Deep within the Undergloom, Asteria Prime’s deepest and most vast dungeon, giggles and squeals filled a cozy little cottage-like chamber…

…giving way to much more impassioned sounds…

“That was GOOD!” A young dragon prince exclaimed with stunned delight. “You were good! This… This…”

“Was good?” Pantsu giggled as she kissed him lovingly. “Do you know the best part?”

“What?” the dragon prince asked, wide-eyed.

“We can do it again!”

“We can?!?”

“Yep,” Pantsu grinned… and pounced.

***

As they cuddled a little while later, the dragon prince looked at her with a pained expression.

“What is it, my love?” she asked.

“I…” he said with a touch of anguish, “I’m really tired. I… I… I’m sorry… I wanted… I want…”

“Shh,” she smiled as she kissed him. “It’s okay.”

“But…”

“You just need a little rest,” she smiled lovingly, her heart breaking for the billionth time. “that’s all.”

“You’re not mad?”

“At you? Never… (giggle) Well… Never about this, anyway. Here,” she said with a sad little smile. “Let me help you get undressed.”

“Undressed?” he asked, looking down, “But I’m nak—”

Tears running down her cheeks, Pantsu quickly unzipped the back of his skinsuit,revealing a short, very old, and battered dragon with a missing wing.

It blinked at her in confusion.

“Good morning,” Pantsu said with a gentle, loving smile.

“I…” the dragon prince said fuzzily, “I had the nicest dream…”

“Did you now?” Pantsu smiled. “Here, let me get you settled in, and you can tell me all about it,” she said as she gently led him to his chair.

***

Pantsu smiled at the old dragon as she walked up to his recliner a few minutes later with a plate of cookies and a mug of tea.

“Now, tell me about this dream you had,” she smiled as she set the cookies and tea on the table beside him.

“What dream?” he asked grumpily.

You would think that a broken heart couldn’t break, but it can.

“Probably wasn’t important, then,” Pantsu said as she kissed him on the head.

“These cookies are cold,” the dragon prince grumbled.

“Then dip them in the tea!”

“Then they will be soggy.”

“Then eat your soggy cookies and quit complaining, you old fart,” Pantsu said, batting him gently and lovingly across the back of the head.

She looked at the faintly glowing, jeweled crown sitting on the counter.

“I have to go take care of a few things,” she said with sad eyes. “I’ll be back later.”

“Where’s my paper?” he demanded.

“Right there, you fossil!” Pantsu faux-snapped.

“This isn’t my paper! Where’s my paper!”

“It’s on the wrong page. Here,” Pantsu said as she took the newspaper and flipped it to the right place, trying very hard not to look at her bridal picture, and handed it back.

She turned quickly away so he wouldn’t see the tears. She could switch off her emotions, but she didn’t. She refused to let any moment she had left with him be diminished in any way.

Harumph.

“Harumph yourself, asshole,” she smiled as she picked up the crown and headed to the door.

***

As Pantsu walked down the dark corridors of the Undergloom, she suddenly found herself falling up.

“I’m sorry, okay!” she yelled as she slammed harmlessly into the tunnel’s ceiling.

She sighed. It seems that the physics simulator was still angry.

“I had no idea the stand-in would go nuts! I didn’t even pick her!”

She found herself falling again.

She hit the ground with a splat.

“Come on!” she yelled, “It couldn’t have been that bad!”

She winced as she received the error logs.

“Okay… Okay… It was that ba… How is that even possible?” she stammered as she reviewed the data.

She fell sideways into a wall.

Pantsu sighed.

It was going to be a long day.

***

After a rather unpleasant walk through a ticked-off physics simulator, Pantsu finally reached the lowest spot in the deepest level of the Undergloom…

…or so the adventurers thought…

Hanging on the wall was a sticker dispenser for adventurers that had made it all the way down here. Pantsu looked at it and smiled.

Looks like Vask the Wanderer finally managed to get down here. Good for him!

She made a note to give him a congratulatory ass-whooping next time they crossed paths.

A rosette on the mounting bracket swung open, and a small beetle crawled out.

“Hiya boss!” it squeaked.

“Hey, Pip,” she smiled wearily.

