Everybody We Hate
The escape worked.
That was the nicest possible description of it.
Noctis Arquen hit the ground on his knees.
Then his hands.
Then very nearly his face.
Behind him, the last rectangular fracture of Infinite Ledger snapped shut.
Gold equations remained in the air for half a second.
PAYMENT DATE: ∞
They flickered.
Then one changed.
PAYMENT DATE: APPROACHING
Noctis stared at it.
"Oh, fuck off."
The equation vanished.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Nobody celebrated.
They had escaped Discordia.
That was not the same thing as surviving her.
The place Ilyon had brought them to had once been a dead universe.
Now it looked more like a hospital someone had built inside the corpse of one.
Broken gods lay across black platforms.
A few remained conscious.
Most probably regretted it.
Veydras Miekō lay on his back near the edge.
His eyes were open.
Barely.
Noctis noticed.
"No."
Veydras's lips moved.
No sound came out.
Noctis crawled closer.
"I said no."
Veydras tried again.
"...didn't ask."
Noctis stared at him.
"Excellent. Your personality survived."
Veydras breathed once.
It sounded terrible.
His body had been stabilized enough to prevent immediate death, but stabilization was being generous.
One shoulder sat lower than the other.
His ribs had been reconstructed badly enough that breathing remained an argument.
His hands were wrapped separately and placed where nobody could accidentally touch them.
One eye had swollen almost completely shut.
The other looked at Noctis.
"We need... someone."
"No."
Veydras blinked.
Noctis sat down beside him.
"We have just escaped a primordial calamity through a Domain I discovered while approximately one heartbeat from dying."
He pointed weakly behind himself.
"My newest ability is already threatening to send me an overdue notice."
Noctis lowered his hand.
"We are going to lie here."
Veydras breathed.
"No."
Noctis closed his eyes.
"I hate you."
"I know."
Ilyon Vareth sat against a collapsed support structure nearby.
Blood had dried beneath both nostrils.
He lifted his head.
"There is someone."
Noctis opened one eye.
"No."
"The Epithet."
That eye opened farther.
Veydras's did too.
Noctis stared at Ilyon.
"Anixiety."
Ilyon nodded.
Noctis considered it.
Then looked offended by the fact that he was considering it.
"I have spent an unreasonable portion of my existence opposing the Continuum Concord."
Ilyon replied, "Yes."
"I helped found an organization whose long-term objectives are, depending on which member you ask, dismantling their authority, dismantling existence, or making the paperwork sufficiently miserable that authority dismantles itself."
"Yes."
"And now your proposal is that we call management."
Ilyon looked around at the wounded gods.
"Yes."
Noctis sighed.
"Unfortunately, that's a very good proposal."
Veydras's eye moved toward him.
Noctis continued.
"Which means I hate it."
The Epithet.
Not merely another military officer.
Not merely another god.
The kind of name armies rearranged themselves around.
And if what the surviving records said about Anixiety's authority was accurate, merely anticipating the wrong outcome around her could become dangerous.
Discordia had power.
Anixiety had the sort of authority that made fear itself worth auditing.
Noctis rubbed blood away from his mouth.
"She also hates us."
Ilyon shrugged.
"Less than we hate dying."
A voice farther down the platform answered.
"Sorrow."
They looked over.
One surviving Syndicate officer had managed to sit upright.
Half her armor was missing.
Noctis frowned.
"What about her?"
"Karma is dead."
The room became quieter.
Even now, that sentence sounded structurally incorrect.
Karma.
Dead.
Not defeated.
Not temporarily stopped.
Not waiting for reality to remember its favorite answer.
Dead.
The officer continued.
"The cell holding Sorrow was his."
Noctis's expression sharpened.
She was right.
The Karmaic Cell had never behaved like a conventional cage.
Sorrow could escape.
That was the cruelty of it.
Every exit worked.
Every successful route became another way of returning to the prison.
But if the authority sustaining that arrangement had actually suffered physical and spiritual death—
Noctis looked toward Ilyon.
Ilyon finished the thought.
"She may be free."
"May," Noctis corrected.
"That's enough."
"No. That's the sort of word that gets people killed."
Ilyon looked at Discordia's damage across the wounded.
"I believe we've passed that stage."
Noctis had no response to that.
Sorrow.
A god whose darkness did not merely attack an event.
It mourned what should have happened next.
Against ordinary Chaos, that distinction was vicious.
Karma had learned how to answer it.
Discordia—
Noctis stopped.
Would Discordia even use Chaos in a form Bereavement recognized?
He didn't know.
That had become the most dangerous sentence in existence.
Veydras moved.
Barely.
His wrapped hand shifted a fraction across the platform.
Noctis immediately leaned over him.
"Don't."
