This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a deal.

Jack appeared on cue.

Jack: You're not finished. You still need to kill Unikeia.

Me: We're not doing that.

Jack: Why not. She's a monster?

Me: We're not going to kill her just so you can create more. The Games over.

Jack: The game isn't over until I say it's over.

He raised his Red Hand fingers poised to snap.

Jack: Unikeia or no Unikeia the game continues. I'll create the next group of monsters now.

Me: No you won't.

Jack: Why not?

Me: We won't let you.

Jack began to laugh.

Jack: Let me guess. This would be Muffy's plan... Well, you may not have noticed but Muffy is gone. Whatever plan he had has failed and likely wouldn't of worked anyway. You're not facing The Fears, The Ne Timu or even the Amalgam. You're facing me. JACK OF ALL! I am a god and you are nothing.

Me: You're right. Nathan is gone but he was never important to the plan. The focus was on him. The focus was always on him but it was just misdirection. The plan is still ready to go and god or not it will work.

Jack: Alright I'm intrigued... Tell me your little plan "Doctor."

Unikeia moved beside me.

Unikeia: That would be my cue...

Jack smiled.

Jack: Oh genius. Let me guess you think her little loyalty powers can control me. I created her she's not powerful enough to control me.

???: And that would be my cue...

Portnoy appeared out of nowhere stepping beside Unikeia and grabbing her hand.

Jack's face altered. There was anger there and then it became a serene smile. Defeated but amused.

Jack: I underestimated you, Unikeia. You found him have you?

Unikeia: Yes. This was my plan. Muffin and the others helped me but it was always my plan. They killed The Ne Timu but as long as you're still in control I'll never be sole ruler so I found him... I had them kill the others and lure you out. It's over "Creator" I've won.

Jack: Not yet!

His fingers began to move.

Unikeia: Stop.

The voice was quiet but there was a layer of authority there beyond words. Jack stood completely still and so did I. Everyone was still but Unikeia and Portnoy beside her.

Jack: Damn... you...

Unikeia: Now I suppose Dr. I should uphold my end of the deal. Tell him what you want.

The spell broke and I nodded.

Me: We want things fixed. You made this universe and it's too late to fix it so you're going to make another one. One where The Amalgam were defeated but Muffin's plan didn't succeed and The Fears still live. A universe where everything is back to normal.

Jack glared.

Unikeia: Do as you are told.

Jack winced and snapped his fingers.

Jack: It's done... However know that for you this will be a universe of suffering far greater than you have experienced so far.

Me: But it's exactly as it was before The Amalgam?

Jack: Yes.

Me: Then I don't care what happens to me there.

Unikeia: Are we done?

Me: Yes.

Unikeia smiled.

Unikeia: In that case Jack. This is your final command. You will leave this universe to me and never interfere with it again.

Jack nodded and then smiled as he disappeared.

Me: That's that then...

Unikeia: Yes it is... She turned to me. This universe and everything in it belongs to me now...

I nodded.

Unikeia: Don't worry though you and your friends will be given a position of honor in my universe. You'll be my personal slaves.

I wasn't surprised. This was the agreed upon end. A universe destroyed by The Amalgam, a Universe enslaved but now also a universe truly saved. 

   

Screw the last part...

There is no god here...

There is no comfort.

Faceless is dead.

Portnoy is gone. He had told me and Harold where Muffin and Genome where but after that we couldn't find him... Unikeia said he had other things to do but she didn't seem to know what or wouldn't tell us... He's not coming back though... I know it...

Lastly Muffin is gone too... When he woke up and finished posting what happened he told us. "we're almost done. Now we just have to find the last one." then the world seemed to blur and a voice spoke.

"I am always here." then everything went crazy. I don't know what happened then... No one does... When whatever it was ended Muffin was standing stock still. I went to him and I heard whimpering... Like terrified whimpering... Some sort of ancient, primal fear whimpering... He turned... his eyes were blank... Not pure white, but blank... And he was crying... Then he was gone... He turned away from me and ran... Straight towards the wall then vanished through it... Unikeia spoke then and told us it was done... I don't know how... but apparently the last Ne Timu is dead... We've lost so many...

The Liar, Portnoy, Megan, Faceless...

Hell... Marcinius, Jayson, that Vadim guy...

There's only one thing we can do to honor those who fell...

