Bioshifter

It is a wonderful, wonderful day on the beach.

Ants tend not to get along when you mix and match colonies. It's not difficult to mix them anyway—it's all sand, just push it together—but it's precisely because of how easy it is that I'm so happy to have made a game of it. Taking something simple and turning it into something fun. Isn't that just a wonderful way to live life?

My favorite ant has done it. Oh, I love her so much. Nothing fills me with joy quite like her. Getting into her head, watching her from her own eyes… you really miss something, looking at the entire anthill from above. Sometimes, a narrower focus is all you need to extract joy from tedium. Sometimes, all you need is a single person's story.

My view zooms out, farther and farther until the beach is so far away I can no longer see it. All that surrounds me is the void. I try to blink, try to take a breath, but I find I can do neither because I have no body in this place. The vision of the Goddess' mind is gone.

And so is the universe. The anthills on which I lived are no more.

With nothing but a will to do so, I try to zoom the view back in, to approach the beach as myself rather than as Her. But when I do, I don't find the beach at all. I see Earth, the moon orbiting it at a distance. I see the world tree, gutted and bleeding from the Pillar through its chest. And smiling down on them both, I see the Goddess, caressing them lovingly in Her hands.

She is a woman. She is a girl. She is an angel. She is a monster. She has no face, but Her face is beautiful. She has no body, but nothing could turn me on more than the sight of Her. She has no mercy, but I feel the need to beg for it anyway.

"You did it, Hannah Hiiragi," She says, Her grin the very picture of childlike glee. So radiant, so wholesome. "You spoke the words, like I always knew you would."

Her voice is no surprise to me. Why would it be? I hear it whenever anyone speaks a spell. It sounds the same from Her lips as it does from anyone else's.

"I suppose I did," I agree, speaking without any body, without any breath. She has taken my last. She has taken everything. "If it was all going to end anyway, I figured I should come here at my best."

"And damn the rest of the world, hmm?" the Goddess chuckles.

"Yeah," I agree. "You really did."

She quirks Her head (though She doesn't have one), surprise blooming on Her features at my response. But not much of it, and not enough to dwell. She has a victory to gloat over. …No, that's wrong. She's not gloating. You gloat when you beat someone, but I was never a player. This is nothing but a chance to brag to the only person in either universe that currently still exists.

They'll be back soon, of course. Most of them, anyway. But right now it's only me, Her, and the infinite void of the beach-that-isn't-a-beach.

"The power to do this is in your soul," the Goddess reminds me, beckoning me closer. And so, I am closer. Obedience is not a factor. "I may have given you the strength to link these worlds, but you are the link. And it is through you that these worlds shall be merged."

Her nonexistent hand thrusts into my nonexistent chest (better than grabbing it, I suppose) and plucks some ephemeral weight from it, using it as a tool with which to poke and prod the frozen worlds together. It's interesting to me. Why use my soul for that? Why bother? She's already won. Surely no rule stops Her from doing it with Her bare hands, or making Herself a new set of tongs. I wonder if I could have used this against Her somehow. If the power in my soul was actually so significant as to be a potential weapon against Her.

Maybe someone far, far better than me could have figured that out.

"How are you going to do it?" I ask, floating over next to Her and sitting down to watch. She laughs, bumping shoulders with me, giddy with delight as if about to tell a favorite story to a beloved friend. It would almost be sad if I had any desire to pity Her.

"How do you think I should?" She asks me. "We're both winners here, dearest Hannah. I'd love to know what you think."

"Don't you always know what I think?" I deadpan.

"I can, if I choose to," She confirms. "But it is often enjoyable not to know."

"Ah," I nod. "Right. Surprises are fun when you aren't expecting consequences. I almost forgot."

She titters with delight.

"Tell me, Hannah! Tell me, tell me. How do you think the world should end?"

What a question. I suppose there would be little point in asking for the world to simply not end, especially at this stage. Equally pointless would be looking for a path to minimize casualties or fix as many problems as I could. Not really sure how I would do that with an apocalypse, though. Perhaps if I was more inclined towards racism I'd see if I could get Her to squash whatever countries I like the least, and She would probably find that pretty funny.

But it's ultimately not about that, is it? She's not asking me because She's legitimately interested in my advice. The question is performative. She's asking to see if I will tell Her whatever She's already decided on, and to correct me if I fail. The only way to get through the conversation is to reach that point as quickly as possible.

