The tachyon's words hit me like a ton of bricks. The skin at the sides of my face tingled. I paused the memory, almost too terrified to continue. I rose from my seat, covering my mouth. Tears trickled down my cheeks, collecting on my thin beard.

"No…" I ran my hands through my hair, and paced around once in a tight circle.

"The Angel became the Sun. He didn't die. He returned to Paradise. He—"

"—Genneth…"

I turned to face Suisei. An empty theater's worth of seats spread out behind him. Memories streamed out from the camera in the room high up in the back, moving, wisp-like, toward the screen.

Suisei was crying, too. He looked at me with empathy and compassion.

I tried to speak, but I couldn't bring myself to make the words.

The Angel—Azon, our Angel, our God… He was dead.

"It can't be," I said. "It just can't." I didn't yell. I don't think I had enough spirit left in me to do it.

"It explains why the Sword was dying," Suisei said. "And… Ooüm had no reason to lie."

Shaking my head, I smiled a truly wretched smile. My voice cracked. "You know," I said, tightening a fist, "this is just my luck." I sniffled, and then conjured a tissue to wipe my face. "Just when I start to find my faith again, I learn that God was dead the whole time."

"The Moonlight Queen may yet live," Suisei said.

Turning around, I stepped back and flopped down into my seat. "We're still down two out of three. Two-thirds of God is dead."

I looked Dr. Horosha in the eyes. "You must realize what this means," I said. "If Azon died at Angelfall, then… all this time, it's all been for nothing. We've been worshiping a ghost." A tightness gripped my chest, as if a hand had squeezed around my heart. "Then… what was the point of it all?"

"To err is human," Suisei said, softly, "but to forgive is divine."

"I really wish Andalon was here right now," I said.

Like any other child, she was a handful, but, at the end of the day, she was worth it. She was my Angel. I only hoped that, through her greater self, she'd provide us with the guidance, wisdom, and mercy that our dead god never lived to give.

"Genneth…" Gently, Suisei put his hand on my left forearm. "In all likelihood, &alon is the Moonlight Queen."

I nodded heavily, flexing my toes in my loafers. "I'm well-aware of that. I want to say that that will be enough, but…"

"It will be," Suisei said. "We'll make it so. We all will."

Fidgeting with my bow-tie, I shook my head again, sat up straight, and exhaled. "Fricassee me, I don't know which I'm least looking forward to now: how my wife reacts to this, or how my daughter does."

I let the memory continue.

I empathized with Ooüm, with the pain He felt at the lost of His comrade.

No… the tachyon said. His wings folded back, literally shrinking away in horror. No…

The tachyon's voice fell to a whisper as meek and frail as the dying light in its geometric heart.

This cannot be…

"What is it?" Suisei whispered back.

Answer: They are all dead. Everyone we sent is dead. The mission was a failure.

"Mission?" Memory-Suisei and I spoke at almost exactly the same time.

The tachyon's light regained a little of its strength, but only a little. Its words echoed through the starry expanse.

Answer: A Singularity was discovered, designation Princess of Broken Memories. Under the leadership of Tachyon Azon, a detachment was dispatched to initiate diplomatic talks with the Princess. The data archived Azon's sword indicates the mission was a failure.

"How?" Suisei asked. "Why?"

Answer: The Princess' conditions could not be met. While en route back to In'dwen'el, the detachment was attacked by an entity of unknown origin An attempt was made to initiate diplomatic talks with the Entity. The attempt failed. The detachment was forced into combat. The result was defeat. Catastrophic defeat.

The tachyon's light flickered.

Warning: Horosha Suisei, the Entity is spreading. The Entity is spreading. It—

—Ooüm's entire body twitched, as if overburdened.

Processing…

Waves of dizziness wracked Suisei's body.

Processing…

The dizziness faded.

Response: Horosha Suisei, I have now designated Azon's findings priority Aleph. This is an emergency of the highest class. Disaster is imminent, if not already in progress. It is paramount that this superposition of his sword be delivered to In'dwen'el IMMEDIATELY. Broad dissemination of sword's data will maximize the likelihood of developing viable countermeasures. Notice: Having cross-referenced the data within Azon's blade against your memories and my prior, I have triangulated the proximate locations of your point of origin to within three standard deviations. Furthermore, the probability of your successful return to your point of origin is current within one-and-a-half standard deviations.

"I can go home?"

Suisei wept. The starlight hexilated through his tears.

Answer: With at least 86.6% probability, yes. However, before initiating transport, I require your assistance, Suisei.

"What the fudge?" I muttered.

"Me?" Suisei said, as startled in the memory as I was in the present. "How can I—"

—Answer: With Azon dead, the sword's superpositions will continue to lose power. Secondary power sources may slow this process, but its progression is inevitable. Regardless, the probability of you successfully conveying the sword-data to In'dwen'el is minimal. The last data entries within accessible superpositions of Azon's sword indicate the Princess of Broken Memories is in a fibered neighborhood of your original world-line. As such, if possible, I request you make contact with the Princess. The Princess' ability to freely move from world to world without the Tachyonim's restrictions would be of great use to you. With the Princess' assistance, the likelihood of successfully delivering Azon's sword to In'dwen'el is over 98%.