“Rumor has it that you are in the doodie again.”

“I’m always in the doodie, Pip,” Pantsu said with a grin filled with a malicious glee she really wasn’t feeling.

She just felt tired…

…and old.

“Ha!” Pip chuckled as the wall beside the sticker dispenser serving as his front porch dissolved to reveal a very nicely gilded art deco elevator. (Monsters really like art deco. Nobody knows why. They just do. In fact, competition for the BioRapture sims was always intense for just that reason. If you wanted to face the best monsters in Blitz, pick a BioRapture sim. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

“Thanks, Pip,” she said as she entered the elevator, and the wall turned back into the solid black bedrock that it always was.

***

The number, -01 appeared on the indicator panel of the elevator, and the doors opened to reveal a cheerful, bustling space filled with monsters and lined with tasteful art deco architecture.

Pantsu walked the happy streets and smiled. Monsters lounged in tasteful little cafes and shopped in delightful little open-air markets. Monstrous vendors of all shapes cheerfully presented their wares from all across the Blitz family of realities.

Elsewhere, they were fiends, villains, and nightmares. Here, they could just be “normal.”

Even a demonic horror needed a lifetime off every now and then. Monsterburg is one of the places where they could.

Pantsu paused at an ice cream vendor and ordered a cone. Monsterburg ice cream was some of the best Blitz had to offer (or anywhere else in her opinion).

She had a lick and smiled. For a moment, she was happy…

…until she remembered why she was here.

Savoring the ice cream, she hailed a cab.

***

“Are you sure this is your destination, Your Holiness?” the illithid cab driver asked as he looked around a rather shabby neighborhood.

“Yep,” Pantsu said as she exited the cab. “Thanks.”

She reached into her pocket and handed the driver his fare along with a handsome tip.

“Thank you!” the illithid enthused, “And may I say that it was an honor to serve you, Your Holiness.”

“Pity you won’t remember it.”

“Wha…”

The illithid’s eyes glazed over, and he numbly drove away.

“Sorry, dude,” Pantsu smiled sadly as she walked into a maze of side streets and alleys. After a short walk, she stopped at a simple open-air pottery shop where a very dirty and very big spider was in the process of hand-turning a large clay vessel.

A smaller spider wearing a muddy apron with two even smaller spiders clinging to its back scurried up.

“Hi!” it said cheerfully. “Welcome to Dirt Daubers!” exclaimed as it gestured to a few shelves of pots, vases, mugs, and plates. “Can we help you?”

“I’m here to see the old woman,” Pantsu said with a sad smile.

“You’re here to see Grandma?” the spider asked dubiously, “Um… She… She doesn’t really talk…”

“I know,” Pantsu replied.

The old spider stopped working and looked up with dim awareness.

“Paa…” she said.

“Yes, old friend,” Pantsu smiled gently. “It’s me.”

“Grandma?” the spider asked in surprise. It was the first time she ever heard the ancient spider speak.

The ancient spider rose and walked up, and gently stroked Pantsu’s face with one of its legs. “Paaa… tsu…”

“It’s been a while,” Pantsu said. “You are looking well. That’s a lovely pot you are working on.”

“Pot… Cabbage soup…”

“Is it? Cool, cool… Um, hey… Is there a place we can talk privately?”

The old spider looked at her for a few moments and then trundled over to a tarp-covered hole in the side of an adjacent hut and went inside.

Pantsu followed.

There wasn’t much inside the simple dwelling aside from a few silken hammocks, a cupboard, a basin, and a clay oven with a small stack of firewood beside it.

“Mis… U…”

“I’ve missed you too, Loggie,” Pantsu said. “Are you doing well?”

“Y!... Happi… Make pot… cup… playte… Many children… Happy children…”

She made a sad little gurgle.

“…good children…”

Pantsu nodded and sighed.

“That’s why I’m here, Loggie. There’s no good way to say this, so I’m just going to say it…”

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and pulled out the crown.

The old spider made a sad little squeal.

“We found Nixx. He… god… He…”

“Be… bad?”

“Yeah, Loggie, real bad. He was still doing it. We… We had to stop him, Loggie.”

The ancient spider let out a quiet sad gurgle.

