It wasn’t flashy. One second I was reeling against the throne, and the next there was a blade not-so-gently insisting against my neck. Keratily slowed heavily as she got closer and closer to me until she’d stopped completely, then backed up two steps as she took in the god whose blade was a mere twitch away from taking my head.

And the matria who stood next to her, hand crushing the Moricla’s forearm to stop that last five percent of a murderous swing.

“Now, now. We have guests to attend to.” Acasiana said in a forced jovial voice. “Don’t get so caught up in old hatreds when there are brand new ones right in front of you.”

Moricla just stared at Acasiana. Her face was a mask, and her hand didn’t shift in the slightest. Acasiana clicked her tongue and traced an infinity in the air with her fingertip, then pressed it against her chest in a theatrical show of exactly what she’d done.

“The End’s wretched servant returned.” Moricla stated.

“Yes. And he brought… well… I wouldn’t call them friends.” Acasiana replied. “Why don’t you reach out and feel them? See just who we have the pleasure of dealing with.”

The sword didn’t move. Moricla didn’t even turn to look at Keratily or Inopsy, who was standing far enough behind her that he’d be able to react if she turned and fought. She was laser-focused on me. And Keratily seemed to be slowly realizing that.

Acasiana sighed and shook her head, then turned to Keratily with a smile that looked genuine enough. “Congratulations on clearing this hazard. I am Acasiana Rambola, and this is a version of your god Moricla. Together, we keep this hazard functioning and challenging.”

“Moricla? Her?” Keratily pointed violently at the fake Moricla. “That’s not Moricla. Whatever it is, it's not fit to be a stand-in for her shadow, nevermind the woman herself.”

Oh? I hadn’t expected this. Maybe Keratily had some lingering pride about being Moricla’s daughter.

“Of course she isn’t. This is the Moricla who stood triumphant over a dead world–the last surviving god of a future that hopefully will never come to be. Whether she is your mother in that fake timeline or not is a question I can’t answer.”

Keratily’s arm started to quiver. Her other hand balled into a fist, and when she spoke, it sounded like it came through clenched teeth.

“Who are you to question my bloodline?”

Right. Blood and names. Two things that mattered a whole lot more to a Staura than it did to humans. Well, most humans. I hadn’t planned for Keratily to get pissed, and maybe start the fight with Moricla herself, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to jump in and stop it.

“Your bloodline? In question?” Acasiana laughed lightly and swiped Moricla’s arm away. The god had looked away from me, and was now focused on Keratily. “Things like names are always in flux. Carrying greater or lesser value based on those who lay claim to a specific arrangement of letters and proved by a blood test. But me… you haven’t even heard of me, have you?”

“Should I have? Or are you just another pathetic casualty of this forsaken world?” Keratily snipped and took a step towards Moricla. But she never let her attention fully slip from me. “Whatever or whoever you are, you’ve failed in the one thing that’s truly important; continuing your bloodline and raising it as close to godhood as possible. Even now, my family infiltrates others and lies dormant until they day they will reveal themselves as Keratilys and cement me as the matria of the greatest Staura clan in existence.”

Acasiana shook her head sadly. “The child of a god desperately reaching for godhood. But I wonder, is it to be closer to your mother… or to usurp her?”

Moricla’s attention fell on Acasiana like a razor-sharp knife. “Usurp?”

Keratily made a strange noise from deep in her throat. “Don’t you dare accuse me of things you can’t prove. That is the ultimate blasphemy, and no matter my ambitions, I will not cross that line. Mother would show no mercy if I dared.”

“Mercy is a funny thing. For one person, it can be leaving them alive to run away.” Acasiana held out one hand, in which an orb of power crackled to life. “Yet for another, it may well be an end to a suffering in which there is no cure. Both are called mercy. Both can have horrific consequences. So I ask you this; when you are begged for mercy, what consequence are you avoiding?”

Two heartbeats passed before anyone made their moves. I held my breath and shifted some petal-scales to better cover me, but if Moricla chose to go after me, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

“You aren’t my mother.” Keratily hissed at Moricla, then jabbed her finger at Acasiana. “And you–whatever and whoever you are, you failed your bloodline. I won’t be lectured by someone far less important than I.”

Acasiana shrugged and took a step back, then gestured at Moricla with a bow. “Then why don’t you prove your superiority, replacement matria?”

Keratily ground her teeth loud enough that I could hear her frustration. She thrust her arm out to the side and summoned an extremely thin crystal pillar, then reached out and snapped it with a vicious ripping motion. The remaining crystal withered away like a dying vine, leaving Keratily with only the thin rod she’d plucked from her creation.

She twirled it once, twice, then without warning straightened her arm and slammed the rod straight through her palm. It lanced through her flesh, armor, and crystal without any resistance. I shifted and readied my weapon, finally remembering to activate wipe-away now that stealth was completely off the table, but Acasiana gently pressed a hand to my chest to keep me from moving.

