Chapter 288: Book 4 Chapter 45: One Last Time

In a lonely laboratory, Kraid’s machine clicked together with the same quiet malevolence as ever. Kraid watched in silence as the diamond wall of the containment tank was etched with one of the millions of runes needed to contain a Goddess of Life.

“Almost showtime,” Kraid said. “I’m a little disappointed. I expected some kind of last-ditch attempt to stop me, but all Vell did was try to make nice.”

Helena said nothing. Kraid kept talking anyway.

“Helena, be a dear and go run the termination test, would you?’

“Termination test?’

“Yes,” Kraid said. “You remember all those little tanks we put the gods in?”

“Distinctly,” Helena said. She could still hear the divine screams echoing in her ears. Kraid’s experiments on divinity had not been pleasant.

“Right, well, go down in the basement and hit the big red button that murders them all,” Kraid said. Helena’s eyes twitched, and not for any of the usual reasons.

“All of them?”

“Yes, all of them,” Kraid said. “I had to reshuffle my schedule to murder Lee’s parents, never got around to doing that myself.”

Kraid spoke about murdering parents and committing deicide with some casual boredom most people reserved for dentist appointments.

“Once I’m done with Quenay, I’ll need to make sure I can obliterate her right,” Kraid said. “Plus, you know, clean up dead weight.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do it? A little touch of murder to keep you awake?”

It was now just a bit past midnight, but Kraid showed no signs of slowing down.

“That’s very thoughtful of you, but I really need to keep an eye on these runes,” Kraid said. “Fucking tiny little things, the smallest mistake can restart us completely. I don’t know how Harlan does it.”

Kraid furrowed his brow as he gazed at the nigh-microscopic runes being carved into the surface of the diamond wall. He couldn’t imagine doing this all by hand. Usually when he made mistakes he blew up all the evidence and pretended it never happened.

“Sure. So, did you want that done now, or-”

“You can take as long as you want to hobble your way there,” Kraid said. Helena’s jaw tensed at the callous mention of her disability, but said nothing. “But you should get started. Only a few hours to go.”

“Right. I’ll get right on it.”

Helena started walking away, if only for the excuse to leave. She was no stranger to feeling ill, but she felt unusually sick to her stomach tonight. Her steps felt heavy, weighted down in a way that no adjustment to her brace could fix, and none of her usual medications could chase off the nausea. She chalked it up to a new development in the ongoing nightmare that was her health and thought nothing of it. All the more reason to work with Kraid and get a cure as soon as possible.

For some reason, the moment Helena thought that, she started to feel worse.

The lingering unease dogged her every step, all the way into the basement below the faculty building. Kraid’s playground for divine experimentation added a new layer of unease, but one she was entirely familiar with. The glowing tanks still twitched with the energies of captive divinity within. Anansi, Coyote, Loki, and all the other Tricksters were still kept within their tanks, cowering in fear of another experiment. In this case, the last experiment.

Helena stood in front of a big red button. She knew for a fact Kraid had made it big and red on purpose. Just one little piece of flair on the final step. On killing a whole host of gods.

Helena stared at the button for a while. It occurred to her now that she’d never actually killed anyone before. Been an accessory to murder, certainly, with the Board of Directors and the Burrows. Even a dubious murder with the bomb at the start of the school year, but Samson and Vell had come back, so it didn’t really count. This big red button, on the other hand, was definitely murder. One hundred percent logically, ethically, unarguably murder. If she pressed the big button, all the gods would die. No caveats, no time loops to erase the consequences. Just Helena and a bunch of dead bodies.

Helena looked down, and stared at the big red button.

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As the clock rolled on towards two in the morning, Vell sat in his office, with Skye leaning on his shoulder sleepily, and Harley and Lee across the desk, and watched the time tick by. He’d been getting more and more nervous as the clock had approach midnight, but it had ticked right on past without any problems -and with no time loops. The entire day had passed with no apocalyptic incidents or any resulting time recursion. Kraid canceling classes had canceled the loops as well, apparently. Vell put the fears about that in the back of his mind and focused on the immediate problem of Quenay’s game.

