Desmond was charging at them.

Free, with nothing holding him back, and that wasn't going to change anytime soon. He wasn't going to let himself be caught so easily, this time. His body was charged with even more power, thanks to the appearance of the strange flesh, throbbing wildly.

Abigail did the same as before. Shooting him with jets of water, trying to reach him as if they were whips.

Desmond... Or not Desmond, but the impostor that had occupied his body, dodged it all with no trouble, or simply and directly cut the tentacles of water that stood in his way. Without breaking a sweat.

A normal person would have fallen long ago. They would have been overwhelmed by the water, which was attacking from all directions, and would now be drowning helplessly on the ground.

But the Imposter was dodging it all with no problem, so was it an imposter at all? That speed of movement meant he was using Desmond's power as if it were his own, and the easiest explanation was that he was, after all.

Easiest, but the only one, she reminded herself. They had already faced Desmond controlled by another creature.

That living shadow. The shadow had been able to make use of his affinity, too.

It wasn't Desmond. It couldn't be Desmond.

The impostor didn't go after Abigail, but after her first, surely recognizing her as the weakest link in the chain.

It couldn't be him. There was not a hint of doubt in his eyes. He wanted to hurt her.

Kill her? Would he dare kill her? In any case, she wouldn't. She didn't feel capable of hurting him. He might not be Desmond, but that was still his body, after all. So for her it wasn't that easy.

Instead of attacking, Amy bought herself time.

Erecting a wall of ice between her and the.... attacker, the enemy, she had many names for him. He didn't deserve to be called Desmond.

It wasn't too much of a barrier. She hadn't had time.

So the enemy could have simply circled it, but he didn't even bother with that, he slammed into the barrier, smashing through it smoothly, barely slowing down.

And he swung the sword. He swung the sword with both hands, at blinding speed.

She saw the blade flying towards her neck. And she was petrified.

I'm going to die, Amy thought.

But it wasn't like that. She would have, but Abigail grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and pulled her back, saving her by the skin of her teeth. The blade passed where her neck had been a second too late.

And, instead of separating her head from her shoulders, it buried itself in the ground. Forming cracks, raising a cloud of dust. Gods, how close it had been. How close.

She'd hesitated, but he, whoever he was, hadn't hesitated for a moment.

Because it's not him. It's not him.

"You fucker!" Christina shouted, enraged. Amy turned her head to look at her.

In time to see her launch her attack.

The enemy had been quick enough to evade or cut off all the tentacles of water, even though they had come at him from every possible direction.

But this he couldn't avoid, he had to stop it with his own body.

The shadows ran over him, pushing him backwards. He resisted, but barely, planting his feet on the ground. Steadying his stance. Neither the shadows nor his strength were winning.

For the moment.

An unstoppable force against an immovable object. What would be the result? Amy was barely able to distract himself from the fact that he had nearly died; it wasn't the first time, but so close to the end of the war, and at the hands of someone who looked like Desmond.... Her legs were shaking, she couldn't get to her feet, in short.

"Be careful," Abigail said. "That's not Desmond, but it's still his body!”

That was also something to keep in mind. Desmond could take a lot, but he had a limit, unlike Abigail. If they went too far, he'd be finished. For. Desmond's regeneration had given him a sense of confidence, as if he were incapable of dying, but he wasn't. He wasn't.

Christina grimaced in response.

"I know. But he can take this and more.”

They'd only just started, so that was literally true. But how much more would he endure? Amy concluded that it didn't matter, because if they held back, they would end up dead. They couldn't afford that luxury.

But... Then Abigail would immediately turn on them, even though they wanted the same thing.

"It's just that..." Abigail began, but was quickly cut off. Even she didn't have anything to say, after all. Even she had to admit that there was nothing else left, given the circumstances.

If they didn't take this fight seriously, they'd be dead.

Except Abigail, of course.

But Abigail wanted them to survive as much as they did. Because they were Desmond's friends. That was something, at least. She had every reason to try her hardest to make sure they didn't end up dead.

"If you're not going to help, at least stay out of it!" Even though she had yelled at him like that, Abigail kept her silence.

