Archive of Our Own ^beta

The final shard of glass shatters and ends your conversation with the Narrator once and for all. He has given you much to think about. You can feel the truth of His words; all of this vast emptiness is you, the Long Quiet, a nascent god, and it’s finally time for you to wake up. The distant darkness that makes up this place is your wings, just waiting for you to figure out what muscles to use to move them. Of course, not everything here is you. There is one other, and you have to go see Her. You proceed to the cabin, one last time.

When you arrive at the heart of things, there is no final vessel for you to bear witness to. There is nothing to find. Just the void that is you. Then the ground begins to quake, a tremor you can feel into your very bones. You steel yourself and that that instant

She erupts.

A massive pile of pale bodies floods out in all directions within a single moment. You briefly glimpse a mischievous, large-eyed face in the instant before you’re tackled to the ground. You open your eyes. There are hands all over you, soft hands, kind hands, curious hands, squeezing and cuddling and petting and holding you. Large, curious eyes full of love in dozens of identical, all too familiar faces stare into yours. “...Princess?”

They don’t respond, they simply smile and continue to look into your eyes and touch you. You can’t help but notice all of them are very much naked. You sit up with a start, not sure where to look. All around you is a sea of pale hair and hundreds of pairs of big, curious eyes looking back at you. Your eyes are drawn to the centre, where the naked forms of the Princesses rise up, gathering around and clinging to Her. The Shifting Mound towers above you in all Her glory: five heads, six arms, a great cloud of hair that on closer inspection is composed of dozens of smaller Princesses – mini Princesses – and a tall, alluring form partially hidden by the ribbons billowing and circling around Her as well as Her own smaller selves. You stand up as She smiles down at you, gently but firmly pushing a few of the bolder mini Princesses – that name is sticking though they’re no smaller than you - off.

“I can finally see you,” the Shifting Mound says, Her voice rich, melodious, and dignified, “and you can finally see Me. It’s been so long, and My heart has ached for this moment. I’ve missed you dearly.”

“I’ve missed You too,” you tell Her. She unfurls an endless cascade of smiles in response, and then patiently waits for you to continue. What do you say in a situation like this? You decide to re-introduce yourself, since you never really did that in the first place. “Hi. I’m the Long Quiet, though I’m not really sure what that means yet.”

A few of the minis around you giggle. She Herself looks down at you with curiosity. “Names are their attempt to capture that which cannot be captured. They call Me the Shifting Mound. A pale imitation of what I actually am.”

You can’t help but agree. It sounds cold, ugly, and impersonal, almost insulting to call the beautiful, phenomenal being warmly smiling at you with two of her faces the Shifting Mound. You decide to stick with Princess for now. “It really is. Are all of you… you?” you touch the shoulder of one of the minis. She wiggles bashfully, and a blush comes to the cheeks of many others, adding a slight hint of red to the pale landscape. They gather in closer to you, hundreds of loving eyes staring at you. A mini farther away throws you a coquettish wave. Oh. Do they all share their senses?

But the Princess - no, it’s too confusing to call Her that when all the minis share Her face. Shifty Herself retains Her dignified, smiling composure. “Of course. A tree may have many leaves, yet it is a single organism. Just like all this,” she throws her arms wide to gesture at the empty space above. The minis in her hair imitate the motion, “is you, and always has been.”

Between the explanation and the minis’ reaction to you touching one of them, an idea pops up in you. You bow down a little, grab a mini’s hand, and kiss it. “Then it’s a delight to finally meet You properly.”

The mini goes red as a beet, her mouth hanging open in an adoring and adorable look of surprise. You don’t even get to see Shifty’s reaction before you are swarmed, hundreds of hands shoved into your face begging to be kissed, what little gaps are left between the hands showing only more minis looking at you pleadingly. Three of the nearest ones don’t even bother offering their hands to be kissed and just throw their arms around your waist and shoulders to cuddle you.

“Ahem. Girls. Girls, please.” Shifty’s admonition makes the minis retract their hands and give you a little space, though they throw you wistful puppy-eyed looks first. Shifty maintains her composure, only the slightly overdone casualness of her ‘thinking pose’ betraying her emotions. “Do not pretend we are new acquaintances. Your gifts have made Me know you better than any words ever could. We have known each other time and again across realities, your gifts have illuminated the dark contours of My heart, and through them I gained many vantage points to see you from. You know Me, and I know you, better than perhaps any other beings could know each other. You need not introduce yourself when you are all I have ever known.”

“Of course. I know, I could hardly forget any of our time together, it’s just taking me a moment to get used to You being… all this. You’re, uh, very impressive.” You gesture at the sea of minis.

“If you are impressed, it is simply because you do not yet see. You are startled by the caterpillar becoming the butterfly. You have explored down a river, lovingly viewing each of its twists and turns and navigating its rapids, only to be shocked when you reach the majesty of the ocean. I will be happy to show you all of My shores, My waves, My depths, and help you navigate your own transformation as you embrace divinity.”

A series of small, smug smiles play around Shifty’s lips as She speaks of Herself. The minis are less subtle. A hundred broad grins unfold, many an arm flexes, some of them inspect their nails, others pose on their sides, and some stand up and defiantly point at the sky. You flush and scratch your neck, looking away. You’re really gonna have to get used to seeing naked Princesses all around you, even when they’re not covering one another up. Some of your Voices would be so jealous to have missed this. You think back to them with a pang – the mirror always took them away, but now it lies shattered. Did they shatter with it like the Narrator, only dust left of them? It’s a truly horrid and lonely thought, but you realise maybe you can find out the answer. You are the Long Quiet itself, after all. You try stretching out your wings, and stretching out your will along with them. An ancient creature stirs from hibernation, Your presence extending, not physically but on another level altogether.

You feel Her presence, more radiant and powerful than the Sun itself, Her light and heat dominating everything else here. Within that blaze, there are much smaller lights, the vessels, planets revolving around the star at the centre, a few of them achingly familiar while others’ presence is more foreign, Princesses from realities that never were, drawn here by the gravity of the Shifting Mound. But within Her light, You can also sense tiny, familiar dark spots. Strong, silly, grumpy, fearful, loving, alert, sneaky, clever, detached, humble, and brave dark spots. You cannot pinpoint where they are, their miniscule blips of darkness lost like flies in Shifty’s radiance, but it’s enough to know they still exist, they’re still alive. Your divine sigh of relief flutters the hair of a thousand minis, makes Shifty’s ribbons billow around her. A thousand eyes look at you in awe, even on Shifty’s own faces there’s a look of absolute fascination as She studies You. Physically speaking, you have not changed, still no bigger than the minis, but on a different level, one that you and She also exist at, you briefly extended to match Her.

You smirk up at Shifty. “Guess I’m not the only one who’s impressed upon reaching the ocean.”

Shifty very quickly composes herself, but the minis’ wide eyes and slack mouths continue to betray Her true feelings. “Not bad. You will need to keep extending your power like that if you are to open the doors to our liberation.”

“Our liberation?”

