It took only two heartbeats before the phantasmagoria tunnel spat him out somewhere else; this time, the expanse of outer space.

On the other side lay a vast, star-spangled darkness. The stars twinkled all around, shining in all the colors that ever were. Clouds and ribbons of sprightly dust swept in masses and distant storms, like gleaming ink-puffs or the sound of music. Their stillness danced before his eyes.

I'd never get tired of looking at that.

The wave of exhaustion hit him a moment later. It wasn't as intense as it had been before, but it was still more than enough to knock him unconscious.

When he awoke, he was still floating, with the Sword hovering nearby, joined by the grilled hoverpede meat, which the zero-gravity had liberated from his pocket's confines.

"I don't want to think about what might have happened if I lost hold of the Sword. After all, its pataphysics were the only thing keeping me in a survivable, breathable atmosphere."

He ate half of a slice of hoverpede, and then grabbed the Sword by the hilt and opened a new rift. Unable to swim through the vacuum of space, Suisei cast out some threads to thrust himself into the rift. In doing so, he made sure not to draw on the Sword's powers in any way, lest something go awry and rip him to shreds.

"How did you survive?" I asked. "What if you ran out of food and were too exhausted to continue?"

"With every rift I made, the physical drain from using the Sword's world-hopping magic lessened. I must have been acclimating to the process."

His next destination was a world. He flinched at the sudden profusion of heat and light. Knowing what to expect, he braced himself for the coming wave of exhaustion, which brought him to his knees when it hit. A million miniature sharpnesses rasped at him through the tears in his armor, clothes, and leggings.

This time, however, he didn't pass out.

It was desert in every direction, glass and dust storming beneath a vermillion sky. Two and a half suns blazed overhead, the third straddled halfway on either side of the horizon. Massive, crystal formations dotted the desolation, their crooked tips piercing the naked sky.

I gasped.

Though naked—lifeless, cloudless, and calm—the sky was not empty. A creature blotted across it, miles tall and wide, black, violet, indigo, and umber.

It had four wings, rippled-feathered in reflective obsidian, dotted in wisps of green flame. Serpent's tail and dragon's maw. Four arms, splayed at its side. Breath of mist and teeth of ice. Malefic claws, sparking and vitrified.

It blinked at the desert world with an ocular trinity.

With a flick of its tail, the creature descended, approaching the sand like a falling cloud. Its looming shadow grew, its back and wings blotting out the suns.

It waved a hand, and then the Sword's magic sputtered and fell apart. Sand and wind and air too thin or hot to breathe washed over Suisei, making his vision blur. Holding his breath, he summoned the memory of the particle weave, drawing on the divine magic that flowed through his veins like the sand beneath his feet. His limbs grew heavy. With one, last, terrified gasp, he brandished the Sword and tore a rift through the air. A cooling breeze streamed through the break, reeking of rotten eggs.

The shadow fell over the gate, but Suisei didn't hesitate. He pulled himself across the glassy desert, toward the rift, thrusted his head into the life-giving stench and scrambled the rest of the way through. The sharp sand shredded his overcoat and rasped his body-armor raw. Innumerable cuts opened up on the skin of his knees and thighs, streaking blood on the ground, not that he cared about it in the slightest. He closed the gate as soon as he was through. The last thing he heard before passing into unconsciousness was the sound of many feet pitter-pattering against slick stone.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I wish I knew."

Suisei awoke on a broad square hammock. The soft, dry, spongy material flexed as he stirred, shaking him awake more quickly than he would have liked.

Everything smelled of rotting eggs. His breaths, his skin. The stench seeped into his corneas, encrusting itself in his dried tears. It was awful, but it was air, at least in all the ways that mattered.

But he wasn't alone. A gaggle of creatures clustered around him. They were twice his size, with half of it being width. They pitter-pattered in place, each an X of four legs with a humanoid torso jutting up through the center. The emotions—anxiety? anticipation?—shining through their fidgeting, seven-fingered hands were strange bedfellow with their heads, which were capped by fearsome horns, spikes, and bony ridges. Their clothes were something in-between cloth and leather, with earthy hues—greens and browns—bound to their bodies in tunics and bracers.

