92. All That's Left

A/N: It's finally here! AYEH is quickly coming to a close, so do forgive me if I take my time again on the last... two chapters? There are probably only two more chapters after this, though they may or may not be extra long. I've struggled with efficiency when writing most of my book endings, the only exception so far being Bioshifter, though I'm figuring out what does and doesn't cause this particular brand of writer's block and hopefully won't be repeating this particular problem for MGMH... though the end of that story is still a long way off.

Speaking of endings... what comes next? Let's talk about it. What are the plans for this tier once AYEH is complete? Originally, I'd hoped to use this time to develop a video game, but those plans are currently tabled, so I will of course instead be writing a book! I normally take a month break whenever I finish a series, but given the current momentum MGMH has, I'll instead just be taking a month to plan. MGMH posts will continue once a week, and I'll devote half my week to writing them like I usually do. I'll be devoting the other half of my week to resting and, mainly, planning.

My next book idea will require a lot of it, because I intend to dip my toes into the mystery genre—more specifically, a series of high fantasy mysteries with a hard magic system that you'll need to take into account if you intend to try and solve things yourself before the main character finds the answers. If mystery isn't your thing, I wouldn't worry too much—I think I would die if the main focus of my stories ever wasn't some form of fucked-up traumagirl character drama—so you should be able to read and enjoy them like you always do. For those of you who particularly love theorycrafting and chatting in the Discord about what may be, however, I expect this to be a real treat.

It'll be a while yet before we get there, however. In the meantime, thank you all for your patience regarding all the delays this series has had. We're on the home stretch now, and I hope you enjoy it.

When only one Danielle remains, I finally shrink back down to a reasonable size and drop her off. Giving her back her original body, I form a new one of my own, relinquishing control over her.

"Thank you, Danielle," I say. "We're done now. No more making more of yourself."

"I have embodied the divine," Danielle says, her voice hollow but her grin wide. She stares at her own hands in disbelief.

Yeah, that… was probably a lot for her. More than her little human brain is fully equipped to handle, honestly. But I don't have time to help her out. Not with the fight still going.

"Stay safe, Danielle," I tell her, and then I teleport into the sky.

I've been getting a lot faster at that, recently. It's still not instant; I need to physically grow the body I'll use, and that's always going to take noticeable time, but I'm getting better at it. I'm also not waiting to disassemble my prior body at all anymore. If I need to teleport really fast, I might not finish doing so at all, leaving a bit of meat behind in exchange for getting to move my domain away a split second sooner. That, of course, is the other reason my teleports are getting better: my domain has been rapidly getting bigger, and now it is enormous.

I am, after all, a Queen. But due to my blessing, my size is not locked in as a massive, unmoving entity, forced to remain as a centerpiece to her colony until the day she dies. I am mutable, I am free, and as a consequence I am brimming with Possibility. 

I am wide awake, and I can still almost feel their approval, like the ghost of a dream.

Back on the ground, I had grown myself larger and larger, crushing the city beneath me as I exalted the gods as a tangle of feather and flesh. Now, in the air, I find myself at a loss as to what form I should take. My exact body plan won't make a huge difference against Agnus Dei, so… something comfortable, perhaps. No, wait. This isn't just a fight. It's a fight over who gets to control the future of the world. I need to make an impact. I need it to be clear who the victor is. 

So… six wings. I fill each feather with bioluminescent bacteria, striking them alight with a burning golden glow. And I make them larger, and larger, and larger, enough that anyone watching the battle can see. Using them like massive parachutes, I float calmly in the air. Agnus Dei and her current foe notice me immediately, and rocket in my direction.

"About time!!!" Christine shouts at me. "Are you done making Mystery Flesh Pit National Park!? Can I get some fucking help!?"

"It's what I'm here for," I confirm. "Thanks for protecting me so much while I prepared."

"Is that what that was!?" Christine asks, looking like she'd be ill if she wasn't so full of adrenaline. "Whatever! As long as it works! Can you beat her?"