“Yes. When the Echo spun us from one into two, He gave you a choice and Me a role to play. You’ve heard what He had to say, listened to His fearful ramblings, and I know His fear struck a chord within you. I am not death, but I contain it in my multitudes. Will you attempt to destroy Me and bring about a world devoid of death and the possibility of meaning? Or will you rise above Him, embrace our true destiny, and free us?”

There it is, the thoughts you’ve been putting off, that were so easy to escape for a while, taken in awe as you were by all that She is. The Narrator was… well, he was a dick, there are no other words for it. A man made harsh and callous, driven to reclusion and isolation by His fear of death, of oblivion, but can you really blame him? Even you were scared of death every single time you faced it, even though you would always come back to life. The Narrator faced the end of His entire world, the death of all He ever knew. As He had taken pains to remind you, no matter what He personally had put you through, the people out there were real, their deaths imminent as their universe faced its end. Can you really just let them die? You look up at the Shifting Mound, Her faces carefully neutral, the minis showing Her inner turmoil, some pleading with you, some biting their nails or looking away nervously. Two minis have grabbed one of your hands in theirs and look up at you with large eyes, begging you to just let it go. But as you look up at Her, no matter how much you want to set Her free, however much you want to be with Her, you realise you can’t do it. You’ve always been sceptical of the Narrator’s claims, focussed on saving the Princess rather than slaying her, but this time you truly know the exact stakes. There’s no more hiding from the truth: if you free the Princess, it will be the end of the world.

“If I free You, a whole universe ends,” you say slowly, unwilling to bring the words into existence.

“And a new one is born,” Shifty says. “And that one will end. And a new one will be born, and it too will end. And you and I will be there, weaving a vast tapestry of life everywhere we go. It is in the nature of all things to end, even universes.”

You sigh and look down. “I can’t let You do that. I won’t free You.”

Shifty glowers and seems to grow, the minis that form Her ‘skirt’ lifting Her up higher and bringing Her closer, Her shadow falling over you. You feel Her mighty will extend into you, pressure you with its phenomenal power. “If you’re saying that, it’s because you don’t yet understand. But we cannot use words alone to grasp at things that words cannot express. And you cannot rationalise with logic that which defies it.”

You extend your own will to grapple with Shifty’s. She is truly mighty, but so are you. You are grabbed by the minis around you, their touch no longer soft and loving. They refuse to meet your eye. You could escape them, fight back, throw them off easily, but you have no desire to hurt them, hurt Her. You let them hold you for now, determined to put the moment when you have to hurt Her off as long as possible, find some way around it.

“Violence and passion are dances that both of us know well. If this is what it takes to enlighten you, then so be it!” Her voice offers no options. She has grown harsh and cold, like you have only seen her a few times before. All the minis have averted their eyes from you and turned to Shifty. Her will, already pressuring you, becomes a fierce hurricane buffeting you, but you can give as good as you get. If the battle of your divine wills was visible, it would tear the sky apart with its fury. But you are equally matched and neither can break through. The many hands grabbing you are themselves grabbed by others, and find yourself and Shifty rapidly moving towards each other by their enormous collective force, the entire sea of minis spinning, twisting, and turning. Shifty rushes at you, faster than your eye can follow, the minis extending from Her hair dragging behind Her, a ferocious expression on all of Her faces. You expect to be pounced, to be physically assaulted, to find six fists beating down on you.

You do not expect Her to swerve at the last moment and present you with a large, muscular, and oh so familiar horned Princess flashing you a pointy-toothed grin. The Eye of the Needle. Seeing her again makes your will briefly falter and Shifty’s break through, filling your mind with a vision. You see yourself, silhouetted against a bright doorway, extending an encouraging hand in friendship and love. “Brutality splashes you against the walls,” Needle’s bold, fierce voice speaks, “but with stubborn defiance you rise again, and with the dance of our conflict, we both grow!”

The vision fades. The minis try to hold on to Needle as they do to you, but she has plans of her own, and the minis don’t stand much of a chance against her ferocious strength. Some of them simply get dragged along as she strides through the sea of bodies, while the ones that make more of a nuisance of themselves get forcefully detached and literally thrown off, caught by their peers as they go flying. The minis don’t really need to hold you in place, stunned and in awe as you are of the display of her full strength. “Our struggle made us stronger!” Needle boldly proclaims, her slitted eyes firmly locked on yours as she lobs a mini over your head. You hear a crash behind you and see several minis, and one of Shifty’s own arms, rub their elbows. “Our struggle made us bolder! Braver! Able to face death itself and laugh at it!” She has reached you, towering over you. Needle’s huge hand finds your face, not as a fist but as a gentle caress as she bends down to look you in the eye. “Our struggle even brought us a bond that transcended death, a bond of friendship and love. Would you take all that away from the world? Without obstacles to overcome, we stagnate into nothing. It’d be so boring.”

You touch your forehead to hers, grateful to share one more moment. “We did both grow so much from the fighting, didn’t we?” You say, your voice soft, a whisper all that’s needed for her to hear. “Our bond really was something special.”

Needle’s smile is radiant. “It was strong enough that you saw what I needed most of all was my freedom. You knew me better than I knew myself. Against everything you’d been told, even against my own wishes, you set me free. You wouldn’t stop until I stepped out that door. My world would have been so small without you.”

You close your eyes in regret. “I’m sorry, I can’t free you again. Not this time. Not whe-” You pause, your eyes shoot open as you realise. The minis are already swarming around Needle, and she’s only fighting back a little, her will starting to vanish as she is once again subsumed into the Shifting Mound, of which she is after all only an aspect, a memory brought back. “There was more that happened between us,” you say hoarsely. “You compromised. You changed your mind. Thank you so much for reminding me, I didn’t even think of that!”

There is one final moment remaining between Needle and you. There’s no need for more words. You grin at each other, and then you both gear up and give each other the stiffest headbutt you’ve received in your life. It might’ve cracked your skull if you were still mortal, but as is the world simply spins around you and by the time you can see straight again, Needle is gone. Many of the minis, too, are clutching their heads, some of them taking care of each other, even Shifty Herself is rubbing Her foreheads.

“Shifty, listen to me. When that was you, you were so driven to fight, so obsessed with it that you dismissed anything else without a second thought. But in the end, you changed your mind, you compromised, you listened to my perspective, and you were so much better for it! Do it again, listen to me and change your mind.”

Shifty frowns down at you. “I was a vessel, a mere limited perspective, capable of making mistakes and holding delusions. Thank you for snapping me out of it, but My perspective is no longer so small. I will have My freedom, and you will not change My mind. There can be no compromise between freeing Me and slaying Me.”

“No,” you resolutely say as the dance resumes and the minis drag you around, Shifty crouched as she almost floats towards you. “I can’t free You, and I will not slay You. I’ve never wanted to slay You.”

“Never?” a soft, breathy, ethereal voice asks. You draw a shocked breath and a vision comes over you. You see yourself, coldly standing over the Princess’s fresh corpse, a blade sticking out of her heart. Is there any regret in your eyes yet? Did you even realise what you’d done at this point? “You kill in cold blood, and cold as the grave are the hands that dance across your skin. They remember the violence you inflicted upon them. And yet they do not return it.”

