***The Crystal City***

***Seria***

Only a moment after Celes stumbles into the vault, the protective barrier activates and takes the fate of the multiverse out of my hands. Whatever my actions have wrought, I won’t be the one who shapes the fates of all.

It’s in their hands now.

I fall to my knees, listening to the sounds of the sobbing survivors of this most recent conflict. All I can do now is to wait for the inevitable oblivion.

When, suddenly, the barrier drops, revealing my mother once more.

Changed, she steps out of the vault, seeming different from the person who I just shoved inside moments ago. Her attire is the same, but Celes seems taller now. She carries herself differently, her expression is less strained and full of confidence, devoid of the stern rage of her other alter ego, and more like the person from my memories.

The indomitable queen of all in creation.

More eye-catching are the two leathery wings emerging from her hips which she has wrapped around herself like a skirt, turning her into a true creature of myth. She is back to being the person who was always at the Bright One’s side in the fresco that decorates the inner sanctum.

The woman standing before me narrows her eyes and looks down at me and then around the room, studying the people who are watching her in stunned silence, waiting for something to happen.

A rather pale Angrod steps out from behind her, eyeing the room with an equally critical expression, his eyes checking every detail. “I hope we got it right this time around because I am sick of trying this again and again and again...”

Celes crosses her arms in front of her chest. “And we will try this another million times until we get it right! Your problem is that you make do with half-assed solutions.”

“Damned perfectionist! Who cares whether your carpet has a different colour? Look, everyone is here and they are alive, isn’t that the important thing?” He winces, noticing a smouldering figure on the ground. “Oh, someone should help Carne. He looks a little crispy.”

Out of nowhere, he summons his staff and takes a step forward, poking the figure. When insistent prodding engenders a painful-looking twitch from the corpse the father of all creation nods, apparently satisfied enough with the reaction to pronounce, “Alive!”

I frown and turn around, checking for our harem-protagonist. Wasn’t he fried to ash just before Angrod entered the vault? How could he be alive?

But my father is right.

Carne is lying nearby, looking worse for wear, but alive instead of a pile of ash.

“Wha-” I gape at the impossibility of the scene but am interrupted by my mother patting me on the top of my head.

“Don’t strain your brain overly much, dear. Just let us do our job.” She waves her other hand dismissively towards Angrod. “Who cares about that idiot.”

“Hey! He is one of the few pals I have,” Angrod clarifies his concern for the man on the ground.

“And you killed him. What a fine friend you are…” Celes sighs.

“Only for a short time,” her husband points out.

She turns her attention back to the rest of the room. “Anyway. Every little detail is important because I won’t fall back on using this method again when there is something I dislike later on. And we got the ‘everyone is alive’ thing right a few thousand tries ago. Still feels like a cheap trick though.”

“Why don’t you go and check on your stupid blanket?” Angrod asks, looking tired.

“It is a carpet!” Celes vanishes, returning a split second later. “The carpet seems to be alright. Have you made sure that your father survived in this version?”

Angrod perks up upon hearing the good news, immediately looking a little livelier. “Of course, for the millionth time. This time around, he never accompanied the old geezer to the outpost. Anything else you want to make sure of? Please bear in mind that with all the little alterations we have made to the timeline, some things are bound to be different.”

Celes raises an eyebrow and turns her attention towards me. “How much is two plus two?”

I open my mouth, trying to keep up with their conversation but failing miserably. Finally, I answer in a questioning tone, suspecting some kind of trap, “Four?”

“At least you didn’t play that trick again,” Celes grumbles and Angrod unsummons his staff in order to raise his hands defensively.

“You must admit that it was funny.”

My mother only rolls her eyes and addresses me with another question. “What is the last thing you remember?”

“I- I-” I point at the entrance to the vault. “I shoved you through just in time before the barrier went up… to ensure that the Calamity is defeated for real this time. Did you two really manage to do it? Was everything I did worth it?”

Aeons of waiting, aeons of suffering, aeons of loneliness.

I tremble in anticipation, waiting to hear that my existence’s purpose was finally fulfilled after such a long time. My eyes wander back and forth between the two of them, searching for a quick answer in their expressions.

Angrod shudders and raises a hand to stop me. “You don’t want to know about the details of its demise, believe me. Let’s just say that the Calamity is no longer an issue, and if Celes and I did a good job, the Void Zones should slowly dissipate in time as the multiverse repopulates with the souls that were caught inside the Calamity.”

“Just what is going on!?” Miruliru breaks into the conversation, voicing the question that’s probably burning on the tongues of all the other listeners in the room.

Chiffre picks up his dismembered mechanical arm from the ground, answering the question nonchalantly, “They did it. They destroyed the multiverse. And then they recreated it. Though, what I don’t get is how we can be here with our memories intact. Without the multiverse actually being destroyed.”

Angrod raises his hand helpfully. “Ah, that’s easy to answer. We wanted to come back to a multiverse that’s as close as possible to the one which we left behind. So, after many attempts at aligning our desires, we finally achieved success!”

