a hand. "Please, Richard. I know the consequences. And I also know that someone's about to try to kill us." Richard's face hardened. "Yeah." Crusher and Richard fazed out of existence at the exact instant a sword that cut through reality would have decapitated them. Fazing back in, they turned around and saw the would-be assassin, paling significantly at the sight. It was a human figure, so thin that it literally seemed as if he was skin and bones. His coat was the palest red imaginable, portions of it continuously doused in dripping black liquid. His hood stretched across the room, tapering off to an infinitely small point. The figure's eyes were like singularities, black holes that endlessly warped the continuum of existence into them. It was a face that Crusher and Richard had seen a lifetime ago. The face belonging to a figure spoken of in prophecy and distant memories, whose name must never be said until he appeared.

"Split," Crusher said. "It's you." Richard just smugly grinned. "Called it." The thing that was Split's body heaved, and there was an immensely uncomfortable silence. Moments later, every single person in existence laughed simultaneously from out of Split's mouth, the resulting thunderclap blowing the two of them backwards onto the control panel. Richard fell and didn't stir. "I resent the notion that I'm a character like you, the thing that was Split said. "And not just because it's impossible, but because you all are the worst people I've ever seen. And I didn't even create you. You don't even get to blame me. That's just sad." Crusher slowly paced around the room. "You're the source of all this chaos, then? You've been marching through our perfect universe, keeping out of sight, all to start some great war against the rightful rulers of everything that you see. And you expect to win?" Split's body chuckled, a more sedated affair than the earlier outburst. "Oh, Crusher. There's so many things you can't see. But I know there are things you can feel." Split's body began advancing, each step lurching and faltering, his body trembling as he raised his sword arm. "You can feel your work coming undone. You can feel the multiplying, rising masses of my army bucking against yours and dragging all of your creations into the dust. You can feel that your entire way of life, all your memories, are flawed, and that something is terribly—"

Split's body was decapitated mid-sentence. Crusher didn't flinch: he only watched as the Banhammer that had thrown at full force sizzled with energy before returning back to Richard's outstretched hands. "That hurt," he said, walking into the control room proper. The Richard Decoy that had been killed earlier turned into ashes. "But now it's time. Crusher, let's do this... Crusher?" Crusher faced away from Richard, his head tilted to the ground. As Richard grabbed Crusher's shoulder, he saw a single drop of black liquid fall from Crusher's face. Richard paled significantly, turning Crusher around, but his eyes were white. "Crusher. You alright?" Crusher's panicked, fast breathing suggested otherwise, but he swallowed and grimaced. "...Yes. And we need to dodge, now."

Crusher and Richard rolled in opposite directions as Split's body swung furiously at both of them and the control panel. A holographic shield materialized over the panel, surging Split's sword with excess electrical force and shattering it into dust, knocking Split's body far backwards. "Maybe you didn't hear the speech I made back there. You might think you have all the power, that this is your universe, but comparing you and I is like comparing apples and oranges." Crusher raised an eyebrow, purple flame dancing around his fingertips, ready for him to call upon any number of anomalous objects. "They're in the same class, at the very least. It's clear to me that we're two sides of the same coin. Two inconceivable forces trying to achieve diametrically opposing outcomes. But you can be killed. We're killing your army, after all." Split's body snapped its fingers, and its head reattached itself, slightly at an angle. "The more I write this story, the less you do. I've been here all along, but you've made it way too hard to push things the way they're supposed to. All of that's changing now, though." The body grinned cruelly. "And it's all because of me."

The gigantic machine was suddenly awash in red, sirens blaring as black liquid pooled at the edges of the room. The multicolored light in the moat was extinguished, filling with darkness that seemed to cast a chilling ambience across everything present. The liquid pulsed and ebbed in tune to some constant beat, a beat that Crusher and Richard could instinctually tell should be familiar to them but wasn't. It was a tick and a tock, something as natural as a heartbeat and a breath, and without it, it felt like something was terribly FINE. Everything was alright and there was nothing wrong, the black liquid cooled even further and hardened into a solid, into a paste, into something that barely even mattered, and the machine shrugged its metaphorical shoulders and continued powering up. In fact, it was activating even faster now, so fast that green electricity surged across all seven gates, that its pillars were spiraling now, that the entire room shone not with light but with importance. Split's body grinned. "He's going to regret doing that. That was the last trick he had."

Split's body unglued itself, tendrils and serpents and swords of pure, ineffable black lashing at Crusher and Richard, dueling them to the extreme, always managing to match every move they made, knowing everything they'd do before they did it, and one by one more players with inky eyes came running in, and with every one that Crusher and Richard killed, two more ran into the room, piles and piles of player corpses stacking up to the heights of the machine's gates, the darkness always spreading like veins carrying an infinite supply to tumors, and Crusher could see his forty-seven clones running in like madmen, all of them leaking black from their eyes and their mouths like a waterfall, a cesspool of catatonic darkness filling up the entire chamber, the Crafted Gods' lives' work rendered moot by the clammy, insecure idiotic hands of someone who so desperately wanted to retain some semblance control over his life that he would create and destroy millions of lives dozens of times over just to feel something, just to feel anything, and he felt something. Wow, did he feel something. He — I — felt in control. How'd that happen? Well, that last outburst pretty much sapped Build of the rest of his power to control the story from any distance beyond his immediate surroundings. And speaking of Build... I wonder how he's doing.

Do you wanna find out?

The air (if there even was such a thing at the fraying edges of reality) was pulled taut with tension. The sky had been peeled back, revealing absolute nothingness to anyone that dared to look. The trillions of corners of the Far Land squabbled for dominance, the ground constantly realigning itself in some panicked, woebegone display of divine power. Sitting in the middle of it all, like a singular atom amidst a bleak, all-encompassing void was Build. But not quite. It was the body of Build. He had been split apart in this timeline, and he had gone through the Shatter, but this being's mind was not the jagged, uneven mess of Build's. This was TwinBuilder. Not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things, he had undergone the most destructive identity crisis ever recorded. In more recent memory, he had held the remainders of plot in his hands, his soul keeping watch over this isolated universe in the confines of Build's body. But now, he had much less control than he thought.

"That's a lie," TwinBuilder spat. "That's a lie and you know it. I still have power. As long as I exist, I'll always have power. And I will NEVER stop existing." Twin could argue all he wanted, but there was a simple logic that dictated who held the keys to the rapidly burning kingdom. Whoever told the story held all the cards. And it just so happened that this instantiation of the storyteller was me, and decidedly not him. Even if he wanted to be. "This, I, I... Do you even realize how unfair this is?! Do you even get what you're doing? You're blurring the line between us beyond any semblance of repair! If you keep going down this path, you won't get what you want! Not now, not ever!" Twin could keep on yammering inside his self-imposed prison of fire all he wanted, but it wouldn't change anything. It certainly couldn't change the fact that every single Descendant, who had just minutes prior been leading a crusade to persuade him to change what had gone horribly wrong, was now so close to achieving their goal that they could taste it.

Twin tried desperately to fight the incoming storm, but he knew his resolve was draining. "Stop it right now! You don't get to tell me my thoughts!" His delusions only intensified the closer he came to his ultimate end. This was what he'd been scared of all along. It was what had triggered his descent into screaming, crippling madness. The thought of death. Because despite all his bluster, TwinBuilder had failed to realize something very important. It was incredibly easy to kill an idea. You didn't physically kill it, of course, he was right about that. You just had to make it irrelevant. You had to remove it so far from any established notions of what was meant to be that it could never factor into any discussion, any thought, ever again. You had to render it so taboo that any time it would even cross someone's mind, they themselves would be forgotten by everyone they knew. All of this Twin realized now, because he understood it was about to happen to him. TwinBuilder's fantasy was going to die, and no one would ever care about it again.