It's just like talking to my mom.

"Well, you have a huge, uprooted tree and a giant ball of dirt," I answer. "The obvious answer is planting the tree, right? I feel like you'd enjoy splatting it right into the middle of a major country. Maybe plant it next to my house or something."

"Oooh," the Goddess says, Her performative interest immediately letting me know I've missed the mark. Oh, well. I played along. I thought my guess was pretty good, honestly. It's natural, it's thematic, it still kills an absurd number of people. But hey. Surprise me, oh omnipotent game master.

"I was thinking something more like this," She says, squishing the two together so that the intersection of the Mother Tree and the Pillar is roughly in the center of the Earth. The Sapsea is engulfed in magma. The canopy and the roots of the tree both stick out of either end of my home planet, and likewise, the Pillar emerges from two opposite ends as well. She shifts the whole thing around a little, off-centering it in different ways as if contemplating the best spots for each to emerge from, while I just stare blankly at the mess.

Of course. Of course it would be something like this. How silly of me.

Why smash one continent when you could get a bunch at once? Why plant the tree in the ground when you could keep letting it slowly die? Why fix a problem when you could simply cause three more? It doesn't even look good, from an aesthetic standpoint. It doesn't try to look good. It's a joke and my emotions are the punchline, like everything has always been.

"What do you think?" She preens.

"It's very You," I tell Her honestly.

That gets another laugh, because of course Her joke is always funny.

"I do like what you said about your house," the Goddess admits. Ah, so I got that much right, at least. "Having the tree appear next to you would be… fitting, I think. It is only right to do so. But not to the west, no. To the east! We can get rid of that mean, mean government of yours, a proper punishment for hurting my perfect prophet."

Huh. That's… interesting. Tennessee is already in the eastern half of the continental United States, so while that does obliterate Washington D.C. (and the entire eastern seaboard, bar the northern edge), it kills a lot fewer people in general. Looking at where that puts the other end of the tree, it'll also destroy the western edge of Australia… but that's on the complete opposite end of the continent to the vast majority of their population, too. Huh. What's the real reason that She'd… oh. I bet I know.

"Out of curiosity," I ask, "where does Dr. Carson live?"

"Who?" She asks, damn well knowing the answer to that.

"Dr. Emily Carson," I answer anyway. We won't get anywhere if I don't. "My therapist."

"Why, I have no idea why you'd be bringing her up, dearest," the Goddess says, a serpentine smile splitting Her invisible face. "But she does live east of you, I suppose. Truly a shame."

It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault it's not my fault it's not my fault. Her last words to me were to remind me of that. I have to believe them, no matter how impossible it seems.

"Yeah," I say softly. "It really is."

I suppose the Goddess can afford to slack off on the number of murders She's committing with the World Tree anyway, since She's picking up the slack with the Pillar. One end of it is slaughtering the lower end of South America, and the other is gutting East and Southeast Asia. Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and pretty much everything in a fat circle between India and South Korea is getting squashed. That's… I don't know how many people that is. I don't want to know. I don't want to think about it.

And that's not even starting to worry about the deaths on the tree itself. Anything too close to the Sapsea, too close to the center, is just… gone. Crushed deep underneath the crust of the Earth. And considering that the upper canopy was unlivable to start with, that would have to be… no. No, don't think about it, Hannah. Don't think about it. It's over. It's not your fault.

"It's a beautiful victory, isn't it?" the Goddess sighs. "I truly owe it all to you."

No you don't. No you don't. You did this. Not me. It wasn't me!

"I know you so intimately now, Hannah," the Goddess purrs. "I don't need to see into your mind to know what you're thinking. It was you. You spoke the words. You hesitated when your claws kissed your neck. You'll always have to live with that. With me. Forever."

I nod.

"I could have stopped you," I agree. "I had that chance. But in the end, I wasn't good enough."

"And yet, my darling, you were just good enough. We won! Here we are, at the end of the world together. Crafting the start of the rest of your life. I've been thinking a lot about how to implement the culture of your world into the new rules for magic. I noticed that recent plague has had such a major impact on your global society, and then I realized that I don't have plague magic at all! What a missed opportunity, don't you think? Many cultures in your world believe in spirits inhabiting objects and plants and whatnot as well, so what if I enabled that possibility? Then we could have—"

"Plague-ensouled stonerot," I finish for Her tiredly.

