"Daddy Genneth!"

In that no-place of endless white, &alon—god fungus, destroyer of worlds—knelt before me, arms and cerulean flame wings widespread, wanting nothing more than a hug.

As Jules might have put it: I just can't even.

At this point, it was anyone's guess as to who was crazier: &alon, or the world she'd destroyed.

I bellowed, lashing out with my arm. "Enough!!"

My cry shattered the white void, and the next thing I knew, I was back in my wyrm body, resting on Fort Marteneiss' landing strip, with the Sword in my grasp.

In my brief absence, my body had slumped forward, even though I couldn't recall having done that.

Wind swept over the scene, scattering ash and spores across the night. &alon was there, floating in front of me like a princess of faerie.

It took me an instant to notice that the Sword's time magic had petered out. The spell had been broken. Wings of energy no longer streamed from the hallowed blade. The fluctuating barrier of temporal gauze had dissipated, letting time march on.

Vyx ships swarmed over the battlefield. Blistering heat beams as red as bloodlust shot down from over the sea, lighting up the night like a rave.

My panic automatically sped up my thoughts. Overhead, a beam was hurtling toward me. It was a bristle of furious particles throbbing at the center of my field of vision.

Holy Angel…

"Daddy Genneth…" &alon cried. In the stillness, she was the only thing that moved.

But I ignored her.

The death ray was so close. It had been aimed almost directly at me.

Even with my thoughts running for their lives, the beam continued to advance toward me.

Toward my wife.

I tried to move, but I couldn't. I was all thought, now. The beam would have struck us by time the signals from my nerves reached my limbs and told them to move.

I couldn't use my powers, either. It took time to conjure a weave.

"Daddy Genneth!"

&alon flew up beside me and hugged me.

I tried to understand what was happening. Why had the time magic stopped? Why had the Sword's power lapsed? I'd been powering it. I should have had more time before it petered out!

Oh no…

Please, no…

When &alon had brought me to her realm—her mind, whatever it was—she'd brought all of me, even the extensions of my mind that I usually left behind, to keep my body operational.

That's why the magic had stopped: I hadn't been there to keep powering it.

One of the Angelic Doctors once wrote that God was the greatest thing that can be conceived. In that telling, God was the roof overlooking the world, separating the possible from the impossible. God was Supreme over All Things.

Thankfully, &alon had disabused me of that notion. The world was far too vast to be bound by such a meager thing.

But that also included an individual like myself. I mean, that should have been obvious! If God wasn't powerful enough to save us, then, surely, we weren't powerful enough to do so, either!

I'd been a fool.

The beam enveloped Pel, along with a good deal of my tail and much of our surroundings, right up to the underground parking lot's entry ramp.

I watched the devastation flower in slow motion. Reds and oranges, blistering whites and yellows. Petals of sunfire spewed out radiation. Sound waves rippled through the air like a disturbance on a pond as molten debris beaded up along the death ray's angled column.

Pel?

No.

No no no no no no no no no no no…

I…

I snapped in a way I hadn't known I could. The slowed time fell away, replaced by a handful of seconds of terrible motion. The blast wave knocked me back. I roared into the wind with an agony that words couldn't describe.

Pel…

I flopped back onto the ground, tumbling and tumbling, stopping myself by digging my free hand's claws into the ground.

I righted myself.

It's hard to describe what I felt, other than to say that I… felt. I felt everything. It slipped away from me.

Enough of the debris had settled that I could see the scar the death ray had blasted into the ground. &alon's fungal dermis grew at the base of the wound. Asphalt wept at the hole's molten rim.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

And that's when I broke. It was the first time in my life that I could honestly say I saw red.

I raised myself up and sped my thoughts.

You can only want to negate yourself for so long before the tension becomes unbearable. True suicide never happens slowly. It either happens in the instant of its birth, or it gets crushed by the self-hate that brought it to the surface.

&alon fluttered up in front of me.

I raised myself up and roared. "I'LL KILL YOU!" I screamed out a geyser's worth of spores. SHE'S GONE, AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!! IT'S YOUR FAULT, YOU FUCKING MONSTER!! I'LL END YOU!!!"

I took flight and leapt at her.

"Daddy, no! Stop!"

She dodged effortlessly, teleporting out of my way.

I made the Sword the instrument of my wrath. Swinging it, I channeled its power, launching out a sweeping vacuum wave that shot out like a slice of the Moon. The Vyx module that had fired the death ray that had murdered my wife was turning around, readying itself for a second run; it, too, was in the path of my rage.

My magic cut through the ship's shields like a knife through a boiled egg. The forcefields flared in a luminous scream and then shattered and imploded. The ship exploded a moment later.

"Daddy Genneth!" &alon cried. "Daddy Genneth!"

My attack passed through her without effect.

I damned myself for having expected anything else.

&alon winked into nothingness, reappearing a great distance away.

"Stop it, Daddy Genneth," she said. "I'm here for you! I'm here!"

Oh, I was going to gut her.

More laser beams tore through the sky.

Fudge.

The Vyxit were on us.

Dozens and dozens of Vyx flower-ships and dropships raced toward the ground, pushing their engines to the max. The flower-ships fired en masse, lighting up the sky with constant volleys of death rays.