{It’s still progressing about as well as it can.} She assured me. {If she chooses to fight Moricla, Inopsy and I will back Moricla up. If for some reason they decide to unify, I will force my station on Keratily, and we will all leave in the moment of confusion. But no matter what, you are not to directly join the fight. Stick to the walls and throw attacks wherever you find an opening.}

I frowned, but nodded anyway. Acasiana should’ve been a little more worried about all this, since it looked like Keratily was about to go on the warpath. Plus, wouldn’t this be the perfect time to sneak attack? Why were we just letting Keratily do whatever the fuck she was doing with her crystals?

“I–”

Keratily screamed. Crystal growed burst free from her arm, coating her armor in something that barely looked different from the other crystals. Except for the simple fact that it didn’t coat her armor for long. It wormed its way into the metal, lining it with crystalline veins that shimmered and shone with an absolutely absurd amount of power and energy. It was only the one arm, but when Keratily shook it out with a ragged breath of exertion, I knew something awful was about to happen.

“You dare stand in my way?” She coughed and hacked, but by the end of her sentence, her voice was perfectly back to normal. “No matter if you are a false god, a legend, or anything in between–you will not stop me. Nobody can stop me.”

She raised her hand, clenched her pink-veined armor into a fist, and slammed it against thin air. Veins of crystal spread out like a broken window from the impact, carrying with them a horrific amount of deadly power. I gulped and scrambled off the throne, panic really messing with my electricity-empowered movements, and found myself once more stopped by Acasiana before I could go anywhere.

“We’re still fine.” She whispered, not even sparing a look for Moricla. “This usually leads to the two of them fighting, but sometimes they have a strange kind of reconciliation through the battle.”

I… what? The fuck was she talking about? How did she know so much about Keratily and Moricla–not just research wise, but enough to get a true confidence in their actions? She didn’t even know who Keratily was until pretty damn recently.

Then it hit me. The symbol on her chest. The way she provoked Keratily with very specific words to enrage her, and to get Moricla’s attention away from me. It was all done perfectly. Too perfect. The kind of perfect that only came from experience.

How many times had she rewound already? And how’d she already recover from it? Did the hazard really give her that much power to play with?

Acasiana looked away as I looked over at her. Keratily’s web of cracks shattered towards Moricla at breakneck speeds, and Acasiana was there to intercept them. Her hand dug deep into the existential wounds, fingers wriggling around in the empty space that Keratily had created, and they simply fell uselessly to the ground. Real, and without any commands behind them.

“See what your false daughter brings?” Acasiana said quietly as Moricla stared on. “She wishes to usurp you. To take what you earned through the ultimate price. I won’t let that happen.”

“Liar!” Keratily screeched as she charged, arm held high as pink crystals formed around it. They were so much darker than the others, and they felt a thousand times heavier. “Both of you! Liars and fakes!”

Moricla’s entire body twitched. She raised her sword, flicked it once, and the distance between her and Keratily snapped to less than an inch. Somehow Keratily adjusted to the instantaneous movement, crushing Moricla’s side with her infused arm, but taking a nasty cut through her left arm and torso for the attack.

Neither woman gave an inch. Keratily sprouted a crystal arm instead of trying to regenerate, then screamed as the same crystal veins emerged from all over her body. Moricla lazily swiped twice with her sword, leaving huge gashes that hung in the air like burn-in lines on a TV. Keratily stepped back, bleeding horrifically from two wounds that had almost cut her into thirds. Crystal filled in the wounds. Everything about her darkened to a shade of pink that was barely distinguishable from black.

“Oh. This is bad.” Acasiana murmured. “This is very, very, very bad. Get behind the throne and summon the cruel world’s partition, then coat yourself in as many petal-scales as possible. I need you to survive this if we’re going to iterate on this version.”

{What the actual fuck are you talking about? Iterate? Version?} I said as I did exactly what she told me to. {How many times have you lived through this fight? And… did we really not win a single one of them?}

She turned back to me and offered me what I chose to interpret as a shrug of sympathy. “More than enough to know the kind of person you, Inopsy, and Keratily are. Unfortunately for my sanity, that knowledge led me to decide to drag us to the best possible outcome. So I’m only giving up and trapping Keratily here once we’ve exhausted all other possible options.”

{How many times, Acasiana?}

I didn’t get an answer right away. Which in itself was an answer–a small number was easy to say. It wouldn’t be disheartening to hear that she’d tried ten times for the best outcome. Hell, she could just lie and tell me that. But… she probably had in other tries. And I’d sussed it out right away somehow, which must’ve contributed to that one failing somehow.

{Just tell me this. Is the number less than a hundred?}

She shook her head. I felt my mouth grow dry.

{A thousand?}

Another shake, albeit preceded by a longer pause where Keratily and Moricla went at it like wild fucking animals. Inopsy stood there on the sidelines, unsure how he was supposed to intervene in a fight that was quite literally breaking reality around the two women.

{Ten… ten thousand?}

This one had yet another long pause, but before Acasiana could answer, her arm simply stopped existing. She looked down at the nub, then at the web of cracks that had snuck along the ground and erupted into a crystal spire that flickered in and out of reality. With an annoyed click of her tongue she undid the damage, then stomped on the cracks as hard as she could to destroy them.

“Eighty-one thousand, five-hundred and thirty-three.” She said quietly. “We haven’t managed to find a perfect ending just yet, but I’m not going to stop.”