The tree shifted and burbled as if a creature was stirring under its surface, then settled on a landscape that I couldn’t quite make heads or tails of. The best description I could give was that it was a massive coral reef above water, with vibrant coloured corals that swayed in the breeze and a long, skinny eel-like creature meandering through the air around them. But the ground under it was the typical parched mountain path and beaten earth, but with colourful pebbles lining the way.

Far off in the distance I could barely make out a flag flapping in the wind, bright aqua on the top half and deep royal blue on the bottom. A single line of white cut the flag perfectly in half from corner to corner, three simple colours coming together to designate whatever settlement it flew above.

“You try going ahead first.” Jun suggested, patting me on the shoulder and lightly shoving me towards the tree. “I don’t want to get through and find out that my invitation only works if we’re in the same place.”

How thoughtful of her. I nodded and pressed my hand to the tree, feeling the smallest amount of resistance as my hand shimmered before my eyes. The portals were always strange, taking me from one place to another in a myriad of different ways, but going straight up the water tree was one of the more tame ones I’d encountered. A catapult that tore space around me so I landed in the right place was one of my personal favorites, and going to sleep on a bed of flowing rock that swept me away was one of the strangest ones.

“Is something wrong?” Jun asked with concern, and I shook my head to clear my thoughts.

I shot her a smile she couldn’t see and pressed the rest of my arm into the tree. “I’m just lost in my memories. See you on the other side.”

My vision went dark as I was consumed by the tree, a spotlight of twisting blue and white spiraling down from somewhere above illuminating a lone folding chair a dozen steps away from me. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, feeling my hands make contact with skin instead of armor. Something had gone horribly wrong.

//WE FINALLY GET A CHANCE TO SPEAK FACE-TO-FACE.

A voice coiled around and squeezed its words into my mind, then blew away like smoke on a breeze.I knew this was the being that was sending me the error messages.

//THERE IS NOT A GREAT DEAL OF TIME UNTIL THE TREE SPITS YOU OUT INTO THE SHARED WORLD, SO WE MUST MAKE THIS RELATIVELY QUICK. TAKE A SEAT.

“Promise you won’t kill me?” I chuckled without any nerves, stepping to the chair in half the number of steps I’d expected and taking my seat.

{It would be a fatal setback for the both of us if I did that, so… no.} The voice mirrored my chuckle, and the spotlight split into two. One white for me, and one blue for my shimmering white doppelganger that sat backwards on its own folding chair. The voice was somehow less… all-encompassing now. {I have enjoyed having someone to truly speak to after all these eons, so I wanted to dissuade some of your worries before they began eating at you. Or amplify them to be dealt with sooner.}

“My worries? Like what?” I asked. Aside from if my family had survived the accelerated razing and what Garrett and his Embodiment benefactor were doing with my old core, I didn’t really have any grand worries. I probably should’ve been more worried about my old friends, in hindsight.

{Such as what I am. Or what the Embodiments are.} The errors suggested, then shook its head. My head. Flecks of luminescent white trailed off it into the air like embers from a campfire, and it sucked in a long breath that seemed to steal the air from my lungs. {I am The End. To be clear, I am not the ‘Embodiment of the end’, but The End. Capital T, capital E. Embodiments have a representative for each living species, but I am a line continuously threaded through each and every reality. One of the few constants in an endless sea of variables.}

I tried to muster my anger at this being that had just admitted to being the thing that had killed my planet, my family, my friends, and everything I’d ever loved. But I just couldn’t. Something about it didn’t seem like a murderer.

Instead of wondering, I went straight to the point. “Did you kill everyone on Earth?”

The End shook its version of my head. {No. And seeing as you are not filled with incandescent rage, you must have already been leaning towards that answer. Before I say more, I would like to hear why that is.}

“Honestly, it’s just a feeling.” I said with a shrug. “I met a lot of… awful people in the new world, and you don’t feel like them. That could be because you’re fundamentally different than them or me, but then I’m fucked anyway, so… eh.”

The End’s laugh was like mine but infinitely more enrapturing. It was terrifying, yet it also invited me to join in, and I couldn’t help but grin as it doubled over wheezing.

{A feeling. The End, trusted on a simple feeling. I love this.} The End’s eyes were suddenly the vibrant blue of my interface and armor, and I could feel it staring right through me. {I am not a killer, Sebastian. I exist in a mockery of my name, delaying the inevitable to save the remnants of doomed species and cultures before allowing nonexistence to take its course.}

“The archivist, the custodian, the overseer…” I trailed off, thinking back to the monsters I’d seen in my last moments on Earth. “Were they there to preserve our… history? Our traditions?”

