It was time to embrace the living skills.

Sham ripped down the mental barrier he’d been building up over all these Loops as he charged at Julya. He felt the full strength of the legendary grade skill flow through him, pervade every extremity, inform every movement.

With a power he’d never thought possible—even with Vigour in his system—he tackled Julya, sending them both soaring through the air and into a nearby pillar. Hard.

As the pair fell to the ground, Julya gasped for air, winded by the speed at which she’d hit hard stone. Sham slammed his clenched fist into her soft stomach, looking to press the matter further.

‘Seize the advantage,’ Perspicacity said, almost drowned out by the cries of ‘Punch! Kick!’ from Vigour.

But Perspicacity was already moving Sham before he ever consciously did so. He semi-watched as his fingers reached for Julya’s vial-stuffed jacket, the strength of Vigour ripping it from its wearer like it was made of tissue paper. Before he could think, a part of Sham launched the jacket as far away from them as he could manage. It soared across the space, over Riot’s outstretched arms, and finally landed in the empty ministerial elevator at the rear of the atrium.

Sham and Julya made eye contact for only a second, then began scrambling over one another in the direction of the tossed vials.

This was it; the moment that Sham and co truly had an advantage. Julya was separated from her sources of strength, and hindered by the luck boono in her system—yet even then she proved a worthy adversary.

A swift kick to Sham’s shins—likely aided by a Fleet of Foot skill already in her system—sent him whimpering to the floor.

‘Forget about it,’ Recollection said, and suddenly the memory of pain was wiped from Sham’s mind.

He charged after Julya, shoes heavy against the floor, and raised his revolver, meaning to fire.

But ahead of Julya was Riot, and a stray round could pierce not his target, but the woman he… But his friend.

‘Riot!’ he cried out. ‘Duck!’

But his friend either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to, and continued onward towards the empty elevator, the gap between her and the target, so fleet of foot, closing with every passing second.

He fired anyway.

Sham didn’t know whether it was truly him, or one of the skills guiding his hand, but he emptied his six-round chamber in the pair’s direction. Neither he nor any of his skills improved his ability with a firearm, and so only one of the rounds hit.

And it hit Riot.

Riot fell to the floor of the empty elevator as she clutched at her forearm, not severely injured but enough that stemming the flow of blood was now an urgent problem.

‘This is why we don’t like him carrying a gun, see,’ Recollection muttered.

Riot hissed as she forced herself to stand up, one hand wrapped around her injured forearm, and she shot Sham a furious glare.

‘Oopsie!’ said Joy.

‘Riot!’ Sham shouted as he charged. ‘Close the—’

But his friend was way ahead of him, as ever. Her uninjured elbow slammed into the lever control, firing the elevator into life and causing a brass metal grill to roll out in front of its entrance.

The charging Julya was unable to slow enough in time, and so careered into the brass with an almighty crash. Inside, Riot bent down to pick up the discarded jacket, smiled at Julya, and then began her slow journey up the Tower—Julya’s only potential advantage, and cause of the Loop, in hand.

Sham slowed to a halt and stared down his target as she slowly turned away from the elevator. ‘It’s over, Julya,’ he said. ‘No more Loops. We can go on with our lives, now. It’s over.’

A figure appeared at his side. Kryl. He never thought he’d be standing side by side with such a man as he. Yet… here they were.

Julya’s eyes dropped to the ground. She sighed. She even wiped her hands over her face, clearing the beginnings of tears from her cheeks.

‘It’s over,’ Sham said again.

His target nodded, stepped towards the pair of Loopbreakers.

‘Ah! Ah-ah!’ Kryl cried out.

Julya raised her hands into the air. ‘I’m unarmed. I’m unarmed. It’s as Sham says…’

Sham allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief, and he was sure he heard one from the man at his side, too. It was over. After… after however many Loops it had been—he’d more than lost count—it was finally over. He could go back to his life a stronger man. A better one. Maybe he’d make something of himself, at last. Maybe Riot—

Julya stepped closer still, standing right in front of them now. Sham felt Vigour tense his legs, just in case.

But she didn’t attack.

No.

She only bent towards his ear, her mouth parting as she whispered, ‘Do you really think the Fringe would let me give up so easily?’

With that, a hand slammed into his chest, and a great nothingness flowed from it.

A Moment Out Of Time

Sham was swallowed by… not darkness. Not light. Not… anything.

Only the void surrounded him. Only the void, and there, in the distance, a woman.

He felt his legs step forward before he really knew he was doing it. The skills still operated here, in this place, in this Great Nothing. Each step was silent, as though the void around him unable to communicate sound. He tried speaking. A strange, muffled sound came out.

Then Sham heard a noise grow from the nothing as he grew closer to the distant figure. A whooshing, or… no. A hissing.

Like a wireless improperly tuned.

Sham slowed to a halt; whichever skill was urging him forward had since lost confidence in the idea.

‘Why are we stopping?’ said a voice at his side.

He turned to see the shadow-father standing next to him. But it was not, in this place of nothing, formed of the same substance, as it had been in his mind. Here, Recollection took the form not just of Sham’s father, but of, it seemed, a dozen other people, each overlaid on top of one another, each stretched and morphed to fill the same space as his father. He saw, in there, a young boy with limbs ill-fitting his age. He saw, in there, an old woman with white blind, eyes. He saw an impossibility—yet that was of no such surprise in this place of impossibilities.

‘We need to get out of here,’ another figure said. The shadow-Riot, this time, or Perspicacity. But also, again… a dozen other figures, rippling in and out of the same body, as though occupying the same space but moving a fraction of a second behind one another.

‘And you no longer think the only thing that’s actually here is our best way of finding that?’ Recollection asked.