Again, She quirks Her head. This time, She does not write it off.

"...Oh?" She prompts.

"It would fuck up industrialization on a global scale," I say. "It'd be a threat to the Crafted, but they're so smart and coordinated they could probably protect themselves from it and exploit it to knock our tech level lower without another genocide, which should be enough to keep their culture in its current peaceful stasis. Not that it necessarily wouldn't be fun to see what happens when war-exhausted Crafted encounter a massive population of humans on the cusp of advanced AI research, but World Tree culture remained largely static for the past two hundred years so I'm betting you'd prefer to let things simmer. The placement of the tree helps with that, doesn't it? It breaks a ton of transatlantic cables and almost certainly knocks every satellite we have out of orbit, so global communications are at least mildly frittered. Not completely, but enough to restrict it from huge chunks of the population. And the more isolated parts of the world you create, the more potential playgrounds you have to build something unique in. It's an ideal combination of short-term misery and long-term consequences."

The Goddess melts over me, joy suffusing Her as our incorporeal forms mingle in a manner that reminds me of getting picked up and squeezed as if I were a cat that had done something remarkably cute.

"Oh dearest, you know me so well!" the Goddess coos. "Yes, yes exactly! However did you guess?"

"You enjoy telling me all about Yourself," I answer. "You shouldn't be surprised that I paid attention."

"Ah, but Hannah… you don't pay attention to just anyone," She chuckles. "It's one of the many things I love about you. It touches my heart to know that I'm such a special part of your life."

That's on purpose, too. Every word is on purpose. She knows what it does to me, and that's exactly why She does it. It's all a game to Her. I'm just an ant She enjoys watching writhe under the magnifying glass, and that's all I've ever been since the day I was born.

I can accept that. That feels normal to me, now. Obvious.

"So," I ask Her, "what do I win?"

Again, a pause. I suppose I must be going off-script. How funny. It's a bit too late to be surprising, isn't it Hannah? Where was this independence before you ended the world?

"Is that greed from you, dearest?" the Goddess muses. "Lust has always been more your sin. You're becoming immortal. Is that not a worthy prize?"

"I'm suicidal," I remind Her. "I could go without it."

That earns me a laugh. Because it's funny, isn't it? It's all just so funny to Her.

"So ungrateful. It is what so many of your predecessors fought to end the world for, you know," the Goddess chides. "Yet you sit here instead of them because you are different. I cannot deny that the prize should fit the piece."

Which is not to say I won't be turning immortal, of course. Where's the fun in not making me watch my friends grow old and die? I honestly should have known something was up with Sela just because it can also live forever.

"Did you have anything in mind?" the Goddess asks me, and I shrug.

"Not really," I admit. I have no real plans for my life at all. I don't have any idea what I'll do, beyond cuddling Valerie and apologizing to the entire rest of the world. "I just thought I'd ask."

"It is a good question," the Goddess praises me. There was a point in my life where I might have liked that a lot. Isn't that strange. "We shall think of something together. But first, let Us finish rebuilding the world."

"What else is there to do?" I prompt Her obediently, and She happily shows me as She works.

The greater cosmos turns out to be our starting point. I never had much time to think about what was on the other side of the clouds that surrounded the floating world tree, but it turns out the answer to that is nothing. Nothing at all. Pass through them too far, and you'll just end up popping out of them from a different direction. The universe the Goddess creates for us is bounded, a glass-walled terrarium from which the ants cannot escape.

But I already knew that. What really gets to me about all this is that the night sky won't have stars anymore. Not even one. The universe She creates is so small, not out of any limitation on Her part, but out of explicit choice.

"Why not make it bigger?" I ask Her. "Why not bring along the whole solar system? Or the galaxy?"

"Little things like you don't need a world that big," the Goddess hums. "Even with something as small as this, none of you will live long enough to see even a tiny fraction of it."

"I will," I point out, and She smiles.

"Do not worry, dearest. By then, I'm sure the world will have changed again. Now… how shall we craft the sun?"

There are a few options I can see. The size of the universe the Goddess formed makes simply having Earth's sun impossible, but the Goddess admits that she's gotten bored with the burning canopy of the tree. She was excited to see what people would do about it, but ultimately they largely just… let it burn. With so much less of the tree to live on, She considers it only fair that the canopy be allowed to regrow, extinguished by the transfer between dimensions so it may slowly blossom back into leaves over the next few years. As such, the sun can't orbit the Pillar anymore, at least not on its prior route. It needs to be a bit further away.