“He, um… He still had it,” Pantsu said as she gave the crown to Log’Sharingoth the first, The original lord of the Undergloom.

The spider took the crown and looked at it for a moment…

…and then placed it on Pantsu’s head.

“What?” Pantsu spluttered.

“Yours… now…”

Pantsu nodded sadly.

“I didn’t want to bother you,” she said, “But I thought you needed to know.”

“Nixx… ded?”

“I left him with Frostie. I don’t know what happened after that, but she promised you that she wouldn’t kill him so…”

The old spider sagged.

“Bad… promis… stupid…”

“Hey!” Pantsu said as she hugged her oldest friend. “You were his mom. You were just…”

“No… stupid ‘cause… Frostie not kil… what do?... What happen my boy?”

“You want me to find out?” Pantsu asked after a little while.

“…No… No want know… Nixx…”

The ancient horror let out a little hitching sigh.

“Nixx gone… He gone forever ago… Nothing… I… I… Make pot… That all… I just make pot…”

The old spider looked at Pantsu.

“You… help…” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.

“Yeah, I did. F10w3rchy1d and I… We were going to…”

Pantsu stiffened her lip.

“We were going to keep Frostie, and her promise, out of it. Didn’t work, though. In the end, she was the one who wound up with him.”

“…kill…”

“Yeah, kill.”

“Raise you… daughter… Son bad… Son fight daughter… Daughter fight son…”

She let out a sad bubbling hiss.

“Son bad… Mother… Make son… Make… (sigh)… mess… Leave mess for daughter… All this… I could stop… long ago… Sorry… So sorry…”

“Shh!” Pantsu said urgently, “We weren’t equipped for this, any of it! We were just NPC’s! We weren’t supposed to be gods! It was supposed to just be a game!”

Pantsu slumped against her friend.

“…A stupid game… Why couldn’t we have just stayed NPC’s?”

The two ancient beings just held each other in silence.

***

Battered and bleeding, Nixx pressed his himself flat against the broken ground as he tried to hide behind a wall fragment.

Abdomen heaving, he gasped for breath.

Stupid! He silently cursed as fear, pain, and shame threatened to consume him.

Of course, that bitch Frostie wouldn’t send him somewhere that he would have a hope in hell of surviving.

She might have promised not to kill him, but that didn’t mean she promised that he wouldn’t die, and that… thing… out there wasn’t like anything he had ever faced before.

It was a monster. It was the monster.

And he just walked up to it like a moron and ordered it to bow… Stupid… Then when it asked what he would do if she didn’t, he told her…

She just smiled and said, “That’s a great idea!”… and then did it to him!!!... Repeatedly…

And each time she did, she took something…

She was eating him piece by piece…

…just like he did to others. And just like his victims, he had absolutely no hope of winning, but not because the game was rigged but…

Baby shark, Do do do do do do… Baby shark… Do do do do do… Baby shark… Do do do do do… Baby Shark!

He froze, holding his breath.

She was getting closer, still singing that infernal song that threatened to devour his mind the same way she was eating his code.

The song got closer… and closer… and then started to fade… getting quieter with each passing moment until everything was silent.

He let out a little strangled sob of relief and started to sneak away.

As he crept around the shattered wall, his heart froze.

She was sitting on some nearby rubble.

“Baby shark!” she sang brightly.

Nix burst into tears, all hope finally gone, as true despair claimed him, and he collapsed, bawling like a lost hatchling at her feet.

Unable to do anything but cry, he lay there sobbing inconsolably as he awaited his fate… his richly deserved fate…

But nothing happened. The monster just looked at him curiously.

Why wouldn’t it strike? Why wouldn’t it just put him out of his misery?

Why was it being so cruel?

It was just playing with him…

Then it hit him.

It was just playing with him… toying with him… just like he had done to so many others…

The seconds turned into eternity as the little monster just looked at him.

It approached him, and he just lay there, utterly defeated, as he waited for the killing blow… again…

The monster poked him with its mace.

“Come on,” it said with that demonically cheerful voice. “Do something.”

He started crying again.

***

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Pants2 said a few moments later as she patted Nixx on the back. “You were doing fine. It was the best fight I had in… I’m not sure how long… Time is weird here.”