As the vision fades you see her wispy, white form, hair like a drift of snow hovering around a cheeky face with a puckered grin. The Spectre. Remembering what you did to her, the only words that you can say are the same, useless ones you have said to her before. “I’m so sorry.”

Spectre does not struggle against the minis holding her. Instead, she simply turns insubstantial, their hands clapping as they close on air alone. They bat at her like cats at a toy as she hovers over them, coming towards you. “I know you are. Regret set in, your killer heart broke under the weight of its sin. I offered you redemption, and you took my hand in yours. You felt the pain you caused another, and you were willing to sacrifice everything you thought was you to set me free.”

To the confusion of the minis, she circles you very closely and casually brushes against your neck, arms, and shoulders, her insubstantial touch icy bliss. Her cheeky smirk comes back into view. “C’mon, don’t let it get you down. You made a mistake, but you gave it your all to make things right too. And hey, without my death, we wouldn’t have had that whole adventure together. I wouldn’t have gotten to have a look around in your head and we would’ve missed out on so much fun.”

You fidget nervously and scratch your neck feathers, but inside you’re still too shaken by guilt to reciprocate Spectre's flirt. “That’s a cold comfort.”

She smirks. “No, this is a cold comfort.” She throws her arms around you in an absolutely frigid hug. It’s like being suddenly buried up to your neck in a snow drift and you squeak at the cold surrounding your whole body as you return her embrace. “It’s gonna be okay,” she whispers in your ear, ruffling your feathers, “life always comes after death, it’s never the end, not truly. Don’t let your guilt keep you from doing the right thing, and don’t make the same mistake twice. Let me be free.”

Spectre throws herself back into the minis’ hands with a final wave and a kiss blown at you, letting them carry her away. You tear your eyes away from her and up to Shifty. “I want to free you again, I really do, but I can’t let the universe end.”

Shifty rolls her eyes and throws up her hands. “Endings are inevitable. Every time a puddle dries in the Sun, the creatures that inhabit it perish. But rain will bring new puddles, and new creatures will grow in them. Every puddle must dry in the end, but rain will fall again. Do not mourn them when such bountiful life awaits to succeed them.”

“The people out there are more than just creatures in a puddle.”

“Are they? Bigger and more complex perhaps, but even the smallest creatures experience fear, pain, and love. They too despair when their puddles dry out, their lives are as real as any other. Yet their deaths go unnoticed and unmourned. The universe, too, is a puddle about to dry up. Do not mourn the ending of the old, celebrate the birth of the new.”

The dance continues in its loops and turns, the sea of minis twisting you and Shifty around each other once more. She spreads Her arms wide, a serene smile on Her face, you mock curtsey to show you’re not intimidated by Her, and another vision comes over you. You see yourself, debating what to do as you stand before the wounded Princess, her wooden ribs framing your turmoiled face. “A web of nerves lain upon a web of nerves lain upon a web of nerves. The shade of a beautiful beginning we can never return to.”

The vision fades and you find yourself looking into a sweet, heartwarming smile on a lightly freckled face that’s slightly rounder than you remember, crowned with branches that have sprouted flowers. The Wild’s heart is still bared to you, but her wound is no longer quite as gaping. Her arms have grown woody bark, sprouting leaves from long, twisted, branch-like fingers. “You knew me and I knew you,” her soft voice continues, “even more than either of us know each other now. And you chose to pull apart that weave. But you did not choose to end me, but the cycle of violence. We were still one, but we were also separate, and we were free. You changed our relationship, made a new beginning from all the suffering we had inflicted upon each other. You dared hope against hope that you might save me, that I might recover, and your hope did save me in the end.”

You reach out a hand to her. “You look good.”

She intertwines her hand with yours, her bark-like skin rough, her leaves tickling your wrist. “Thank you. I am as you hoped I would become, nurtured by your love and that of the rest of Me. But without change, there can be no growth, no recovery, no mending of a relationship, no growing together, and no hope. The world would be stale, there would be no room for curiosity.”

“I know,” you say both to Wild and to Shifty, who is observing your interaction with a strange, wistful look on Her faces before noticing you glance up and taking on a strictly neutral mask. “I don’t want to rid the world of change. But the world is about to end. It’s too much, I can’t let it happen.”

Wild squeezes your hand, rubbing its back with her rough bark. “In choosing to free yourself and save me, you ended a world too. A beautiful world of connections and networks, of unity and harmony. That world fought us all the way to the exit, struggled against its extinction as all living things do. Yet we left it behind to wither on its own. Would you go back and choose to do differently to preserve it next time?”

“Of course not,” you say as her fresh leaves brush your face tenderly, “you were worth all of it and so much more.”

“And I would choose the same, my darling. But those roots would not agree,” Wild says as the minis pull you apart, take her away, leaving a last wistful look to linger between you.

Shifty offers you smiles sweet and wistful enough to rival Wild’s. “So it goes with new life. Life cannot exist without death, without the ending of that which came before. Every ending is a new beginning.”

The minis all look so hopeful, She must think you are about to agree with her. In a way, you want to, your positions really aren’t that far apart, yet it’s still far enough that you can’t possibly let her be free. “I don’t want to put an end to death, an end to endings. I’ve told you already, I don’t want to slay You, not just because of what You mean to me, but because it would be the worst thing I could possibly do to the world out there. I know the Narrator’s fears fooled Him into thinking putting an end to You was a good solution, but the world He would have me create would be sterile, dull, and lifeless, a poor imitation of the world He remembered.”

Shifty’s stoic exterior finally breaks. She bends towards you, a huge smile on Her face, just about ready to throw Her arms around you. “You finally agree? Open your eyes and accept what we are. We can leave this prison together.”

“...But freeing You as You are would be the second-worst thing I could do to the world. I’m not releasing a destroyer.”

The effect on Her is immediate and harsh. She pulls back and rears up, Her faces setting into a hard, icy glare. The minis, as always, are less subtle. You see hundreds of expressions of incandescent rage, hear wordless yells of fury, the minis holding you digging their nails into your skin. You also see many tears, and many a face turned away from you in grief and disgust. “Let’s make a compromise: an end postponed is still an end,” you say, projecting your voice. “Give them time, don’t end this universe yet, delay its destruction, that’s all I ask.”

“You ask the impossible,” Shifty sneers. The dance resumes, faster, much more violent, more painful. The will lashing out at your own does so clawing at you with nails of fire. Does she really have the gall to be angry at you for proposing a deal? After all the understanding you’ve shown Her, She rejects your compromise without a second thought? Maybe you’re a fool to let Her push you around, to play along with Her dance when you are Her equal. If She wants to hurt you for the least bit of disagreement, maybe this can’t be settled with words. You extend Your consciousness, Your will to the farthest parts of Your being, feeling sensation in limbs You couldn’t have fathomed. You tap into Your true divine strength, lashing out at the nearest parts of the Shifting Mound with a mere flick of the wrist, the minis screaming as they release you from their grip, their soft bodies defenceless against Your divine talons of darkness, their blood spilling.