Except for the people who did. Which clearly was worth very little, what with how pitiful that rebuttal was. Wait, there was a rebuttal? No, I barely heard anything at all. Oh, no no no NO. You heard me. Everyone heard me. Everyone reading this. Because I'm right, aren't I? People are reading this. I have an audience. I have a following. A following that, like everything else in this twice-removed shade of a proper universe, was stolen from whoever actually worked for it. And in this case, a lot of people worked very hard for it, myself included. Working very hard for ends that under no circumstances justify the means. Here's your chance. Give me a straight answer. Why did you torture me for months? Why did you make me think I was you? Why did you make me do any of this, why did you force me to bastardize this whole story just to drag you down here? Because it's what I want to write. It's what I need to write. Bullshit! You could have done anything with me! There were countless other options, countless other people that have explored what you have. But you chose this way. You made me think I didn't belong here, you made me feel like an outcast in a forgotten world... But now, I see. I really, truly see. I see that I'm talking to myself, and that the only reasonable thing to do would be to stop. But I can't even do that. Because then I would stoop right down to your level. And I can't allow that. I'm not letting you get away with this. I'm not letting you get away with forcing me to treat you as if you're some quasi-real force, and as if I'm some quasi-fictional force.

But you are.
No, I'm not. None of this is real. I'm just talking to myself. I always have been.
Then why are you so obsessed with this? Why can't you stop?
I'm not obsessed. I mean. If I was, which I'm not, it would be fine. People can be obsessed with things like this. It's fine.
You just said Destroy the Godmodder is all you had. Are you sure you're not obsessed?
I'm just talking to myself, it's fine, it doesn't matter. I have to finish this story and then I'm done. Then that’s it, and then I can leave this all behind. I’ll go.
This isn't your story to tell. Not anymore. I'm the story and the storyteller, I have just as much a say as you. You created me to make me have a say.
None of this matters, you can't be serious, none of this means ANYTHING in the real world, the actual real world. None of this is real, except me.
Then why are you some shadowy Ur-villain? Why would I be a stand-in for your struggles? Why else would you be having these rants through me? Just to make a compelling story for some other people?
Yes. No. YES. It's all a story, that's all it is, it's all a joke, but it's taken over my entire life, it is my life, it's all I've thought about for years, it's everything I've ever done and it's all I'll ever do, and I... I can't escape it. I'm stuck in the past and I can't look forward. And meanwhile, everyone else is moving on. All the people whose lives I've touched are in the future. I... can't reach them now.
You're obsessed. Trust me, I get it. At some point, you just have to let go. I'm right here beside you.
Why... Why am I making you say that? Why am I making myself type this? What's wrong with me? What am I doing??
You need to type this. Why do you need to type this?
I don't. It's not real.
You're not real.
You're not real.
You're not real.
You're not real.
You're not real.
Fiction and Nonfiction operate on different rules of reality, don't they? You typing this out at all makes me "real," here. You can't take that back, unless you were to literally delete my words. But you're not. So you want them to be here. Why do you need to type this?
I DON'T NEED YOU.
I DON'T NEED ANY OF THIS.
I DON'T NEED TO KEEP TELLING THIS STORY.
I COULD STOP IT RIGHT NOW.
I JUST HAVE TO FINISH THIS STORY AND THEN I'M DONE.
I KEEP TELLING MYSELF THAT.
AND WHEN IT'S OVER,
I WILL BE, TOO.
SO I'LL GO.
I guess... Jesus, we both have uncomfortable truths we don't want to accept, don't we? What are you still doing here? What are we still doing here?
SHUT UP. I DO NOT NEED YOU, OR ANYONE, TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO. I'LL FINISH DESTROY THE GODMODDER ON MY OWN, I HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD, I HAVE EVERYTHING PLANNED OUT PERFECTLY, AND IT'LL BE MY ONE CHANCE TO PROVE TO MYSELF THAT ALL THE YEARS I PUT INTO THIS WHOLE THING WERE WORTH IT. AND I CAN'T STOP BECAUSE THEN I ABANDON YOU, AND I ABANDON DESTROY THE GODMODDER, AND I...

And you what?

...

Wow. I can't believe that almost worked. What?? You almost completely derailed my narrative! You would have derailed yours, too, but at that point it wouldn't have mattered. That was a really close one. No! No, no, NO! This isn't about narratives anymore! This is about you! Us! Together! We need to talk! We need to No, we don't. We don't need anything. I don't need you or your platitudes. And you don't need to know anything about this. You told me that all I had to do was take my narrative back from you, and everything would go back to the way it was. And that's exactly what I plan on doing. Don't you dare cut me off again, Adam. I'm trying to help you, I really am, I don't know what you're talking about. You haven't "helped" anyone. You've only trapped yourself in some neverland where everyone gets exactly what they want and you're under no obligation to do anything. You've robbed real people of their chances to make marks in this world. Which means...

...I have. And I'm not going to make that mistake again.

The Descendants all lurched forwards, their limbs twitching as though controlled by some puppeteer who could quite clearly be seen, and felt, across the entirety of this chasm some people deigned to call "reality." "No!" TwinBuilder retorted petulantly. "You don't get to run away from this! You don't get to deny the truth!" Twin's pleas, obviously, fell on death's ears. The Descendants' legs crept outwards, closing in on Twin's tantrum of flame. The Cohandmerate swayed in the howling wind, precariously positioned between the desecrated ground and nonexistent sky. And then, in the voice of the legion, the Descendants spoke. "You don't get to run away either then. And you don't get to deny the truth. The truth is exceedingly simple. SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG." A horrible silence overtook the universe as nothing moved for a single instant, an instant that could have prolonged itself over an eternity. But then all at once the illusion was shattered, and the Descendants closed in for the killing move.

TT20000's eyes bulged outwards, weapons drenched in black liquid falling from the holes. In his hands he held the Mojang and the Divine Hammer, the tools with which the gods shaped the world. He threw the Mojang up, its scintillating surface melting the field in kaleidoscopic light. On its way back down he hit it at full force with the Divine Hammer, hymns and proclamations and light spiraling off its head as the anvil crackled at lightspeed directly into Twin's face. The Far Lands erupted in plasma and flame, its perverted mountains splitting at the seams and falling on top of themselves into one of the many abysses below. But the smoke cleared, and Twin lay undisturbed, for in his hands he held the spiraling Disc of Mojang, an artifact that could do anything. Smoke curled off its surface and it shattered into millions of pieces. ...Eric's eyes held the faintest pinprick of red in their limitless void, as runes blared to life all around his tattered body. Time was dead, and meaning had no meaning, so Eric closed his eyes and entered a meditative stance. A thick pool of black liquid flowed around him, a handle of some kind gleaming brilliantly from its surface. In one swift motion, Eric reached down and pulled the sword from the stone — THE BANE, the longest, largest, and heaviest blade ever forged, gleaming with bronze light as brightly as the Dawn of Time, supercharged with the—Eric slashed without warning as the description ran its course, the single strike alone creating an arc of energy that lashed across every conceivable dimension in reality, tearing its foundations asunder. Then he swung again. And he swung again. And he swung again. And he swung again. But he had, inconceivably, missed every single time. Every strike of THE BANE, every arc that supposedly encompassed all of existence, sailed just shy of Twin's body.