Yes. She had no choice, after all.

They ran out of time to chat, to hesitate. It turned out that the answer to the question of who would win was useless, because the object wasn't immovable. Desmond cut through the shadows that had been cast over him, freeing himself from their immense pressure.

And from that same spot he leaped straight for Christina.

Abigail reacted, surprisingly, without missing a beat. Making use of what had worked so far. That is, the water shots. It was somewhat more useful than fire, for example, since he could simply withstand the fire damage and keep fighting, not to mention that he'd regenerate before they noticed. He'd barely be hindered.

It wasn't a bad strategy.

It just didn't do any good. Anyone would think that he would have more difficulty not being able to move in the air, that his stupid jump had put him at a disadvantage. But it wasn't like that. He cut through all the tentacles of water as he crossed the air with no problem whatsoever.

By the time he landed, Christina had already moved out of the way. But the girl didn't get very far.

The impostor threw himself on top of Christina, knocking her to the ground. And then his sword kissed her neck. It wasn't tight yet, but it could slit her throat before they could blink.

No. No. No. No. This isn't happening.

Not again, she thought incoherently, even though she hadn't lived through Christina's "first" death.

Amy had managed to stand up, at some point, as the disaster unfolded. But now she was afraid to take a single step forward.

She was afraid to be the excuse he needed to kill her.

But he didn't seem to be in a hurry for it. He seemed to have other plans.

"I saved your life. I gave everything. My body, my life, my sanity, even my soul, to save you. Because I love you. And you can't do the same for me?" he said. Christina locked her gaze with his, her eyes wide. "You're only my friend when it suits you.”

He cruelly spat those meaningless words at her. Their friendship had been many things, but anything but convenient. They'd almost lost their lives more times than she could count.

Fuck, Christina had done it, as that thing had just said.

Amy had had her doubts.

Naturally, how could she not doubt looking at him and hearing him talk as if he knew them? But now she no longer doubted. That wasn't Desmond, that couldn't be Desmond at all.

"You like having someone barely human who would give almost anything for you, don't you? You like that devotion. That's why you stuck by me through all the trouble, through all my hopes, putting up with things that would have sent most people running. You need that sense of security.”

He was... drooling as he said it. That's how frantic and wild he had become, that he wasn't even swallowing his saliva in the middle of his tirade, complete madness from start to finish.

How dare he?

How dare he sully their friendship by pretending to be Desmond? How dare he?

Christina spat in her face. An appropriate reaction, and Amy even felt a rush, as if she had just done something good. Then she came to her senses. And what had to happen happened, of course.

That thing squeezed the blade of the sword, finally. Blood began to flow down her delicate neck. Amy imagined Christina's severed head rolling across the stone slabs, leaving behind a red trail.

"No!" Amy cried, rushing forward. Sword ahead, already casting her magic.

Once again, she did nothing, she couldn't.

Abigail pulled him off Christina, catching him with the water tentacles at last while he was distracted and pulling him back.

Several tentacles wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, squeezing with immense force.

As if intending to rip them off.

Amy didn't sense that strength on her own skin, of course. But it was evident just by looking at the impostor's resistance, his muscles contracting, veins becoming more and more visible, teeth clenched and eyes bulging out of their sockets.

Abigail had caught him.

Even that wouldn't last long, but she'd caught him.

"I won't let you hurt her.”

"You don't believe me, Mom?" Amy supposed he saw no reason to pretend, to keep playing his part. For even as he asked her that question, the impostor was smiling.

Perhaps he had simply lost his mind long ago.

"If you're a Desmond, all the more reason not to let you do this.”

That's why he hadn't hesitated to act. Anyway, it didn't matter what the reason was, only that he had done it.

The impostor cocked his head to one side. It reminded her of the movement of a bird. It wasn't a very natural, human movement, in any case. It gave her chills.

"And what are you going to do then? Are you going to kill me?" He asked, openly mocking her.

Yes, he wasn't even making an effort to pretend.

"No," Abigail replied curtly, "You're going to stay right where you are, until my son comes back and regains control.”

