“You think you’d be better?” Just Lore’s voice, now. They faded in and out of each other, her and the god.
“Better than you,” Dani snarled, hands clenched over her stomach, her shirt becoming a mess of red. “Better than Them, and better than the Fount. That’s all you’re doing. Going back to something that never worked.”
Like Raihan said. As long as there were mortals, as long as there was free will, there would be evil.
You can fix that.
“I can think of one way to make it better.” Lore let the blade drop to the floor. “For me, at least.”
She reached out. She pushed.
Dani didn’t realize how close she was to the edge. She pinwheeled, trying to regain balance that was long since gone, and then she tumbled over the lip of the cliff. One scream, swiftly silenced by the first rocky outcropping, a meatythunkas she hit it.
The rest of her tumble to the sea was quiet.
Lore’s vision spun in and out, like looking through a constantly adjusting telescope. Sometimes, she saw herself as if gazing down from above; other times she looked out from her own eyes. It was disorienting, made her stumble. Her limbs felt too heavy and too light; she lurched over the ground when she tried to walk. Hit her knees, grit digging deep into the skin.
A glimmer of familiar feeling. Bastian. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him, his sudden panic. “Lore!” His voice wasn’t audible, but she heard it anyway, echoing in her skull. “Lore, you have to fight Him off—”
You won.
Apollius’s voice sounded so smug. So pleased.
You got Me out of Bastian. You lived when you should not have.
Lore stumbled from the cave but didn’t fall. She didn’t know how she made it to the grassy knoll, her body moving of its own accord as she fought to gather up the pieces of herself and knit them whole. Endless cycles, endings that began again. Apollius dug in like a snake to its nest, curled around the very foundations of her.
You averted the apocalypse.
So much blood on her hands. The villages, Anton, Jean-Paul, now Dani. She’d been the architect of so many small apocalypses.
She ran through the island, reeled back to the Fount, still singing. It sounded triumphant; why did It sound happy about this?
Apollius wasn’t trying as hard with her. She knew that instinctually, knew that every movement of her own was only because He allowed it. Why? What made her different from Bastian?
You’re smarter than him. You look out for yourself. You’re far more like Me than he ever was.
“No,” she moaned, crashing through underbrush, dead branches whipping at her face.
Yes, Apollius said.You can make the world in your image. Better than your image. In a Holy Empire, there is no war. When everyone is brought under one rule, Our rule, they will be better for it.
Lore fell to her knees again, this time on the mossy, broken stone of the courtyard. The voice of the Fount stopped singing and spoke instead.
Almost done.
Soothing, like a hand in her hair.
You’ve done well. We knew you would. It’s been so long since We held power; We need a cup to pour from, in order to catch it all. Now give back what you have, wait for the others to bring you what remains. Then you can rest, Lore.
If Apollius could hear the Fount whispering to her, He gave no sign. He nestled into her mind, gold stringing through her limbs, gold all she could see when she blinked.
Lore staggered toward the Fount.
She nearly fell in; Lore braced her hands on the Fount’s edge, her nails breaking further with the force of her grip.
Go on, Apollius said.
Go on, the Fount urged.
