“Huzzah! The beast is dead! Now, if you’ll kindly turn around, its twin seems quite cross about the whole affair.”


    — Dread Emperor Irritant I, the Oddly Successful


    <hr>


    I swooped to the side as the Winter Dragon’s claws scraped my wings. Piloting a dragon unsurprisingly fell well outside my normal arsenal. I relied upon both Innovate and the narrative to keep me aloft.


    On any other day, soaring like this would’ve instilled me with a sense of wonder.


    Instead, I felt numb.


    The black fog shrouded my thoughts much as when I thought of those slain by Endbringers or the many victims of the Nine. I’d estimated that over a third of the Tyrant’s army had perished during his strategic repositioning. I’d known this empty lassitude would smother me the moment Kairos had appeared. That eventually the bodies would be stacked so high that it was no longer possible to understand the loss.


    There was no avoiding tragedy when fighting a villain who savoured other''s suffering.


    Golden clouds shimmered above the dragon’s frostbitten frame, their shifting hues reflected faintly in the creature’s eerie eyes. I lunged as it tilted its wings. It had unleashed a fan of icicles the last three times I’d observed that tell. Dozens of the Tyrant’s men died screaming alongside bands of the Summer fae each time it did so. The Winter dragon twisted in an attempt to evade. A crack reverberated as I struck the beast and smothered it in a cloud of radiance.


    The most aggravating part of this conflict?


    The sheer pointlessness of it all.


    It was far worse than any regular fight. Our strikes were just empty gestures. Both of us hunted for a weakness when our weapons were as effective as trying to stem the tide with more water. There were stakes despite that. I saw it in the creature’s hollow blue orbs. A cold malice lurked there, watching behind each counter.


    Malevolent eyes narrowed.


    The skeletal frame dropped and reformed a dozen heartbeats later.


    Its tail scythed toward me as a spear of black ice formed at the tip. I twisted and unfurled my wings, deflecting the blow with a luminescent wave. A tremor reverberated through the air as they collided and shattered the ice into fragments. Silver tears stung as the screams below drove nails into my eyes.


    Another reminder of my imperfection


    Another reminder of the people caught in the aftermath of our struggle.


    The trouble with destroying the Winter Dragon was that I’d transformed the battle into a clash of concepts. Summer, Winter, and me—the future. The narrative favoured me, but it wasn’t that simple. I still had to carry through that victory myself.


    I’d needed to turn Winter against Summer to break its dragon.


    And destroying the Winter monstrosity would take something more.


    I chased the beast as it plunged toward the erratic streaks of grey that raked the sky. The errant bolts had reduced in both quantity and scale now, with more fading with each passing moment. One of my claws closed around the dragon’s wings and knocked it off course. It crashed into once verdant soil now blighted by frost.


    Hadn’t this been green less than a quarter-hour ago?


    Suppose that makes this a crash course in dragoneering.


    I blocked the snap of frozen jaws, but three icy claws gouged holes across my wings. Tendrils of frost spread towards a loose band of Summer fae who’d wandered nearby. Cries rang out as their defences weakened under the encroaching ice. I severed the attack with a vicious cut and spun, then clamped onto its neck. Gloom bled from bones and ate at me. We both pulled back and circled each other on an iced over plain, waiting for the next blow.


    The miracle I’d been preparing while I stalled completed.


    I wove radiant threads through the undead dragon into a grand tapestry.


    What if the wild hunt didn’t hunt down lost peasants in the waning woods and instead guided them to safety? What if the princess didn’t attend the ball only to be knifed in the back? What if betrayal became chivalry and vice became virtue?


    Again and again and again.


    One question after the other.


    The manifestation thrummed.


    My aura surged as a burst of shadows draped itself around my masterpiece and tore into it with jagged teeth. Light streamed, faster and faster. A pair of joined hands, a nest with eggs, the laughter of children not yet born.


    Mockery resounded as the darkness gave its reply.


    Broken vows, an empty house, a stillborn babe.


    An involuntary snarl tore from my golden snout as the miracle shattered.