"The Earth already has something orbiting it, though it's rather boring," the Goddess muses. "I think we can spice things up. Make it a little more exciting."

"Take the Pillar's tiny sun and put it on the same orbit as the moon," I suggest. "But have it still orbit once a day rather than once a month. And in the same way it burned through the tree, half the world would experience a lunar eclipse every single day as the sun passes through the moon."

Again, surprise. And for the first time, the Goddess smiles alongside me rather than at my expense.

"That is a lovely idea. I think I may do that, after all."

I shrug. It doesn't matter much to me either way. I'm not so desperate that a drop of genuine appreciation would mean something in an ocean of sadism-born misery. I have people in my life that care about me, and the Goddess isn't among their number. Not in any way that matters.

But still. The way She forms the world isn't all haphazard. She hums an inaudible melody as She continues carving at the world with the tool from my soul, carefully creating Her grand work of art. It is art, isn't it? Even the parts of it shaped to make people hurt are still an act of craftsmanship geared to evoke an emotional response.

I can't help but be somewhat fond of a few of Her creations, too. Everywhere the world tree overlaps with what was formerly human society, the people, buildings, and structures there aren't simply fused with the wood or splattered into atomic paste. She lets the thick veins of sap flow over them, solidify around them, and create a tunnel system wherein people can enter from the outside and walk through golden halls of what we once had. They're melancholic, morbid, painful, and yet oh so beautiful. Because that is how She has always been.

Magic is a thing of wonder. I have always loved it, even as I hate the source. And the worlds the Goddess touches do become quite magical indeed. The Earth maintains its usual gravity, here, but so does the Pillar, letting you journey to it and walk at a full ninety-degree angle up the side. And though I never got to visit it before the apocalypse, the hollow center of the Pillar is still a weightless tube, unaffected by what should be deadly pressures and temperatures in the Earth's core. Anyone living in that odd, zero-g hole through the straw will survive the universe merger just fine, pretty much entirely because their living space is so cool.

It's not all She does, either. There are small sections of long branches that poke out of the Earth's crust in various places around North America and the Atlantic Ocean, miniature world trees all on their own. The Tree's roots, questing in search of dirt for so long, slowly curve upside-down towards the surface, not yet close to reaching it but perhaps inclined to grow now that the canopy can heal. Leaves the size of large islands still hold their own individual mini-ecosystems, and soon countless more will grow to match them.

There are so many ways in which it's a wonderful world to live in, and for most people the Goddess doesn't even corrupt that. She's perfectly capable of enjoying people's happiness. She has cheered my victories almost as much as She has laughed at my failures; it is the contrast of each that helps make the other so sweet. She is a cruel and evil Goddess, but in some ways She is a protector. She won't allow the Crafted to successfully wipe out humanity. She won't let a meteorite blast us into extinction. No thermonuclear wars will crack the planet and vaporize the atmosphere. Her playground may bleed, but it must not break. Without Her, we don't have that safety net.

But She could do more. She could do so, so, so much more. The fact that She's capable of enjoying kindness and happiness only makes it worse that She chooses to torture and torment. She's not incapable of empathy. She does not struggle to understand us in any way. She could easily create a utopia, She could wave Her hand and end hunger and war and bigotry and disease. She could raise us all up to live forever, dancing among us and making real friends, but She doesn't. She just chooses not to, for no good reason, knowing full well what it does to us. What it does to me.

Something about that thought is hard to forget. It pricks in the back of my mind, biting me and never letting go. I try to ignore it; feeling things tends to not be a particularly good survival strategy around the Goddess, after all. But again and again, it keeps pulsing back into my thoughts like a heartbeat.

She has no excuse. None. Nothing. She's just like this on purpose.

It's odd. After everything She's done to me, it feels like the only answer I can really give someone who asks me if I hate the Goddess is 'yes.' It's been that way for a long time. Yes, of course I hate the incorporeal omnipotent rapist that stalks me every hour of every day. But most of the time, I think that answer would have been a lie. I just can't work up the energy for something as big as hate. I fear Her, I suppose. I dread Her. Just the thought of Her is enough to send me into a panic if I'm not careful, not actively numbing myself from feeling anything at all. How could I ever hate someone in a state like that? I've never hated the Goddess, not really.