"You'd better pray it's sooner rather than later or he'll find you with your guts out by then. These "chains" won't hold me for long.”

So he declared, smiling. And it was true. They were holding on, but it wouldn't last. All they had left to do was hope that Desmond would return before the chains reached their limit.

Otherwise, there was little they could do against an enemy that had all of Desmond's monstrous power at his disposal. They had nowhere to run and they couldn't win.

——

Charlotte rescued the last of the survivors.

Like everyone else, she pulled him out of the rubble and carried him through the portals to the beach. The more pertinent question would be how she was sure he was the last one.

It was quite simple, really.

She had searched the rubble from end to end.

If there was a single other person left alive, she would have seen them. There was no doubt that this was the last one. The survivors barely numbered two dozen.

Charlotte didn't remember the total crew, no, she had never learned the number, something she regretted now. But she knew enough to say that, in comparison, two dozen was nothing. So many people had died without her having been able to stop it.

Rather, she had thrown them to their deaths, recruiting them for this dangerous mission. She couldn't have imagined this happening, of course. But it was still her responsibility.

She wasn't going to pretend otherwise. To fool himself.

She wouldn't be... like other people.

She had saved two dozen, but she couldn't take pride in that. Instead, she was self-flagellating. Speaking of flagellation, she hadn't seen Desmond or the others anywhere.

While rescuing them, a couple of survivors had said something about a white snake. She guessed the one that caused this mess.

Maybe that was why he had left her behind along with the rest of the crew.

Running from the snake.

She'd rather think that than that they were dead, evidently. Either way, this was a fucking mess, and it had only just begun.

Charlotte put her hands to her head, squeezing her temples violently. Yes, this had gone like shit, but what couldn't she say the same about?

She had barely stopped the invasion.

She'd only been able to stop the Golden Masks, that whole damn organization, after they'd done too much damage. Poisoning Desmond, leaving him too weak to respond properly to the invasion. How many lives would have been saved had he been at full strength?

And, in the months after, she'd been losing forces.

Terrain.

More and more lives.

Charlotte had been losing her kingdom inch by inch, her birthright, her responsibility. Thousands upon thousands of monarchs before her had managed to repel the Imperials. There was a history with a weight impossible to measure behind her.

They had been able to defend the kingdom for so many years, and she would be the first to fail?

The first and the last, instead of the queen who would put an end to this bloody war and countless years of suffering?

Even if she won, she was depending on Desmond being right and ending this war for her. It wouldn't be to her credit. Victory, that is.

Defeat would be all her fault. They wouldn't be in such a desperate situation otherwise.

She squeezed her temples tighter.

"I break everything I touch." It was hard to say it, to accept it. Like any uncomfortable truth. But it had to be admitted out loud.

Strangely, it felt a little better to do so. As if a weight had been lifted. The weight of pretending, Charlotte supposed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that one of the surviving sailors was moving his lips.

Delirious? Or trying to communicate, perhaps with her?

It didn't matter.

Dropping her hands, she walked over to him.

"Don't strain yourself. You almost didn't make it; you need to rest.”

"It's... not true.”

What wasn't true?

She didn't know his name, another thing she regretted. But she remembered him. Hadn't been just another one, aching in the rubble. She'd found his head underwater.

He'd been this close to joining all his dead comrades.

Maybe he didn't remember. Between the loss of blood and the loss of oxygen.

"Yes it is, come on, don’t…”

"Not that. What you said before." He heard that? And she had thought she was practically alone, how embarrassing. "You don't break... everything you touch. I'm... fine. We owe you our lives.”

He was right, in a technical sense.

But the fact that she'd simply saved their lives after putting them in danger in the first place couldn't have escaped him.

He had nothing to thank her for.

If anything, he should curse her for making him come all this way.

"Yes. You are our queen.”

It hadn't been said by the same person.

It took her a while to realize it because it already seemed unbelievable to her that one person would have that opinion of her, two was really too many.

But there were two, regardless of what she thought about it.