Looking down on his bandaged wounds, Suisei thanked them for nursing him back to health. Unfortunately, the language barrier was as thick as it was tall. The creatures responded with clicks and clacks that beat out in odd rhythms above a lively stream of falsetto moans.

"More… otherworlders?" I asked.

"Yes. They're just a drop in the ocean, Genneth. A drop in the ocean." Shifting around in his theater seat, Suisei sighed. "I had severely overestimated my mastery of the Sword's abilities. It would take many, many jumps before I started to develop a sense of direction. It was relatively easy for me to learn how to aim my jumps so that I landed on solid ground rather than in the vacuum of space. Learning to visualize my destination, and how my mindset affected the outcome of a jump, however, was not. Jumping too frequently strained my body, temporarily regressing my progress, as if my next few jumps were my first all over again. Because of that, and for my own safety, I had to learn how to conceal the Sword and its power's aura, especially for when I was out of commission after a particularly draining jump."

"Why?"

"Not everyone is friendly, Genneth. And, more often than not, the most common common denominator is a thirst for power."

I hesitated before asking my next question.

"Suisei…" I pursed my lips. "Just how long were you wandering like this?"

"Years." He paused. "As my skill increased, the worlds I visited started becoming more and more like my own. But my progress was an uphill battle, and a steep one at that. It was almost as if something was blocking my way. I could never quite close the gap."

"…Why are you showing me this?" I asked.

"Because I'm tired of the danger and the silence," he said. "Compared to what my world was before I was cast adrift, it was like I was in a house whose walls had been blown down. There's so much more out there than any of us can imagine; wonders beyond belief, and terrors that would send our nightmares scurrying in fear." He lowered his gaze, looking through me, now, rather than at me. Then, closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. "Truth be told, this is the first time in a long time that I've felt… safe." He ran his hand through his head. "I don't have to worry that something is watching me from the other side of the air."

"Technically," I said, "I'm the one doing that, now."

He snorted and chuckled. "Exactly my point." He sighed. "Now, I can speak without fear, and you, you can listen. This isn't just my story, Genneth. It belongs to everyone I encountered. It's our story, and I want it to be known, you most of all, because… I don't want it to be forgotten. Neither it nor myself." His features curled in disappointment and disgust. "I'll never know if I saved my world from the evil Zaina unleashed. As far as I know, I'm the only survivor. I don't want it to be lost forever. If I couldn't stop it from being destroyed, at least I can keep its memory burning bright."

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Nodding, I put my hand on Suisei's armrest. "You don't need to worry, Dr. Horosha, I'm…" I managed to smirk. "I'm quite good at remembering, especially history."

"So I've heard." He smiled, but then turned to face the screen. "But there's another reason I'm showing this to you."

"Yes?"

"Something wicked is on its way."

Bit by bit, almost imperceptibly at first, the worlds Suisei visited started to be linked by common motifs. Blue skies. Green plants. Dense cities. Mechanical marvels. Humanoid inhabitants. The process was laborious and hopelessly repetitive, but the patterns were undeniable.

"Whenever I arrived at a world reminiscent of our own, I noticed I tend to appear in more or less the same place: a quiet, sandy bight along the coast, out in the wilderness, not far from Elpeck—well… not far from whatever semblance of Elpeck I happened to find."

He opened to the appropriate pages in his memories, and I leafed through them one after another. It was a Theme and Variations, but with space and place as its playthings, instead of merely a tune. The idea of it echoed across most of the realities Suisei passed through: a minor bay with sandy beaches, girded at the side by hairy bluffs. Sometimes castles and battlements abutted the shore. Sometimes the hills were alive with cave-dwellers. Sometimes, it was the waters themselves that lived—a churning, ever-evolving polymorphic collage. Sometimes the sea was little more than a shallow reflecting pool edgelessly stretching across the horizon.