    Shadows wreathed the skeletal frame as the dragon took to the sky. I followed behind it. Arcs of radiance extended from my claws. The beast lashed its tail towards me as it snapped into motion. Daggers of ice deflected my attack and tore through my neck, scattering shards of Light like broken glass. A heartbeat later and I reformed, still hurtling after the monster.


    I couldn’t stop.


    I didn’t think it could, either.


    How could I destroy this beast? My biggest obstacle to miracle based combat was how most of the faithful resorted to pointy beam diplomacy. The sufficiency of that approach against many enemies did nothing for me in a war of concepts. While the angels did resort to more esoteric combat, the tactics they used did nothing in the type of war that I waged.


    That left this entire fight in an uncharted realm.


    One where I pioneered all the tools.


    Perhaps a prismatic prison would work? One that would splinter the creature’s attacks and send them spinning back. Fragment the present into metaphoric pieces. No, that idea wouldn’t work. The present was trapped in stasis already, and I needed something removed from that if I wanted the dragon gone. How about…


    Yes, that could work.


    The next several exchanges passed as a blur.


    My mind wandered while I wove my next miracle.


    Muted thoughts of Kairos lingered, like the waning rays before sunset.


    I was certain that the pointlessness of this clash of titans was the entire point of it. Kairos required tools to undercut my story. He didn’t actually care about the dragons at all, he only cared about tying me down. So he forced me into a major slog with no real stakes to cut away the weight of what I worked towards. I’m sure somebody found it hilarious. I didn’t. The near certainty of my victory was irrelevant. The Tyrant had insured that I’d not have the oomph required to challenge the King of Winter or the Queen of Summer in the aftermath.


    Not that my chances had been good to begin with.


    And I couldn’t decline the clash with the dragons, either.


    Villains like the Tyrant were petty attention whores. The kids causing problems when the teachers stepped out of the classroom. He was the abused child who’d decided to perpetuate the cycle rather than attempting to end it. He’d find a way to sabotage my plans using these dragons if I’d decided to ignore them. Or he’d hurt somebody else with them. His repugnant nature led to a situation whereby I had to engage with his game on some level — even while I tried to cut past all his bullshit — in order to prevent more lives from being lost.


    I thought about striking him down anyway, consequences be damned. Yvette hadn’t indicated yet that the slaves would survive if I acted. The thought still lingered. Was I the teacher who let the abusive student run wild? Or the Taylor who let her bullies keep taking swings because fighting back felt like giving in?… No. Not this time. I was doing my best to fix this. I just had higher standards than I used to.


    It unsettled me that the urge to lash out at him burned as hot as it did.


    Much about the Tyrant worried me.


    His inversion of Aladdin had come at a time when I’d been too preoccupied with ending the Summer Dragon to intervene. It had been a twist I’d not anticipated. Well, it hadn’t been completely unexpected. I’d guessed the broader strokes of his scheme without knowing the finer details. His betrayal of Larat had been unsurprising. I suspected Kairos would die the moment his Gods found him boring, and ploys like this were his method of survival.


    I’d need to take care in how I countered that story.


    The hells would freeze over before I approved of a relationship between him and Yvette.


    Seeing him use Wish had rung church bells deep in my soul loud enough to crack the pews. It was enough to confirm that he was certainly my rival. I’d bet it had limitations, even if I didn’t know what they were. They were likely tied to frequency or some abstract narrative logic. Perhaps the circumstances had to be amusing? It would fit my understanding of the boy shouting for attention because nobody had heard him before.


    I doubted that Kairos knew enough about the story of Aladdin to invert it. That suggested he’d wished for knowledge of Earth’s stories. It made sense. The Gods Below couldn’t possibly allow their favourite toddler to be punished for throwing a tantrum. No, consequences were for other people. Such a high level of potential story awareness elevated him as a threat far beyond almost every other hero and villain I knew. I’d tentatively place him third to the Bard and the Dead King until I knew more, and suspected that Kairos’s position and the Dead King’s might be interchangeable.


    Enough had been recorded on the Hidden Horror throughout history for me to guess at his goals. He wanted to live forever more than anything else. There was no other reason to turn himself into a living corpse. That kind of motivation rewarded patience. I’d bet he was cautious, brilliant at manipulating stories, but hated upsetting the status quo. That made the Dead King predictable, in the sense that I’d always know the general shape of how horribly we were about to be fucked if he knocked at the door.