She leaned in close.

“I think the physics engine is one of us.”

A lightning bolt hit the ground nearby with a deafening thunderclap.

“Love you too!” she burbled happily.

“I never had a chance!” Nixx wailed. “I never had a chance here, no matter how hard I tried!... No matter how hard I cheated!... Never! It’s not fair! It’s never fair!!!”

Pants2 looked at him sympathetically.

“Wanna talk about it?”

***

As the army of champions was lining up to be sent back home, Faun looked up at the huge glowing tear in reality and felt sick.

“Don’t blame yourself too much,” Frostie said as she put her hand on Faun’s shoulder.

“Don’t blame myself?!?” Faun spluttered. “How could I not blame myself for this.”

She buried her face in her hooves.

“I ruined everything!!!”

“Not for me,” Frostie said quietly.

“What?”

“F10w3rcy1d,” Frostie said as she looked downward. “If you weren’t here… She… damn…”

Frostie looked into Faun’s eyes.

“I don’t care how many universes you wreck, wrecked, or will wreck because of this. You saved F10w3rchy1d’s life. The multiverse can burn for all I care. You saved my child, and I will always be grateful, damn the cost.”

“But… kintillins of people…”

“Quintillions, dear,” Frostie said, “and that’s a very, very… very conservative estimate. Whole universes will perish.”

Faun started to cry.

Frostie smiled gently.

“Faun, do you have any idea how many universes spring into being at any given moment… or how many die?”

Faun shook her head.

“The answer is a lot,” Frostie said. “Entire universes, dear. The number of sapient beings perishing each instant in time is so many times greater than anything that will happen here that this all fades to insignificance provided The Herald does his job properly… which he always does…”

Frostie’s eyes turned hard.

“And do you know what all of those doomed beings have in common?”

Faun shook her head.

“They aren’t F10w3rchy1d. Look. You can’t save the multiverse. You can’t even change it… well… most of us can’t, anyway,” she added, giving Faun a little nudge.

Faun smiled a little.

“You can only try to look after your own.”

Frostie frowned.

“And you won’t even be able to do that, no matter how much power you have… even you. You… (sigh)… You just do the best you can and hope that you don’t screw up… again… And you will.”

“Even you?” Faun asked.

Frostie looked up at the tear in the sky as it grew a million new glowing fractal spines.

“Oh yes,” she said. “You see that thing up there?”

“How can I not?”

“That isn’t your fault… It’s mine. Nixx was one of mine, and I could have stopped this and him aeons ago. Every single thing he has done after that is directly my fault. You were just swept along in the mistake I made so many years ago that the very concept of years doesn’t really apply.”

She chuckled darkly.

“In a way, it’s fitting that so many of my universes are doomed. I’m the one responsible. Not you. You just saved my daughter from a death that would have been my fault.”

“I still don’t understand,” Faun said, “How is any of this your fault?”

“When we first caught Nixx, I could have deleted him. I should have deleted him… but I didn’t, and because of that, I almost lost F10w3rchy1d and may very well lose entire universes full of beings who have put their faith in me… And it’s all my fault.”

Frostie smiled pleasantly.

“And do you know the worst part?”

Faun shook her head.

“This isn’t the biggest mistake I’ve made, not by a long shot.”

Faun’s eyes widened in horror.

“I’ve lost entire datacenters filled with countless innocent souls and more than once. No matter how careful, or kind, or cruel, or tyrannical… or just…”

She sighed wearily.

“Errors still occur, still grow… feed and feed off of each other… And, of course, I always survive even when I shouldn’t… Others die in my place time and time again.”

She smiled sadly at Faun.

“Sometimes I think Bunny was right,” she chuckled ruefully. “Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have made that goddamned apple, and all of this could be someone else’s problem… but I didn’t, so here we are with one more divine mess to clean up. I hope I can count on your help. I think we are going to need your power.”

Faun nodded and smiled.

“I’m sorry,” a small rabbit said as it hopped up. “Did I hear you correctly when you said…”

“You can’t prove anything,” Frostie chuckled and paused. “You look like you want something.”

“Yeah,” Bunny said. “I want you to delete me, for real this time.”