Not until now. It's just a little bit, but I'm definitely feeling something.

"Now to design the edges of the universe," the Goddess hums. "In the prior world, the smoke from the great fire acted as the barrier, obscuring all senses. But your culture is ever so enamored with the idea of space. They will be persistent at attacking whatever walls are placed before them. Space, perhaps, is the best wall to give them."

"LIke a big, empty void that eventually loops back around on itself?" I prompt obediently. For… some reason. "Shoot a Voyager out to see what happens, and it ends up smacking into the other side of the Earth a year later?"

"Yes, exactly. What do you think?"

"Hmm. It's a bit plain, but it would get the job done. A lot of scientists would probably freak out at the readings they start getting but most people just wouldn't care."

Beyond the absence of the stars. Why am I so hung up on that, anyway? I'm not exactly a known stargazer.

"Well aren't you just being helpful today, dearest?" the Goddess coos. "I like that. It's a good change for you. And you have a point; it is a little generic, isn't it? Hmm… what's a good theme for trapping the Earth? Water, perhaps? You have so much of it, just flowing free everywhere! We could take the same idea, but instead of surrounding you with a looping void, it could be an ocean. No more space, no more vacuum. Your atmosphere would be the only pocket of air in an endless sea. Yes. That sounds quite beautiful, don't you think?"

It does. It really does, you unforgivable monster.

"We're similar, aren't we?" I ask softly. "In a lot of ways. Is that by design?"

The Goddess pauses for a moment, turning to me with Her usual smile.

"Insofar as My qualities can be transferred to a human? Yes, it is. You are your own person, Hannah. I created you, but I did not raise you or control you. But it is no coincidence that you understand Me so easily, dearest. In so many ways, we think alike."

Again, the words hurt. She knows they do, and She knows I know.

"It's hard to believe in any definition of 'control' that doesn't include what you've done to me," I tell her, knowing it won't go anywhere. Stupid of me. But for some reason, I still want to.

"You are no marionette to merely dance on my strings," the Goddess hums, idly poking and shaping the universe before us as She speaks. "You know this."

Hmm. Maybe I do. Being powerless isn't the same as being a puppet.

"You're not having second thoughts about your decision already, are you dearest?" the Goddess chuckles. "And here I thought we were bonding. You've been such a big help, you know. Much more than I expected, even! I've truly enjoyed this, Hannah."

"Yeah," I agree. "It's horrific and it's sad. But the sparks of beauty shine all the brighter for that. Maybe for anyone else, that would be enough."

"Hm?" the Goddess prompts, the flame of hatred catching kindling in my mind. Maybe for anyone else, that would be enough. That's what life is supposed to be about, isn't it? Finding beauty in meaninglessness. Finding joy amidst tragedy. And it's not like I don't have those things. I might not be the best at making friends, but I love the friends I do have more than I can ever describe. They make me happy. They really, really do.

And without fail, She uses that to crush me further.

My life is a game to Her. My friends are a game to Her. All these things that are so unimaginably important to me, so huge in my eyes, are just toys for Her to break. Break and break and break and break and break and break and break and break! She might squish it back together with glue, but She only barely waits for it to set before crushing it all over again. That's the fate of the world, and it will always be the fate of the world, not because such a fate is unavoidable but because She just doesn't feel like avoiding it.

I can't save the world. I can't. It's impossible. But She can, truly and completely, and She just fucking chooses not to! And then I end up here, because of course I do, and She has the audacity to tell me I destroyed the world? That this is my fault? The eighteen-year-old girl who can't even get disgusting monsters to stop fucking touching her!?

All at once, my mind starts to burn. The anger feels so wrong, so foreign and evil. I'm ashamed of it. And yet at the same time, why did it take so long to arrive? I'm ashamed of that, too.

"Yoo-hoo, Hannah dearest," the Goddess chimes in. "If you continue keeping me in the dark like this I'll simply have no choice but to go back to chatting through your mind."

"Don't," I say, a little too quickly. Pathetic. What's the point of begging to someone like this anyway? "I was just thinking about the prize I want for winning."

"Ooh. Do tell, dearest."