“Arcane analysis on spectrums of magic closely associated with the living is still underway,” Lee said. “But I have-”

Lee’s hair briefly stood on end as if she was about to be struck by lightning, and then flattened again.

“Lee?”

“To get ahead of your question, I have no idea what that was,” Lee said. “Probably nothing good.”

“Somebody just got fuckardly with magic, I assume,” Harley said. “Considering all the shit going on, it’s no surprise.”

“We should probably at least check in and make sure it’s safe.”

The ground rumbled hard enough to shake Skye off Vell’s shoulder.

“Alright, not safe, let’s settle for ‘not as dangerous as it could be’,” Lee said. Normally these kind of earth-shaking incidents wouldn’t phase her, at least not on this campus, but there were no classes today. Without the classes, there could be no loops.

“I got it,” Vell said. “Need to stretch my legs a bit anyway.”

His legs got a good stretch as he walked out into the quad and faced the direction of the rumble. Years of looping had honed a fine sense for rumble-location, and he looked right in the direction of the faculty building. Or where it had been, anyway. Even in the darkness of the night, he could tell there was a hole where it had once stood.

“Oh no.”

Vell didn’t bother to check in before he went sprinting that direction. He only stopped when he reached the edge of the crater and peered down. The destruction was only partial, apparently -rather than being evaporated entirely, as buildings on this campus tended to do, the faculty building had merely collapsed. The rubble of it was strewn about the crater, as it had sunk into its own basement and broken to pieces. Just below the rim of the crater, on a piece of rubble that had only barely avoided collapsing into the depths, was Helena, red in the face and hyperventilating.

“Helena!”

Vell hopped down, carefully grabbed Helena, and dragged her out of harm’s way, just in case the crater collapsed any further. Only when she was safe did Vell ask any questions.

“What the hell happened?”

After taking a few breaths to regain her composure, Helena actually answered.

“There were experiments,” Helena gasped. “Under- there. Gods, Kraid was trying to learn about gods.”

“How’d the building collapse?”

“I was supposed to do an experiment,” Helena said. “I was supposed to- it doesn’t matter. One of the gods got out. Loki broke something, sabotaged the machine somehow. When I tried to start the experiment...that.”

Helena pointed down the hole. It was a pretty self-evident situation. Vell examined the chasm, then glanced at Helena for a second. His eyes narrowed, and his forehead wrinkled, and then unwrinkled, before Vell said anything.

“Jesus. Was anyone else in there?”

“I don’t think so,” Helena said. Thanks to Kraid’s usurpation and Vell recruiting the entire faculty, the actual administrative building itself was entirely empty.

“We’ve got to have something on this campus that can scan for life,” Vell said. He got his phone out to call Lee, and then thought better of it. He turned around, and saw that Lee was already making her way to the scene, followed by other current and former loopers. The old instincts still ran strong, apparently.

“Lee, can you cast a spell to see if anyone else is—or was—in there?”

“I suppose,” Lee said. She glanced at the crater, then at Helena. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t-”

“Lee, people,” Vell said. Lee broke off her accusing glare at Helena and focused on the pit. A quick spell danced across her fingertips and washed over the collapsed faculty building.

“Oh dear.”

“What? Is someone down there?”

“Not someone,” Lee said. “Something.”

The first bubble of ethereal tar slipped through the cracks as she spoke. The fluid that started to seep forth was thick and viscous, so dark in color that it stood out as pitch black even in the nighttime sky, and a pearlescent sheen glimmered across its surface. The rising tar soon formed tendrils that grasped up, intertwined, and coalesced into new shapes.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Well, the experiments on the gods were messy,” Helena mumbled. “There might be...byproducts.”

The rising tide of malevolence continued to grow. Lee took a cautious step back.

“Tampering with the divine rarely ends well,” Lee said. “But we should have the means to contain it until we can sort out this mess.”

She turned around to face Joan.