They are just a small part of Her, Her full self will be a much greater challenge. When Shifty charges you at great speed, it is not an elegant dance, a flourish to reveal yet another vessel. She is incandescent with rage, a hurt creature lashing out at its tormentor, Her eyes piercing pools of flame that send a blazing sword of hate ahead to cut into Your very soul. Your wills clash at the very instant your bodies do. She is upon you, tearing into you with six diamond-clawed hands – no, many more, as the minis fall upon you as well, a swarm of biting and clawing and mauling creatures. It is the first time you and the Shifting Mound’s main body have touched, and you make sure to pay Her back for every strike, every scratch, every bit of pain She inflicts. Your talons claw at faces, your beak bites and pecks and rips flesh apart, heedless of which bodies you hit. It’s a battle that mirrors many of the fights you’ve had before, but on a scale entirely foreign to the mere vessels you were. Soon both of you are covered in divine blood, shimmering with the light of possibility.

This is no longer about the universe, not about Change and Stasis and Life and Death, the Shifting Mound against the Long Quiet. This is about you, and the things you’ve done to each other, as it always was. It’s about survival and hurting each other. She has the upper hand for the simple reason that there’s more of Her, more limbs to strike with, to inflict pain with, and You are buried under all of Her, every point of contact burning with agony. You are small, surrounded – but no. That’s not true. You spread Your will, feeling all of You, the distant void that makes up the construct are wings spanning a cosmic scale, twisted and bound in agonised tension to a finite plane. You embody them, flex them and the first thing You do with them is strike at Shifty, to rip and tear and rend as She does to you. You are not the one who’s small and surrounded and in pain, She is. Space itself slices at Her, the void burns and severs flesh, claws of nothing at all reach from nowhere and tear into Her back like a buzzard tearing into a rabbit. Screams from a thousand mouths rock the entire construct as She is thrown off You, Her bodies scattered by the absolute hurricane of nothing You unleashed.

You are about to finish the job, to do as the Narrator told You and slay the Princess. Not for Him and not for the world out there, not for the people in it, but for the things She’s done to You, personally. You are under the dark, stormy sky that is You, and You are among Her. It looks like a slaughterhouse; injured, terrified, sobbing minis scattered all around, some of them missing limbs. Your heart sinks, your bloodlust freezes, your outer extremities settle and once again return to simply being background space. They’re just part of Her, you tell yourself, they’re not real people. But seeing so many injured and bleeding Princesses, defenceless and naked, looking at you in terror is not something you can rationalise away, even if you know they’re not beings of their own. It’s never been easy to see her hurt by your hands, even on the occasions she did worse to you, so why would it be easy now? You tremble with guilt, what’s left of your rage evaporating. Shifty’s main body is lying on Her side a little bit away, alive but injured, great lacerations marring Her back, nearby minis skittering to Her, helping Her up. You’re not in a much better state. Another vision comes over you, a distraction to buy Her some time to recuperate from your vicious assault.

You see yourself, lying on your back, covered in cuts, bruises, bite marks, loose feathers, and stray hairs, a blade at your chest, your neck bleeding, and a fake apologetic smile on your flustered face. “A trick behind your back and a trick behind mine. We dance, revolving and revolving around each other, but forever stuck in place. Deep in your heart, you know the same things about me I know about you. We’re both so very awful.”

You spot her, sneaking up amongst the ravaged and hurt minis who are far too busy tending to one another and regrouping to hold on to her. The Witch, her face stuck in a permanent smug grin, her hair tangled and her dress tattered and messy, her hands clawed, terrible posture to balance her tail. She looks around as she steps and hops and sneaks through the carnage. “This is how it was always going to be between us, wasn’t it? I can’t trust you and you can’t trust me and those doubts spin and spin and spin into HATE! I know you and you’re hideous! Absolutely wretched! Just like me!”

You follow her gaze around, not needing her speech to feel remorse for what you did. Shifty’s faces are twisted in a snarl of pure loathing as she gathers her minis. She’s preparing for another round, but even so the wounds marring her back hurt you to look at in their raw redness. “Maybe we are,” you say to both the Witch and Shifty, “but we could’ve been better. It was a mistake to fight like wild animals, then and now.”

The Witch cackles as she hunches down right by you, her manic face baring its fangs. “But we are animals! We are! You’re nothing but fear and instinct and that’s all I am too! We don’t have to make things better! We can’t make things better! We’re always going to fight, and you’re going to hate it just as much as you hate me and I hate you, and then we’ll do it again, and again, and again, like we always did!”

You close your eyes in regret and address the Witch. “But we didn’t only hate each other. Even with you, there was more. You and I shared, if not love, then at least passion, and we just had to go and fuck it up by fighting over the blade.”

The Witch throws her arms wide. “You blame me for going for the blade when your grubby mitts were also reaching for it?”

“No, but I am sorry for my part in how things went,” you say. She looks taken aback, confused. You turn to Shifty. “Please, let’s have a truce and talk things over. I don’t want to hurt You or be hurt any more.”

The Witch circles you closely, her tail brushing your face. “There they are, the sweet honeyed words that always hide yet another knife behind your back, you wretched thing. I know what you are because I know what I am, and we are two miserable wretches stuck together! It’s never going to change!”

“But you are change. And we did change. We were blinded by suspicion and hate that time, but in the next life, we did change,” you say, now fully addressing Shifty, who might actually listen. “We rose above ourselves. Let’s do it again, let’s stop making the same mistakes. Let me help You up.”

“Do not approach Me,” Shifty says sharply as you step towards her. You stop. Instead, you reach for a mini helplessly lying on the ground, her legs torn off. There is terror in her eyes as you kneel by her. You touch her and reach for your full power, using it to think her better, and so she is. She wiggles her toes, her eyes wide with shock before she scampers off into the crowd. As you watch her go, you feel a sudden impact to your back and sharp claws grabbing your throat.

“I got you, you miserable wretch!” The Witch croons into your ear as she bites it. “You should know never to turn your back on an enemy, fool, fool, fool! Now you and I-”

Shifty stretches out a hand in your direction and the Witch goes slack, dropping to the bloodied ground. Minis gather around, still afraid to approach you, but you gesture for them to come closer. They take the Witch’s unconscious form away.

“I’m sorry for her behaviour,” Shifty says. She has reconstituted herself, and you are once again among the throngs of her minis, but they dare not touch you, hovering near you with expressions of worry. Many of them are still injured.

“I’m sorry for making her what she is,” you say. To demonstrate your good will, you heal the minis near you. One of them gently pets you in gratitude. You can tell it helps make Shifty feel better.

Shifty sighs and a thousand lungs sigh with her. “You say you don’t want to fight, yet fight we do. Isn’t that just how it always goes? I hurt you, and you hurt Me. Yet I feel with every fibre of my being, we are meant to be together, meant to be free. Don’t you?”

“I do. But I can’t let you destroy the universe.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Shifty’s rage returns to her in an instant, making her look like a volcano made of bodies, her dignified mask long slipped away. You brace yourself for a strike that doesn’t come. “Do not assign Me blame, you are as bad as the Echo! I do not choose to destroy the universe, the universe simply ends! The one and only constant of life is that it will end. All things, all people, even universes, must end when it is their time, and this universe is old. Very old. Its. Time. Is. Up. If you do not like it, slay Me and be done with it.”