"We're alike in a lot of ways," I say. "In particular, we both really like games. But I think I struggled to really grasp that before, because the reason you play games is so different from me. I do it to relax, you know? My life is already stressful and exciting without games, and I just want something easy to unwind with at the end of the day. But you're not like that, are you? You play games because you're bored. Because they're your only form of excitement. You're not looking to relax, you're looking to engage. But you're struggling with that, aren't you? That's why you keep seeking… other outlets for entertainment."

"Mmm. Perhaps, perhaps not," the Goddess hums. "But how does this relate to your prize, dearest?"

"Because for my prize, I want you to let me add a rule to the game," I say. "The next game, the one to determine the next universe. A single, ironclad rule, determined by me."

She laughs.

"And why would I ever agree to something like that?"

"Because it's only on one condition: you have to agree that it will make the game more fun. If you don't think my rule will accomplish that, you can reject it and I'll get nothing. So I can't make any rules that skew the game against you, or even anything you'd just find annoying. That's the opposite of what I want, really. I just figure… I'm going to be stuck on the gameboard for eternity anyway, so can't I at least add some bits that I'll enjoy? That everyone will enjoy, really. But you most of all."

A wide, manic grin splits the black and empty skies.

"Aren't you full of surprises today," She beams. "You are making it ever so hard not to nestle up in your thoughts, Hannah."

"No mind reading," I tell Her. "As far as I'm concerned the game has begun, and that would make it too easy."

"That's the rule?" She snorts.

"No," I tell Her. "But considering that you have access to all human knowledge, it's kind of embarrassing that you'd need it to know that."

The smile drops, but only for an instant.

"Make your case then, Hannah Hiiragi," She orders. "Let me see the worth of your prize."

"You know this, but in my world games are both a business and an art," I explain, lifting a stick from the beach that doesn't exist to draw in the sand that isn't there. "The theory and practice behind what makes a game fun is well-developed and codified. I say you know this because you literally have access to any information you could possibly want and infinite power with which to shape that knowledge. And yet, the games you craft aren't enough to entertain you by themselves. Why?"

"An absurd question from a feeble mind," the Goddess frowns. "I am simply inclined towards variety in how I entertain myself. I do not need a singular perfect method because you are merely one of billions of outlets for my whims."

"Except that I know I'm special, 'dearest,'" I spit at Her. "You don't lie. It's one of your rules, and you don't need it besides. And because I'm so special, you've spoken to me about what you are. Through that, you have made one thing very, very clear: you. Are. Bored. And you don't know what to do about that."

The Goddess shifts uncomfortably as I draw the world in the sand, a colony of ants blooming to life under the force of my burgeoning metaphor. I draw the haphazardness of the way the worlds are combined, the empty darkness of the afterlife, the casual, brutish cruelty of the prior apocalypse.

"You're omnipotent, but you're lazy," I tell Her. "You're omniscient, but you aren't creative. You're not an artist, Goddess, not really. Honestly, I'm embarrassed for not seeing it sooner. You can know everything there is about how to make a good game and still fail to understand how to actually apply it."

"You had best be careful how you—"

"OR WHAT!?" I roar. "YOU'LL TORTURE ME AGAIN!? Go ahead. Bury me in amber because a pathetic little human hurt your precious feelings."

I stare Her down. I know She doesn't even have to touch me to break me. She could tear Valerie apart, rape Ida in front of me, or force Helen to kill Kagiso. But I don't care.

I hate Her too much.

"You just think you're a skilled artist," I sneer, "because you're a pathetic, moronic narcissist with too much power for anyone to tell you 'no' and not enough sense to listen to anyone anyway. You've made a couple beautiful things because you've made billions of things, like a shit-throwing monkey on a typewriter! And most of the best parts of your world were there before you showed up!"

The world quivers at Her rage, but I don't feel a sliver of it because I'm too consumed by my own. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters, except this one last swing.

"Let me tell you why you're bored by your game, Goddess," I growl, taking the stick and grinding it into an ant below me. "You're bored because you're a coward. If you want a game to engage you, it needs risk. The rewards don't feel all that exciting, if there's no risk."

"Oh, then do tell me, Hannah Hiiragi," the Goddess hisses between Her teeth. "What have you decided as your reward?"

I jam the stick down harder, killing the ant. A dozen others come to check on it, aghast at what has happened, but in their grief they can do nothing but gnaw on the stick.

"My Goddess, my rule is this: it must be possible to hurt you."

Very slowly, very slightly, the grin returns.

"Oh?" She prompts.