And what did she think? The truth was that she didn't know what to think at all. This had caught her completely off guard. They're devastated by the disaster, she thought. When they have time to recover, they'll turn on me. The veiled insults, protests and demands will return.

"Better ruler than your parents ever were. You... you care." A third party. Unbelievable, a third. And one who had gone even further than the previous ones.

Better than her parents?

Better than the shadow of expectations that had hung over her from such a young age, that she had never been able to overcome, that no one had ever expected of her?

Charlotte swallowed hard.

Now she really... now she really didn't know what to think.

"Is that what you think of me?” Charlotte asked, her voice trembling slightly. And what did she expect to get out of it? Even if all three of them were lying, surely they wouldn't admit it just because she asked, so that was no way to overcome her insecurity.

"The whole populace does it," the first of them continued, staring at her, even though he could barely lift his head. He wanted her to understand, and tried with all his might. "Everyone knows... That you are our queen, forever and ever. And that we should be grateful.”

Charlotte was speechless.

She had no words to respond to the wonderful things that had been said to her. Her throat was blocked. It was hard enough for her not to cry and even harder to speak in the meantime. But, inside her...

A sense of pride began to rise for the first time.

——

Inside the temple where the world as even she had known it would end, the situation had not changed. Not yet. The impostor was still trapped by the chains of water, held aloft, not much, but enough so that his feet didn't touch the ground.

The only strange thing was that he wasn't actively trying to escape.

Exerting strength, resisting.

He seemed to simply be waiting for something.

"I'm boreeeeeeeeeed." With each passing moment, the more Abigail became convinced that he was nothing more than an imposter after all. That he couldn't and never had been Desmond.

She couldn't imagine her boy, any version of her little boy, reacting that way.

Stretching the e with that mocking, cruel expression.

Unimaginable, indeed.

"I'm not here to entertain you," Abigail spat.

He turned his head to look at her, in an extremely unnatural way that made her hair stand on end. It was as if his neck had no bones, almost. A movement far too...

He'll be back, Abigail told himself. Nothing has happened to him that can't be fixed. He'll come back.

"Yeah, don't worry. I'll find my own fun.”

His own amusement.

She was sure it was some sort of creature that had taken control of her little boy's body when he had left it by activating the weapon.

A creature that had probably been created in haste like the snake. One more artificial obstacle in the way.

So he would surely enjoy gutting them.

To begin with, there was something that didn't fit.

"What do you mean? Didn't you want peace? Didn't you want your life, your body? Ha. So why are you wasting your time?”

The impostor looked back at her.

He didn't have an answer for her. There wasn't. She didn't expect anything coherent, only that forcing him to face the contradictions in his programming, so to speak, would serve a purpose. That it would break his control, or weaken it, making the return trip for Desmond easier.

Though Abigail still hoped it would be neither difficult nor easy. That it would happen instantly when the Empire was destroyed and this temple's weapon lost its purpose.

She still hoped so, but it didn't mean she couldn't do two things at once. Just in case.

"I should have fucked you when I had the chance. A s she had expected, she had no answer. But his words were sudden and shocking. As much as it wasn't Desmond, that was still his face, that was still his voice. The very idea of other men putting their hands on you makes me sick. You should be...

Mine.

That was something she could believe the real Desmond felt. Maybe not to that extent, but a certain sense of possessiveness, of jealousy. Even though she was his mother. Or maybe precisely because of that.

But...

"That's not an answer. And you're just wasting your time, again. Why don't you fight your shackles? You're a sham.”

That was also true.

The impostor's face twisted, carved with rage. She was used to seeing Desmond indulging his inner fire during the heat of battle, like any warrior, and had seen him angry about whatever it was more than once.

Of course.

But somehow, somehow, she'd never seen him with such an expression. There was something subtly wrong with it. But she couldn't tell what it was.

Abigail wondered if she was seeing something real or just what she wanted to see.

"I'm Desmond! I won't let you deny it!" But he wasn't trying very hard to act like it. As if he was really staking his own existence on a race against time. "I wouldn't have to do any of this if you hadn't gotten in my way.”

"Desmond would never have hurt them.”

"I have done nothing but hurt them.”