Up close, Christine's new body looks even more amazing than it did from far away. Chitinous armor plates, styled to be evocative of those robot model toys she likes, latch onto her body. Underneath the armor, she looks almost identical to how she did after I changed her, her armor acting as the outfit for her human body. But that armor is her body as well, each piece acting as a symbiotic organism that can attach to subtle ports on her skin and link her circulatory system with its own to take in energy and nutrients from her body. The armor plates don't have brains, mouths, stomachs… they don't have most of what you'd expect from a living organism, but it's enough. They are alive, and they count as part of Christine enough for her power to pull them apart and bring them back together in whatever configuration or position she chooses.

And they are modular. I watch in awe as the armor on her leg disassembles itself and re-combines in the air in the form of a large shield, blocking a razor-thin beam of destructive brilliance that seems to work as a decent counter to how Christine disassembles Agnus Dei's larger attacks. Now exposed to the air, I can see the way the skin on her legs is structured to hide the symbiotic ports as just minor blemishes, almost like freckles. They're only identifiable as tiny orifices if you look extremely close… or notice how the so-called freckles are always arranged in a specific triangular pattern, where the armor plate's tiny mandibles enter to lock themselves in place. Now that they're detached, it's much easier to see that said armor plates are indeed alive: the underside of them is distinctly fleshy, rather than styled to look like a polymer or plastic. 

"Now is not the time to be admiring my biology, Julietta!" Christine snaps at me. "Focus!"

"Wooooaaaaagh!" Peter shrieks, suddenly pulled into the two of us as Christine's shield disassembles and reattaches to her leg. "Hey! It's Mystery Flesh Pit National Park!"

"Christine already made that joke," I say.

"Fuck!" Peter swears.

"And I'm not sure, but between the three of us? I think we can win," I say. "We just have to trap her in a big ball of flesh long enough for her to die. Or… give up, maybe, but I doubt she'll do that."

"So you make the flesh, I make it invulnerable, and… query: designation?" Peter says, switching to network speak in the interest of time.

"This unit's designation is Shattered Destiny Rebuild," Christine answers.

That… causes a bit of a double take. Is she getting alien grammar wrong…? No, that's too human of a thought, the network doesn't really have grammar in the traditional sense. She doesn't mean 'Shattered Destiny Rebuilt,' she definitely means 'Rebuild,' and it's like… in a noun way, rather than a verb way? She is a rebuild of a shattered destiny, or something?

"It's a reference. Kind of. Don't worry about it," Christine says. "Focus."

Right. I do need to focus here. I suppose I'm distracted because I'm still reeling a bit from… everything. I made and killed what felt like hundreds of copies of my girlfriend. I devoured hundreds of Danielles. I have committed mass murder on a horrifying scale, all for the sake of power. It's exactly the… no! Stop. Stop getting distracted. We have to fight, here.

The Angels are still fighting, delaying Agnus Dei as much as they can. They're not winning, sacrificed one by one just to buy me time. Each death is another murder I'm responsible for. Move, Julietta. You have to win.

"It's unlikely that Confidence is Apotheosis' blessing can hold our enemy at her current level of strength," I say. "She will simply break through his domain if we attempt a direct approach. However, this unit believes she has a weakness."

"Elaborate," Christine says.

"My blessing has limits determined by the amount of biomatter I have consumed," I say. "Hers is limited by the number of people she has killed. To repair the damage I take, I must expend biomass. It is likely that she must expend her own reservoir of power to heal damage as well."

"Comprehension," Christine acknowledges.

"I told you so," Blossom declares from the midst of the battle. "Violence solves everything."

I sigh, refusing to dignify that with a response.

"Generating offensive-use biomatter," I declare. "Intention: weapon usage for physical manipulators."