Veydras ignored that.
"Neither."
Ilyon looked toward him.
"Neither what?"
"Anixiety."
A breath.
"Sorrow."
Another.
"Not first."
Noctis frowned.
"You have a better suggestion?"
Veydras's functioning eye stared at the ceiling.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Noctis almost thought he'd lost consciousness.
Then Veydras whispered:
"ACT."
Noctis went still.
Ilyon frowned.
"The Anti-Chaotic Faction?"
Veydras closed his eye.
"Yes."
Noctis knew the files.
Everyone did by now.
A group of anomalies that had somehow developed the habit of surviving things reality had filed under obviously fatal.
Karma's son.
The swordsman.
The Glitched Child.
Access Denied.
And—
Noctis looked at Veydras.
"You've fought them."
"One group."
Veydras swallowed.
His throat hurt badly enough that Noctis saw it.
"The son."
"Kaosu."
"Annoying."
Somewhere beneath the pain, Veydras almost sounded irritated.
Noctis smiled faintly.
"That sounds like him."
"The swordsman."
"Raiyo."
"Worse."
Ilyon raised an eyebrow.
Veydras continued.
"Cut routes around my hands."
A pause.
"Kept removing positions I needed."
Noctis remembered the reports.
Raiyo's Semantic Cuts did not need to win a contest of raw force if they could sever the relationship supporting whatever he wanted gone.
Against Veydras, that meant denying the touching hand the route it needed.
Useful.
Not enough.
Noctis looked back down.
"And Nyxus?"
Veydras's expression changed slightly.
"Problem."
That earned a weak laugh from Ilyon.
"Very detailed."
Veydras ignored him.
"Denied things that should happen."
Noctis nodded.
"Still not enough for Discordia."
"No."
Veydras opened his eye again.
"The mentor."
Silence.
Noctis leaned slightly closer.
"Aoikishi?"
Veydras stared past him.
For the first time since waking, something other than pain occupied his face.
Memory.
"I watched the others."
His breathing hitched.
He waited until his body allowed another sentence.
"Kaosu was dangerous."
Another breath.
"Raiyo was troublesome."
Another.
"Nyxus was wrong."
Noctis waited.
Veydras's eye sharpened.
"But Aoikishi..."
He stopped.
The silence after his name became strangely heavy.
Noctis asked, "What did he do?"
Veydras answered immediately.
"Nothing."
Ilyon frowned.
Veydras looked at him.
"That was the problem."
Noctis understood before Ilyon did.
Veydras had spent longer than most civilizations existed studying threats.
Movement.
Energy.
Intent.
Reaction.
The little habits powerful people acquired when they were certain nothing present could punish them.
He had looked at ACT.
Measured Kaosu.
Measured Raiyo.
Measured the others.
And their mentor had stood there—
doing almost nothing.
Veydras whispered:
"He knew what I was."
Noctis's expression changed.
"Before you told him?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I don't know."
That sentence, coming from Veydras, mattered.
Veydras continued.
"He watched my hands."
A weak breath.
"Not afraid."
Another.
"Not curious."
Veydras swallowed.
"Familiar."
Noctis felt something unpleasant settle beneath his ribs.
Ilyon did too.
Veydras closed his eye.
"I think..."
His voice nearly disappeared.
Noctis lowered himself enough to hear it.
"I think there may be one person capable of beating her."
Noctis waited.
Veydras opened his eye.
"His name is Aoikishi."
Ilyon exhaled slowly.
"And if he refuses?"
Veydras looked at the bodies surrounding them.
"Tell him what woke up."
Noctis's expression hardened.
"He may not know what Discordia is."
Veydras stared at him.
Then, despite the broken body—
despite the barely functioning lungs—
Veydras smiled.
It was not a pleasant smile.
"I think he will."
Noctis didn't like that answer.
Which was becoming something of a theme.
He forced himself to stand.
His legs disagreed.
Noctis billed the disagreement to later.
Not infinity.
He had learned enough about that word for one day.
"Ilyon."
Ilyon stood.
"Find ACT."
Ilyon nodded.
Noctis looked down at Veydras.
"You're not coming."
Veydras's eye narrowed.
"You cannot walk."
Nothing.
"You can barely speak."
Still nothing.
"Half your internal structure is currently being held together by three gods, a compensatory exchange, and my personal resentment."
Veydras blinked.
"Coming."
Noctis stared at him.
Then sighed.
"Of course you are."
Far behind them, something impossible shifted.
Every surviving Chaotic reading in the dead universe pointed in the same direction.
Not toward Karma.
Not anymore.
Noctis turned.
Veydras did not.
He already knew.
"Find Aoikishi," Veydras whispered.
Then his eye closed.
"Before she remembers why she was angry."