Once, he found a sea impaled by stony spires that pierced through a pall of fog. Wide-winged shadows darkened that fog, cast by great beasts soaring somewhere beyond, basking in the warmth of the mist-hidden sun. But through it all, the essence of the place remained the same; the echoes of a grievous wound dealt somewhere in time.

"I liked to think of them as echoes of Angelfall," he said.

With each jump, the Sword dimmed a little more. Its silver tarnished into a lusterless gray. Its winding loxodromes slowed to a near stand-still.

"My hopes died along with the Sword," Suisei said. "I became so desolate that, when the decay started to set in, at first, I thought my own pessimism had been at fault. After all, I'd long since learned that my mindset and mood had an effect on the destinations of my jumps."

"Decay?" I asked.

"See for yourself."

He liked saying that.

And see, I did. It was subtle at first: a defilement that started to besmirch the worlds Suisei passed through. First it was dark clouds and empty cities, or haunted landscapes bereft of any life. But then the contamination deepened. We saw darkness pooled on broad prairies. It flowed in rivers, digging canyons through landscapes. In later realities, it bottomed out in continent-swallowing abysses. Then entire worlds. We saw broken mountains' fragments bobbing in the liquid shadow like flotsam on the sea.

Just looking at it made me shiver.

Something wicked this way comes, I thought.

"I kept thinking that if I could find the world of the first Angelfall, maybe I could find something to explain all of this. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done."

"Why?"

"I don't know if there even is a 'first' Angelfall," he said.

"Then how did you make it here?" I asked.

Suisei closed his eyes and laid his arms on the armrests. "Genneth, I'm focusing on a particular memory. Can you sense it?"

"Yes."

It was kind of like highlighting a particular recording on the master list of the DVR on your TV console. Focusing on it shredded to pieces the memories currently playing on the theater's screen.

Suisei stood beside a lonely shore, Sword in hand, as he cut a new rift in spacetime. In the early days of his journey, each portal he'd opened had been a miracle. But now… it was just another workday. It discomforted him that something so extraordinary now felt so banal to him. Another week, another spatial rift, another world, and—in all likelihood—another dead end.

But this time, something different happened: the rift pulled him in, casting him into another starry void.

As he floated in the void, something unfurled. An entity blossomed into being. Grand wings of fractured light shook themselves free from the starry firmament. They came to rest folded upon and through one another, enclosing a fiery, auric column that shot out above and below, and further still, piercing through aboveness itself, and belowness as well.

Suisei muttered prayers on his frigid lips, though there was no air to carry the sound.

And yet, he breathed.

The wings opened like a lotus flower, rippling out waves of heat. An obsidian polyhedron gyrated at the center of the wings, rotating through unseen geometries. The wings' grandeur reflected brightly in the object's flawless surface.

Rising from my comfortable seat, I got down on my knees and made the Bond-sign.

I knew an Angel when I saw one.

Then, Suisei heard a voice that was not a voice. Euphonious chords rang broad and long and gentle in Suisei's thoughts—and, somehow, he knew them to be words.

Query: Tachyon Azon?

Its voice was like Kléothag's.

But then the warmth of the sound sieved itself away.

The wings twitched.

Observation: Negative. You are not Azon.

Embers swarmed throughout the space, dancing around Suisei with their slow-fading trails.

The voice's almost mechanical affect meshed strangely with the grandeur of its sound.

Demand: Please identify yourself, Sophont, it said. Query: Why do you bear Azon's sword? Have you—

"—A-Azon…" I stammered, awed.

Suisei nodded. "The Angel's name," he said, softly.

In the memory, Suisei was even floored. He'd made the connection that Azon had to be the Holy Angel.

"—Please, Lord," he begged, "Holy Angel Azon… forgive me." begged. He closed his eyes and lowered his head. "I did not act with malice. I am lost! I—"

—Error.

"Wha…?"

Answer: I am not Tachyon Azon, I am Tachyon Ooüm.