Which is to say, I expect Christine to throw shit at Agnus Dei until she falls. It's not the most elegant strategy, but… ultimately, when it comes down to it, that is often the nature of war. I make a dozen different things, all to try and test what works best and what doesn't. Organic bombs full of acid, giant bone spears, crystalline blades and jagged, rending teeth… I will it all into existence, and Christine takes hold of my hodgepodge collection and sorts it right at Agnus Dei's chest.

"Blessed forces, fall back," I order as a hailfire of death starts rushing toward Agnus Dei. "Shattered Destiny Rebuild, send me forward."

"Acknowledged. Sending you in with Confidence is Apotheosis," Christine agrees.

In an instant, I'm accelerated at, frankly, entirely deadly speeds. Thankfully, I can repair my brain and fix my wings after I feel my domain stop moving and re-orient myself around the fight, spreading out my radius of power as far as I can. Agnus Dei, after all, has optimized herself to avoid being directly affected by enemy powers and to be able to ignore domain protections with her own. I don't need to care all that much about… god, what did the military call it? RD scores? 

Doesn't matter, I'm getting distracted again.

"Seraphim!" Agnus Dei shrieks, and she sounds almost delighted. I don't like that. "Wretched, giant, brilliant Seraphim! Is this finally the time that we decide which of us lives and which of us dies!?"

"Nah, we just brought an entire army of Angels to dick around and relax!" Peter answers for me, seemingly totally unaffected by the constant acceleration and change of direction his body is undergoing as Christine tosses him every which-way.

Agnus Dei rushes around the assault, accelerating toward me, and I decide that's entirely fine with me. I meet her head-on, taking a punch strong enough to blow me apart like I've been hit by a cannonball. As my guts splatter in every direction, I shift them into all the nastiest things I can imagine: necrotic diseases, neurotoxins, swarms of biting bugs designed to latch their claws in so deep that even supersonic speeds can't tear them out of her skin… everything at once, it all collapses on her. Agnus wipes most of it out of existence with a burst of light, but Christine turns that power against her a second later, striking her once again with her own attacks.

The light burns her just as much as it does anything else, but her wounds are almost immediately replaced with yet more shining light, this time repairing her instead of destroying her. Agnus Dei retaliates with a thin beam from one finger that she swings toward Christine like a sword that can cut the horizon. Christine interposes Peter in the way of the attack, who catches the beam on his face just long enough to save Christine from getting cut in two.

"Ow!" Peter yelps.

"Are you hurt!?" I call out. It would be really, really bad if Agnus Dei had started to pierce his invulnerability!

"I'm fine! It just hit me in the eye and I didn't blink in time! It's very bright!" Peter answers.

Oh my god.

"That boy is starting to get on my nerves!" Agnus Dei hisses, rocketing up into the sky.

She spreads her arms, each fingertip glowing with power, and then thrusts her hands forward, ten individual lines of annihilation launching toward Christine and Peter. I grow a huge wall of flesh between them that Peter defends with his power, but with a twitch of her fingers the beams actually curve around the shield and attempt to converge on Christine from several directions, which she and Peter end up blocking with several of Christine's personal shields.

I teleport up to Agnus Dei and try to stab her in the back, and while she just flies off, it at least forces her to halt her attack. Incoming fire from other Angels keeps her temporarily on the defensive, though one particular friendly projectile comes flying toward me.

"Twisting Scars Reshape Fate!" Blossom calls out to me. "Grant me wings!"

I do so without question, changing her body to one that can fight in the air. Her humanoid features fall away, replaced with massive wings that thrum like a hummingbird's to keep her in the air. Claws, teeth, and acid glands form most of the rest of her body, a monstrous beast built only for war. Blossom adjusts to the change in moments, taking a deep breath and expanding her domain out as far as she can, effectively turning herself into a floating proximity bomb. The longer she stays there, the more devastating her attack will be if we can force Agnus Dei into the area.