Abigail should have imagined that she would answer him like that. It was the easy answer. And, besides, it was something she had no trouble imagining coming out of her real son's mouth.

Since he hated himself, he always blamed himself for everything. He believed he broke everything he touched. While she was eternal, and he couldn't break her, he couldn't cause her to turn away from him, whatever he did, whatever he said.

In any case, he was wrong. And that wasn't even the point.

"On purpose. On purpose never.”

"Yeah? I've always known it would be best for them to stay away, but I've never done anything about it... because I'm weak. A coward. Because I'd rather they suffer or die than be left alone.”

You son of a bitch. You creeping coward.

"That's not..." No, why waste time crushing his points? Rather, why was he wasting his time with this? A distraction would make sense only if he gained something from it. And he wasn't. Time was playing against him, not against her. Time was always on Abigail's side. "Stop distracting me. You know I'm right, that's why you're not even trying to argue. This isn't going to do you any good.”

It was all true.

And even though he was an imposter who didn't try too hard to act, it didn't make sense for him to behave that way. It was like attacking himself. No matter from which angle he looked at it, it didn't make sense.

"With every second that passes, things get worse for you. You're just wasting your own time. Even if I lose my focus, my magic will not fall.”

The impostor was silent. He had no answer. There wasn't.

"Maybe I just want to vent my anger," he said slowly and after a while, his expression as blank as his tone. That was perhaps the worst thing he had shown her so far. That emptiness. "Maybe I don't need anything else.”

Abigail shook her head.

"You're contradicting yourself. You're not Desmond. You're not even a complete being.”

"Com... Complete? Complete?" Everything changed with that one word. No, he was empty inside, even when his face was that expressive. He was truly empty, all he had left was anger and bitterness. He was dead inside. As she had been before him, that is, before Desmond breathed life into her. "Yes, I'm not complete. Because they took everything from me!”

He broke the chains as if they were nothing.

Clenching his hands into fists, pulling, flapping his wings like swords.

He was free, just like that, again.

——

After a while, Charlotte stood up, removing the sand from her pants with her hands. She had rescued as many people as she could and there was literally nothing more she could do for them.

Because of that, she had to focus on why she had come here in the first place.

That weapon that was supposed to end the Empire, ending the war forever. Her and her entire kingdom's last hope.

She had to make sure Desmond would get to that weapon and activate it.

To do that, she had to find them first. Where could they be, he and his group? If they had fled from that giant snake she had been told about, then the answer to her question was tremendously simple.

Charlotte had only to follow the trail of destruction.

They could be alive.

No, they had to be alive. Surely by now he had gutted that snake. After all they had been through, a giant creature wasn't going to stop them. She believed that from the bottom of her heart. However, all the same, she had a bad feeling about it.

She couldn't say why. But she had it, all too clearly, like an ice dagger against her back.

"Please... Stay safe," she whispered to herself, as she set off.

Too much depended on it.

Too much.

——

"You can't stop me. You know that, don't you?" declared the Imposter, free of his bonds at last, walking calmly towards them. No, there were three of them, but he only had eyes for Abigail. She was the biggest threat, after all. A threat that wouldn't die, that would never stop coming after him. And if he told the truth about who he was.... Only it was impossible. Right. Impossible. "You think I have too many powers, that I'm not like everyone else, and that's part of why you had illusions about me. About me being the one to save you after two thousand years. As if you believe in fate, in those things."

Amy created a block of ice and threw it quickly, at his head, apologizing internally to her Desmond. To the one and only true Desmond, that is.

But it did nothing to him.

The imposter stopped the attack by simply putting his free hand in the block's path. He didn't have to exert force to make it burst into a thousand pieces.

If he could so easily break a magically created block of ice, it was easy to imagine what those hands could do to her neck. Amy shuddered.

This was bad. This was really bad.

"But of course, you have to trick yourself. You need, just like any human being, something to hold on to.”

Only Desmond didn't see her as a human being, but something else. An exalted, superior existence. And not because of her immortality, like the people who pursued her.

Because he wasn't Desmond. Of course.