He nods to himself. “This means that we had to recreate all of you with your memories intact. That was easy enough since your souls gave you easy access to the memories of the most recent events. But it was all Celes’ idea to do away with all the” – Angrod strikes a pose of anguish – “ ‘I AM BURNING!’, which came along with its destruction. Honestly, it shouldn’t have been that bad even if you remembered it. My destruction spell is very efficient. Just a flash of white and then nothing. Very humane…” He trails off when he notices that Celes is glaring at him.

“There is no need for anyone to remember the multiverse’s destruction. In fact, the fewer people are aware that something happened at all, the better.” She looks around, making eye-contact with everyone. “All of us will keep our mouths shut and forget that this crazy, genocidal method actually works, hm?”

She eyes the people present in the room for a few more moments, her expression turning ever more doubtful with each second when there is no immediate response of agreement. “Actually, we messed up. Let’s try this another time without telling anyone.”

Celes is already in the process of turning around, back to the vault, when Angrod stops her. “Wa- Wait! Let’s talk about this. All the people in here are reasonable fellows, and even if you don’t trust them, we can just wipe their minds. No need to risk your carpet again, right?”

I sigh in relief, a weight falling from my chest of which I didn’t know that it was there. “I… did… it…”

Celes grumbles and turns back around. “Fine. But this time, you check each and everyone yourself.”

Then Nix is at my side, pulling me back to my feet while addressing our parents, “So you really recreated the multiverse? How?”

An insane laugh escapes Angrods lips, bordering on madness. “Through destruction and creation, and many, many failed attempts. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that this current reality was forged in Chaos and formed by Order.”

Celes pats his shoulder. “Forgive him, he got a little antsy after a few years of honing his eye for the little things. We had a long argument about how to do this, and I finally convinced him that a half-assed solution wouldn’t help anyone.”

He nods. “I only wish you would have allowed me the one with the cat-tails.”

Celes purses her lips in disgust. “Both of us had to make sacrifices.”

That’s when a little girl peeks out of the room, raising several eyebrows among the spectators of this circus.

“Mom, can I come out now?”

Celes gestures with her hand, becking the girl to come closer. “Enyo, let me introduce you to your sisters.”

“Enyo!?” I cry out, remembering Angrod’s perverted experiment.

Nix is equally perplexed. “Wasn’t Enyo the…” She stops talking when Celes glares at us as only a mother could do in order to shut up her children.

Instead, Nix bends over and whispers, “Wasn’t her soul so damaged that it would have taken aeons to repair it? Just how long were you in there?” She points at the vault. “And how did she get in there?”

Angrod pulls a face. “Yeah, about that… she kind of clung to my ankle… and I only realized later on that she hitch-hiked a ride. But, that turned out to be not the worst thing to happen. Without something to fiddle with I would have turned crazy while Celes was working on her ascension and on ‘convincing’ the Calamity that being dead was better than being alive. First time ever that I witnessed someone who doesn't have a shred of soul magic utterly destroy a soul...”

He shrugs. “I kind of repaired Enyo and spent the rest of the time on figuring out how to make it so that her existence doesn’t interfere with the recreation of the multiverse. Let’s just say that it's better not to talk about the amount of time Celes and I spent on this endeavour.”

My father pats Enyo on the head. “But she turned out to be a nice kid, so welcome your newest sibling.”

His gaze wanders to a spot behind me, where Sharid and Aengus are hugging each other with tears in their eyes. “Get up you two fools! I spoke there should be light! And therefore it is! You two had enough time to reunite after being returned from the grave.”

I gasp when I realize that my brother is also back among the living.

Angrod walks over to the two of them, spreading his arms. “Give daddy a hug too!” He hugs both of them and turns two circles before letting go.

Suddenly, Sharid's eyes fall onto Enyo's remnants inside the vault. Which means, not the little girl, but the destroyed anal-plug-tail-thing.

“~Whahaha! Noooo! The family heirloom!~” She dashes forward and grabs the crushed remains like a loved pet.

Celes is quick to cover the flesh-and-blood Enyo’s eyes.

“No worries! I will repair it,” Angrod calls after Sharid. “Will be good as new afterwards. I just need another soul. Why shouldn't the creator of the multiverse be able to repair an- Ouuf!”

Suddenly Celes appears next to Angrod, sinking a flying knee into his guts.

He sinks onto all fours, spurting out a little blood. “Why?”

“You know why!” Celes scolds him. “Not in front of the kid!”

There might have been more to tell about what transpired that day. About how Enyo was introduced to the rest of the family, or how Angrod and Celes told us the tale of their misadventure with the Calamity. How they recreated the multiverse, or how Enyo was promoted to being another sibling of ours. How we had to appease the various ambassadors from the other factions.

There were still so many things to do, but right now I was only glad. Glad that the grand plan had worked. Glad that things were back to how they were supposed to be.

And even if I had felt like the trickster of the story, I was content to be its true hero.