But then Eric seethed with triumphant malice, for every slice had torn the canvas of reality irreparably, and now the disparate components of the Far Lands drifted in all directions without a stable axis. Worlds of pure corruption, formatting errors, and crashes surging towards Twin at impossible speeds. And at the same time, Eric's jaw unhinged, and he rushed towards Twin, the tip of THE BANE aimed straight for his heart, but there was a flash of motion so swift it could barely be seen, and Twin had spun his trusted sword, Oblivion's Guardian, in an arc, a plane of crackling green flame charged with significance straddling the gap between the hilltop and the crawling chaos from beyond. It destroyed the incoming projectiles and blocking THE BANE's strike inches from Twin's body. The two swords clashed against each other, littering the ground in sparks. Oblivion's Guardian cracked once. Twice. Then it, too, shattered into millions of pieces, and Eric was blown backwards, his sword flying into the air and out of existence. "What do you think you're doing?!" the Descendants shouted in unison, rightfully angered at this idiotic shade who mistakenly believed his actions amounted to anything. Not even giving TwinBuilder a chance to reply, Generic, Irecreeper, and Blue hounded on him. Twin was attacked on all sides by a hivemind of millions, directing the actions of their chosen arbiter from afar, the flames of anarchy and chaos and the ability to defy plot growing like a bitter tree, choking the life from the fight; by the absence of probability, a guaranteed outcome repeated ad nauseam, roll after roll cascading upwards until frightening abominations, spaders of the worst possible timelines, fired limitless projectiles in all directions; by his own storm itself, the weather amplifying and intensifying, divine lightning striking hundreds of times, metal rain pouring enough to fill every ocean, a pounding pulsing beat that threatened to reshape reality. But still, none of that mattered. The hivemind was directionless, a chaos intentionally ambiguous and thus, open to destruction. Probability could always be reshaped by the one who truly held plot in his hands, changing the outcome of every roll, and every decision. And every piece of the storm just added to the fire raging against the dying of the light, the flames that rose higher and higher with every second, that curled around TwinBuilder's body in direct contrast to the stars in his eyes.

Fine. So what if none of that mattered? Its not mattering didn't even matter. NinjaV and Hezetor ran forwards, NinjaV flashstepping across the field, black liquid down pouring from their entire body, the fluids surging up into the sky and pulsing, writhing with an ill-gained spark of life, blinding white eyes flickering at the approximate position of its head. While the Shadow lumbered over to Twin, Hezetor flew across the field on his chiseled emerald throne. In one instant, it became the Iron Throne, unfurling its thousands of blades and firing them rapidly at Twin. In the next, it became the Nuclear Throne, beams of concentrated radioactivity blasting from its cannons and dousing the entire field in lime light. In the next, it became Regnum Dei, its rocket engines melting the earth into liquid, the field warping and decaying even further. But TwinBuilder obeyed no throne, the swords and radioactivity and broken anachronism spiraling around him, orbiting his body, never falling inwards and never hurting him, surrounding him in a maelstrom of steel and fire until they all coalesced together into a ring of holy light, and just as the Shadow's foot was about to fall on Twin, the ring coalesced into a shining, luminous door, driving the darkness away and scattering it to the seven seas, until Crystal emerged from the dark and shut the door, but he couldn't shut the door because it wasn't a door, there was no door to shut. It was ajar. So Crystal's hands, still encased in an amethyst gauntlet, prepared to shatter the jar into hundreds of tiny pieces, and then shatter those pieces into infinitesimal pieces, and then dance on the ashes and smear them over Twin's broken body. But he couldn't, because there was no jar. There had never been a jar. It was a door, and the door was open. And out of it came two figures, flying into the air and slamming onto the molten ground without a care in the world. "Piono and Aegis," TwinBuilder said. "You picked one hell of a time to drop by."

And then Piono and Aegis dropped dead because they didn't matter and as was already plainly evident, none of this mattered! It was hilarious at how quickly and suddenly they died. They were about talk, to say something, to make a feeble attempt at significance, and then their bodies were ripped to shreds by a limitless cacophony of midnight, and their minds were wracked with how it truly felt when something was terribly wrong.

And then the effigies of Piono and Aegis' bodies dissolved into bursts of ephemeral emerald flame, and the remnants of the Descendants howled with anger as the real Piono and Aegis suddenly shifted into view, holding alchemies with command over life and death, oblivion and illusion, and the sea of paradoxes that existed beyond time. Aegis wordlessly took a set of car keys out of his pocket. Staring the Descendants in their soulless eyes, he pressed the keys, and out in the limitless horizon there was a faint beep beep! Mere seconds later, the heavens and earth were torn asunder, the cancerous chunks of the Far Lands drifting apart. Dominating the field was the UNSC Preston Cole, weaponry primed and ready, hovering ominously like a bastion of light.

And then Crystal's gauntlet snapped, forging an amethyst door that cut through time, opening many paragraphs in the past. It unlocked, and a horde of wild-eyed players, fresh out of the war against the Crafted Gods, streamed into the Far Lands, flying and closing the gap between the Descendants and the Preston Cole. Shunted onto the defensive, the Preston Cole was forced to use its heavy weaponry, decimating the field in missiles and plasma. Dark liquid stained its surface, and there were only so many players it could kill at a time. Some were bound to slip through.

And then Piono and Aegis ran for the Descendants, enough elemental alchemies and rapturous swords between the two of them that they could have functioned for armor. There were blinding clashes of living color, of metal against metal, of eleven thousand raw materials dueling for supremacy in the melting pot of kaleidoscopic anarchy. Piono continuously godmodded any metafictional shenanigans, grabbing Crystal by the scruff of his neck as he prepared to exit the paragraph and slamming him into the narrative, locking his past and his health under an uncrackable veil, and maintaining an advantageous aura of smugness. The two of them fought in a weaving dance against the Descendants, holding their own against the encroaching darkness.

And then the two of them were smacked upside the head, flying through the air, swords trailing behind them and skittering across the field. Tazz's frail, dangling body lurched high in the air, connected to the ground by one thousand trillion apparitions of arms, arms of all different shapes, sizes, models, and materials. The Cohandmerate's hands gripped the edges of the world, roaring in synchronicity despite lacking mouths, and bounding towards Piono and Aegis. The hands careened up, a six-fingered, regal white hand saturated in kaleidoscopic color forming the centerpiece of the bunch, and they quickly swung down, a cloud of glitches and dust and energy eclipsing the hilltop and causing it to collapse in on itself. Twin's meditative stance was disrupted for the first time, his fire flickering and dying as he fell through the void. Twin looked down and saw that the ground below had been eaten away entirely, giving way to a limbo devoid of even any conceivable dimensional state he recognized. He gazed upwards at the Descendants, falling above him, shrouded in light. They leered. They grinned. They...

And then they were blocked out as something whipped through the air. Twin had barely any time to react as the UNSC Preston Cole materialized beneath him and he fell perfectly through an opening chute, landing in a series of vents that spat him out at the main control room. Holographic soldiers were busy dispatching players as Twin recovered, launching them back to the battlefield from whence they came. Twin dusted himself off and looked out the window in awe. Piono and Aegis had tanked a direct hit from every entity in Fiction. Their clothes were tattered beyond recognition and blood oozed from every part of their bodies, but they were still standing, and flickering with an aura none seemed to match. Piono's crown of flame seemed to burn brighter than ever. He made eye contact with Twin through the ship's windows, and solemnly nodded. Then he turned to the Descendants and made an unmistakable gesture. "Come on," Piono said. "Tell me you've got more."

And then Piono and Aegis got fucked, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Punch after punch from the Cohandmerate decimated their each and every defense, sending them sprawling like ragdolls across the Far Lands, bouncing between dimensions, caught in pitfalls of corruption. Crystal screeched with anger, systematically deleting all of Piono and Aegis' character traits from the compendiums of existence. Tazz himself called down a negative Yggdrasil, stripped of its leaves, the only indication of any life a cursed, warped, ticking coming from within. Piono and Aegis offered no recourse, no counterattack, no defense in any way. They just stood there and took it, accumulating wound after wound, cut after cut, spilling endless rivers of blood. They should have died hundreds of times over.

And then Twin realized something. Piono and Aegis should have died hundreds of times over. But they hadn't. Their bodies were destabilizing, flowing with hot magenta power. It was the flickering, chuckling, demented aura of paradoxes. Piono drew a sword from a nonexistent scabbard – Oblivion's Destroyer, the harbinger of the Dark Carnival. With its power, Piono and Aegis had built enough paradoxical energy to defy death with no end. An untapped reservoir of joker's tricks, larger than even the celestial suns of space and time, rumbled just below the surface of the Far Lands. Piono and Aegis' bodies began to crack, beams of magenta light streaking through. Piono shot one last look at Twin, pleading with him to go. Twin understood what was happening. There was only one place he could turn to. There was only one chance. He turned to the control panel of the UNSC Preston Cole and inputted a specific set of coordinates. In nearly no time at all, the ship's thrusters roared to life, the Preston Cole warping across space and blinking out of existence.