While the supporting fire from the other Angels is welcome this time around, we really need to stop Agnus Dei from killing more people and getting even more powerful. I once again teleport into her path to divert her attention and allow the Angels time to retreat, but the moment I put Agnus Dei between myself and Christine, she fires on me. A massive beam of death engulfs my body entirely, obliterating it from existence, and with the distance she's gained, Christine isn't close enough to use it against her. I, of course, have plenty of other vessels in range, and reconstruct myself from some of the matter I left behind in a prior teleport, but that was clearly a blunder. Her power might not be limitless, but neither is mine. I can't be entirely wasteful with biomass. 

"Hey, now that we have Twisting Scars Reshape Fate, she's just running away again!" Peter exclaims. 

"With all of us combined, as well as every Maria, we might actually be able to overpower her domain," I say. "And I DO have every Maria waiting for deployment at a critical moment."

"Should we chase her down, then?" Christine asks. "I can barely keep up, and with your teleports we might overtake her completely."

"When I teleport you, technically you very briefly die," I admit.

"Terrifying. We should do it anyway. Dissolve me," Peter insists.

I don't want to say yes, but this really isn't a situation where we can afford to argue. I kill my brother (temporarily, hopefully) and add his biomass and his template to me before teleporting after Agnus Dei. Christine just launches one of her armor plates at mach fuck and pulls herself to it to follow after us, and honestly gets there at about the same time I have enough of a body to function with. 

My big problem with catching up to Agnus Dei is momentum. I can form my body just about anywhere above the city at this point, but I'm not traveling in a direction when I do so; I just flow into existence and start falling. Agnus Dei, meanwhile, is moving extremely quickly, and by the time I make it to wherever she happened to be when I started teleporting, she's no longer anywhere close. I can try to teleport in front of her, but if she saw me doing that she'd just turn.

So naturally, I fall back on my oldest and most favorite trick: octopus skin. I assemble my body in her path, camouflaged with the sky to be frighteningly hard to spot. At the same time, I form several more obvious dummy bodies, one of which Agnus takes the time to swerve away from, letting Christine actually start to get close. When Agnus turns and fires on another dummy body, I start assembling Peter just above her path. 

Peter starts to fall at about the same time his powers come back, but Agnus dives down to avoid contact with him. Christine responds to this by yanking Peter straight down at well above terminal velocity, forcing Agnus to once again swerve to dodge. Little by little, we close the distance. With one more change in direction, Christine launches Peter straight up, back into Agnus' flight path. They're too close now, and the change in direction is too sudden. He hits her.

Agnus does her best to juke out of the way, but it's not quite enough. Her arm is completely vaporized as Peter passes through it head-first, a shining light spilling from the wound. Does Agnus Dei even have blood? Is she made of flesh at all? With my powers unable to pierce her domain, I don't actually have any way to know. But one thing is certain: it's a substantial wound, and one that's going to hopefully start to slow her down.

But Agnus grits her teeth, grinning through the pain.

"Got you," she hisses.

With a pulse of strength, Agnus Dei's domain blooms outward from her body, encompassing a wide sphere around herself for barely a split second before she pulls it back in. I don't understand what the purpose of that was. What did she…

"Peter!" Christine yelps in surprise, and I realize what just happened.

He's not stopping.

When Christine 'divides' something, she shoves the pieces of that thing outward at rapid speeds, and then stops them just as suddenly. But Peter isn't stopping. Agnus Dei canceled out Christine's power over him for just long enough that she lost hold, and now all of that speed has no source of divine intervention to arbitrarily cancel it out. Christine rushes upward to try and catch him, but Agnus Dei does too, launching a deadly beam at us when she does, which Christine has to stop to catch. The beam gets pulled apart and redirected back at Agnus herself, but the woman just laughs off the damage, catching up to Peter as gravity slows him down, and uppercuts him with her one remaining arm.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of horseshit power interaction causes it, but Agnus Dei both loses her arm and successfully transfers most of the force of her punch. This is easily a worse trade on our end. Peter is sent on a literally stratospheric ascent, and I'm afraid he's actually going to make it all the way to space. After all, due to how his power works, he's not actually affected by air resistance! No matter how invincible he is, space isn't something he'd be coming back from!