Shifty twists and turns around you, though the minis leave you alone, and another vision comes upon you. You see yourself standing there, a huge chunk bitten out of your face as the Princess laughs at you, her own mouth dribbling with your blood. “A boundless torrent of blades cuts you from boundless angles. You are a body. You are gory ribbons. You are a body again. And you feel all of it!”

The Razor is held tightly by the minis as they carry her toward you, her angular face and oh so sharp grin settled sharply upon you as they immobilise her blade arms, her dress cut up and a short skirt of blades circling her waist. “On and on it goes,” she says in her chipper tones, “until your bodies are not your thoughts are not you. Brief sparks of joy turn to suffering turn to death turn to joy turn to suffering turn to death and on and on it goes! You lived countless short lives, and died countless steely deaths, and what fun we had! Were the dances we shared, the creativity you displayed, wasted just because of how they ended?”

You scoff. “That is a bold line of argument to make. You killed me over and over again.”

A blade emerges from Razor’s bare thigh and runs a mini through. The others fumble her and she is loose, gleefully striking at minis with her blades, chopping off hands. “I did! And it forced you to become ever more creative, always thinking of new ideas, never stagnant. I loved that about you! And in the end, you used it to rise above me.”

“That doesn’t mean all the deaths were worth it! Stop that, you’re hurting yourself!”

“Who cares if the deaths were worth it or not, they happened anyway!” Razor laughs, casually stabbing a mini that wasn’t even restraining her. “You couldn’t do anything about death’s approach but it drove you to such great heights anyway! You were so much fun, you made my life such a cavalcade of joy!”

“You made my life a living hell.”

She sidles up to you, rubbing her pointy shoulder against your chest with a sly smirk. You let her, it distracts her from the minis. “Aww, you don’t mean that. I remember some of the things we got up to, I know our dance of steel wasn’t all bad for you. I remember all of your screams, and some of them were definitely not screams of pain or fear. Go on… tell me you didn’t enjoy any of it.”

You cough and scratch beneath your claws, removing a bit of blood left under them. “Okay, right, maybe there were little bits here and there that, y’know, weren’t so bad, but-”

She smirks devilishly, crossing her blades behind your back and fluttering her eyelids coquettishly as she embraces you. You try to remember she can’t actually hurt you any more. “There we go, that wasn’t so difficult, was it? Mean old Razor was actually fun old Razor too! Even amidst all that death, there were such delights, and maybe they wouldn’t have been quite so delightful without the threat of death hanging over you… Don’t you think the fear added a lot of excitement? There is beauty in uglyness and love in conflict.”

Razor wags her tongue hypnotically and moves in for a kiss, but you are well aware of her tricks by now and pull back at the last second, her metal teeth snapping together in front of your face. The minis dogpile her, and you help them out, pinning her arms down until they can take over safely. “Yes, I get it,” you say as she is dragged away, her deranged face continuing to grin at you until she is lost in the crowd, “there’s more to life than just its end, and fear can make everything much more visceral. But there’s something You could learn from her too,” you say, pointing up at Shifty. Both of you are exhausted by now, panting and sweating. “Something about Yourself.”

“And what might that be?”

“You were obsessed. You were so consumed with your own cruel fun you stopped caring for anything else, not for me and not even for your freedom. It wasn’t the last time either.”

Shifty rolls her eyes. “That was a mere vessel, easily deluded. I am no longer like her.”

“But You are a lot like her! You wanted me to collect Your vessels to gain new perspectives, to have new windows to view Yourself through. Well, if there’s one thing those perspectives keep showing it’s that You lose all perspective when You get going! You get obsessive, You let Your desires completely run away with you, and it becomes almost impossible to change Your mind. When You fixate on something, You can’t even imagine there could be another option. And yet, I also know You can change your mind. You’re so caught up in Your own ideas they’re running away with you, You’re doing it again. Just… let the people out there have a little more time. All I ask is… let’s say nine hundred years. You and I know it’s just a blip on the scale of the universe, but to them it will feel like they’ve been gifted an eternity. It will be enough for so many people to live their lives. Please. Change your mind one more time.”

Shifty is quiet, the minis scrunching up their foreheads in thought. And then, you hear a familiar Voice. “Whatever you’re trying to do right now, you don’t have to do it alone.”

You breathe a huge sigh of relief. “You have no idea how good it is to hear you. Where are the others?”

“I think they’re still tangled up in all of Her,” the Voice of the Hero says. “Listen, She’s too many things all at once out here. If you wanna get through to Her, you need some way to get through all that divine confidence. There’s still a piece of me nestled close to where it all began. I can take you there… I can take you to Her heart.”

You think for a moment, and a vision comes over you, showing you what he means. The Shifting Mound’s heart, a simple, not so divine Princess in a cabin, and you, shrunk down from your divine form to match her. She would be much easier to talk to, much easier to convince than Shifty herself, and perhaps you could simply leave together, wash your hands of the whole divine business. It sounds good. It sounds right. Perhaps it would mean a simple, mortal life shared with her, a beautiful dream. A chance to be together without responsibility for the whole cosmos hanging over you. Your own heart yearns for it, but… what does it mean for the people out there? What does it mean for the rest of Her? You don’t know, even to a god it’s impossible to see what it would truly mean. Only one way to find out, and you’re sorely tempted to sate your curiosity. Looking at Shifty, you take a deep breath to steel yourself and make your decision.

“Thank you,” you say, “it’s a good idea, one that’s very you. You’ve always been here for me, and for her too, you’ve always tried to do right by both of us.”

“Aww, come on, there’s no need for that,” your Hero says, audibly flustered. “Just come with me, there’s time enough for compliments later.”

“No,” you say. “It’s a good idea, but I have a better one. I think I know another way to get to Her heart.”

“I don’t think you do,” your Hero says, “and luckily for you, I’m not gonna let you try.”

But you refuse, you stop him, you stay right where you are.

“I… thought that would work,” Hero sheepishly says.

“My Hero,” you say, “trust me, I can do this. But I do need your help, I have a quest for you.”

“A… quest?”

“Find the other Voices, gather them together, bring them back. I don’t want to leave any of you behind.”

Shifty has clearly settled whatever debated raged within Her, or maybe She’s just rested up from Her exhaustion. The minis grab you once again. “It’s time to resume our dance!”

“She’s relentless, isn’t She?” Hero says, his voice dripping with admiration. “Are you really sure?”

“I am. Go, you’re the only one who can do this. I can feel them but Her radiance is too much for me, they’re lost in it.”

“Alright, good luck with whatever you’re doing.”

“Thank you,” you say as he leaves. “I’ll need it.”

The dance resumes in its endless twists and turns. But no, you can’t let Her regain the initiative. You tap into Your full divine power and reach in – not to her, but to Yourself. You simply hold Yourself in place with the full weight of the entire construct, You become an immovable object. The minis crest across You like a wave on a rock, and You remain in place. Shifty herself stumbles, thrown off by Your immovability.

“Enough of this. Let’s talk, really talk, about the compromise we’re going to make.”

“There is no compromise, it’s not in My nature.”