We're going to finish this... Let's go have a talk with The Devil... 

I will fear no evil

Sorry about the strangeness of that last post. I wrote the first part early on then the second part later after all was said and done... The events I will describe for you now happened pretty much immediately after the events of the last post... They are merely split into this second post to better explain it in time with actual events.

We arrived at the Gate. Reirr was there. Reirr appears as a suit of old, battered and badly distorted medieval armor. The armor is badly dented inwards to the point anyone inside the armor would be dead and crushed. The fingers on the gauntlet are also all twisted and broken and the knees are smashed inwards. In short he looks like a medieval knight who was trampled and crushed and maybe hit with a mace a few times... From these broken dents and cracks flows that same black sludge. It's face is covered by a helm and visor but I'm pretty sure it was surprised by our arrival. Genome pulled out a gun and shot him in the helm. The entire creature just fell over backwards at the knees then slowly straightened back up a joint at a time. Faceless charged but his sword bounced off of the armor and an attempt to stab through a hole in the armor had no effect but to cover his machete in black sludge. I momentarily contemplated punching it but the thing is already full of dents I doubted any more would hurt it. We had been told it's weakness of course but... It didn't make any sense... We were told the sludge was it's greatest weapon and it's only weakness...

Reirr raised it's... mangled... horribly horribly mangled claw and grabbed the hilt of a large rusted sword. Of course given it's fingers all bend in different ways when I say grabbed I mean it's fingers twisted around the hilt in a disgusting way that caused my finger joints a large amount of sympathy pain. It raised the sword and began moving towards us. Faceless moved forward raising his machete. Reirr slashed. It was jerky, erratic... No fluidity to the movement, no force behind it... Nevertheless it slashed through the machete without slowing and Faceless barely managed to avoid being cleaved entirely in half. As it was he backed up enough to keep the slash from severing his spine but only barely. His torso was cut open entirely... Leaving just his spine in tact... His body slid backwards, the spine and upper half flopping backwards till he collapsed in a two part heap. Birds emerged from his corpse and lunged at Reirr but they didn't do anything... They didn't even distract him... Reirr started moving towards us and we fucking ran. He was slow but we had just watched him slice our buddy almost in half... Somehow we ended up out in the runway. Reirr was there already waiting for us. We tried to run again but suddenly the sludge leaked from him and created a ring around us. I don't know what the ring would have done if we had tried to cross but it can't be good. Reirr had us cornered he swung and then was launched backwards as a gout of black sludge flew from his helm. We turned and saw Harold supported by an apparently no longer drugged nor apparently no longer affected Dr. Malice. Reirr got back up in his creepy little way and Harold yelled to me to move to the middle of the circle. I didn't ask why I just grabbed Genome and got as far from the ring as possible. At this point Dr. Malice drew what looked like a flare gun and everything popped into place.

I grabbed Genome and pulled her to the ground covering her with my body as Dr. Malice fired. The sludge and Reirr ignited in seconds. The result was a horrible bonfire that scorched every bit of my body not hidden from the flame. Even with me covering her I could see Genome starting to melt. Luckily the fire didn't last long... It went out almost as quickly as it started leaving behind nothing but charred pieces of metal armor and a line of scorched runway around us.

I got up. Checked on Genome then turned to Harold and Dr. Malice, gave them a thumbs up and passed out. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...

Our numbers are down... and are enemies are many.

Dr. Malice is still confined, Portnoy is confined, Harold is injured and Unikeia and all her followers have turned on us out of fear.

Luckily Unikeia is mad with fear and isn't thinking so she's not using her powers... Just that strange knife of hers. All that's left of us trapped and under assault from Unikeia and her forces. Well, now... I suppose it's time to go out fighting... Final stand and all that... Open the door and try and take as many of them down with us as we can.

Or alternatively something completely crazy could happen. Like the door could suddenly burst open revealing Portnoy standing there with the unnamed Child clinging to him.

Portnoy: Reirr is currently at Gate 2... He won't be there long hurry.

Me: Portnoy what's going on?

Portnoy: No time for questions hurry.

Me: What are you doing?

Portnoy: Staying here to keep Unikeia and the others pacified.

Me: How-

Portnoy: Muffin! Shut the hell up and go fight Reirr!