“Be a dear and get me some bezoars, would you, they should be past the arcane biology lab, third cabinet on the left.”

“Got it.”

After nodding affirmatively, Joan leaned in for a kiss, and got one. Helena shook her head and looked away. It was sickening.

Almost as sickening as the sound of snapping bone and tearing flesh right after it. Helena slowly, nervously, turned her head back towards Lee. There was a spike of black sticking right through one of her lungs, and out her chest. She looked down at the impaling tendril and shrugged her shoulders as much as she could.

“Not to worry, dear,” Lee said to Joan. “It’s...”

Lee drifted off mid-sentence and looked at the horrified faces of her fellow loopers.

“Wait. This isn’t supposed to-”

Then the spike drew back, and pulled Lee with it, burying her in the inky darkness.

“Lee!”

All hell broke loose in a matter of seconds. One tendril rose up and lashed at Hawke, and he only barely avoided death. Leanne grabbed at the tendril and tried to pull. When her hands pulled away, all the flesh had melted off her palms. She got to feel the sting of that for exactly half a second before another arcing tendril took off her head. In panic, Alex threw up a shimmering barrier of green energy. Another blade of black tore right through it, and her, in one swipe.

“Move, now!”

Helena felt the familiar hands of Joan on her shoulders, pushing her away. Vell was hot on their heels, throwing rune after rune at the maelstrom of corrupted divinity, all of which accomplished absolutely nothing. He kept running.

“Vell,” Joan said, through a mix of tears, fury, and confusion. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” Vell admitted. “We’ll figure something out! Just keep- move!”

The act of consuming and destroying everything around it seemed to make the living void grew, and it swept towards them in a tidal wave of furious darkness. Helena felt that hungering emptiness nip at her heels, and then she got pushed forward. She fell, and looked backwards as she hit the ground just in time to see violet eyes vanishing into the abyss.

“Joan?”

There was nothing left to answer the pleading question. Just Helena, an infinite abyss, and Vell Harlan, quickly throwing himself between the two.

The hungering dark washed over Vell, and something like smoke rose from the clash of the two. Vell hit the ground and threw his arm up, and the void washed over him and around him, pushing against him with all its might, but still somehow unable to devour him. Helena scanned him in confusion, and saw a burning light from his lower back.

“Vell. The rune-”

“Yeah, listen, this hurts, like, a lot,” Vell said, through gritted teeth. Whatever protection Quenay’s rune afforded him was only partial, and presumably temporary. “Going to need to be quick here. What happened in there?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I- I…”

Helena felt the void draw a little closer in, and she curled up into a ball to try and keep it at bay a moment longer.

“I lied,” Helena sobbed. “I lied. I k-k-k-”

“Can we skip the pity party,” Vell snapped. He could feel parts of his spine melting. “I know you lied! I know you killed the gods! What’d you do specifically? We need a way to fix it!”

An amorphous blob of corrupt godhood was devouring all of existence, held at bay entirely by a magical tramp stamp on Vell Harlan’s back. Yet somehow, the most unbelievable part of the situation was that Vell was still trying to fix it.

“Vell. We can’t. We- we don’t get a second try,” Helena said.

“I don’t care,” Vell said. “We’ve got this try. Please talk while I’ve still got most of my legs to use.”

“Vell! Everything is gone! Everyone is dead! What’s the point?

Vell winced with pain as another part of his skeleton gave out, but managed to reopen his eyes and look down at Helena

“I don’t know,” Vell admitted. “But I’m trying anyway. Because-”

Whatever was keeping annihilation at bay gave out, and Vell and Helena were reduced to nothingness, utterly erased, consumed entirely by the void.

They were dead.

And then they weren’t.

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Vell yelped with pain and snapped to attention so hard that Skye got launched off his shoulder and out of her chair. He looked around in a panic as Skye rubbed a sore head.

“Ow! What the fuck, Vell?”

“Skye?”

“Yeah, been here the whole time, bud,” Skye said.