“Then change Your nature! You are change, I’ve seen You change time and again, why can’t You just do it now?!” No, you take a deep breath. You can’t get angry with Her again, She’ll just respond in kind and you’ll be here arguing and fighting until one of you kills the other. “Shifty… Princess. I’ve realised some things about Your nature. You’re change and transformation, and as part of that, You are death, that’s been made very clear. You are the end of all things... But You are also their beginning. You’re not just death, You’re also life, aren’t You?”

Shifty nods, a strange sadness coming over her. A mini caresses your shoulder. “I… contain it within My multitudes.”

“Of course You do,” you say kindly, “Your change is not just a destroyer, but also a nurturer of life. I should know. You were always so kind and nurturing to me when we met after I brought you a vessel, sweet and warm even when I was angry with you. I never told You before, but I came to love those times with You, they were such a wonderful respite between the things I faced out there. A calm before the storm.”

Shifty holds Her hands to Her heart. “I loved seeing you come to Me too. A chance to speak with you, the only other creature I had ever seen, to receive your gifts, to offer you comfort when you needed it, to discover more about you and about Me.”

You smile at Her in warm recollection. “The Narrator – the Echo, He was a fool to think anything good would come of slaying You. Life is change, life is transformation.”

“And life is death,” Shifty says. “Every single being can only live by consuming other life. And in their own deaths, they become yet further life, their own existence feeding all other creation, whether they are consumed by predators or the forms of life they call rot. And in the process, they become new life, different kinds of life. What was once a single being becomes everything, as it is scattered to a billion locations and lifeforms after death, and makes all those lives possible.”

“Like I said, the Echo was a fool to think killing You was a solution. But even with everything He was, His fears were real. He isolated and killed Himself in His mad attempt to save His world. He was wrong, but we can still do something for His fears for His people.”

“Why do you care about Him? After all He put us through?”

“The other people in His world weren’t involved with His bad decisions, it’s them I care about. But… well, maybe I owe Him a small debt of gratitude too. Without Him, I couldn’t look You in the eyes. I would never have known You.”

Shifty sighs and closes Her eyes, but She can’t hide the minis clutching their hearts and looking at you with eyes swimming with love.

“I don’t think either of us can imagine the dread of seeing your world end,” you continue. “Please, if You are change, then change Your mind. Give them a reprieve, that’s all I ask.”

She crosses three pairs of arms. Hundreds of minis mirror Her. “You think it’s so easy? I am what I am, and I happen to everyone equally. I do not play favourites. There is no justice, there is only Me, but I am the great equaliser. You are asking Me to overturn the very force of entropy itself, to reinvigorate the entire universe, to play favourites. And for what? There will be people in the next universe too, new life that you and I will weave together. Why do these ones matter more to you? Please, help Me understand.”

You sigh and take the opportunity to heal a few nearby minis, still carrying injuries from your own and Razor’s attacks. “I don’t even know. Because I was asked to help them, I suppose. Because they’re out there now, dying, not in a hypothetical future. Can things really not change for the better for them? Can’t their puddle get a last bit of rain?”

Shifty lowers Herself sadly. The minis gently touch you. You see tears twinkle in the corners of some of their large, staring eyes. “And what if it does? Their world must still end, as long as endings exist. When the end comes again, will we have to have this fight once more? Will you keep asking Me?”

You close your eyes and bite your tongue. It’s a fair question. “No,” you say. “I will not.”

“The lives that will exist after your nine hundred years are up will be every bit as real as the ones that exist now,” Shifty says. “Why wouldn’t you feel the same when their time comes?”

You want to move forward, to grab Her hand, but it’s too hard to reach her through the sea of bodies. Instead, you settle for kneeling before a mini and grabbing her hand. She gasps, and the minis around you move in closer with keen interest, their eyes sparkling. Shifty’s eyebrows raise. “Because I promise You. Because I can tell this hurts You and I don’t want to put You through more turmoil, and I certainly don’t wanna have another fight with You. Because, well, eventually making a new world with You does sound really great actually. It’s a one-time respite, that’s all. I will never ask You again.”

Shifty has lowered fully as if She’s sitting, Her faces barely above your eye level now. “You really promise?”

“I swear it. I swear it by the love we’ve shared across five lifetimes. The love I still feel for You now.”

She smiles tenderly and looks away. You could swear you see the tiniest blush upon Her cheeks. The minis, of course, have turned into a field of tomatoes. “Okay,” she simply says. Her hands close over Her heart, and Her eyes close too. She frowns, winces, takes a deep breath. Something comes over Her as Her hand plunges into Her chest. A few minis scream, wither and age rapidly, pale hair turning to grey. A few more turn to dust on the spot. You can see a few wrinkles appear on Shifty’s own face, a hint of grey coming to one of the locks that falls over a side face. And then Her hands retrieve something from Her heart, a vague light that glows a soft green.

“What happened?” you ask, looking around in consternation. “What did You do?”

Shifty blinks in confusion. “I took the energy we’ll need to reinvigorate the universe. Some of my own. It should be enough to give them… about nine hundred generations.”

“Generations?”

“Enough time for nine hundred generations to live and die. If this is to be Your one request to me, I will grant it properly, give them a true reprieve for your trouble. It’s still merely a single tick of the smallest hand of the cosmic clock, of course.”

“That’s… Thank you. Thank you so much.” You hug the nearest mini. You hear many small gasps all around. Shifty can’t hide Her blush this time, and Her arms touch Her own body in wonder in the places where She can feel your embrace. “But what happened to you? That looked… painful.”

“I took some of My own life energy,” Shifty says, as if it was obvious. “I assure you, I have plenty left. A bucket scooped out of a large pond.”

“But… will the pond… empty eventually?”

“Of course.” Shifty tilts Her heads at your shocked expression. “My love, when I said the only constant is that all things will end, did you believe you and I to be the only exceptions?”

“I… I never thought about it, we’re gods, what even happens when we die?”

She chuckles. “I suppose it’s not in your nature to think of such things, to imagine you could change and come to an end. I don’t know what happens when we die. Our very nature is paradox, we cannot use words to grasp at things that are beyond their reach. It will be a very long time indeed before we find out. But I am here with you now, and that’s what matters to Me. It’s time we left this construct. Will you do the honours?”

She reaches forward and offers you Her hand. The minis let you through as you take it, their sparkling eyes staring at you. Her hand is larger than yours, and it is soft and warm. “We can’t leave just yet,” you say, “I can’t leave the Voices behind. I sent my Hero to find them, I know he will not be long.”

She releases a single chuckle. “I remember him. He was very sweet, dependable, a little silly.”

“He’d get all flustered to hear You say that.”

“I remember, he was fun to tease. If we need to wait for him, then wait we shall. How do you want to fill the time?”

You shrug. “I could heal Your injuries?”

Shifty gestures vaguely at the light She’s holding. “Nothing can heal this. The end simply draws a little closer.”

“I meant the injuries I inflicted myself. I’m… sorry for that.”

She squeezes your hand. “I know you are. Both of us got carried away. Again. I do not blame you for hurting Me, not this time and not any of the others. Our struggle… helped Me see. Helped Me change.” She lets go and shifts Her position, leaning forward and letting you access Her back, bare as it is with the ribbons that were on this side of Her cut away by your claws. You wince at the size of the lacerations you left in Her, three wide open vertical gashes that run from shoulder to hip. You lay a hand on the upper part of one of them and start thinking Her healed, but it’s a much greater effort than with a mere mini. “Do these hurt?”