Breaking Down

It's Muffin... Dr. Malice is... being confined at the moment. He tried to kill Harold yesterday... By confined I mean we have him extremely heavily drugged since otherwise it's pretty damn hard to confine something like him. When we stopped him the lower half of his face was just a mass of that black sludge and he was screaming about betrayal.

It seems he was convinced Harold and by extension Faceless are secretly working for Jack or The Ne Timu or... well he started saying something else but at this point he was knocked unconscious and whatever he was going to say was lost. It's hardly important though. The point is Paranoia and Fear and all the wonderful things that go with that are running rampant through the airport and the death toll is rising.

There's good news though... Oh yes there is some wonderful fucking news!

It's here.

Reirr... The Ne Timu of Bravery. A fucked up looking Knight monster. He's been spotted wandering around the airport now. Trails of his black sludge have appeared in the halls which corroborate these sightings. He's finally here. We're going to find him and end this before it gets any worse. 

The Litany against Fear

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I have fond memories of Dune... Granted I never read the books... or seen the movies... Or really had any interaction with the series outside of having a father who was a huge fan of it and who used to quote the litany and constantly tell me things about the series... So I guess what I'm saying is I have fond memories of my father which I disguise as fond memories of a series I know pretty much nothing about...

Hell even that quote isn't from memory...

This is Dr. Malice btw... Nathan's relationship with his father ended with him joining The Archangel trying to kill Megan and Nathan eventually murdering him... So I'm pretty sure there are no fond memories there...

I'm rambling aren't I... The point is The Litany against Fear would be very useful right now as it appears to be running rampant.

The servants are panicking and killing each other. Unikeia has completely lost control and has been spotted at times reverting to her Unnamed Child form for an unknown reason. Whatever is causing this still hasn't arrived as far as we know and already it's tearing us apart.  That black sludge is becoming more apparent as well. Some people have black stains under their eyes or constantly have a couple of streaks of it dripping down...

A guard yesterday snapped and shot two others before he was eventually subdued and proceeded to kill himself by biting off his own tongue... Our group seems unaffected but it's hard to really tell. We stay together when possible now but Harold is often on his own somewhere, Faceless doesn't have eyes and Unikeia keeps Portnoy by her side and won't let us near him much anymore.

The only ones I'm sure of our myself, Nathan and Megan...

Actually Harold's behaviour is pretty strange... Why is he by himself so often? 

A... very interesting meeting.

It's Muffin. We arrived back at Unikeia's place to await whatever is coming. Dr. Malice is right. Unikeia and, as a result, most of her servants seem afraid. My guess one of the last two Ne Timu is mounting some sort of attack. There haven't been more incidents like the one Dr. Malice reported but we're pretty sure it may happen again. Attempts to question Unikeia have been fruitless. She seems to want to tell us but every time she starts to speak she seems to lose her nerve.

Regardless my post today isn't so much about that as about another strange meeting I've had today... It wasn't Jack this time it was... Well something that shouldn't have happened.

I was walking towards my designated room and as I reached for the door it suddenly opened inwards. The door opens outwards normally. I looked out into a vast empty city but not for long. My amazement at seeing The Empty City before me was overcome by my amazement at seeing myself standing in front of me. He seemed surprised to see me too. I stepped back to let him come out but he didn't.

Other Me: Can't set foot in this universe. Part of the agreement.

Me: What agreement.

O. Me: The Empty City wanted to show me this universe. It brought me here but said I couldn't set foot inside. Something about not being able to properly manifest here and if I stepped out I couldn't come back.

Me: Makes sense... The Fears are all dead here. So The Empty City is probably breaking all sorts of laws just showing up here at all.

O. Me: So this is the universe where we succeeded?

Me: Yep. We killed The Fears and doomed the universe.

O. Me: Shit really?

Me: Worse then that... We killed Megan...

O. Me: ... Tell me everything.

We spent the next few minutes telling each other what we know and what's been happening in our respective universes. Eventually he started fading.

O. Me: Thank you... I think I know how to fix things in my universe now... Good luck... I'm sorry.

Me: Me too...

He disappeared then... The door closed. I opened it outward went into my room. Oh to explain. While it is an airport Unikeia has modified it heavily. I believe my room was once part of a coffee shop... Anyway . I went inside thinking deeply about the conversation before falling asleep and dreaming about the universe I had just learned about... A universe where Megan was still alive and The Fears still had power... Compared to this one that seems like a paradise despite my other's problems...