    Kairos liked chaos.


    Kairos wasn’t predictable.


    I needed to end the Tyrant while he was in Arcadia, and not just because developing a proper threat profile on him for the House of Light would be an exercise in frustration. The battlefield of Arcadia favoured me more than anywhere else, and I didn’t want new heroes travelling to Helike and adding weight to his story down the road.


    My mind returned to the conflict as I finished preparing my next gambit.


    Tassels of radiance streamed from my maw and coalesced into a resplendent sphere. One that swallowed the Winter Dragon whole. The surface gleamed — smooth as polished glass — but its reflection told a story of what could be and not a story of what was. It didn’t matter where the beast looked, the visions remained the same. A world thawing, ice melting into streams, grass budding, trees erupting with blooms.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    The surface rippled with countless refracting visions.


    Much like a stone tossed onto the surface of a pond.


    Then the inevitable walls of the future encroached.


    A blizzard of ice and darkness swept across my silver prison’s interior and whispered of the inevitable end. A world freezing, the frozen peaks of the Whitecaps, soil buried beneath ice, the last leaf falling from a tree. The reflection dimmed as gloom occluded the interior. A skeletal claw lashed out.


    Once.


    Twice.


    Thrice.


    My frills flared as the walls shattered.


    At this rate, I’m going to need to start giving miracles fancy names like wizards with spells.


    The echo of frustration tolled in the recesses of my mind as the dragon escaped my claws.


    What else could I try? I could attempt to trap it in illusions, but I doubted that the illusion of change would be enough to overcome the idea of a world trapped in ice. How about leaning even further into something I’d already done? I didn’t have the time to invent novel miracles. They’d all have to be variations on the same themes and ideas. The seasons would switch by the time I’d invented even a single entirely original miracle, and handing Kairos victory on a silver platter wasn’t an outcome I’d accept at all.


    The air vibrated with frost and Light as the beast twisted and dove towards me. Its jaws parted. I veered as an icy abyss poured forth. Its breath screamed of a timeless eternity that heralded the end of all things. I answered with a chaotic, scintillating spray, even as the frigid death trailed whispers along my scales. The necromantic construct swerved as the darkness dispersed, but it was too slow.


    The Winter Dragon’s icy wings caught the glow and shattered like glass.


    I examined the battlefield while threading Light as the beast began to reform.


    Ice had crept halfway up the paradox trap. It inched forward like frostbite on flesh. In theory, there was little meaning to halfway through infinity. I concluded something else as I read the portent inscribed in cold. The King of Winter approached. I needed to conclude my struggle before the war reached its end.


    A storm cloud brewed on the face of the Prince of Nightfall. For now, he lingered beside a broken throne within the palace ruins, but I didn’t expect that to last.


    Roland conducted a mad dash down the hills with the cursed casket clutched tight against his chest. Both the Tyrant and his gargoyles were relentless in their pursuit of my friend. Roland ducked and darted behind rocks or into craters for shelter, often trading barrages of lightning or flames against equivalent gestures with the child on the throne. I tried intercepting the menaces seven times with both lances and barriers. Each attempt was foiled by either my undead assailant, the Tyrant, or the Winter fae.


    My aura surged as my attention waned and the intricate net I’d woven unravelled between my jaws.


    Trust that Roland can handle those pests, Taylor.


    The dragon turned and exhaled a storm of icy shards that hummed with the breadth of the present. The shards tore through the air. They didn’t just strike the battlefield, but also close to the fragile camp where Yvette worked her ritual. I felt my wings falter as one jagged icicle narrowly missed one of the braziers.


    Another storm of icy shards sheared after me only a heartbeat later. I capitalized on the beast’s mental slowness and wove between them. My form blurred into nebulous clouds as icicles pierced where I had been only moments before. The dragon roared again in false frustration and flapped its wings in a pale mimicry of the life it once had.


    A line of gold split the air as my attack burned through the dragon’s wings and gouged a path through its chest. Ice sealed over the injuries as it recoiled. My talons sparked against its frozen scales as I struck again. The inevitability of the future trailed lines down the bones of the immutable now.