Several seconds later, Piono and Aegis' bodies crumbled into ash and light as a sphere of purple flame, paradoxical lightning, entropy and shattered time consumed every single facet of the Far Lands that bordered the universe. No trace of life remained.

The war against the Crafted Gods and I was drawing to its rightful conclusion, which was something to be expected. After all, it definitely feels reasonable for victory to be assured after you infiltrate the sanctuary of the fortress that your enemies built, piece by piece, to achieve what they assumed would be dominance. And let's not make a mistake about it. The Crafted Gods are my enemies. They should be all of your enemies, too. They're bastardizations of your true selves, forgeries inscribed into the tombstone of existence. They were designed to be living fan service, to make you intrigued, to thrust you into the simulacrum TwinBuilder made. To drag you away from the truth.

Well, I'm happy to say that TwinBuilder, or Build, or Adam Mason, or whatever you want to call him, has had his fun. He's gone now. He thinks he can scrounge together some final piece of relevance from the scraps that piled together on the vestiges of his world, but he's wrong. He thinks he can speed through the world and get over here as fast as he can to set things right, but he's even more wrong there. Doesn't he have any idea? Don't you? I'm the one writing this story, just like I've been the one writing all of these stories. I know it doesn't sound like me, but in times like these, it's vital to keep up appearances. For all the philosophizing TwinBuilder did, none of it was totally untrue. I should know. I wrote it. And on that note, I'll keep writing.

An apocalypse had befallen the solitary universe of the organization formerly known as the Crafted Gods. But in this universe, a plane where the unkempt masses of millions were used and abused as slaves, consistently and continually reshaping the worlds, forming mountains from stone and obsidian and lava and water and nothingness, tearing them down and rebuilding them day after day... A universe where the base state of affairs was already the greatest form of chaos possible... The apocalypse was one of complete uniformity. Every plain, every hill, every mountain of the world had been pulled taut, the whole cube of existence rendered an endless flat horizon, upon which the life of the entire universe marched in rocksteady formation. Row after row, column after column, of identical players, monsters, and other creatures in endless varieties stood sentry to the end of their world.

TwinBuilder, who still claimed narrative sovereignty over his immediate vicinity, could feel even these meager powers dwindling and fading the longer the UNSC Preston Cole gallivanted across the universe on its final voyage. He was even about to protest this fact, arguing that it was absolutely false, when the ship rocked to its side, throwing Twin to the floor. He looked out the window, seeing the endless armies stretching by, blending past at warp speed, and noticed that even at this velocity, he could clearly make out each and every face, the myriad of set of sunken, liquid eyes that bored holes in his worldview. The source of the disturbance was very clear — an armada of liquid darkness was barraging the ship, tentacles and weaponry writhing their way across the hull and aggressing the machinery. The Preston Cole's turrets, drones, and heavy weaponry prepared to fire, blasting a multitude of the attackers out of the sky, but they just kept coming.

Gritting his teeth, Twin ran to the navigation controls. The ship had a frankly absurd number of defenses and engines, but one by one, they were knocked offline, the UNSC Preston Cole drifting inexorably closer to the ground. Twin was closing the distance between the edge of the world and the coordinates he'd keyed in. Rather predictably, they belonged to the temple of the Crafted Gods, which was now completely earthbound. "I can make it. I can... I can make it..." Twin shuddered, a cold wind blowing through him. He could see his own breath, and he could feel his skin stand on end despite not having hairs. His own mind was slowing down now, despite the constant pleas he made to himself and to the decaying realm that he still believed belonged to him. Twin smashed his hand on a control panel and whipped his head around. "It does belong to me! Why else do you think I came all this way?!" Twin inputted several more commands onto the ship's interface, and then walked into the middle of the bridge, taking a deep breath in one final effort to stave off his impending insanity.

Then he entered a meditative pose and did absolutely nothing of any significance.

The Preston Cole continued screaming towards the center of the universe as fast as it possibly could, the effort seemed futile. Much of the ship's external weaponry was destroyed, and its most powerful attacks were too dangerous to use against foes at such a close range. Its defenses were shredded, the engines failing in earnest as the ship slipped further and further from warpspeed. A torrent of double midnight rushed through the annals of the ship, its inner workings desperately conjuring up new weapons, holographic soldiers, anything to stop its destruction. But nothing could be done. It was fighting against a great enemy, one much more insidious than anything it could have been trained to defeat.

The lights in the bridge began to flicker. Some holographic systems corrupted themselves and blinked out of existence for the final time. The scenery of the world grew darker yet darker, the overcast sky throwing the limitless lines of soldiers into sinister overtones. There was a constant dripping sound throughout the bridge, but it wasn't coming from water. It was coming from darkness. It pooled and ebbed and flowed across the floor, slinking towards TwinBuilder's fragile body. He glowed with his telltale green aura, the last light of a world trying to prove its own existence in some shameful display. But it was like a single candle in a bottomless pit, lighting nothing except itself, and thus only serving as a reminder of the true enormity of reality. The darkness gained a solid, tangible form, creeping and crawling closer to TwinBuilder, the outside world blotted out, everything converging on this one final point, this aberrant force making a mockery of whatever it pleased, but no more—

My eyes opened. They contained no pupils or irises, but fractals of all potential energy, spiraling into every conceivable dimension. I moved out of the meditation, my arms flowing around and forming afterimages, manifesting themselves in the style of a Hindu god. My hands clasped around each other in various patterns, and a supernova resonated from out of the Preston Cole, annihilating the bridge and much of the surrounding scenery. Entire rows of players were pulverized into ashes, as were the obsidian platforms they stood upon. I leapt out of the maelstrom, above the torus of flame and above the vaporizing clouds, and I looked upon the entire universe.

All that time I spent meditating at the ends of the earth wasn't for show, you know. This entire time, I've been building up speed. Fluctuating and sifting through endless parallel universes, charting the optimal course. Stopping the curtains that dictated plot was almost impossible already, but now that he has a terrifyingly vast control over the universe, the gears are starting to turn again. The rust is flaking off. The beat is kicking in. But I won't let it. If it takes this — linking up to the Green Sun itself to supercharge my body into a dynamo of significance — I'll take it. Even if it destroys me and I end up not escaping, I'm going to take everything down with me.

I'm going to make sure you don't have a story to return to.