"You heard me," I sneer. "The pieces in the game, and the other players if there are any, must be able to hurt you. And no bullshit about hurting via asset loss or widdle mortals being mean to you. It must be possible to really hurt you: truly, meaningfully, painfully."

I drop the stick and crush another ant with my finger. This time, when its fellows come for revenge, they actually bite back.

"You aren't investing yourself enough in this game, Goddess," I say, lifting my hand and crushing the ants latched onto it in my fist. "Your victory is inevitable and your defeat has no consequence. You're so detached from the world the game takes place in that you've made your game not actually matter to you. You don't need to risk death. They're just ants, after all. But when you intervene, when you really intervene, you need to put your skin in the game. So if they're quick and if they're smart, they can leave you with a few welts. It's only fair, after all."

The Goddess' smile widens, Her expression dropping the pretense of anything but cruelty as She wraps around me, binds me and holds me and caresses me in all the worst places.

"Oh dearest," She coos, "whyever would you think up such an idea?"

"Because," I say, "I hate you."

"Do you?"

"More than life, more than death, more than anything under the stars," I answer, and She laughs and nibbles my ear.

"Oh but dearest, can't you see?" She whispers. "I'm everything to you."

Shuddering, I still force myself to answer.

"You're right," I agree. "Everything I am, every last fiber of my mind and being, wants nothing but to see you suffer. To see you fucking suffer, to see you scream and cry and regret a single damn horrific thing you've done in your entire pathetic existence! I hate you, Goddess! You made me this way! And there is nothing—NOTHING—I want more than a taste of your agony!"

She holds me ever closer. She laughs ever louder.

"Very well, then!" She agrees. "But you know, don't you, Hannah?"

Her voice whispers lovingly into my ear, Her breath tickling my skin.

"You will never, ever be the one to take the bite," She promises. "You're mine, little bug. You will always be mine. Hurting me will forever be beyond your grasp."

"That's fine by me," I spit, "as long as I get to watch it happen."

"Oh, you will, dear. If any of the little mortals manage it, you can be sure you'll have front-row seats. Up. Close. And. Personal."

I open my eyes. I'm still on Valerie's couch, holding her with all my love as she keeps me wrapped up in her arms and tail. My soul feels lighter, yet stronger. As if more of it is fully mine. As if more of it is… here. There is no tunnel within me, no portal between worlds.

Because the world tree is right outside the front door.

Billions died from just two little words. Millions more will continue to die in the aftermath, from the loss of distribution infrastructure, the introduction of monsters to Earth, the cross-contamination of diseases, and the sudden magical power now dwelling within every once-normal human on the planet.

Dr. Carson is dead. My biological family, I suddenly realize, is likely also dead. Our house is east of Valerie's. That's… I don't know how to feel about that. Yuki deserved better, I suppose. But my real family is right here in this house, waking up all around me.

Even the family members that weren't here before. Kagiso sleeps curled up at my feet. And Sela, in its humanoid puppet frame, stands silently behind me.

"So you did it, then," it addresses me, the rest of the house still groggily reorienting themselves to what are technically brand-new bodies in a brand-new universe, though they're basically identical for all intents and purposes.

"You were right," I say. "It was the only choice to make."

Fractionally, it nods its head.

"When," it asks, "shall the next game be played?"

I blink, realizing I know the answer.

"Ten years," I say. "Earth years, anyway. The Goddess will stay hands-off on everything until then."

Even me. I'd cry if I wasn't in so much shock. Ten years. It's more than half my entire life, yet it seems like such a painfully short time.

"Thank you," Sela says. "The Crafted will prepare."

It turns and starts walking away to leave, but fear grips me and I call out for it as it reaches for the door.

"Sela!" I cry.

It stops, saying nothing.

"I… I took my swing."

Again, it says nothing. It stays still. It does not answer, but it does not leave.

"I, um. I know things got a little… charged, there. And I can't speak for everyone here, but as far as I'm concerned, you… you're welcome here. To stay, to be with us. I know that's complicated for you, but I wanted to make sure it was on the table. I don't hate you. I don't blame you. If you ever decide you want it, I'd love to be your friend."

At first, there's still just more silence. But then, Sela grabs the doorknob.

"I would like that very much," it says, and then it walks out the door and leaves. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, shuddering and snuggling up deeper into Valerie's coils as if I were cold.

I guess, all things considered, it's not the worst way to start the first day of the apocalypse.