Gritting her teeth, Christine goes as fast as she can, trying to catch up. I possess her body so my domain follows it, reaching out as far as possible to try and reclaim him. It's not quite enough. We're going to lose him…! 

Peter takes a deep breath, gritting his teeth as he pulls his domain underneath his skin and suddenly re-introduces atmospheric braking to his body. The effects are immediate: he slows down considerably, and he also flays most of his own skin off and lights himself on fire. I don't dwell on it, I just grow bone plates all over his body and make him as un-aerodynamic as possible so we can catch up, halt his momentum entirely, and heal him back to normal. That was fucking close, but now we have to refocus on… oh, shit.

Agnus Dei's injuries are already healed. The only sign of them is that her arms, rather than being made of skin and bone, are now made entirely of a glowing white energy at least superficially similar to her usual beam attacks. And she's flying up for another punch…!

Peter is too disoriented to deal with this, and it might not even work if he did, as Agnus Dei has proved she can at least partly bypass Peter's powers at close range. I grow a large ball of flesh around her, if only to cut off her vision and give us a shot at dodging, but she predictably tears right through it. It's enough for Christine and Peter to dodge to the side at least, and they drop altitude as quickly as possible to avoid another potential spaceflight incident. I turn the shorn flesh Agnus just punched through into my new body, anchoring my domain to it instead of to Christine, in an attempt to get Agnus to focus on me and let them retreat. Thankfully, it works.

"Die!" Agnus Dei shouts.

…And then I'm engulfed in an annihilating beam, reducing most of my new body to atoms. This is inconvenient, but as usual, not incapacitating, and since I can feel Agnus Dei's domain within my own, I know exactly where to reform myself and launch an attack from. That'll get us nowhere, though. She's faster than me, stronger than me, and seemingly just as durable. I form the body anyway, just to give her something else to shoot at. We have to outmaneuver her somehow, and given her obvious mobility advantage, that means baiting her into a trap. The trap in question is already set, so the bait… well.

"Very old testament of you," I say, growing myself a mouth. "Really bringing that Sodom and Gomorrah energy everywhere you go."

"You really are a persistent devil, aren't you?" Agnus snaps back. "Perhaps I just can't kill what doesn't have a soul."

"No, Devils are a different thing," I correct her. "Though I still think 'demon' rolls off the tongue better. Devil just has a more awkward mouthfeel, you know?"

"Do you really think you have the time to be babbling nonsense right now?"

"Well, yeah," I confirm. "Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. I've been pretty distracted this whole time, if I'm being honest."

"Distracted!?" she hisses. 

Oh my god, she's just so easy to rile up. I'm barely even trying. I start to fall toward Blossom.

"Yeah, distracted," I say. "It's just really sad, isn't it? The more I think about you, the more sad it all is. You have so much potential, so much power, but you're deluded about all of it."

"Oh, this again," Agnus Dei scowls. "Save the speech. I don't expect you to understand."

"Surely you understand though, right?" I ask. "You're not a total idiot. You've figured out what's wrong with this whole scenario. I mean, my powers can bring people back to life, and you think you're the one chosen by God? Are you for real?"

A growl from her throat preempts another blistering beam of annihilation, but I just form a small new body right next to her ear so we can continue chatting.

"You're not a messiah. You're not even a soldier. You're just a mass murderer that kills for personal gain."

"Oh? Like you're any different?" she challenges.

"So you're saying you're like me, then?" I retort.