“Vell,” Lee said. Vell examined the look of concern on her face, and her entirely un-punctured ribcage. “Is something the matter?”

“I...uh...Is this a visual metaphor?”

Skye got off the floor and back into her chair, and let out a confused grunt in his direction.

“Are you you? Or are you a psychopomp trying to ease me into the next life?” Vell asked. “I haven’t- I mean, I have done this before, but I don’t remember it.”

“Vell, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be dead,” Vell said. “I’m just trying to make sure I’m not.”

“Sweet. Next time settle for ‘are you an angel’?” Skye said. She sat up and gave Vell a kiss on the cheek. “Brevity is the soul of flirting.”

Skye got up and rubbed a sore head again.

“God, really got my noggin on the floor there,” Skye said. “I need a fucking ice pack or something.”

She wandered off to relieve a sore head, muttering another curse under her breath as she went. Vell watched her go, and his eyes narrowed. They probably didn’t have sore heads and swearing in the good place, and he was reasonably confident he wouldn’t end up in the bad place, so Vell reasoned he must still be on Earth. Somehow.

“You just nod off a little there, Vell?” Harley asked. “You can take a power nap if you want, no one will judge you.”

“I wasn’t- you wouldn’t remember anyway,” Vell said. He got up and walked to the door, and called out for his fellow loopers. Kim was the first through the door.

“Kim, what the hell just happened?”

“Something happened?” Kim said. “Did you figure out the rune?”

“What? No! The thing with the loop,” Vell said. “And the goo. Helena did some experiment in the faculty building basement and made evil god goo that killed everyone.”

“Vell, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Samson said. Vell examined their faces and saw no hint of recognition.

“So you don’t remember anything,” Vell said. In most other ways it was an entirely typical loop -the clock had even reset to just after midnight, as it did on other loops. But for some reason, Vell was the only one who remembered it.

“There’s nothing to remember, Vell,” Alex said. “Kraid canceled all classes, and loops only occur on class days. That’s one of the only rules we know this place has.”

“Under the circumstances, I’d say it might have been a divine premonition,” Lee said. “Maybe the gods were trying to give you a warning of what might happen if their demise is not prevented.”

“No, I’ve had divine portents before, they always get the details wrong,” Vell said. “You were wearing the exact same socks and everything! That was a loop!”

“Before we get too deep into this, even if it was a loop, there’s no point trying to make sense of it,” Hawke said. “We don’t even understand the regular loops, much less bullshit Vell-exclusive evil god goo loops.”

“Yeah. Whatever the fuck just happened, I think we need to roll with it for now,” Samson said. “We can figure it out after we’ve saved the world from Kraid and his bullshit.”

“That said,” Kim continued. “We should do something about Helena. Just in case.”

“Agreed on both counts,” Alex said. “Prioritize stopping the thing that risks harming us over examining the thing which has apparently helped us.”

“Let us handle her,” Samson said. “Vell, you stay here and keep things running. And maybe get a drink. You’re twitching.”

Vell took a seat. He definitely felt twitchy. He’d seen his closest friends, maybe even the entire universe, get obliterated. He’d been obliterated. It should’ve all been permanent. But it wasn’t.

As the rest of the loopers wandered off, Lee and Harley stayed behind to keep Vell company, and he took comfort in their presence. Alive, intact, and safe. Not at all obliterated by evil goo.

“You know,” Lee said. “Something does occur to me. The loops depend on ‘class’, but to have a class, all you really need is a teacher and a student, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Harley agreed. She pointed at Vell. “And you’re still technically a teacher, aren’t you? Sort of? Maybe you taught somebody a lesson.”

Vell narrowed his eyes in thought for a moment.

“That seems like a bit of a stretch,” Vell said.

“Well we’ve got to make sense of these things somehow,” Lee said. Harley scoffed at her.

“Why start now?”

A knock on the office door provided a good endpoint to what was surely an open-ended conversation. As Hawke had said, they barely understood regular time loops, much less strange, limited ones that stretched all the rules. Vell beckoned their new guests in – or rather, guests. Two young students Vell didn’t recognize hauled in stacks of paperwork and research documentation, adding them to the ever-growing pile.