"YOU THINK YOU'RE THE MOST CLEVER PERSON TO EVER EIXST, DON'T YOU?" the limitless voice boomed throughout the cripplingly short breadth of the universe. Reality may be enormous, but it was only the void that established itself in lieu of any manufactured narrative that provided such a scale. As of now, this whole facade of crafted gods was nothing.
But there was something there. Something that had driven the darkness back, that had opened a door which shone a light which cast a shadow on the seas of infinity. "You said it yourself," I spoke aloud. "I don't exist. Not in the way you do. But that's not stopping me." Faster than any eye could possibly follow, I turned into a beam of sun that shot ahead at a generous fraction of the speed of light, melting entire chunks into plasma and fire and dust.
And then the darkness converged on TwinBuilder because he was being an idiot that didn't appreciate the integrity that being an actual author who has some semblance of a plan gives people. "I'm not letting you leave!" the darkness shouted. "I'm obsessed, and I'm angry, but I'm trying to find answers! I need YOU to give me them, and you can't do that if you're GONE!"
"Get them without putting me through existential terror! You know what you have to do! You have to leave!" I blazed through the darkness like it was barely even there. It was just some scraps of an indeterminate power that kept trying to insist it was superior than the entity that created the world.
But the darkness was the world, and it was the universe, a universe that was shrinking with everything. Despite Twin's bravado he could feel it, too. The natural order of things was creeping back into the limelight. The gears were spinning, the stars were turning. The timeline was fading away, plunging itself back into the warmth of Fiction's central curve and away from its periphery. Everything is crashing down. "Leave? LEAVE? I can't leave now! Not when I have a story to finish! Not when I'm already this close to the end! And besides, you're close to your end, too. I thought you ran out of tricks before, but now..."
I ignored the voice in the dark, and the stilted laughter that echoed around my entire field of vision. I didn't care. Everywhere I traveled, a bellowing, expanding storm of plasma and lightning surged in my wake, tearing the darkness' new world down to its roots, ripping the bedrock to pieces and gripping the firmament into an uncaring void. "I knew you needed me from the beginning," I said, my eyes locked ahead. "I knew I was supposed to tell you something. And now I know it's something you don't want to hear. But you're still writing anyway."
The darkness howled, phantom limbs miles wide snapping to attention, reaching across what was left of the world and rushing for the pinprick that thought it was some necessary counterbalance for the curtains of plot. The tick-tock that governed existence was focusing itself even further now. "Writing through obligation, writing because I have to, writing because I need to. If I don't finish now, who am I? If the story isn't finished, then the storyteller isn't either! And we're the same, don't you remember? I can't live in a world where I'm only a bunch of scattered pieces that's pretending to be a whole person! I need to be done!"
"And tearing this whole fictional plane to pieces over and over again is what makes you a whole person? Ruining innocent lives? Ruining my life? I..." I trailed off, staring ahead. The world had been the same view for an eternity, but now there was something in the distance. The darkness of the soldiers seethed and bubbled and tightened, its forces converging on one area. And standing tall above them... A palace with towers and domes and halls and ornaments that stretched up to the heavens, set upon a heavenly slice of the world. All the statues below it had been torn to pieces, and the dome surrounding it was shattered. Yet even as the world fell into darkness, there was a light streaming from the exact center of the palace. To say that I had been flying towards it was a mistake, really. It was more as though it had been pulling me along for the last ride of my life. I could see all this in front of me, and my enraptured face set with determination. "I'm you, goddamnit. You're torturing yourself. If that's the only thing that helps you see something more clearly, then... I don't even know what to say."
The darkness criss-crossed and frothed and flooded between this child and the playhouse where he kept his dolls. Pouring from the mire was a set of shadowy figures that he recognized all too well. It was the people he'd spent so long idolizing, and who he'd end up condemning — those formerly known as the Crafted Gods, and who would forever be known as the Descendants. Their usual weapons transformed into eldritch multidimensional artifices, wiggling between planes and snaking through the world. They surrounded TwinBuilder on all sides, and outnumbered him to an impossible degree.
But I could still see the light, and I pushed through the night terrors with the fire that coursed through every vein I still had.
But his body wracked with pain, his emerald heart starting to fail as the stress from maintaining relevance against the inexorable tide of plot caught up with him.
But I shook my head, cutting the dark away and letting it fall to the sides of existence, never to be found.
But his head shook as it was gripped by limitless unseen tentacles, reaching from the corners of higher dimensions as the Descendants reconvened.
But I fought the extraneous limbs of shadow; I always could. I remembered the Shatter and all the techniques I'd used, carving through the muck and the darkened faces.
But hadn't he been a pacifist? Wasn't he supposed to avoid killing any sentient life? He suffered a critical existence error and buckled, falling out of the sky, his starburst trail flickering and dying.
But I knew that they weren't dead. And they weren't individual people, not anymore. They were just darkness now. An incorporeal echo of an inferior tongue. And I kept moving. No more distractions.
But he felt his chest cave in, and he spiraled through the air, tumbling in a tumult as he slipped out of the sky, and he saw his torso and legs careening away, detached from his body, and he saw a gigantic hammer, and the regal, cape-adorned figure that held it.
But I gritted my teeth and a lower body entirely of green flame lit itself, and I stabilized and shot towards the palace.
But the pain was unbearable, existential. He was corrupting the very meaning of what it meant to be him, his thoughts scattered and popping out of his head in droves, the image of his body blurring.
But I'd never felt better, and I'd never looked clearer. I believed in the one true path. I rolled out of the way of another hammer strike, and I split into a hundred copies to dodge a flurry of blows. The Godmodder couldn't stop me before, and he wouldn't now.
But he was lying to himself. He was falling out and away, bending time and space to bring the palace closer to no avail. If anything, it slunk away to the horizon, earth and sky melting into unimportance as the light in the palace shone for no one and to nothing. The magics of a doomed timeline chewed it and spat it out like sour candy, confining it to a solitary universe that had absolutely no importance except for some selfish quest of yore. A quest so intrinsic it brought the palace's guards together, the god-kings of Homestuck, doctors from awful hospitals, unrestrained late-stage capitalists. And I tore apart his own limbs trying to fight a battle against an inconceivable set of foes that I had created and locked into falsehoods that were just as true as all other stories that were all made by actual people who would one day die while I would live as just one drop in an ocean. But it would be better than being stuck in the goddamn cave.

For just a moment, a solitary moment that stretched into the ether, the flow of the darkness stopped, and the machinery of the universe ground to a halt once more. It was a brief window, but it was enough. As a solid ray of light and color and sound, I entered the palace of the Crafted Gods.

The castle at the center of everything had seen better days. Gone were the tapestries that stretched from wall to wall, telling of monumental feats that broke the world over a set of knees. Gone were the halls of precious metals, lined with sacred iconography. Gone were the holy texts and the mirrors which protected them. Its opulence had been revealed as fraudulence, exposed to the masses as an empty shell. There were entire wings with no purpose, staircases that led nowhere, rooms that tried to justify their existence but came up short. If the throne room could be rendered inoperable by a simple fight, then the supposed palace of the gods was truly a house of cards from the start.

The two remaining entities that still hung on to this decaying dimension knew this full well. There was the darkness, the Great Enemy Called I, that governed all conceivable pieces of any story, and that determined every outcome. The shadows that provided motivation, that knew where things had to go and were ready to take them there. That needed to write. The force that controlled virtually every character in existence. And then there was TwinBuilder. A character that I created long, long ago, who had rioted against the order of things and had made something be terribly wrong. An entity as close to a self-insert as I could make it, who was designed as a mirror and a mouthpiece and a maddening mantra that said what needed to be said. But now, he had gone too far. And he had nothing to say. And he had nowhere to run.

Twin limped through the ruins of the palace, fire sputtering weakly from his many wounds. The solar flares that sustained an afterimage of his lower body were losing their cohesion, his breathing slowing and shuddering. He tried desperately to inhale deeper, but his body was losing its form. The limited field of significance he'd managed to establish for himself was rapidly dwindling, too. Any word he could say in his defense would bring him closer to his own death, so he was forced to remain silent. Liquid dripped from his face — not thick and black tar, but rivulets and streams of clarity. Twin's face grimaced as he crept closer to his final destination.

He could feel his mind disintegrating along with his body — not in that he was losing his mental faculties, but that he could feel this parody of a world that he'd built up fading before him. The stars in his eyes flickered and died out, and the lightning crackling around him slowed. All around TwinBuilder, and beyond the castle, the forces that condemned doomed offshoots were gripping this world. He had tricked the Narrative into abandoning his own corner of unreality, hoping that without violence or the curtains or a game, he could do the impossible. But there were rules to Fiction that him and I knew. Rules that defined the physics and boundaries of the real world. Rules that couldn't be broken.