Because this is not an ideological battle. This is not a serious argument. I'm not trying to get one over on her, I'm just trying to piss her off. Judging by the size of the explosion that vaporizes me, I'm pretty sure I've succeeded. Good. I form another body closer to Blossom, baiting Agnus to follow. She has no need to follow me, of course, but that's why it's a bait. My skills have always leaned more social than physical; it's fitting that my most powerful enemy is felled with that particular skillset, in some ways.

"Do I even need to fight you?" I ask. "What could hurt you more than clarity? You're a monster justifying genocide with a book you barely understand. You've basically admitted it."

She hasn't, obviously, but sophistry often gets the job done. I haven't done this kind of thing in a while, so I was worried I'd be a little rusty, but Peter is in the back of my mind, subconsciously helping me evaluate my words before they ever reach my lips. The confidence that brings is enough to sell it.

She rushes me, and I know I've got her. Launching a piece of me downward as quickly as I can, I let her smash through my old body so she can feel like she's making progress and lure her toward Blossom at as high a speed as possible. Peter and Christine are already waiting there, synchronized with Blossom's domain to add to her possibility space. We're coordinated, we're ready, and when the moment comes, we make it count.

I pass into Blossom's domain, and the look on Agnus Dei's face when she does the same is priceless for the split second before she's completely torn apart into a spray of red mulch.

That might be underselling it, really. Agnus Dei's eyes bulge during her desperate attempt at deceleration, and then she's just gone. A spray of blood and energy is all that remains, as with Peter's support, Blossom's strikes can't even be stopped by Agnus Dei's new, glowing limbs. Our enemy is reduced to such a fine cloud that the remains barely even start to fall. Blossom must have struck her thousands and thousands of times, all in a single instant. She's a mist now, a cloud, and gravity is no stronger on her now than it was before she died. 

And she is dead. Her domain is gone. Just like that.

"Wow. We make kind of a terrifying combination, don't we?" Peter asks, nudging Blossom with an elbow.

"I don't like this," Blossom says. "Stay on guard. That was too easy."

Well, I'd be an idiot to ignore that. Blossom has a lot more combat experience than I do.

"Request: elaborate."

"You are free to order me rather than request, oh Grand Queen," Blossom teases more or less on instinct, though she quickly returns to the point. "Or more accurately, Grand Queen Candidate. As was our foe. I have no tangible justification for my fears, but… it felt too easy, even accounting for the exceptional synergy between myself and Confidence is Apotheosis… between the two of us, we have the support of only two gods. Our foe had more, did she not?"

Hmm. I see the logic. Obviously, the number of gods involved in a fight simply isn't a scale that can be used to determine the amount of power one can bring to bear. Not all powers are gifted equally, and one's skill at using their blessings is more important still. But Agnus Dei is a significant investment. She's not just another blessed. The gods backing her have thrown quite a few chips in.

And one of them in particular has a grudge.

"Get back!" I order, aloud and in the network at once. "Run!"

Right after my words are spoken, Failure's presence weighs down on the world like a curse. It bleeds into everything. If I had been walking, I would have tripped. If I had been carrying anything, I would have dropped it. All I can do is nothing, because anything I attempt now couldn't possibly succeed. The pressure of a god's displeasure is paralyzing, so I can only watch in horror as the fine spray of red that had once been Agnus Dei starts to vibrate, glowing a familiar brilliant white.

Still, we all try to do something. Even with the feeling of futility pervading us, we shove forward with our domains and attack the blooming glow of power however we can. But my flesh burns away as it gets close, Peter's domain failing to reach me through the pressure. Peter himself fails to get close enough, as Christine fails to run, and Blossom fails to deal any more damage. We all try. We have to try, even if that's exactly what it wants.

We all succumb to failure, and as the motes of light reform Agnus Dei's body, she lets out a maddened, hysterical laugh, louder and wilder than ever before.

And everything goes white. It's not the first time today that has happened to me, but this time, it's not only because I'm blinded by an overwhelming amount of atomizing energy moments before it obliterates me. This time, Agnus Dei isn't just shooting a blast at me. She is shooting at everything. An expanding dome of annihilation cascades outward in every direction, and unlike the few other times she's done an omnidirectional attack, it doesn't stop. 