‘I think we shouldn’t underestimate the possibility that our situation can get worse,’ Perspicacity replied.

‘We continue,’ Sham said. ‘I’m not staying here. Wherever here is. If there’s a chance…’

‘We’ll fight,’ a many-formed Vigour said, ‘If we have to.’

‘We’ll do anything,’ added Joy, her body much the same as the others. ‘We’re here for you, Sham.’

‘You have no idea how little comfort that gives me,’ he replied. Then added, ‘But thanks.’

The five figures—one man, four multi-beings—looked on at the figure ahead of them.

‘Well,’ Perspicacity asked. ‘Shall we?’

Sham nodded, and forwards they went. But the distant figure grew nearer slower than it should have; as though she were further away than visually she seemed. Fifteen minutes or so into what should have been a sixty second walk, the figure was close enough now that Sham could make them out not as a woman, but as a girl. A girl whose movements suggested she was sobbing.

He felt his legs tremble beneath him.

Here, in this void, with Vigour taking his own, separate form, Sham was weaker. Sham was succumbing to his illness once more. That illness that Vigour’s strength had only patched over.

‘Easy does it,’ Vigour said.

Sham shook his head, ignored the suggestion, and pressed on.

They walked for hours, their gazes fixed on the girl ahead of them. Sham felt weaker by the minute as his detachment from Vigour grew, a familiar prickly sensation growing around him, covering him. He bit his tongue, forced himself to continue, each step in this infinite journey seeming itself to take an age.

‘Hello?’ he cried out as he finally grew close.

The young girl whipped her face up. Tears streamed down those cheeks. But it wasn’t that that made Sham’s stomach twist into a knot. No, this reaction was to the fact that he recognise that face. It was younger, sure, and held eyes that were far less… manic than he’d seen, but he knew it.

‘Are you OK, Julya?’ Sham asked.

The young girl’s lip trembled. She shook her head.

‘How long have you been here, Julya?’ he pressed on.

Julya blinked at the four shapes around him, then burst into tears once more.

‘You might not wish to upset our gracious host,’ a new voice—a voice formed of thousands—boomed. At Sham’s side, Joy flinched. From the void around them, a new body took shape. Formed of nothing—formed of the void—a body. Julya’s body.

The child Julya shrieked, scrambled to hide behind Sham. He felt the kid clutch at his legs, but he kept his eyes fixed on the many-voice being.

‘And you are…’ Vigour prompted, the snarl clear in his tone if not on his face.

‘I am the void. I am nothing. I am the corruption, incarnate. And you threaten my rise.’

‘The Fringe,’ Perspicacity snarled.

Sham nodded; that bit, he knew. He gulped, gearing himself to speak to, or at, the void being ahead of him. ‘Threaten you? If Julya… if you give up on the Loop, then I wouldn’t have to kill her host. But as it stands…’

‘It is not this host I am concerned about,’ a thousand voices replied. ‘It is the interruption of the Loop, of the corruption of this world. I am not risen until every city, every village, every soul falls to me. I am not risen until I am the world.’

Sham glanced at Recollection. The figure stared, just as he had, not betraying an emotion of any of his many faces.

It was Vigour who reacted first to this revelation, and he did as he was prone to do. The living skill stepped forward, face to face with the void figure of Julya, and he launched his clenched fist at its face.

Though the collision was hard, the void figure barely moved. It was pushed backwards a step, but gave no grunt, no sign of pain. The only indication that anything had happened at all, in fact, was that the void gave way to blue sky at Sham’s rear.

Perspicacity turned to Recollection, shared some non-verbal communication, and then, at once, shouted, ‘Sham—run!’

The four living skills launched themselves at the void figure in the same instant that Sham reached for the young, broken, Julya’s hand.

He turned, meaning to flee, but with his first step found that something gripped at his ankle. He hit the ground hard, the young Julya blinking down at him, then turned to face his attacker.

Though his four living skills were throwing punches and kicks at the void being, its attention was fixed firmly on Sham. With every hit that it took, the blue light of clear sky illuminated the void more and more, and soon Sham could stare into the void as it stared back.

He was entranced by the shapes he saw billowing around its form. There, in the not-black, not-white skin of its body, he saw sights that could not have been. He saw the yellow explosion, erupting time and time again, he saw the Tower fall, but he also saw screaming faces, and creatures of legend, and scythes, and parasites. He saw everything that could have been, and he saw more still.

The void crawled its way up Sham’s body, until its face was above his, staring in, and void-formed saliva dripped from where its mouth would have been, electrifying Sham’s face with every landed drop.

‘Get, the fuck, off him!’ Vigour roared, and with a great heave ripped the voidbeing from atop Sham.

Joy helped him to his feet as the other three continued their attack. ‘Go, my darling. We’ll see you when you get out.’

Sham nodded, grabbed at the child Julya’s hand once more, and charged for the strange blue light that surely represented their escape. Behind, he heard shouts and roars and screams, and from the changing nature of the living skills’ tone he could hear that the tide was turning. The Fringe incarnate had shifted its attention from Sham to those who fought for him.

And the blue glow was quickly diminishing.

Sham fought with the impossibly long distance as he sprinted, dragging the girl with him. Even in his weakened state, he was stronger than the young Julya he dragged with him.

The blue light grew dimmer.

And the young Julya wasn’t fast enough, her strides short, her determination practically non-existent. There were two choices, here, Sham realised; he could hold on to the young girl’s hand and fail to escape this peculiar void, or he could…

Sham released Julya’s hand.

As the slice of blue sky diminished in front of him, Sham launched himself through it, and tried not to think about the distraught young girl he’d left behind.