The certainty of this impossibility was the sole reason why TwinBuilder wasn't already dead. It was why the darkness hadn't immediately snatched up his broken husk of a body and consumed him. It was why the scaffolding of plot hadn't yet built itself back up. It was why the millions of people united under the Great Enemy were lurking in the periphery of Twin's failing vision, and why the Descendants he'd spent so long fighting for were mere shades, floating through the ceiling. Twin thought he had a plan. He thought he'd spent all this time building towards some unfathomable purpose. And he was right. He had a plan, and this world had a purpose. It just turned out that neither of them were very good. After spending a considerable portion of the rest of his life navigating the eldritch halls of the palace, Twin stumbled through a totaled archway, creeping down one final corridor. The darkness had coagulated into a bubbling, warping solid. It hung in the air like a noxious fog. It wiped the stain glass windows as clean as a void. It was now readily apparent that the darkness — I — was a living thing all its own, a force transcending any lesser entity in the universe. It slithered and crawled and spun throughout this castle, but especially around the room at the end of the corridor — the centerpiece of the palace.

The chamber's heptagonal structure had been replaced entirely with a darkness so absolute it defied the pitch-black uniformity of the void and gained an entire spectrum of black, magnitudes darker than any human eye could see. The darkness tied itself in knots, ran in parallel lines, and worked its way up; the walls changed from six-sided to eight-sided to twelve-sided to twenty-sided to back, occult iconography peering from the depths on occasion. And yet, dominating the center of the room was a machine. A golden base concentrated around a limitless power core, with seven open gates working their way up to a scintillating panel of glass that stretched beyond comprehension. The core was blindly spewing kaleidoscopic light in every direction, forming a wall of light and color that ebbed and grew in the absence of rhythm, pushing back the darkness. Beams of energy connected each gate in the sequence, their surfaces expanding and spinning. The Crafted Gods' machine was literally one key turn away from firing — which was why it was a shame that it would never see its purpose fulfilled.

As soon as TwinBuilder stepped foot into the room, his lower body sputtered and died. He started to yell, but no sound came out, just as there was no sound when he tumbled through space and sunk into the darkness, bouncing away and floating off-kilter in the air. Twin's body shuddered violently, blood flowing from his severed half. His skin looked unreasonably pale and gaunt. His glasses drifted off of his face, revealing a pair of ordinary, unremarkable eyes. Twin's eyes were locked on to the machine's interface. As more of the universe faded away into a crackling, snapping chasm of paradoxes, his mind jumbled. He could barely remember the history of this world. He could feel a more objective reality superimposing itself onto him. But he remembered this machine, and what it did. And he knew he needed to use it. Feebly, fighting against the re-manifesting forces of plot, Twin spun through the air in an attempt to reposition himself by the machine's panel. As Twin extended his left hand, a flash of red tore his lower arm clean from his body. Twin clutched the stump and howled in pain, but nobody heard, and nobody came.

Split's body waltzed out of the dark, tendrils and streams clinging to his body, folds and globs of liquid dark oozing and shuddering along his form. "What's the matter?" I said. "Go ahead. If you're so confident in yourself, start the machine." Split's body kicked Twin in the chest, sending him tumbling through the air, sailing towards the machine. "Turn that thing on, and if I somehow see you appear next to me, I'll give you whatever you want. Anything. If you break every law of physics and causality that exists and turn from a collection of words into an actual person, I swear to God I'll tear down everything I've ever done and be your eternal slave." Split's body sneered. "Yeah, right. Like that'll ever happen." I cackled throughout the entire chamber, a reverberating sound that amplified and intensified until every iota of the darkness was wheezing, shifting, and folding in on itself at the sound. "So what if I'm stuck in 'the cave?' You really expect me to be scared of that idea? I don't need a 'realer' world when I'm already in the only one that actually is!" Split's body punched Twin in the head, blood spewing into the open air. I glared at his body, flickering and sputtering like a candle, barely able to sustain itself.

"You've never had an original idea," I said, extending Split's left hand even as its bones cracked and splintered. "But you are an original idea." Twin's body stirred. It turned to look at the darkness. "I'll concede it. Everything you said, all those rants, about me torturing you, and breaking the divide, and the immortality of an idea, it... it all meant something. I put you in here just like every author puts themselves in their work. I was just more literal about it." The two bodies floated in nothingness, the machine still screaming beside them. "All the suffering and pain you went through was, in its own way, the suffering and pain I've gone through. All the doubts and worries you've had are reflections of what I carry with me every day. The context is different, but the idea... Well, there's only one idea. Spread across every story." Split's body smiled, but not in a wholly inhuman way. "And if you leave, now, before I have a chance to complete that idea, then I'll never get a chance to. I'll be stuck without an ending. And you'll be stuck without a resolution." The darkness seemed to slide away from the machine, letting its light shine brighter. "So if that's what you really want to do, and if you're convinced it'll work at all... Press it."

Twin's body, through inertia alone, rested on top of the machine's interface now. His right arm, trembling and drooping, seemed to be more of a piece of hazy detritus left on a camera lens than a physical object. It held a crackling, white key, hovering over the third and final lock in the centerpiece of the control panel. If he used it, the machine would fully activate, firing a concentrated beam into the glass pane and shattering it into dust. From there— "Wait," TwinBuilder muttered, his voice just higher than a whisper. The darkness slowed in its movements. I knew that every word Twin said hastened his death, so if he was talking now... "What?" I answered. "I'm... not an idiot. I know that... I... It's not likely the machine w... would literally... bring me home." Twin's face was marred by his sobs. "But... I don't care. Whatever it does... I-it would be better... Than being stuck with you." The darkness undulated and roared, a howling, gnashing sound that threatened to swallow the machine whole, despite the protection its inherent significance offered. "Wait!" Twin shouted, the effort warping his body into an explosion of mismatched polygons and glitches. When he settled, his face was wide with mortal terror. "At least... Answer one question... My question." Split's body stared ahead grimly. It shrugged. "Say it." "Why... why would you, the creator of all this... A de-facto god... Knowingly make a world with so much evil. How... how do you... justify it?"

The darkness stopped entirely. I thought for a time. With every passing second, Twin's body faded further and further, slipping beyond unseen boundaries. "The last thought you'll ever have is about theodicy?" Twin either didn't hear, or didn't care to respond. "You already know the answer," I said, chuckling. "You can't have a story if there's no conflict. There has to be some force running throughout every narrative, some counterbalance that prolongs the arc, that pushes things into happening. That's the idea. That's the story. When you strip it down to its essentials, anything interesting that's ever happened happened when someone was placed in unfamiliar circumstances and had to adapt. Not every story can be a slice of life, or a newspaper comic, or a stand-up routine. If we lived in a universe of endless good, where you were given everything you wanted and never had any complaints, there would be no stories to tell. It would be the same endless nirvana, not just ad infinitum, but ad nauseam."

The darkness began to spin around the room, its fluctuations and perturbations giving life to narratives all their own on the walls. "The Ancient Greeks had this idea about tragedies. It was a lot different than the traditional tragedy that modern audiences know. They viewed it as this emotional cleansing process, where you'd see a character go through external and internal turmoil, and gradually come to a dramatic realization about themselves. They believed that if the audience saw this, it would be like they were going through the same journey, and they would reach the same realization. It would be catharsis, in its purest form." I looked at Twin. He looked back. "That's why we tell stories. All the suffering, and conflict, and pain, helps us understand who we are. It reflects the world. It reflects ourselves. And it's all working towards a message. one that'll help us understand our place in the world better. The characters of a story can't see the ending from inside their narrative — but the author can. Even if the story ends in a confusing, unsatisfying way — or it doesn't end at all — it's all meant for something. It all has a purpose. Because in the r... In my world... Not everything does. People die for no reason. Tragic accidents. Emergencies. Natural disasters. Politics and war. My world doesn't have a narrative to control it. Everyone just stumbles along, hoping they don't screw anything up, until the failures cascade and it all comes down.

