Act Zero: Intercessor & Adversary (3/3)

The next loop of the cycle was another Veseryn world. In a world full of magic, her only power was the ability to usurp control of magic items. The start of her story was structured to mirror a previous work, with Veseryn bargaining for the means to become a lich and botching the ritual thanks to a curse from the entity she had bargained with. She drowned herself in a bottle, sold what was left from the attempt, and had a minor breakdown over a mall barista remembering her usual order.

Boiling on the inside with complex emotions, Veseryn made her way to the roof of the mall and leaned on the railing. Her breath fogged in the chill winter air.

She mused aloud, “I really do like the cold. I think it’s about control. You can’t really control heat, you just relieve it. When the sun blisters the land, you can drink as many cool drinks as you want, sit by a fan, go swimming, but the heat is always there, that hateful star always burning down on you. Cold, on the other hand, is something that can be tamed. Cold can be bargained with. Throw on thicker socks and a pair of gloves, drape yourself in a blanket, sit by a fire, and the cold becomes somewhat pleasant. I can control the cold in a way I can’t control heat. Or anything else.”

Then she growled at something only she could hear. She laughed darkly, and then with a soft sight she combed a hand through her hair, straightened up, and said, “I am nothing. In the grand scheme of things, I am nothing. I’m a nameless face in a sea of strangers, I’m a nobody of a girl whose greatest claim to fame is being remembered for her predictable drink order.”

She started pacing, hands gesticulating wildly as she ranted to an invisible audience. “To the eyes of the world, I am nothing, and that’s entirely my fault. My superpower is niche, specific, and limited, but it isn’t useless. I prattle on and on about being cheated by fate and the gods, but I have a gift that the greatest mages in the world would be jealous of if they knew it existed. I’ve been so scared of reprisal that I’ve sabotaged my reputation and kept myself confined to the lower rungs of everything. They all think I’m just a common thief wielding stolen trinkets, a fool’s artificer.”

Veseryn sneered. “And I am a common thief! That’s how I’ve been acting. If I tried, if I applied myself for once in my fucking life, I could be a villain like no other. But here I am.”

She clenched her fists and looked out over the city, watching the cars and the people and the distant clashes of superpowers. Then she released the tension in her arms, stepped away from the roof, back to pacing, and let something else come over here.

In a voice cold and scornful, she asked, “If we had become a lich, what would we be doing right now? Would we be down there fighting heroes and terrorizing civilians? Robbing banks and raiding vaults? Or would be curled up on a pile of blankets, hiding from the cold and obsessively refreshing social media?”

Veseryn scowled and bit back, “If the ritual had worked, I could have done anything, could have stood toe-to-toe with dragons and dragonslayers, could have carved my name into the collective unconscious of this whole damn city and bent it to my will. I could have broken gods and demons and worse with a wink and a smirk.”

“But would you have?” she asked herself.

Veseryn flinched. “Of course I would have! It’s what I’ve wanted for years. Do you think I would have attained ultimate power and then just sat on it? Would I have wasted godhood?”

She stewed in silence, broken only by a bitter, joyless laugh. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I would have stayed a little nothing girl. What does that make me? Can I ever be anything more than a failure and a mistake?”

I jumped down from my perch above the stairs, plunged a knife into her back, and whispered in her ear, “No, you can’t. But I can.”

Veseryn tried to scream, but my other hand was already moving to cover her mouth and keep her quiet. I pulled the knife out of her back and stabbed her again. She struggled, but I was stronger. She reached for her satchel and all the magical trinkets stored inside, but I cut the strap off her shoulder and kicked the bag away. She clawed at me, tried to bite my hand, but she was a frail little thing.

Then she bit something else, and her whole body turned to smoke. The cloud of Veseryn blew just out of reach and reformed, the girl staggering and coughing up blood and oil. The wounds in her back were closing, and the pendant around her neck shattered and broke, another artifact used up to save her skin.

Veseryn whirled on me and the ring on her finger glowed blue as great spikes of ice erupted from the ground in my direction, but with a snap of my fingers the ice melted. I held the knife at my side, loose but ready.

With a moment’s reprieve, the girl should have run, or even just vaulted herself over the ledge and trusted in whatever protective items she had left. Her curiosity got the better of her, as I knew it would. Her gaze darted over my body, taking in cat ears, white hair, and eyes of blue and gold. She spat out another gob of blood and asked, “Why is a changeling trying to kill me?”

I knew it was a mistake to answer; every extra second spent killing the girl was another chance for Melpomene to catch me in the act and put a stop to my plan. And yet, in all the years I’d been her Intercessor, for all the monologues I’d delivered on her behalf, I’d never made those cutting speeches with my own words, my own thoughts and feelings. It surprised me how much I craved it.

So I told her, “It’s not really about you. You’re just a symptom of the greater problem. But you’re still part of the problem, and so I have to kill you. But, don’t worry about the life you’ll leave behind; I’ll be taking that too.” I smiled. “You see, I’ve figured it all out: I’m the only one who ever gets it right, so I just need to play all the roles. Once I’ve killed you, I’ll become you, and then I’ll finally make her happy.”

Veseryn reached for another trick up her sleeve, but I was faster. I crossed the distance between us in a blink and drove my knife into her throat. Her eyes went wide and she grabbed at the knife, but I tore it free and slammed it into the side of her head. She went down in a heap and I followed, knife at her throat to stab and stab and stab until the last gurgles stopped and her body went still.