I draw in a sharp breath of hot, moist air. My eyes open to darkness, until I grow some bioluminescent bacteria on the walls. I'm… in my meatspace. I'm fairly certain my domain is still active on Earth, but for the first time ever, there's nothing alive inside it. Nothing at all. No matter how far I stretch it, there's no sensation, so my attention has returned here in the same way it does when my body is deep asleep. 

But… that's insane. My domain stretches across an enormous area, and that would mean there's nothing living in any of it. Not even microorganisms. Not even Peter, who should have been able to survive anything. But my domain feels nothing at all. Nothing but Agnus Dei's domain, though that too has nothing organic inside it.

I brace myself, and form a new body on Earth. My ears, when grown, hear laughter. My eyes see desolation. The city of Chicago was in ruins before, but now it is simply gone. A massive, gigantic crater is all I can see below me. There are no more skyscrapers, no more suburbs. The alien and human forces are both gone, scoured to nothing. Even the edge of the safe zone has been consumed, the blast having gone well past the FOB to lap up several civilian structures beyond. Every last person brought to this fight, and who knows how many people beyond it, are simply gone.

Water rushes into the crater below me, steam still rising from the banks of Lake Michigan where the shoreline was devoured by light. The crater is both deep enough and large enough that maps will have to be redrawn around the new addition to the Great Lake's borders. It will all be underwater soon.

And Agnus Dei just continues to laugh. I stare at her. At the Chosen of Blasphemy, cackling with madness. Her body has been entirely replaced by energy, a mass of power and annihilation twisted to mimic the shape of a person. Is she enjoying the rush of power she gained from all that death? Is she basking in ecstasy, devoid of guilt? Or has she finally snapped under the weight of her crimes, unable to bear them? I don't intend to strike up any more conversations to find out.

But she notices me, as I approach. She calls out to me like I'm an old friend.

"Seraphim!" she beams. "You were wrong, Seraphim! Death and life submit to me!"

And yet you're still more monster than messiah. Can she do that again? Can I even stop her if she does? I try to form a cage of flesh around her, drowning her in a container of acid, but she wipes it all from the world, still cackling.

She's killed everyone. Everyone I know, everyone I love. I had told Ana to retreat, but there's no way she escaped a blast of this scale. Even the Queen is gone. I could bring them back, but would there be any point? Am I going to torment them like I tormented Maria, recreating them over and over again to die in an endless cycle? If she can bypass Peter's invulnerability now, there's basically nothing we can do to stop her from killing them over and over. Summoning them would only get them hurt. I have to find a way to stop her alone.

"Not so confident now, are you?" Agnus Dei gloats. "This is what divine power truly looks like. God told me that I am to be Queen of Queens!"

And she will be. I've failed. I gambled against Failure and lost, big time. I got overconfident. There's nothing I can do, but I can't just give up! I have to find something! Some power, some aspect of my blessing that I haven't figured out yet! I have to do this! 

A piercing glint of light briefly blinds one of my eyes. It's not the scouring white light I've grown accustomed to over the course of the battle, though, just regular light. Like a painful reflection of the sun off the hood of a car. I almost ignore it because of that, but once that eye gets its vision back I shift it to be as telescopic as possible. That was no mere reflection. There's a person standing far, far away, near the edge of the devastation. They're putting away what seems to be a high powered laser pointer, and then holding up… a sign? I zoom my vision in even further. 

Oh my god. That's In-Joke. And the sign reads: "Learn Your Goddamn Lesson."

What…?

"Finally speechless. I'm almost disappointed," Agnus Dei sighs. "Goodbye, Seraphim."

"It's Julietta," I correct idly. "Julietta Monroe."

And I probably would have forgotten my lesson, if not for that bastard's help. How annoying. 