“Delivery,” one of the two students said.

“Right, yeah, saving the world,” Vell said. “Thanks.”

“Just happy to help,” the other student said. Then he winked in an unmistakably conspiratorial way, which Vell found kind of weird, but chose to ignore.

Vell looked down at his desk, and back at the incomprehensible tangle of the potential meaning of life. He dug into the new papers brought by the two students, and found they were all fairly old, dating back to the late 1940’s, just after the school’s founding. Despite their age, the papers were in perfect condition. He chalked it up to good recordkeeping and got back to work. Or tried to, anyway.

No matter how hard he tried to focus, something Lee and Harley had said earlier came back to mind. He was technically a teacher. And somebody had learned a lesson.

A slight smile crept its way across Vell’s face.

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Helena stared down at a big red button.

She knew what had gone wrong. It was a simple matter of order. She could call Kraid and tell him to kill the gods one by one instead of all at once -prevent the system overloading, prevent their divine essences from mixing into that evil goo thing. It’d be easy. It would keep the project moving. It would keep her in Kraid’s good graces. Keep her on track to her best chance at a cure. It probably wouldn’t even hurt Joan this time.

Or Vell.

The thought zipped through her mind as fast as a mosquito buzzing past her hear, and just as annoyingly. She could forgive herself for thinking of Joan. She would’ve even let herself off the hook for thinking of Samson, if only barely. But not for Vell. Not for the man who’d ruined Joan, ruined everything -and been willing to fight an impossible battle in a doomed world for her sake.

Helena’s lip twitched. She still didn’t understand what had happened, or why the hell she was still alive. There wasn’t supposed to be a second loop. Death should have been forever. In spite of that, Vell had thrown himself between absolute destruction and her. Even knowing everything she’d done. Knowing she’d been lying about the situation the entire time. Vell had kept fighting with all his friends dead and everything he cared about destroyed. He did it all because-

Because something.

The incomplete thought absolutely infuriated Helena. She would have to interrogate Vell later about what he’d been about to say. Something in that ‘because’ had kept Vell going when the end of everything was at his back, and the only thing ahead of him was a villain who’d made his life miserable at every turn. He kept going in the worst possible circumstances because-

Because there was always a chance.

In the worst darkness, in the face of losing everything, there was always a chance. A chance for things to be better. A chance to be better. A chance to make things right.

Helena finally understood what made Vell tick. She also understood that it was complete bullshit. Sometimes there wasn’t a chance. Sometimes things were broken too badly, sometimes things ended, sometimes a sister got eaten by an evil god goo. Helena bit her tongue and choked back bile rising in her throat.

For a few minutes back on that odd first loop, Helena had believed Joan was dead. Gone, forever. No more chances. No chance for an apology, no chance to for a reunion, no chance at having a sister again.

Helena wanted a long, healthy life. But she also wanted a sister. There were two clear paths before her. Kraid promised her one, but not the other. Vell promised no guarantee of either -but a chance at both. Just a chance. Helena weighed her options. She also weighed a nearby chair.

Loki jumped to attention as something bounced off the walls of his cage.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Helena insisted. She hadn’t thrown the chair hard enough to break the cell. “Just a second.”

She fiddled with the controls and opened the cage the old fashioned way. Less dramatic, but much easier.

“Come on, get the fuck out of there,” Helena shouted. “Go!”

Loki peered through the open glass.

“Aren’t you the evil girl?”

“Not anymore,” Helena said. Not if she could help it. “You want to stand around and stare or make a run for it? Because you don’t have long until Kraid shows up, and he’s definitely still the evil guy.”

Loki decided to take his chances -just like Helena. The brace on her arm whirred as she stumbled through the room and opened the cage containing Anansi, then Coyote, then Zeus, until all the caged gods had been freed. Then it was time to deal with her own cages.