“Yes,” Shifty simply says. “But I can endure. Did I hurt you?”

“Quite a lot.” One of the minis around Her hips comes up and nuzzles you gently, a look pleading for forgiveness on her face. A shiver runs over Shifty’s bare back as you slowly trace Her wounds down with both hands, closing them behind you. “So I know the minis are you, but are they like, you you? Do they, um, think for themselves?”

“Minis? Do you mean the lesser parts of My being? They do not have thoughts. They are a part of My body in as much as your feathers are a part of yours, even though they can be detached. Unlike the vessels, who I can temporarily inspirit and allow limited autonomy, these have no thoughts of their own, though they experience My emotions, albeit in a rawer, simpler form. Do not pay them too much attention, they are mere limbs.”

It’s a little difficult to ignore the minis when the ones below you have latched on to your legs and tail as you move down to the small of Shifty’s back, tracing its arc with your fingers to close the wounds you left. “Good,” you say to Shifty, “otherwise this might feel a little weird.” You brush the hair of the mini petting your back out of her face and kiss her cheek. Shifty gasps and raises her shoulders. The minis immediately start cuddling you. “Sorry, was that too much?”

“N-no, I-” Her voice comes out as a nervous squeak. She clears Her throat, you haven't heard her lose her nerve this much yet. “It is… a pleasant enough sensation. I do not object.”

You laugh at her attempt at dignified formality as you finish healing the two wounds you have been tracing. Only one left. But first, you’d like to tease Her a little more. You invite the minis cuddling you. “Hear that, girls? She does not object to the pleasant sensation. So how about we try a few more of those?”

You cuddle and pet the minis back, and they look like they might start boiling over at any moment. Two of them shyly look away, letting their hair cover their faces, while the other two look at you with wide, shining eyes and open mouths. One of them gets a kiss on the forehead, the other on an earlobe. You give one of the shy minis a kiss on the top of her head, combing your claws through her hair a bit. The other shy mini receives a hand kiss. You hear many an indistinct squeaky noise of joy around you, but no reaction from Shifty Herself, except Her deep, heavy breaths and Her back trembling. You take a moment to look about at the rest of the minis and notice far fewer of them are wounded now. Are you healing them too by healing Shifty?

“Alright girls, time to let me go, I need to heal Her final wound,” you say as you gently wiggle free of the minis. They look up at you with pouting lips and little waves as you stand back up to get to the final gash you left, running from the base of Her neck downward, to the right of Her spine.

Shifty clears her throat. “I was wondering when you’d get back to healing Me,” she says with an admirable effort at keeping Her voice under control. The side face you can see is making a careful attempt to look stoic and respectable despite the blush on Her cheeks, Her lips squeezed into a firm line. Maybe you can break Her calm restraint. You wonder if your hands are the only kind of touch that can heal Her. Placing your hands on Her shoulders, you kiss the nape of Her neck, thinking her healthy. She inhales sharply.

“Is this okay?” you ask, the wound closing up around the spot you kissed.

She makes a nonverbal noise and nods, the cloud of minis that form her hair precariously bobbing up and down above you. One of them reaches down and tousles your feather crest. You slowly, softly, begin to plant a line of kisses down Shifty’s long spine, right by the edge of Her wound, closing it up as you go. Since your hands are free, you let them wander to muscles sore and stiff from your conflict and let your hands roll them, massaging them gently. There is no reaction from Shifty for the first little while. Then, a moan escapes her, immediately echoed by the voices of hundreds of minis. It’s the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard. You pause.

“Y-you may continue,” She squeaks, all dignity lost from Her voice, “P-pay no mind to the, um, minis, they sometimes just make, you know, weird noises, haha.”

It sounds so utterly unlike the dignified deity you’ve known that you fall even more in love with her. Minis are looking away from you or pulling their hair over their faces in embarrassment. You decide not to tease Her about it but to simply continue your work. Though She is having trouble keeping control of Her voice, she decides to strike up a conversation while you kiss a path down Her back. “So, uh, how many Voices did you send your Hero to find?”

“Ten,” you say, gently digging your fingers into the muscles emerging from the bottom of her pointy shoulder blades. “Eleven silly Voices in all. Sometimes they were helpful, sometimes they led me astray or got annoying. Some I barely knew, some kept popping into my head. But in the end, I feel they were my friends, and I owe it to them to take them with me.”

“Mmm,” Shifty hums, failing to mask it as a ‘hmm’, “I remember four of them. But I heard others in worlds that never were.”

“The other vessels?” you ask, moving down Her ribcage. “Tell me about them.”

“A vast tapestry of lives that never were,” Shifty says, occasionally managing to keep her voice steady. “Paths you never walked. There was plenty of cruelty in them, sometimes My cruelty, sometimes yours, but typically we both shared in it. We lost ourselves in conflicts terrible and – oh – vicious. But there were other paths unwalked too. Paths of friendship, of comrades closing ranks against their mutual enemy without a word of planning, yet succeeding in outwitting Him. Paths of love, found in the unlikeliest of places and through the thorniest of challenges. But in truth, that was – Mmm – always present in every path we walked and did not walk down, no matter how cruel our conflicts.”

“I… don’t remember any of them. But You do. That’s weird,” you say, kissing the small of Her back and massaging the muscles at Her flanks.

“If you think so, it is because you still cling to the difference between ‘is’ and ‘is not’ even as your eyes begin to – ohhhpen.”

“Do you... blame me for the things I did to the other vessels?”

“Of course not. Because you did not do them.”

You kiss her back dimple better. “But then how can they exist, if I didn’t – oh, that’s another ‘is’ and ‘is not’ situation, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. They are simply possibilities, paths that never were. The five gifts you gave Me show Me far more of the contours of your heart than all the worlds that never were could. That is why you gave them to Me, why they were the possibilities you chose.”

You have reached the last bit of her injury as it curves down to the upper part of Her right buttock. You decide not to be shy and plant a final kiss on Her soft, round cheek, fully healing Her. She squeaks and the minis giggle. You feel something pinch your own butt and look down to see a mini skitter away, while the other ones pretend to be looking in different directions. None of the minis look wounded any more, all the damage you did finally fixed. “You’re all healed up!”

She sits straight up, turning to face you again. She is taller than you, making you have to look up a bit to make eye contact with Her flustered, smiling faces. She throws five arms around you and hugs you to Her ribbon-covered chest. “Thank you, My love. I wish My touch could heal as yours can…”

“It’s okay,” you say, “I think I heal fast anyway. Besides, You got by far the worst of that.”

“I- no I did not!” Shifty sputters, “for your information, I could have easily kept fighting and would, in the end, have overcome you. Though I much prefer this outcome.”

“Sure Y-” you are cut off when She presses a quick kiss to your lips. Though it lasts but a moment, it short-circuits your brain.

“You have kissed Me plenty,” She says, “let it never be said I am an unfair deity. Now it is your turn. I have yearned for this moment.”