"Why me?" Suisei asked.

The tachyon's wings brightened. Their inner light coalesced, swarming with movement.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Answer: Though we travel far and wide, we Tachyonim cannot retrace our paths. Only to In'dwen'el may we always return. I have copied the sword-data into myself, and shall carry it as far as I can. The beings you previously encountered—designation Erboss-Tor—appear to possess great skill at spatiotemporal manipulation. Their assistance would be of great value. I will investigate this at once.

"I… I understand."

Response: Thank you, Horosha Suisei.

A rift opened between Suisei and the tachyon: a white scar on the star-studded dark.

Query: Horosha Suisei, do you have any remaining queries? I am aware that recent events have perturbed your—

—Wisps of glistening shadows licked at the rift through which Suisei had come. The darkness seemed to bubble.

The tachyon spread its wings wide. The ever-shifting polyhedron at its heart spun like mad, passing into a blur.

Observation: Here? How?

The rift burst open; torrents poured forth: flame, color, and darkness, streaming toward the tachyon's wings. An eggshell barrier enveloped Suisei and the tachyon. The shadows buffeted the barrier, bouncing off, but then they surged back close, mounting with a roar and then spilling down onto the gleaming egg. The ravenous streams overwhelmed the barrier in an instant, cracking it like a broken sky, shattering its light to dust.

"No!" Suisei screamed.

Order: Run!

The shining dark pierced Ooüm's body. His wings blackened and shriveled.

As His existence came undone, Tachyon Ooüm lashed out with his wings, flinging Suisei away with one, and opening a second rift with the other.

More darkness poured out, leaping onto the tachyon. Ooüm's voice screeched to a halt, drowning in silence as the great being crumbled away like veins on a burnt leaf.

"Just like Kléothag…" I muttered.

It truly was. The same evil was at work here.

The Sword's barrier flared to full power as it carried Suisei into the darkness of the new rift. The darkness didn't follow him; it went the other way, streaming toward Ooüm's crumbling remains.

The darkness pulled away from Suisei as he zoomed through the spatial tunnel, wicked off by his speed. In a matter of seconds, he was in the kaleidoscope again, surrounded by colors beyond description, spinning and spinning. A few seconds later, the colors faded while new details flared into view, spiraling just as wildly.

Earth and sea then tumbled across Suisei's vision. Sheets of heat and flame lapped at him, but did no harm, because the Sword's protections held them at bay.

The Sword flickered. Its movements slowed even further.

And then the barrier cut out altogether, loosing winds to roar in Suisei's ears, buffeting hair and eyes and cheeks. Soon, his spinning slowed enough for him to make sense of the world he glimpsed down below.

The view was familiar to us both; me, most of all.

I'd never forget when I first saw my city from the sky. It was when Pel and I had been departing on our honeymoon in Vaneppo, in what was my first-ever trip aboard an airline.

The ground was rushing toward him. Suisei saw the cresting surf ebbing with the inbound tide. He should have crashed—dying, horribly—but something within the Sword stirred, slowing his descent. He landed on his feet, on a beach, shuddering as he made the landing. The sand underboot melted and burbled, and then cooled and hardened into a silvery-white metal in the shape of a branching, rootlike dais. The transmutation hissed as it extended deeper into the sand, the dais expanding into an irregular block.

A sonic boom pulled Suisei's gaze upward just in time to glimpse a commercial aerostat liner rocketing into the stratosphere. The aircraft's warning lights flickered red and yellow, as if to welcome the sunrise arriving on the horizon, just above the sea. An Expressway stretched across the bare countryside behind him. A lone digital billboard rose up beside the mag-lev highway, flashing with the bright, colorful, and stupidly profitable characters of Monimega's Monster Mystic franchise.

Monster Mystic 17 — Coming Soon.

The video-game corporation's logo appeared on the darkening screen soon after, with the company's tag-line spelling itself out right below:

Monimega.

It's how you spell "Fun".

And then, like the Angel long before him, Suisei fell to his knees with the Sword in his hand, partially sinking its blade into the sand.

He knew he was home—or, at least near enough.

"This is my world?" I asked.

"Yes." Suisei nodded.

"But Tachyon Ooüm said He would send you home…"

"…with at least an 86.6% probability of success," Suisei added. "Unfortunately, I landed in the other 13.4."

"What happened after this?" I asked.

"I followed the road. Eventually, I ended up at Fort Marteneiss. I told them I'd been in a car accident. The people there were kind enough to help me get back on my feet." He chuckled. "It's funny. This world is so similar to my own that DAISHU's systems were able to recognize the data on my chip and verify my status as a high-ranking employee. Ironically enough, the cover story that my DAISHU had made for me to fool the rest of the world—that I worked in medicine with a specialization in infectious disease—ended up fooling your world's DAISHU."

"They really do trust their systems to a fault, don't they?" I said.