The brace got used one last time to rip a drawer open and pull out a few folders. Hard copies of all their data on divinity. As soon as she had the files in hand, Helena grabbed the latches of her brace and tore it off, then tossed her phone aside. They both had trackers in them. If she started running for the lab now, Kraid might realize what she was up to, but if they were both motionless, Kraid might assume she’d had a heart attack or some other medical emergency. It’d buy her a few precious seconds, at least.

The brace fell to the floor behind her as Helena took a stumbling step forward without it. Her malformed leg was wracked with pain as it was forced to bear the brunt of her weight unaided for the first time in years. She leaned against the wall with one hand, used the other to press Kraid’s ill-gotten documents to her chest, and kept moving. She had never walked more than a few feet without assistance in her life. She had no reason to believe she could make it anywhere without help. But there was a chance.

The first few steps shocked her so badly Helena almost turned right back around to get the brace, to go back to Kraid. She wasn’t entirely sure what kept her moving forward. She also wasn’t entirely sure why she’d started in the first place. She didn’t really have a plan, or even a concrete goal. Get the documents to Vell, and then what? Hope everything worked out? Helena repeated it in her head a few times, to help distract herself from the pain. Hope everything works out. The first time she thought it, it was almost sarcastic. A few repetitions later, it was sincere.

Hope everything works out. Hope they forgive her. Hope she could have a sister again. Step by painful step, Helena started to realize hope was better reinforcement than the brace had ever been. Spiritually, at least. It still really fucking hurt to walk. She added a wheelchair to her list of things to hope for. No reason she couldn’t have hope and proper mobility aids at the same time.

By the time Helena even made it down the hallway her skin was flushed red and she was sweating profusely. Her legs had moved beyond pain and into numbness. She couldn’t feel anything below her knees. Stairs offered some reprieve for her body, but not her pride. She had to sit and pull herself up each step like a scared toddler. Even that caused shooting pain in her hips, but it was enough of a rest for her legs that she could stumble down the last hallway, towards the exit.

Helena Marsh pushed open the door with a trembling hand, and faced the sunlight and the open quad. There were no walls to lean on, no handrails to hold. The rune tech labs were on the far side of the island. Helena took a deep breath, and focused on the simple basics of walking.

Right. Left.

Right. Left.

Right. Ground.

The dull thud of the impact barely hurt. Her whole body was in pain already, falling down didn’t really add anything to it. The wound to her pride was by far the worst. She couldn’t even make it three steps. All that work, and Kraid was going to catch up to her lying in the dirt, having not even made it three steps. She could hear the footsteps approaching now. Deep, resounding, heavy with malice.

Or rather, heavy with metal.

“Well, look what I found,” Kim said.

Helena rolled her eyes. This was almost worse than Kraid.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Samson said, as he bent down to examine Helena.

“Would you shut up and-”

Helena bit back her indignation, and took a breath.

“Would you help me up? Please?”

Samson carefully grabbed Helena and propped her up on his shoulder. Alex took the other arm, and together they helped keep Helena balanced and upright as she walked forward.

“You know, if you need any advice on being less of a bitch,” Alex said. “I happen to have some firsthand experience.”

“You are all remarkably confident that I’m-”

“Helena,” Samson said. “Come on.”

Helena rolled her eyes again.

“I better not find out you were betting on this outcome,” Helena said.

“Nope. No bets,” Hawke said.

“Couldn’t find anyone to bet against Vell,” Kim said with a chuckle. Helena felt a moment of indignation, but pulled away from that aggressive instinct. She focused less on the teasing and more on the fact that through it all, Samson and Alex still had her on their shoulders, still bearing her weight without hesitation, without complaint, and without question.

They had every reason to suspect that this was another trap, some last minute Trojan horse to sabotage Vell. Maybe they did suspect it. But they carried on and helped her anyway. Because there was a chance.

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“Complex runes dealing with mental traits tend to use a right to left carve, right?”

“I do not know enough about complex runes dealing with mental traits to know that,” Isabel said. She had briefly stepped in as Vell’s rune idea sounding board while Joan fetched some materials from another lab. She was not doing a great job of it.