"I don't understand."

Noted.

"T-Tachyon?"

Answer: Noun. Singular: Tachyon. Plural: Tachyonim; also, Tachyons. Definition: The variety of beinghood to which I, Azon, and the other Tachyonim belong. To the best of our knowledge, we—

Plural?

"There's… there's more than one Angel?" The revelation left him stunned.

I felt the memory of Suisei's awe as deeply as if it was my own. The revelation had changed everything for him. It nearly broke him.

The very essence of his faith had just been upended, and God Itself, no less. More than any of the wonders he'd witnessed, the knowledge that there was more than one Angel—more than one tachyon—left him rootless, without a paradigm.

Light flashed across Ooüm's body.

—Warning: Sophont, I detect high levels of somatic stress within you. This will be noted. Query: Are you in need of assistance?

"Yes!" Suisei yelled.

Noted.

There was a brief pause.

Query: Sophont, are you aware that the sword you bear is a fragment of Tachyon Azon?

Suisei stared at the Sword.

"Yes," he said.

Query: Is Tachyon Azon of significance to you?

"Yes!"

Noted, Ooüm said. Proposition: I will provide you with assistance in exchange for information pertaining to Tachyon Azon. Do you accept?

"Yes!" Suisei yelled. He racked his brain, gathering up as many details of what had happened as he could find.

"I… I have not encountered Azon, Holy Angel." Suisei lowered his head to the galaxies below. "I was swallowed by a hole in space after I found y—… Azon's Sword." He reflected back to the incident in Zaina's penthouse. "There was a monster made of faces. And then I arrived on another world, with the Erboss-Tor—"

—Query: What are Erboss-Tor?

"Aliens."

Query: Foreigners?

"No!" Suisei shouted, with a wave of his free hand. "Extraterrestrials! Beings from another world!"

Noted.

Suisei couldn't believe he'd just yelled at God.

Angel, forgive me, he thought.

He inhaled sharply, breathing in the fresh air provided by the Sword's magic, trying to calm himself. The somewhat tattered robes he'd made for himself undulated around him, unbound by gravity.

"The Erboss-Tor said they were once God," he added.

Observation: Interesting, Ooüm said. This will be noted.

Suisei hoped that extra detail would mollify Ooüm.

He lowered his head again. "Please, Lord, forgive me for yelling at you. I know I am unworthy. I—"

—The fractured light of the tachyon's wings spread out, enclosing Suisei like a curtain.

Notice: Please be at ease, sophont. I bear neither judgment nor malice. I am an observer and chronicler. If I have caused you any discomfort, I sincerely apologize.

Suisei stared, mouth agape, weeping profusely. He tried to speak, but all he could make were gurgling noises.

God (a god? Part of God?) had just apologized to him. He'd heard many sermons in his life. Unfortunately, none of them had prepared him for this.

Observation: It appears I have exacerbated your distress. This is most unfortunate. Hypothesis: Perhaps expediting the analysis will curb your distress.

In that moment, Suisei felt as if everything had turned to sand.

Notice: Please remain calm, sophont, Ooüm urged. The tachyon's voice was like the Light itself. I am analyzing you and Azon's sword.

The obsidian polyhedron at the heart of Ooüm's wings glowed and spun.

Suisei felt as if he was back among the Erboss-Tor. There was just a whiff of dizziness. He closed his eyes as thoughts and memories bubbled up bright from the muck of his thoughts.

Ooüm's voice echoed in his mind. Observation: You understood Azon as a deity. Noted. Your distress is understandable.

Suisei's eyes fluttered open. The invisible presence probing through his mind passed down his arm and onto the Sword.

Abruptly, the tachyon flung its wings back, as if recoiling. The movement cast twining auroras off into the starry void.

Dead! Ooüm shrieked. It was grating and dissonant. It scraped over Suisei's mind like severed beaks on stone. His whole body shivered.

The spinning polyhedron stopped in its tracks to shine with a dark, dreadful light.

Azon is dead!

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