It was good that he spoke. With every word out of his mouth, the less confused her heart would be.

"This is the truth, Mom." He held up a finger. "I have only one power. Just one.”

Where the hell was he going with this, anyway? Just as Abigail had said even before the impostor broke his bonds, it was pointless. He was wasting his time, not theirs. That dragging his feet only benefited them.

Amy and the others were trying to keep their distance as they continuously attacked, hoping to break his resistance, hold him off long enough.

Meanwhile, the Imposter was acting as if he had all the time in the world. And he just kept walking forward, walking and talking quietly.

Amy didn't get it.

There was something that didn't quite fit.

"I adapt, that's all," he said, cocking his head in a strange way, grinning from ear to ear. There was something so unnatural about his movements, as there was about everything that came out of his mouth. "I was weak and untalented, barely able to use magic. Hence the regeneration. To cover my vulnerability.”

But Desmond had made the contract with Abigail in the ruins of her hometown. Bleeding out slowly, his guts almost out.

He had obtained regeneration to get out of there alive.

His... failures with magic had come later. It sounded harsh to put it that way. Not everyone is born with talent, and he had come a long way despite that, taking physical reinforcement magic to unsuspected levels. In any case, what the impostor was saying would have logic if it weren't for that.

For that and because regeneration, that semi-immortality, had been but the beginning.

Then I had no long-range attacks. And at my moment of greatest need, wings appeared.

Okay, well... That... That made sense. Nothing yet answered the question of what the hell he intended to accomplish with this, though.

"And the... shots of darkness, which I have so far been unable to replicate.” What? He had never told them about such a thing. Amy would have thought it was another inconsistency, another hole, except that there was no confusion in Abigail's eyes. She did know. She wondered how many other things only the two of them knew. "I adapt. I get stronger. And I always will. That's why you can't stop me.”

Once again, he kept ignoring them. Acting as if Abigail was the only opponent in the room. Perhaps rightly so, because then he stopped pacing as if he had all the time in the world and lunged forward like a hungry panther.

Neither Christina nor Amy could do anything to stop him.

The impostor, despite the defense Abigail had raised, grabbed the woman by the neck and kept running. Smashing her against the wall with great force. From the wall fell dust, stones.

The impostor brought his face very close to Abigail. For a moment, Amy thought he was going to kiss her.

"Do you understand? This battle is pointless.”

Both Amy and Christina were frozen, not knowing what to do. Granted Abigail was immortal, she would come back no matter what the Imposter did to her. But the issue wasn't Abigail, it was them. Her being temporarily killed was still dangerous for them.

Because then they would be left virtually defenseless.

Abigail was gritting her teeth, baring them all like a wild animal, as the Imposter held her against the wall. Her expression was completely different from how she was used to seeing her.

Lacking in composure.

She wasn't one step ahead of the common mortal, right now. She didn't see beyond that. She simply wanted to hurt her enemy. Take revenge on him.

"Get out of my son," Abigail spat.

"Still don't believe me? Okay.”

They should have done something when they had the chance, despite the fear. But it was all so fast. Before she knew it, he had snapped her neck. He referred to her as Mom all the time, but yet he had done something like that so coldly.

It didn't matter that Abigail was immortal and would therefore recover from it like it was nothing.

He was contradicting himself.

Yes, Abigail would be back soon, but still Amy jumped when she heard the woman's neck pop like a dry twig. She was scared because, well, soon meant nothing when they were in an enclosed space against an opponent who could use Desmond's powers (or power).

One second could be enough to decide everything. For this to end the way the enemy wanted it to.

This wouldn't end in a second, at least. Christina ran over him with her shadows, crushing him against the same wall against which the imposter had pushed Abigail.

But he wasn't trapped against the wall, helpless.

He was fighting the shadow wave. And winning.

"Haven't you been listening to me? That won't work on me. Not for long.”

He proved his words were not empty bluster quickly. He parted the sea of shadows with a sword, slashing on one side and pulling with his free hand on the other.

Tearing off.

Breaking free.