{Yes to both, and to more.} The End confirmed. {Your planet’s history has been consumed and used to create more mass for the new planet you found yourself on for so many years. Your species’ designated land is ripe with legends made real and wonders made possible.}

I nodded and leaned back, unsure how to feel about that revelation. Everything was gone, but it would be repurposed. And I may never get to see it. “Why can’t I go with them?”

The End scoffed and sat back in its chair, then flicked its hand at me. {You have your Embodiment to thank for that. The rules I laid out were very simple; take only what is given, what is earned, or what is scavenged from the dead. Instead, he took what you still held in your very much alive chest. And now you suffer for his failure.}

“You let the… simulation happen?” I clenched my fists by my sides, the first pang of real anger that I’d felt towards The End simmering in my gut like day-old stew. “Why?”

{Why did I give your species a chance to live the harsh reality they would be subjected to, or why did I allow the Embodiments to choose who will remember and who will not?} The End asked, then continued without waiting for my answer. {I know you wish to know both. And the answer lies in the fact that memories need an anchor to flit between timelines. The Embodiments anchor their chosen, and I anchor you. As for the memories themselves; you only remember because the human Embodiment of Will took from you, and the hole it created could not be filled to properly reset your memories.}

The End grasped at me, and suddenly my knees touched my brilliant white clone’s. {Would you trade this for confusion, Sebastian? For unknowing? Because if that is what you truly desire, I will give it to you. Return you to your kin with a different core and no memories of anything beyond your years on Earth.}

I considered the offer for a moment, but my face unconsciously twisted into revulsion before I could say anything.

{I see I have your answer.} The End said seriously, then pressed its hand into my chest right above my heart. {You represent me now. I ask for nothing, and you will have no responsibilities. This is merely to protect you from the Embodiments who may seek to harm you or extract your secrets.}

The End stood, clasped its hands behind its back, and gestured grandly. {You cannot yet perceive them, but your fellows welcome you with vigor. And when the time comes that you are //PERFECTED, you will take on a burden equal to theirs.}

“I thought I had no responsibilities.” I muttered, looking around for whatever ‘my fellows’ were. “That sounds a lot like a responsibility.”

{Then I will correct myself; you have no transformative responsibilities. I may eventually call on you to accompany me to a meeting or two, but aside from that, you will exist as you have.} The End assured me, pressing a hand into my shoulder. {The Embodiments’ endless war for purpose will eventually consume your people, as it has every species to date, and I trust you to aid me in ensuring that consumption does not spell an end for your kind.}

The darkness bled away as The End’s words faded to static, leaving me standing dumbly on an aquarium-gravel laden path amidst a coral forest. The End’s incursion had been short and sweet, and had left me with just about as many questions as answers. And most of those questions stemmed from the answers I’d gotten.

Apparently the Embodiments were constantly at war. But I had no idea who they were at war with. Maybe one of the oldest species in the new world? Or maybe it was infighting, a sort of contest for supremacy among the Embodiments of the same thing. I couldn’t imagine ‘Will’ being something unique to humans, and having two Embodiments of the same thing could be troublesome.

If nothing else, at least I knew the being behind the error messages. The fact that it was something as terrifying as The End didn’t really help, but it didn’t seem to be directing any of that terror at me, so that was a positive.

“Ick, ick, ick.” Jun muttered with a grimace as she shook herself of the tree’s waters, her face visible to me for some reason. “Thirty days until we can go back.”

She turned back and glared at the portal that had ripped itself into the world, a shimmering wall of green water that smelled like fresh rain and wet dirt. “Should we hide this somehow? So nobody else can come and steal our progress?”

“There’s no point; hazards show up on everyone’s maps. Besides, what would we hide it with?” I gestured at the brightly coloured coral that surrounded us. “It’s a wall of water coming from nowhere in the middle of a coral field. Anything else we try to do will just draw attention to it.”

A sucking sound, like water being forcefully drained, proved me wrong. The wall of water condensed into a fist-sized sphere, then shot down and burrowed itself into the brightly-coloured gravel. Jun and I shared a look for a moment before hers turned to a smug grin, and I sighed in defeat before she could say anything.

“I’m not sure which settlement that flag belongs to, but we can’t be more than a few days’ travel if we’re seeing it.” Jun said without losing her smug grin, hefting her sword over her shoulder and gesturing into the distance with her free hand. “You should keep your helmet on as long as you aren’t eating; most of my people are kind, but I don’t know how this world’s changed them.”

I, however, was acutely aware of how this world could change people. So my helmet stayed on.