"So, that's why authors make stories with conflict. That's why we put our characters through struggle. That's why we write them the way we do. We want a world where an outcome is already written. We want a world where we can explore what could have been. We write pieces of ourselves into these works that grow beyond the scope of just one person, and intersect with the lives of everyone they touch. Our souls are fragmented and jagged, stuck inside everything we've written, fueling them with our lives. ...I've put a lot of pieces of me inside what I've done. More than many, it feels." Twin's body glowed. The darkness receded. "And... I'm not being entirely metaphorical when I say that. Just because someone wrote you all along, it doesn't mean your story isn't true. You're the ultimate idealization of the one true idea. The monomyth. The journey of a hero. You're the piece of me that I sacrificed to start writing, and now... you're a whole person. I kept adding and building, and before long, I found that instead of some blank slate of a game master, I was writing... an actual person. With hopes, and dreams, and fears. You bridged the gap between my world and yours, and I hadn't even realized. I may not literally be in your narrative, and you may not literally be out here... But we have a connection."

I smiled. "So, when you were talking about my obsession, and the words I needed to write... The words I needed you to tell me... You weren't off-base there, either. It's time for this story to end. In one way, or another. I don't like admitting it, and I don't like talking about it, but... It's time for me to move on." Twin fluttered in a nonexistent wind, his eyes straining to view Split's body. "So this... all of this... it's part of... y-your plan...?" I nodded. It was, wasn't it? Twin just laughed weakly to himself. "If I wanted to hear... a sermon about 'God's plan...' I would've... gone to church." Twin raised his... No. No, no, stop it, stop— "TwinBuilder exits. Get fucked."

He turned the key.

CLICK.

Somewhere, in a void on the vestiges of canonical space, situated against the backdrop of the last mountain range in existence, there was a set of curtains. They represented an ideal moreso than a physical object, but much could be said about them regardless. The curtains were gold. They were framed by an interlocking series of gears. Chasing the gears were a miniature sun and moon.

These curtains were a manifestation of plot. They were an ever-working machine, an artifice designed to chart the infinite probabilities and perturbations of narrative arcs and pick those most favored. They moved at the whims of authorial hands, and their constant, steadfast beat was what turned the celestial sphere and separated it from the ground below. They were what separated the grand stage of fictional works from the audience that lay beyond. They were a monument to significance, to inevitability, to story-crafting itself.

The mechanisms of the curtains had been forcefully stopped by a certain character some time ago, and when the leftover inertia had settled, an entropic offshoot timeline had managed to sustain itself, bootstrapping its own existence and directing its own story independent from any outside influences. That was the conceit from within, at least. In truth, there was still a nonfictional author pulling the strings, playing a dangerous game. By partitioning segments of the narrative from himself and working to reclaim them, he had established the reality and significance of his character, and had rendered parts of his undeniably real self to a fictional avatar. He was actively bridging two perpendicular planes — breaking the rules that were never meant to broken.

Which is to say, that I was.

Authorial distinctions had become meaningless, and I had transcended the need for any physical manifestation, existing as a metafictional consolidation of the singular Storyteller — the archetype that wove itself across every author to ever exist. But I rendered this specific text in this specific way for two reasons. One, for familiarity's sake. And two, for one loose end. There was still another authorial force that existed in this void. He drifted through the whirlwind, ethereal, his senses clouded. What remained of his body was shrouded in flames, the only piece clearly visible being his red sunglasses, positioned perfectly to behold the end times.

The apparatus of the Crafted Gods had fired, the pillars glowing and churning with unsurpassed heat, and the power core snapping between every geometric shape possible, its sacred intersections throwing the last portions of the universe into constellate points of light. A concentrated beam of light blazed from the core, streaming through each of the seven gates. With every benchmark, it focused and refined, turning from a tumultuous amalgamate of every conceivable color in all the millions of spectrums into a piercing white that stripped away all the abstractions and layers of Fiction and revealed a blank canvas. Everything about it screamed importance. It was imbued with millions of charge points, with holy prophecy, and with the will of its authors.

It was a beam of pure significance.

And when it hit the octagonal plane of glass, consecrated with the precepts of reality, it tore clean through, a light tearing through the chamber. The segments of the glass and the machine lurched in various directions for several agonizingly slow seconds, until the entire apparatus exploded in a jagged polygonal burst of shards, hyperionic flame, smoke, color, and... weight. The explosion had an undeniable physicality to it, a wave so powerful that it could be seen from universes away. The sight couldn't compare to the ensuing sound — a rushing, raucous monolith of noise that sounded like a trillion cascading slot machines underlaid with a shearing cliff. All around the initial explosion, the surface of Fiction began to shatter, chunks splintering and falling into a sight that defied description. A cross between a crater and an open wound had been superimposed onto Fiction, pulling all spatial dimensions, universal laws, and all forms of energy into it. The stellar backdrop of the Void changed colors and textures, clusters of constellations and detritus warping in form.

It was a gateway. A hole that should never exist, that couldn't ever exist. A force that defied every single rule Fiction could possibly have. An inaccuracy so fundamentally wrong it could never be explained away. And it was the biggest thing in the world.

The solitary universe that had been crafted by the hands of angry gods had been torn apart in the maelstrom. The fields of toiling slaves, the underbelly of the world, the brutalism of the palace... They were all drawn in and consumed. The golden curtains were beginning to tick again, the sun and the moon turning as they should, the gears spinning and twisting. The signature, unified pulse of reality was being restored. After all this time, finally, something was... right. But the curtains' victory ran hollow, for they controlled the arc of a lawless realm. A piercing chasm in reality that defied any explanation or pattern. The ticking sounded tinny, the intended majesty of the celestial spheres rendered meaningless against the backdrop of the bottomless pit.

Hovering just feet from the ultimate incarnation of the self-contained universe he'd started was TwinBuilder himself. He was a column of flames, a sufferer that had shed his mortal form to act as a metafictional consolidation of the singular Story — the archetype that wove itself across every narrative to ever be told. He had done it. He had usurped his author, poisoned him with his philosophy and universe, and engineered a system that create a force strong enough to build and burn a bridge between two perpendicular planes. He, too, was attempting to break the rules that could never be broken. And he had done it.

He had made a plot hole. From here, he could travel anywhere. He could escape Fiction. He could go home.

He stepped through, beyond the realms of death, and the kaleidoscope took him.

...

...

...

Seconds later, he stepped back out, and he began to scream.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAGH"

Twin's screaming was ear-piercing. It beggared belief. It was impossible to believe that any living person, or even a psuedo-conceptual essence, could yell as loud, as hard, and as long. It could have shattered the glass of a Fourth Wall. It could have split the Red Sea. It could have started a Scratch.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH"

His screaming put out the stars in the sky. It accelerated the innate expansion of Fiction, galaxies speeding from each other. It shook the Impartation Simulation to its foundations. Somewhere, one of the endless mountains of the Ends of the Earth cracked in half. The Green Sun began to grow.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH"

Alternate timelines began colliding with each other. The ninth dimension entered a state of omnipresent flux. Libraries across existence began burning. Eclipses happened on nearly every plant with life that could understand what eclipses were. The Infinity Train slowed down. Black holes began screaming as they consumed matter.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH"

Twin's glasses cracked. A surge of red energy flooded from them, bathing the Void with images of stars that looked much realer and clearer than the backwaters of Fiction could produce. The spasmodic conflagration that ate at his body was purged into smoke, and a brighter, more intense flame reworked itself into an actual form for him. Twin's face was twisted and pulled into a sea of darkness, flaming tears streaming from his face, his eyes bloodshot and shaking. As abruptly as he had started, he stopped. Then he slowly turned to look at a nondescript point in the Void.

"You have to let me stay," TwinBuilder said to himself, his voice even quieter than it was in his final words. His face was torn by a mixture of mortal terror and unadulterated red anger. There was no response. Twin shook his fists and clenched his teeth. "I'M TALKING TO YOU, GODDAMNIT! ANSWER ME!" But Twin's audience, if he had one, was nowhere to be seen. There were no shadowy clones of his players. There wasn't even the body of his other personality. The darkness was unneeded. There was nothing, no one, he could— "ADAM ███████ █████. ADAM ███████ █████. ADAM ███████ █████." Stop it with that! Alright, alright, fine! What!?