Perhaps it was revenge for the defeat they'd suffered at the claws of Brigadier-General Amy Watterson and the First Trenton Wyrm Brigade, or perhaps it was just fate itself, but—whatever the reason—the Vyxit had brought an army at the biggest scale I'd ever seen.

The silver swarm seemed to grow thicker as it approached, like cells dividing, but then the thickness fell away. Landing pods plummeted to the earth and the beach and the hills and the sea. They hissed up steam as they opened and released their cargo: scores of silver-armored Vyxit troops. Centaur-things leapt and dodged as more and more pods rained onto the battlefield.

The wyrm brigade yelled in affirmation. All they had were their powers, their know-how, and their half-functional weaponry, and though it might not have been enough, they weren't about to let that stop them.

The wyrms charged to meet the oncoming Vyxit armies. Slick and Lt. Dueright lobbed logs and curveballs of pataphysics at two of the mech walkers, and followed up the attacks with bullet fire and laser bursts. The psychokinetic blows made the one at the left stagger back. The one on the right slumped to the side, as one of its legs had been dashed to pieces.

&alon spread wide her blue flame wings and screamed.

"No! No! I've just found my Daddy! I'm not gonna lose him!"

She shot up into the air and hovered over the battlefield. She turned this way and that, whipping left and right with flaps of her wings of blue flame. She screamed in terror, barking orders at her body's legions.

The distance filled with shrieks and roars. &alon's voice thundered across the sky through the song of countless wyrms, unified under her will.

I flew up over the Fort to get a look at what was happening.

&alon had just made a declaration of war. It started from the inland stretches behind me, where the fungal forests rose up and marched.

Angel's mercy…

Sleeker runners darted out from between the moving forests, blistering with tendrils and spines.They stormed down toward the coastline, their agile limbs drumming against the earth. They were so fast. And there were so many…

They poured down the hillsides, into Fort Marteneiss' valley.

Swarms of fungus fliers changed course from nearby battles and swarmed toward us. Unearthly shrieks trumpeted from the sea. I turned to see &alon's hordes writhing onto the beach or shooting out from the water and spreading wide, membranous wings.

I looked up at &alon. "What are you doing?"

"I don't want to be alone," she cried. "I'm not gonna lose my Daddy!" She turned to the Vyxit forces with hate in her eyes. "I'll stop them! I'll stop them all!" Then she turned back to face me. "And then, you'll be with me! You'll love me, because you're my Daddy!"

Wyrms trumpeted in exultation.

"GIVE UP!" I roared. "You're insane! You'll never have me! NEVER!!"

&alon bawled. "I'll NEVER leave you, Daddy Genneth!" She stuck out her arm. "I looked and looked forever and ever, and now I found you! I FOUND YOU!" She cried and cried. "Now I'm happy, and… you should be, too. We'll be together forever. I know the darkness is super scary, but," she looked me in the eyes, "I think I can be brave, because of you, Daddy." She looked up at the sky. "And once I make the meanies go away, we'll run run run till the darkness can't find us anymore. And then we'll be happy. We'll be family!"

She burbled and cried as she spoke.

I don't think even &alon believed what she was saying.

Angel, it hurt to watch, and not just because it was heartbreaking; I felt &alon sorrow along with my own. As twisted and vile as they were, her feelings were real. It's hard to convey how difficult that made it for me to be angry with her, doubly so, considering I was angry with her—angry beyond words.

It was just so goddamn sad! She ached for me like how I ached for Pel. The fungus that had destroyed my world and taken away or twisted everything I'd ever known and loved saw me as her father. To her, I was and forever would be the source of the comfort she'd yearned after for eternity and a day, but had never known until she'd met me. Her love was too sweet, even for me. It was as pure as the driven snow, and as grateful as a blind man who could finally see.

How could I feel that and then look on at her pain and not want to make it go away? Only a hypocrite would feel otherwise.

I sang in pain and mourning, broadcasting what I'd just witnessed to all the wyrms in eyeshot.

I knew I wouldn't be able to destroy &alon. Worse, even if I could have done so, it wouldn't have been just. It wasn't my place to dictate the fates of the other wyrms or the spirits they carried. &alon had already denied them a choice in the matter. I refused to do the same, no matter my grief.

But… there was one thing I could do, one way that I could fight back, and deal her a blow that would really sting.

I brandished the Sword with a trembling arm. "If you won't leave me alone, then I'll remove myself from the equation. I'll kill myself. Then you'll never have me."

It was something I could actually do—unlike saving my wife, apparently.

Ever since I was little, I'd been taught that suicide was a sin. It was one of the parts of Lassedile doctrine I'd never needed to push myself to believe in. I agreed with it wholeheartedly. Life was precious, and we owed too much to other people for it to be right for us to remove ourselves from their existences with that kind of finality.

But as much as it pained me, it was my only remaining option.

I wasn't going to let her make me silver-eyed.

I readied to sing my spirits into the surrounding wyrms. They'd be safe there. I felt my guests' shock. They started up in protest, but I ignored them, all except one.

Mr. Himichi, I thought-said, please tell Rayph and Jules that I'm sorry. I couldn't keep my promise to them. And…

I turned my head away and shoved Mr. Himichi's spirit back into his afterlife.

I didn't have the courage to tell him any more.

I begged the Sword to grant me this one wish.

Please, I prayed, grant me this last request. Give me the power to live as I choose.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.