Suisei smiled. "Oh, you have no idea."

As Suisei had now made it to my world, I figured his tale had reached its end, or thereabouts.

I gripped my armrests. "Why did you want to show me all this?" I asked him. "And why did you wait? Why not tell the whole world?"

He frowned at me in disappointment. "We're caught up in something far, far bigger than anything anyone ever thought possible. I had the Sword, along with truths that would rock the world. Why wouldn't I be cautious?"

"I mean, yeah," I said. "I… I just wanted to hear it from you."

Suisei sighed. "In my world, I was a fraud: a doctor in name only, who made his living taking lives instead of saving them. My faith kept me centered, but only because I bent it to keep my conscience clear. I told myself I was doing the Godhead's work. The world was out of order; I saw myself as a force to help set it right. I thought I was on a mission from God." He laughed bitterly. "But then a god I never knew swept in and gave me a mission I never asked for."

"What did you do after arriving?" I asked.

Suisei set down his cup and popcorn bin and lowered his head in shame. "Nothing, Genneth. I did nothing—nothing except hide. I was like that for months. And then… then, the Green Death came." His voice dropped to a whisper.

There was a long pause.

"The only reason it took as long as it did for me to get infected was because I had a power that no one else in your world had. In my line of work, a static repulsion field is a standard precaution. I half considered going back and digging up the Sword, if only to use its powers to help me protect more people the way I protected myself. It might have used up the Sword's power in the process, but…—"

"—You would have failed Tachyon Ooüm then." I said.

"Yes. But worse than that," he said, "all I could think of was how useless I'd be to everyone—especially the Tachyonim!—if I was locked away as a raving lunatic? So… I bided what little time I had. I found a niche for myself in helping transformees. I was going to be drawn to their cause one way or another; it was inevitable. Other than the Sword, the transformees' powers were the only link your world had with my own. And then, I met you. Learning about Andalon put you on my map, and when I saw the power you drew from Andalon during the madness in that godforsaken Lobby, power I recognized from my travels… that was when I knew. That power was kindred with the Sword's. I could feel it radiating off you."

"That sensation," I said. "Sand blasting through your veins."

"Yes." Suisei sighed. "Andalon has to be the missing link: the Moonlight Queen; the Princess of Broken Memories."

"Yes," I said. "And now, thanks to you, I know more about the role she has to play."

"There's still so much I don't know. I no longer know if there is a God. I thought I did, once; perhaps, I still do. Maybe there was a God, once upon a time, but death took Him away from us and made all of our worlds into places of suffering and pain. I wonder: does God make faith, or does faith make God? Or fear? Or… love? But… I know I have my faith, wherever it might lead me, whatever form it ultimately takes. And that… that is why."

He sighed.

"Just watch."

A new memory played out in my mind-theater. We watched him standing on the beach beside the still-steaming dais, with the Sword clasped tightly in his hand. Drawing from its power one last time, he sent force-waves whirling onto the sand, carving out a deep, narrow hole next to the dais. Then he sank the Sword into the ground and filled the hole with sand, scooping it in with his hands and sweeping his palms across it until it was smooth, and hiding any trace of it, or the dais.

He walked for a long time after that, cold and sweaty in his tattered robes and scratched-up boots until he arrived at a car charging station, and began the unnerving drudgery of finding a place for himself in the world all over again.

"It was my luck that my double was about as well-stationed with DAISHU in your world as I had been in mine. It made getting my life back on track far less stressful than it could have been."

He burned the memory of Sword's location into his thoughts, along with the rest of his winding journey back to civilization.

And now, his thoughts were my thoughts.

"What? You mean…?"

"Yes, Genneth," he said. "I want you to have the Sword. It has to be you. It's the only way we can aid the Angels, and the Moonlight Queen. As Ooüm said, &alon has the ability to travel between worlds. The Hallowed Beast told you to flee. With &alon, you can, and you will. That's why you must recover the Sword. Take it with you. Find In'dwen'el. Meet the Angels." Suisei's lips quivered as he began to weep. "Though, I admit, you're far from perfect, as Dr. Marteneiss might say, 'I'm as sure as salt that your hands aren't the wrong ones.' I choose to put my faith in you, Genneth."

"Suisei…"

"It's almost too much to grasp," I said. "It doesn't feel real."

"The world is so much more than our home. If that feels like an overload, I suppose it's only because we have convinced ourselves that we're giants and that land, sea, and sky are ours to command, when the truth is, we are small. Even our gods are small. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that things seem tall only because there's an even vaster unknown casting a long shadow from someplace up above."

"What makes you think anyone can make a difference… least of all me?"

"It wouldn't be faith if I certain it was true. That's why I hope." He looked me in the eyes. "Find the Sword of the Angel, Genneth Howle. Use it, if you can, and spread its message. Share its warning; share &alon's. Please… stop this madness, if it can be stopped. For my world. For your world. For every world."

Pursing my lips, I nodded.

"I don't know if I can, Suisei," I said. "but… I know that I'll try." I clenched my fist. "I have to."

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