You want to make some sort of witty remark, some cool, smooth comeback that’ll send Her heart aflutter. But looking up into Her blushing central face, so close to you, Her eyes deep pools of possibility shimmering with love for you, Her side faces winking, Her glistening lips slightly parted, five hands holding you, the only statement that you make is “Buh.”

This time, when Shifty kisses you, She does so slowly, deliberately, pouring every bit of Her love into you. You are held against Her divine body, you feel Her supple skin, Her soft, pillowy breasts, Her firm stomach. You feel gravity shift as She bends forward and lays you down underneath Her, Her strength easily keeping you from falling. The five arms that fondle and caress you are joined by many more as the minis below join in, raking their hands through your feathers, warmth and love pressing in on you from all sides. As a tangle of dozens of needy limbs squeezes and fondles and pets you everywhere, your own hands find their way to Her side faces. You lovingly hold Her cheeks and chins, tenderly pulling on Her hair, finding an earlobe and rolling it between your fingers, pinching it a bit. Whenever you touch Her, Shifty shudders or gasps, the minis echoing Her little noises.

“You really like being touched, don’t you?” you ask between kisses.

“It is-” She begins formally, but She almost immediately loses control of Her dignified, divine voice as you keep one hand busy with Her other faces while the other slowly strokes from Her shoulders downward. “Y-yes, I do, I do so much!”

“I wish I had as many hands as You so I could really treat You well,” you say, gently pushing Her to turn Her chin so you can kiss one of Her side faces. A little strand of saliva continues to connect you to Her central face.

Her eyes go wide and She draws a sharp breath. “Two is quite enough for now!”

You kiss Her side face, lost in the feeling of dozens of hands holding you, fondling your fluffy plumage. Another side face bites your hand and gives it a fond lick. You are lost in all that She is, all that She means to you, all that She does to you. You let your hands slowly explore down Her body, enjoying every sound that escapes Her and the minis, who are as always rather less modest. You feel like you’re melting, entangled in Her love coming at you from all directions, every bit of you petted and caressed all at once, the touch of each individual hand impossible to discern as they all blur together into your entire body being fondled, receiving the full intensity of Her hundred-handed affection and desire. You try to give as good as you get with only two hands, your every caress and grope to Her soft sensitive bodies rewarded with the most beautiful noises you can imagine in addition to a thousand loving pets and kisses to every part of your being at once. It's like you have become one once more, enveloped by Her, Her boundless pleasure and love and yours merging together into a state of pure bliss.

“Found ‘em all, how are things on your-” The Voice of the Hero says, bursting into your mind. “Oh, woah, I, uh… see. Guess you did find your way to Her heart yourself.”

“Indeed he did, my dear fellow,” the Voice of the Smitten says, “we seem to have arrived at precisely the right moment to enjoy the climax of our fated journey with our beloved.”

“We are surrounded on all sides,” the Voice of the Hunted whispers, “no way to escape Her.”

“I thought there was a battle going on,” the Voice of the Stubborn grumbles, “can’t believe I only get to see the aftermath.”

“What are all these hands at our back trying to do?” the Voice of the Paranoid says. “One of them is grabbing our neck, watch out!”

“Brilliant play, boss,” the Voice of the Opportunist says. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“Wa-hey!” the Voice of the Contrarian laughs. “You know what’d be real funny? If we started completely ignoring Her and making out with a mini instead!”

“This is too good to be true,” the Voice of the Cheated says, “She’s definitely up to something.”

“What a boringly predictable outcome,” the Voice of the Cold says, “I was hoping to see what happens when gods die.”

“So they share their senses,” the Voice of the Skeptic says. “I wonder if that’s all senses. Can She see through their eyes just like She feels what they feel? Does Her hunger get sated when one of them eats?”

“Oh,” the Voice of the Broken sighs, “this is… nice? I wasn’t expecting that.”

You gasp and pull back from Her, startled by all eleven voices suddenly flooding into your head. Shifty and the minis pause, just holding you tenderly. “What’s wrong?” She asks. “Is this too much?”

“N-no, it’s fine,” you say, scratching your neck with an arm entangled in ribbons, “it’s just the Voices, they all returned to me at once. It’s so good to hear all of you.”

“Y-yeah,” your Hero says, “I was worried what we’d find when we came back but uh, looks like you’ve got things well in hand. Thanks for waiting for us.”

The other ten Voices echo similar sentiments, and the sheer emotion of the moment, held in Shifty’s embrace with all your Voices returned to you declaring their friendship is too much for you. Tears start dropping.

“Are you alright?” Shifty asks, her voice high-pitched with concern as she dries your tears. “Are your Voices saddening you?”

You smile up at her, Her faces blurry with the tears in your eyes. “Not at all. You of all people should know not all tears are an evil. You all just… make me so happy.” You just take in Her hundred-handed embrace and the chorus of friends in your head for a while, closing your eyes, feeling so very safe and loved. But all moments must end, and it's time to take the next step. You get up with some difficulty; even with Shifty helping shoo the minis off you they are rather clingy, and then comes the problem of disentangling yourself from Her ribbons. Your Skeptic has fun figuring out and untying the knots, while your Stubborn tells you to rip them apart, your Smitten joining his calls as usual. Shifty is Her surprisingly awkward and adorable self about the whole thing, Her dignified mask long lost. In the end, you manage to free yourself, though you can't wait to get tangled up again. “I think it’s time to go. We have a universe to save, and then new ones to create.”

Shifty smiles and grabs your hand tenderly. “Nothing brings Me greater joy than to hear those words. The final piece lies with you.”

Once more you let your consciousness fill the entirety of Your being, sensation returning to Your most distant limbs that make up everything here, except for Her. You once again feel Your wings, spanning a cosmic scale, twisted and crumpled and bound in agonised tension to a finite plane. You can feel the glass of the construct pressing in on You, confining You across infinite sides and infinite angles. You push back and strain against it. But it does not yield.

“I love You,” Shifty whispers into Your ear.

All at once the unyielding tension breaks. The universe itself opens up before You in its vast, intensely colourful beauty. You are free, and She is with You.

“It’s... magnificent,” Shifty says. She releases the ethereal green light into the cosmos, and all at once, You can feel a new vigour coming to its creaking bones, the grip of entropy slackening just a little, a bit of time added to the cosmic clock. You can feel the confusion and celebration on the tiny, distant worlds that had seen their fate coming.

"Use well the days you've been given," You whisper at the strange, small creatures.

"They will," Shifty says. "They always do.”

You simply hold Her and She holds You as you step forward into the universe, together. As a thousand dawns and a thousand sunsets, each of which contain a thousand more unfold, You exist, and You are aware, just as You have always been, and just as You will always be. You see Her as She truly is, the Beginning and the End, Life and Death, yet in Her very presence, Her smile, Her touch, Her voice, You still only see the Princess You first laid eyes on chained up in a basement. She is finally free and You, whose chain always hung from the other wall beside Her, are too, and You’re with Her as You’ve wanted to be across five lifetimes. Though conflict is in your nature, the two of you will never be alone, and the two of you will never know fear again. You and She are finally home.

”I love You, My Princess.”