If even that wasn't enough, they really hadn't stood a chance from the start. Fuck. Amy swallowed hard. She'd taken for granted the safety of having Desmond fighting beside her. Having him as an enemy, even if it wasn't really him, was just terrifying.

Especially assuming what he'd said about his power was true.

Then there was literally no one who could beat him. Not with time, at least, since time was on his side.

"Don't you feel a little gratitude?" Gratitude? Even if he wasn't an imposter, asking them to lay down their lives for him was too much. Desmond would be willing to give it for them, except that he had already volunteered to do it for Abigail, but he would never have asked them. Never. “This happened to me because I wanted to save you!”

Yes, to save Christina from the clutches of death, the real Desmond had gone through a lot. He had transformed himself into some kind of... monster come out of the darkness. A time-traveling specter.

If this imposter was Desmond, a Desmond, then....

Then what?

Christina owed him her life, literally, and so she should die for him?

No. No, damn it.

"Shut the fuck up. You're not Desmond," Christina growled through her teeth.

Well said, Amy thought, launching another attack. Raining down dozens of stalactites on the impostor. It was as useless as all the previous attacks, or even more, it didn't even graze him.

The impostor broke all the stalactites by swinging the sword around him with one hand. He didn't even look, damn it. Or blinked.

She was that insignificant an opponent to him. Her stomach did another flip"flop. At this rate, she'd end up throwing her guts out.

"What could I say to prove it? I remember everything, or almost everything. Nobody is perfect." Speaking in that half-mocking way made it even harder to believe him. It couldn't be Desmond, yes. But if he wasn't even going to seriously try to get them to buy it, why pretend?

Amy couldn't help but think about that.

"It doesn't... It doesn't matter," Christina said, "If you were created by the gods, like that snake, then anything is possible.”

Good point.

Maybe the impostor seriously believed what he was saying, and that's why he didn't feel too much need to prove himself, to act. But that didn't mean it was true.

He could have had implanted memories. By the same logic, he could have been a perfect copy of Desmond, if the gods had so willed. But too much didn't fit anyway. It didn't fit at all. So...?

Nothing. Nothing.

Stop thinking about useless things.

"So there's no way you can believe me?" the imposter asked. "Or rather you don't want to believe me.”

They didn't want to believe him. Of course they didn't. The mere possibility that he was telling the truth was frightening, it would trap them in a situation where there was no right answer, only decisions they would never forgive themselves for in life, one way or another.

But both were true.

They didn't want to believe him and they couldn't believe him. As Amy had said, he was barely trying.

"Even if you were Desmond, I wouldn't give you my life. Or Amy's. So it doesn't matter anyway.”

And that was true, too, after all.

Maybe unfair, but true. There were so many things she still wanted to do, to experience. And she just didn't want to die. No one in their right mind did. Not even Abigail, in her opinion. Not even in her situation was it natural to wish for true death, for darkness and oblivion.

"What a selfish bitch," the enemy spat, "I gave you my life. I gave you everything!”

The impostor lifted one leg and brought it down hard, executing a powerful stomp. Boy, was it powerful. The impact filled the ground under the foot and all around with cracks. But it didn't stop there. It went much further.

The shockwave sent Christina flying through the air, almost across the room.

She landed badly, rolling on the floor, gasping as if she were drowning. Amy hurried. She froze one of the impostor's arms, the same one with which he held the sword, before he could throw himself on top of Christina to kill her. Although she was aware that bare hands would suffice, that would at least do something.

Or so she had thought.

"Thank you," the impostor said.

Thank you? Thank you for what?

But he gave her the answer quickly. In a direct, personal, shocking way. Indeed he did.

He punched her in the stomach with his frozen arm, causing her to run out of air and double over, falling to her knees. At his mercy. No, that was where she'd been all along.

I'm going to die, Amy thought, lifting his head to look back at him.

Look back at death personified, flying on black wings. They had taken advantage of his power to get here and now she would die at the hands of that power, burn in his flame.

Perhaps it was what had been destined to happen from the beginning.

Destined? Like Christina's death, which had been averted, erased from time?

There was nothing...