“Look it up while I give it a try, then,” Vell said. “There’s enough variations I’ll need to make a few attempts anyway.”

Vell tried to carve a ten-lined rune again, following the latest leads from Cane and the neurologists, while Isabel perused to research materials. Vell had made it to yet another failed rune when his door slammed open.

“Hey Vell,” Harley said breathlessly. “We got another info delivery.”

“Okay, put it over there with the rest,” Vell said, gesturing to a pile that was about ten feet wide and rapidly approaching the ceiling.

“You’re going to want to take this one personally.”

Vell didn’t bother questioning it. He stepped outside, put his hands on his hips, and stared towards the door.

“Just take it easy,” Samson said.

“I am barely capable of moving,” Helena said. “The onus is entirely on you.”

“You are being very rude to the man carrying you,” Samson said, as he hauled Helena towards a waiting wheelchair.

“We both know you wouldn’t drop me.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Samson said. He gingerly sat Helena down in the wheelchair, and helped her adjust it to her own comfort. She looked up from the controls just in time to see Vell looking down at her.

“Hey, Helena.”

“Harlan,” Helena said. She looked down at her lap, where the research papers were still stacked, and then back up. “Vell.”

He held out a hand. Helena lifted the papers towards Vell.

“That’s everything Kraid learned about the nature of gods,” Helena said. “The information is sparse, and hard to interpret, but it should...help.”

Vell took the stack of papers and gave them a quick scan. There wasn’t much, but what was present was more topical to the nature of life and gods than anything else Vell had seen so far.

“Thank you, Helena.”

“You’re welcome,” Helena said.

“Alright then,” Vell began. He put a hand on the documents and then pointed at the door. “I need to deal with this. And you need to deal with that.”

“Deal with-”

Helena struggled to turn her new wheelchair towards the door. The sound of a stack of papers hitting the floor provided an early clue. When Helena finally turned, she saw Joan standing in the door, documents scattered at her feet, with a smile on her face and rivers of tears already flowing down her cheeks.

“Oh no.”

Joan stepped on and over the papers as she sprinted to her sister, and fell to her knees by the side of the wheelchair. She stopped just long enough to look at Helena and let out a sobbing laugh before grabbing her, in the firm yet gentle embrace of someone holding something fragile, and pulling her in for a hug. Helena endured a few seconds of tears pouring into her shoulder before beginning to protest.

“Joan, please don’t drag this out,” Helena mumbled. “You know I can’t cry.”

“I know, that’s why I’m crying enough for both of us,” Joan sobbed. “Stupid.”

Whatever part of Helena’s body was supposed to be crying stung. She had arms, at least, and she used those to return Joan’s embrace.

“I’m sorry,” Helena mumbled, so quietly only Joan could hear. “I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry I let you down.”

“It’s okay,” Joan said. “It’s okay.”

Deep down, Helena wondered if she deserved that forgiveness. She didn’t think she did. But she had to take the chance at getting it anyway.

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An abandoned brace laid on the floor of a barren lab, amid shattered glass and debris. A skeletal arm reached down to grab it.

“Marsh, Marsh, Marsh,” Kraid said, as he pulled the brace up to examine it. “Is there something in the blood? Are you two descended from an ancient line of indecisive bastards?”

Kraid clenched his fist. The metal brace started to burn white hot and melt into a puddle that rapidly burned through the floor. He shrugged, and walked away from the molten metal.

“Fine then. Almost showtime anyway.”

With a snap of his fingers and a flare of green-black fire, Kraid was back in his lab. The laboratory began to shift, and the walls slid away, revealing the central chamber to what would’ve been the student work area, if there were any students left to work in it. Kraid’s divine prison stood like a crystalline monolith in full view of the rows of empty seats. He looked it over from top to bottom and saw no flaws in his design, no errors in its construction.

Everyone had abandoned Kraid, true. But he’d never needed them in the first place.

All that effort, and the only thing they’d deprived him of was an audience.