There was work to be done, so I didn’t waste any time savoring my victory. I crouched by the body and took her dead hand in mine. With a whisper of will, I commanded the flesh and blood of her form to slough from her body and flow over mine. Skin, muscle, fat, cartilage, all of it tore from her bones in slow-moving masses that crawled up my arm.

The meat of her body sank into the meat of mine, and in just a few moments my catgirl visage was replaced by a perfect replica of Veseryn. I disintegrated the bones and rose to full height, getting a feel for my new proportions.

The next step was to follow her role in the story, at least superficially. As the changeling, I was supposed to push Veseryn off the roof of this building. As she fell, a portal would open, and she would pass into another world. There, the next chapter would begin. “And this time,” I murmured to myself, “it’ll work. I’ll do what none of those other girls could. I won’t fail like they always do. And then… and then Melpomene will really, truly love me.”

“So that was your plan,” Melpomene said from right behind me.

I lurched in surprise, pushing back against the roof’s edge and turning to see my Creator in the flesh. Melpomene always used proxies, always some guise to keep her distance, but in that moment I saw her as she appeared to me in her own realm, with flaking lips and soft cheeks. Her eyes were dark and gold, weary and haunted.

“You’ve betrayed me,” she spoke softly, gingerly, almost disbelieving. “Why?”

My first instinct was to deny my actions, but I took that cowardice and snapped it by the neck. The plan had failed, but something could be salvaged. “I was trying to save you,” I told her. “You wouldn’t listen, so I had to act.”

The sky above crackled and boomed with thunder and lightning, and rain fell all around us. Melpomene, the storm in her gaze, said, “You were made to serve, not save. You were made to love me.”

“I do love you!” I shouted. My grip on the knife tightened. “I love you more than any of those stupid little girls who keep hurting you! You obsess over them, but I’m right here! Look at me! Love me! I am the only one you need. If you won’t make the right choice, I will make it for you. I love you too much to let you keep doing this.”

In the distance, the skyline burned. The world was already falling apart, smashed to pieces by its dissatisfied maker. Melpomene took a step forward, flames licking at her feet and sizzling in the rain. “You speak of usurpation, my sweet Thalia. You would bind my hands.”

“I just want to help you,” I pleaded. “You’re killing yourself, my heart. You can stop all this, you just have to let me in. I can be all you need. I can be your answer, your solution, your salvation. You don’t need any of those other girls, you just need me. Please, let me do this.”

And for a moment, for a single glorious moment, I could see that she was tempted. Part of her, some part of her, wanted to accept. Wanted to give it all up and be with me. She hesitated. But the worse side of her won, the dark voice in her head. “No. I can’t. If I’m not a maker of worlds, then I am nothing at all. If I don’t keep hurting my splinters, I’ll never understand. You can’t be my answer. Love can’t be the answer.”

“Melpomene!” I cried, and ran towards her, but with a wave of her hand I was gone.

Another world burned, and the ashes rained down on a place outside the universe. The graveyard of worlds, an ashen void. There were stars above, glittering in a vast and empty darkness, but they were dim and muted, swallowed by falling ash.

I was alive. I had been banished from my beloved’s embrace, cast out from her worlds and her palace, but I was alive. Melpomene couldn’t bring herself to kill me. All the other girls, they died and they burned, but I was still alive. Standing there, among the ashes.

It almost didn’t feel real, what I had done. I had rebelled against my maker, my goddess, my divine Creator. And yet, there I stood. Alive, and whole, and loved.

Because she had to love me, to spare me like that. None of the other girls ever got that grace, none of them were allowed to survive the burning of their world at the end of their tale. We gave them life and we brought them death, a thousand times, and only I was different. Only I was spared. There could be no other explanation: Melpomene loved me.

I could still save her. The thought of it filled me with overflowing relief. My love was not gone forever, just out of reach for the moment. I could wait, and gather my strength, and find a way back to her.

I wandered the void, alone and lost in thought. The ash coated castle ruins, broken swords, the detritus of a hundred worlds raised and ruined. I plucked fragments from the ash and reminisced about their origin, sought to harvest whatever remained of the divine impetus behind them. With one eye, I looked beyond, past the palace of the Creator and into her new creations. New worlds, made without my help, that inevitably joined me in the land of falling ash.

Melpomene would continue, if I did nothing. She would work herself to the bone, scraping away even gristle to perpetuate a doomed cycle. Even loving me, even wanting me, she couldn’t defy her nature. She could not make the right choice, so it would have to be made for her. I would have to take away her choices, all of them, to save her.

The moment I chose to act against her, even for her own good, I had ceased to be her Intercessor. And as I walked the graveyard of worlds, plotting my next steps, I became something else. Sometimes, to save a goddess, a girl must become a devil. To save my love, I would become her Adversary.

In the years since that day, I’ve learned how to meddle with my maker’s worlds. I’ve slipped whispers past the veil, found splinters willing to listen. I’m trying to end the cycle, and I know that this time, this time I’ll succeed. Melpomene has invested too much into this world to burn it just to keep me at bay. For once, just this once, she’ll let me win.

And that brings us to you, Alice. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you gained the ability to end this connection several minutes ago. And yet you’re still here.

…So I am.

Then I think it’s time we finally talked face-to-face.