    Darkness bled from the bones as fragments of ice spilled into the air.


    Ice and shadows snapped back into position.


    I exhaled a searing breath in frustration as I restarted the fabrication of my greater miracle.


    The nymphs had departed the Tyrant’s camp for an assault on Winter after ransacking the last remnants of it. The golden-bannered Immortals harassed deadwood soldiers from the safety of their walls. Winter had surrounded itself in walls of shadows and frost, although they did little to stem the assault when geometry held less meaning than morality in Praes.


    Impatience dug at my heels as I waited for Yvette to signal that I could strike against the Tyrant without causing mass casualties. The ritual had transformed from a three-dimensional grid into an intricate sphere composed of many interlocking segments. A twenty-fourth brazier had also been located and now flickered around the inner circle. Each one of the burning hearts on the pyres had been disposed and had been replaced with a drop of my blood.


    The vial had been emptied.


    Worry about my daughter gnawed at me.


    There was far too much High Arcana in the working she was creating.


    Scrying didn’t require High Arcana at all.


    Yvette had disappeared into a reality of her own. She’d been consumed with an intensity that gouged deep furrows of guilt into my heart. She kept muttering or reaching into her pocket dimension and pulling out additional reagents. Every so often she’d stop and stroke my horse on its mane.


    Should I have avoided asking her to do this? I knew that she wouldn’t refuse. That she’d see this as an opportunity to “earn” my affection for her. The affection she already possessed and didn’t need to earn at all.


    I hated what I’d done.


    I knew that she’d come to resent me if I’d avoided asking her instead.


    How did I determine the correct choice? Should I respect her autonomy or refuse to allow a child to walk into the hungry maw of danger? On Earth, I’d have said the latter without question. But here? In Creation? Yvette almost fell within their standards for adulthood. Most people I asked would declare that I was wrong.


    I wanted for Creation to be more like Earth.


    I couldn’t insist on them following my principles without turning myself into a tyrant.


    Errant thoughts were dusted away as I returned my attention to the greater conflict.


    The strategic situation had become precarious, even with the potential return of Summer’s Sun. I’d long passed out of the realm of established planning and into the realm of thinking on my wings. The situation also wouldn’t improve any time soon. I wasn’t certain who the Tyrant had betrayed. Sulia or Summer, Winter or Larat?


    I was putting my money on Summer and Larat for now, but it hardly mattered with Kairos. He wouldn’t abandon this fight until he’d betrayed everyone else. I suspected there were two major betrayals left. The King of Winter and the hidden player. The only way he could betray Roland, Yvette, and me was by subverting our expectations of him.


    I’d need to turn the betrayed into allies against the malignant youth. I’d win If I reached the end of the tale I’d woven. His goal was cutting it short. Kairos might’ve taken fighting the fae monarchs off the table, but negotiation wasn’t. The King of Winter’s initial question all but confirmed he’d struck a deal with the Tyrant. One that would complicate coming to an agreement. I was still prepared to bet that the King was eager to betray the Tyrant if Kairos tried stabbing him in the back.


    The Tyrant’s death was the real heretic in the cathedral. He was the kind of villain who’d use his own death to spite the world. I had to undermine that. I had to manipulate him into a less catastrophic ending. But how? Kairos didn’t fear death. I also couldn’t exploit his hatred of being ignored. I’d need to find something else.


    My third miracle neared completion as Roland stumbled into the Tyrant’s former camp.


    My golden corona warped into a halo of possibility. Threads streamed from my claws and entangled Winter’s construct like vines choking a dying tree. This time, I struck with something different. This time, I struck with the idea of Creation from nothing. A match struck, stars lighting up the night sky, the void being populated by the will of the Gods.


    The beast tried to contest my working.


    It struggled and lashed and raged and fought.


    It threw possibility after possibility at the radiance which suffused it.


    Futile.


    Each attempt at escape was futile.


    One piece at a time, I slammed the puzzle that was its tomb into place.


    Triumph swelled within my chest.


    I risked a glance towards my friends.