Yes, there was nothing destined. Inevitable.

A wall of fire overwhelmed the Impostor, who began to groan in pain, shrinking in on himself. Folding his wings around his body like a kind of shield.

Fire. She felt confusion at the suddenness of it, but it could only have been one person from the start. Abigail, who had finally come back to life. It shouldn't have taken that long, there was no way it had taken her that long to recover from a simple broken neck. But boy, had it sure felt like a long time.

However, Abigail had acted just in time. That was what mattered.

She had saved her and given her time to get out of the way.

"You're already on your feet? Time flies." Amy thought the impostor would laugh. But he kept silent.

Instead, he hit the ground between his legs once, twice, three times. With his frozen arm, of course, causing it to burst into a thousand pieces. He was free again.

That didn't mean well, and indeed there were chunks of ice, like broken glass, stuck all over his arm. Blood flowed between, over and under them like a waterfall, staining everything red in its path.

But the impostor didn't seem to mind. He didn't seem to feel any pain.

Just flexing his arm, as if wanting to check that it still worked to his liking.

We're going to die here, Amy thought again. If he doesn't come back soon we're all going to die.

——

When would all this destruction end?

He had no regrets. Of course he didn't regret setting the weapon in motion. But it was too much. All the reasons why at first it had seemed unrealistic, distant, still applied; the gods had not forced him to see the results of his actions from up close, from the streets, as in the first vision he had had of the end of the world.

Eventually, however, limitless destruction, on an unthinkable scale, had finally made a dent in his heart. And taken root.

It was... horrible.

Necessary, but horrible. He didn't know how much longer he would endure this.

Or anything else. He truly had no regrets. He wasn't going to, at the end of the war, decide that he regretted the loss of the lives of his enemies. But thinking that no one would understand this, that when they returned home they would consider him a hero, even....

Desmond felt like throwing up.

——

Following the destruction as she had planned, Charlotte soon found the famous white snake. That is, its corpse. There was no doubt that the creature was dead, but she still managed to scare the hell out of her.

"Fuck me... That's really fucking big.”

She had been told it was gigantic, but nothing could have prepared her for how gigantic it actually was. Considering how big it was, the surprising thing, truth be told, wasn't the state of the ship after the disaster but that there had been anything left of it in the first place.

But it had been defeated.

Desmond and the others had triumphed, and now where were they?

Not far from there, she found a sort of temple with the door open, revealing the darkness inside. That had to be the place, judging by, well, simple logic.

If it wasn't the place, at least they had surely passed that way. Searching.

Charlotte... For some reason, she had a bad feeling, but she wasn't going to back down. She couldn't back down.

She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and took the first step into the darkness.

——

"Die! Die already!" roared the impostor, raising and lowering the sword again and again, over and over again. Striking. Striking at what?

As it turned out, Amy had ended up sprawled on the ground.

She'd had better luck than her sword, because it had been scattered around the room in pieces. She had been able to avoid that sad fate only by the skin of her teeth, at the last moment.

Using her hands to create a barrier of ice around her, covering her completely. The ice shielded her from the blows. But it did not shield her eyes from Desmond's face, moved by the impostor, twisted with rage as he struck the barrier with the sword.

Oh, nor from the cracks, of course.

That was the worst by far. The cracks spreading slowly but inexorably, thin as a spider's web.

It would break. It would break sooner or later.

And then it would kill her, because she had trapped herself. She couldn't fight but she couldn't escape either. Christina wouldn't help her in time, probably. She was still alive at least. But she had collapsed against a wall, and now she was writhing, struggling even to breathe.

Just as she had predicted, despite her best efforts, the barrier burst into a thousand pieces. And Amy was helpless. The sword plunged into flesh, blood flew through the air, along with shards of broken ice.

The impostor opened his eyes wide in surprise. As if he hadn't realized what he was doing until now.

But the most surprised person of all was Amy herself.

She had seen blood to spare, but no pain. Why? The answer to that question was very simple. It hadn't penetrated her flesh, that wasn't her blood. In fact, Amy wasn't even where she had been a moment ago.

Instead...