Agnus Dei blasts me, and I reform my body closer to her. She blasts me again, so I form two bodies near her. I try to attack her, but she just leisurely wipes me out, one at a time. So I form three bodies, and then four, and then ten, all trying to kill her. Again, she takes her time.

So I form everyone. All at once. All together. All around her. And I do mean everyone. It doesn't matter who can or can't fly, it doesn't even completely matter whose side they were on. Humans, Angels, friends, enemies, Queens… All Torn to Dust survived this fall once before, so I'm sure she'll be fine a second time around. 

It's a lot to manage at once, but Legion guides my power. I form the nervous system first, manually dulling the pain that would normally cause just to get the domains active as quickly as possible. Immediately, the aliens and my friends understand the plan. The humans have no idea what the fuck is going on, but they probably won't survive for very long anyway.

People die in droves, but I bring them back shortly afterwards, sending body after body at the problem. Every kill likely empowers our enemy, so we'll have to do this fast and hope we have enough. All Torn to Dust blots out the sun, and Agnus Dei sees it as an opportunity, firing a hole through her and trying to fly through, but that's exactly when we converge. All our domains, all at once, pressed down into a single point. A pressure and presence to rival a god.

Agnus Dei understands the threat immediately. She strikes out in every direction, maiming, killing, and vaporizing person after person. But she doesn't have the power to destroy us all at once. Not again. Failure's retribution cannot last forever, lest it draw the other gods to put similar weights on the scale. So whenever one of my allies dies, I reform them anew. The agony of death is theirs to experience over and over, and I know that unlike me most people don't have quite as amicable a relationship with pain. So even though I'm not asking any more of them than I'd ask of myself, it still feels immeasurably wrong. If I'm to be a Queen, shouldn't I at least be able to protect them from this…?

"I think that may be the biggest problem with you humans," Blossom says. "You don't understand Queens at all. You think bad Queens make people serve them. You think good Queens serve the people. But it's neither. We're all one colony, Twisting Scars Reshape Fate. You will help us because you believe it is right, and we will do the same for you. That's all it will ever need to be."

She's right. But it's still not enough.

My domain's strength is near that of Agnus Dei's, though not quite as strong. All Torn to Dust has a massive domain as well, and with her and everyone I've summoned with have a combined strength well above that of Agnus Dei. Yet we still can't pierce her. We can't crush her. We have to outweigh her by orders of magnitude, and we just don't have the power!

"Need help again, Jules!?" 

In-Joke…! Looking up, I see them and the entirety of the Defenders of Nothing suddenly appear in the air, holding hands with each other in a chain. Did Echo copy Cross-Country? But that would have needed to be hours ago…! Oh, who am I kidding? I have better things to do than worry about this!

"Party time, Rapture! The humans here are corpses anyway!" In-Joke declares, smashing open a… vacuum cleaner? 

Right, the vacuum cleaner! Pink mist pours out from it, infecting most of the humans and leaving a dopey smile on their faces as their domains join in the fight. Maria keeps multiplying herself as well, screaming as fairy after fairy pops into the air around her.

"Enough of this!" Agnus Dei shrieks. "You can't keep healing forever!"

"It doesn't have to be forever," I answer. "You don't have anywhere near that much time left."

Together, with a single invisible hand, we all work together to crush her domain smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter. As we push it inside the bounds of her body, the energy composing it dissipates, dissolving away as her power ceases holding it in place.

"No, no, no, n—!"

Her voice cuts off as her mouth dissolves, her whole body slowly following suit. More attacks spray out from her, killing and hurting more of my allies, but I am the Grand Queen Julietta. I am life itself. And I will not let anyone in my care fall for good. And with one final push, the burning glow of Agnus Dei is snuffed out forever.

And this time, I can tell it's done from the weight of the gods on my shoulders. It really is over.

It's not official yet, but it's true. The war is finally over. 

All that's left is learning, for the first time in my life, what peace will be like.