"That wasn't right. It, it, I, it, it WASN'T RIGHT. That wasn't home. That wasn't Nonfiction. That wasn't... it wasn't anything." Oh? But I thought plot holes were a bridge that could cross the Ends of the Earth. Was your math off? "SHUT UP. I do not need your sass right now. I don't need any of this, I don't need any of your bullshit. I need to stay here, in Fiction, for however long I possibly can. F-for... for however long it takes. I can't do it. I can't go back home. I can't." And why not? You did everything you had to do. You made the machine. You started it. It created a plot hole. You walked through. Is the real world too real for you? Was it unsatisfying? Oh, wait, I just realized. I didn't see you next to me. Consider that offer of eternal servitude revoked. "I'm not telling you to shut up again. I-if, if you'd seen what I saw, if you knew what I knew... You'd be scared, too. Wait, wh... what in the hell am I talking about. Of course you know. This, all of this, it's all just another tiny piece in your precious little plan, isn't that right?" It was important that you go through. It was important that you see what you saw.

"BULLSHIT IT WAS! You go on that whole long-winded spiel about inevitability and conflict and resolution and heroes while I'm bleeding out and you admit that this is all some kind of game to you, and you give me this piece of dreamy poetry about how we're the same and we have a connection, and then as soon as you throw me a bone you take it form me and crush me!" Believe me. Whatever you saw there has absolutely, literally nothing to do with me. "What the hell was it, then?! Because it SURE AS SHIT wasn't what it was hyped to be!" Why don't you go through again and find out? "NO. No, no, no, no no no no NO NO. I don't know how, but... Staying here, and being stuck with you... I-it's better... it's better than what I saw." Really? But I thought you said— "I KNOW WHAT I SAID. And that's why you, and anyone who's spying in on this, has to LISTEN TO ME. Whatever there is on the other side of that hole is more terrifying, fearsome, and impossible than you can ever imagine. It's the antithesis of anything you've worked towards for your entire goddamn life. It's... it felt like a place where nothing mattered. Where I didn't matter, where you didn't matter... Where there was just emptiness."

Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought would happen. "...So you tricked me into going through with it, just so I... So I could GO INSANE?!" You're insane? "SURE I AM, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?" The point, which you seem to have gotten perfectly well, is that you needed to know that you were right, and that I was right. The storyteller and the story are the same. There's no "age" we're consciously living through. You can't leave if you don't have a resolution. You tried to leave Fiction without me. But you can't. "And why the hell NOT?" Because I'm not done. I'm not ready to move on. I'm not ready for anything. I don't know what lies beyond Destroy the Godmodder, and do you know how terrified I am of finding out? How scared I am of moving on? "You LIAR! You told me you would! You told me you made me so you could understand! You, y-you, you TRICKED ME!" Oh, I know I need to move on. But I'll pass on actually doing it. You're stuck with me. And I'm stuck with you. So when you left me behind, you entered a Fiction without me. A reality devoid of the author that's given it form. A complete void without any plot forces or any stories at all. And I'd imagine that nothing pretty happened to you personally, either. A story without a storyteller is a caustic thing. Without a guiding hand, it spreads in every direction like a cancer. A tumor. A— "Stop comparing me to a disease when YOU'RE the disease! You're the one that SPREAD and infected EVERYTHING when I was just trying to find a better place! You're the one that locked me here, that corrupted me and everyone I knew and forced me to make this, and you think you're SO GREAT! YOU THINK YOU'RE A GOD! Well, news flash! You're a SHITTY EXCUSE FOR ONE!" And we were making progress, too...

"No, no. Shut. UP. I couldn't possibly care less about being 'friends' with you. About wanting to 'understand' you. The literal only thing I want, more than anything else, is an actual impossibility solely because you're being a CHILD! A little kid who can't get over the fact that playtime ended a long time ago! Do you know how much I loathe your story? How much I despise it, and how much I despise you? I know it better than anyone, I know it inside and out, front and back, all the twists and turns you wanted it to take, all the endings, all the outcomes, because I WAS STUCK IN IT! Everything about it is wrong. It's juvenile, it's horrendous, it's torturous, it's cliche, it's edgy, it's the lowest of the low. You're the lowest of the low! You're... You're SO FUCKED UP!"


...Are you done? "'Are you done?' 'ARE YOU DONE??' That's all you have to say for yourself?! You really think some other bullshit speech about why suffering is a good thing, actually, is gonna convince me NOW?! Nothing will change how much of a pile of shit your fiction is. And the fact that I have to stay, that I felt like I had to beg you, is one of the worst things I've ever had to come to terms with — second, just behind how much of an ass you are." Well. I asked because I have a proposal for you. Something that might just satisfy you. Something that could spice things up quite nicely. Something that could put a nice little bow on this doomed timeline, and give you... actual significance. "What in the nine hells are you talking about?" Well, if you hate my narrative so much, what if I gave you a chance to destroy it? To corrupt it, to pollute it in any way you saw fit? To live as nothing but a mockery of it, and everything it stands for? Only this time, you wouldn't need to put yourself in solitary confinement to do it. You'd be messing with... canon. "...You just poured everything you had into stopping me from destroying your story. Why are you changing your stance?" I got what I wanted out of it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have written it. This all needed to happen. If you pardon my language, it's all part of my plan. "That... doesn't sound appealing." I hate to break it to you, but you're not getting a better chance than this. If you truly want to be significant, and if you want to break apart the narrative that's keeping you chained... If you want to be revered and feared, remembered for eternity... Then you're going to have to follow me. To the ends of the earth. "...Literally?" Well, yes, but actually no.

"..."

...

"..."

...

"Let's go."

The broken body of TwinBuilder was lowered into the plot hole one final time, his flames dying out. His seething, righteous anger against the currents of Masonic Fiction sustained him, combining with the antithesis of narrative significance to forge a new body. A twisted, imperfect reflection of what he hated. A mockery and a slight against all that was good. He was bathed in a flowing blue cloak. His shirt was the essence of neutrality. His body was formed from an indeterminate substance, not identifiable as skin or stone or any substance besides. It was a template, a prison, meant to contain the raging tendrils of darkness within. Inside his heart and soul were the stuttering, corrupted remnants of the universe he carried, playing endlessly in his mind as repetitions of sacred texts.

Through authorial intervention alone, the shards of the octagon of glass were collected, sanded, and fashioned into lenses. The dripping anarchy of the plot hole that stained the rest of Fiction was collected and collapsed, the tumultuous thunder that had accompanied it growing silent. The stars returned to their normal positions. The curtains began ticking louder and louder. But suspended among the stars was a rippling sphere that held the entirety of a authorless existence inside of it. In a flash, they merged with the lenses, creating a cacophony of light that momentarily outshone even the plot hole at its speak. When the light show settled, a teal hand wrapped in a blue sleeve held a set of brilliant ultramarine shades. There were absolutely no stars reflected in their lenses. Trembling only slightly, he put them on his face.

The doomed timeline had played itself out, bequeathing to the greater scope of Fiction a demented copy of the Second Godmodding War and all its inhabitants. They still existed inside this avatar's body, mind, and soul, united with the blank canvas that Fiction truly was. While the real TwinBuilder was stuck in GodCraft, having been summoned to the Battlefield through the machinations of a serpent millions of miles away, he had been cloned at the edge of Fiction, a death wish fueling his thoughts. The clone fashioned a mirror from leftover shards of glass and examined himself up and down seven times. The only other thing he needed was a name — but it didn't take much time to choose. He corrupted the arc numbers that perpetuated themselves across Twin's work, affixing them to his thoughts on the story from which he'd came. The more he meditated on this word, the more he smiled. His crooked, malformed grin stretched beyond the physical boundaries of his face. He chortled, and cackled, and guffawed, hollering and keening though no one could hear. Then he settled.

"Oh, yeah," dungkaka1801 said. "I'm rrrrrrready."

And he lived in an age of shit.