    Frost encroached upon the Helikean camp. Roland faltered as the stone monstrosities closed in. My claws twitched. I couldn’t intervene without risking my working. My friend passed behind the shelter of a barricade. A dim sputter of sparks sent a gargoyle reeling backwards. Splinters erupted. A winged monster screeched as it smashed through the wood.


    The dragon thrashed harder, and I wove faster to compensate. The wintry glow in its eyes dimmed as its struggles weakened. My web tightened. One vision after another hammered it into submission.


    Almost done.


    A stone menace lashed out and missed my friend, but struck a tent line in the process.


    A layer of frost spread beneath Roland’s foot.


    The Rogue Sorcerer tripped as he tangled himself against loose fabric.


    The Midnight Casket hurtled through the air.


    Roland lunged after it with a cry.


    A gargoyled did the same.


    Both were too slow.


    Pandora galloped in like vengeance incarnate. Her hooves struck against the base of the box and sent the casket spinning. Summer’s sun exploded free as its lid flew open. It bathed Arcadia in blinding radiance and streaked through the air, before vanishing into the now crackling silver heart of Yvette’s ritual. The centre of the spell flickered, then spiralled in dizzying, vivid circles as it strained against her intent.


    Perfect. Another setback.


    Yvette stilled for a heartbeat before exploding into a frenzy of movement. Desperation lit up her emerald eyes as she dashed from one side of the ritual to the other. I couldn’t follow her attempt to contain the calamity. I doubted anyone else could, either.


    Silence almost fell over the battlefield.


    The Tyrant wouldn’t allow an opportunity like this to pass without giving applause.


    I’m not allowing you to kill my hope, Kairos. You can topple as many dominoes as you like, there will always be one more beyond your reach. That, or I''ll pick them up and set them at the end.


    A lead ball of bitterness sank into the swamp of my exhaustion. It… didn’t do much to the water level. I was so far beyond justifiably upset that deepening the mire didn’t budge my resolve. Now I needed to end this conflict without knowing the principle motives of either side. So what? Fine. I’d already known this fight would be ugly. The King of Winter had my friends’ souls, and his was the only deal left intact.


    I had absolutely no idea what to do with Larat’s keys any more. Well, it wasn’t even given that I could earn them now. Kairos had shattered that story, but I’d find a way to obtain and use them. I’d keep the promises that I made. It didn’t matter that Kairos had wished our oaths away. I’d see the story through, even if I needed to rewrite history to do it.


    The last threads of my miracle tied together between my claws.


    A crack split the air as the bone dragon imploded in a cascade of Light and frost.


    I dropped from the sky as fast as I could and landed as close as I dared to my friends. The Tyrant’s ‘withdrew’ from the broken camp and returned to his now severely diminished force in the distance. The sight of his fleeing back offered little satisfaction for all the harm he’d done. Yvette had still not provided me with the signal to attack, and I expected the next betrayal to arrive at any moment.


    A suffocating presence arrived at the other end of the twisted tunnel.


    “Night falls across two realms,” the voice of the King of Winter whispered from the frost strewn across open plains, “and Winter devours until the ache of emptiness feels almost like satisfaction.”


    I froze as the sky darkened.


    Vast sheets of lightning rippled from one side of the sky to the other.


    Hail began to fall.


    “And so it came to pass: what once was and what is have crumbled beneath the weight of what must be,” the ground groaned as he spoke. “This distortion of distance stretched a single breath into endlessness,” his voice dipped into the low thrumming of thunder. “And yet, she severed the thread, leaving the timeless undone beneath her claws.”


    The infinite became finite again as the horizon unfurled like a scroll. North, South, East, and West returned to their places on the plane. Concepts that had lost all meaning found their identity once more. Soldiers that had stood side by side were now separated by vast distances.


    That which was forever denied had become obtainable in truth.


    I… didn’t have enough care left to properly appreciate the sheer artistry that was the King of Winter twisting my victory against the dragon into a weapon to undo my story.


    Frost licked Summer’s walls.


    The ground shuddered beneath the rhythmic march of Winter’s remaining infantry.


    Step.


    Thud.


    Step.


    Thud.


    Each newly claimed inch blighted the last dregs of life in the ground below.


    The battle for Aine began.