Luke cracked his neck as he twisted his head from side to side. He sighed as he whirled his arms around, stretching his shoulders and back. The sun shone down on him, causing a faint smile to appear on his lips. After telling Anaheim he wanted to be alone with her in the flight craft, he had created a clone which would slowly lose intelligence over time. He also performed an invisibility spell, escaping from the flight craft without anyone the wiser. Anaheim probably thought he was still with her down in Tanarctica. It was unfortunate that he couldn’t be there for Khrx’s heartbreaking reunion with Fufu, but neither Khrx nor Fufu would mind.

Luke took in his surroundings and sighed. It seemed like his plan to create a country peacefully through the game of [Resolution] failed due to the world ending. Well, that was fine. Even if he formed that country, Anaheim would find him and never leave him alone. At least Anaheim’s ancestors hadn’t been resurrected along with all the other world-ending calamities, right…? Right!? A shiver ran down Luke’s spine as his body went cold. One descendant was enough, but if the ancestor and all her descendants chased after him? Just in case…, Luke took the only reasonable course of action and transformed himself into a grain of sand. He decided to turn himself back after the next time Khrx woke up and went back to sleep.

***

Lorin stood with her head tilted up and her eyes closed, blood covering every inch of her body. Her clothes were in tatters, and her armor lay in bits of molten pieces around her feet. One of her wings lay on the ground, blood trickling out of the stump on her shoulder blade. The sun shone down on her, but it wasn’t the sun from [Resolution] or the one from reality. It was blood-red, huge, and overbearing, filling half the sky. By Lorin’s feet, a devil with three heads and six arms lay dead, gaping holes peppering its body. Arms and legs similar to the ones on the devil were scattered about the room, leaving evidence of a desperate final struggle between angel and devil.

Lorin opened her eyes and staggered forward before kneeling by the devil’s side. Her arm trembled as she leaned over, placing her hand on the devil’s chest. Her fingers sank into its skin as if it were water, and the muscles on her forearm tensed as she squeezed and pulled. With a sickening sucking sound, Lorin tore the devil’s heart out, raising it above her head. She tilted her neck back and opened her mouth while squeezing the heart, causing black blood to rain onto her waiting tongue. Her gulps were audible as she drank the devil’s blood that poured down like an unending fountain. The cuts and bruises on her skin recovered as her severed wing regrew, brighter and darker than before.

When the blood stopped flowing from the heart, Lorin climbed to her feet and smiled. After being abandoned by Jax, she had been accepted by the devil, Moram, unlocking the devilish skill tree that enabled her to steal the skills of others. And now that very devil that gave her power lay dead by her feet. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, how many years it took—she had stopped counting after fifteen thousand years passed—but she did know a single day in [Resolution] was equivalent to ten thousand years in the realm of the devils. She went through countless tribulations to become strong to enact revenge on Theda for humiliating her. She swung her arm, and a gash appeared in the space in front of her. She stepped through the makeshift portal, her foot crunching against white ground—ice. Was this where Theda lived? Thousands of creatures giving off intimidating auras like the devil she had just slain were billowing out of a dimensional gash above a fancy mansion. Her mouth fell open as a giant tentacle from beyond the sky reached down and wrapped around thirty of the creatures, pulling them up and away like a child reaching down into a bag of chips. What was going on?

The front door of the mansion opened and faces that Lorin hadn’t seen for thousands of years appeared in her vision along with some she didn’t know: Theda, Khrx, that woman who claimed to be a hero, a strange limp man with eyes like a dead fish, a strange bundle of moving curtains—Mr. Bubbles?—and most noticeably, a humongous white creature that was as cute as Khrx.

Khrx’s eyes lit up. “Oh, isn’t that Lor—”

Lorin charged forward like lightning, a blade of blood forming in her hand. She swung the sword at Theda while letting out a war cry that caused the beasts billowing out of the gash to tremble and fall out of the sky. A shield of shadows appeared in front of Theda, but the bloody sword cut through it as if it didn’t existed. It cleanly slashed through Theda from head to groin, causing a line to appear on Theda’s body. The goddess of death’s two halves slowly fell away from each other, revealing an interior of electronics and wires.

“Oh, right, she was a shell,” Anaheim said, overcoming the initial surprise of Theda suddenly being bisected. “I wonder what that means for her. She can’t be dead, right?”

Lorin stared at the two halves which were turning white while losing Theda’s features, reverting back to a mannequin-like state. “That played out a lot differently than how I thought it would,” Lorin said with a blank expression. She shook her head and beamed at Khrx. “How are you? It feels like it’s been forever since I last saw you.”

“Two days is forever?” Khrx asked and tilted his head.

A faint smile appeared on Lorin’s lips. Was she going to tell Khrx about the twenty thousand years she spent in the devils’ realm? No. He didn’t have to know. What if it affected that brilliant smile of his?

“Look,” Khrx said, gesturing towards the quokka-like creature. “This is Fufu, my most precious pillow!”

Fufu squeaked in reply—whether from happiness or displeasure, Lorin couldn’t tell. Lorin raised an eyebrow, a strange feeling welling up inside of her chest. “Wasn’t Fufu your lover?” Was Khrx into animals in that way? He was a beastkin….

“I love my pillow,” Khrx said, sinking himself into the fur on Fufu’s leg. His eyes drooped as he yawned. “She promises the best naps ever.”

Lorin exhaled as the pressure around her chest lifted. She gave Khrx a smile as she walked over to his side and lifted him up to her chest. As she thought, she was the happiest when she was with Khrx.