“…ckkkk!” Hiral swore, the Edicts stabilizing space around him within the transportation-slash-time tunnel. To his eyes—also thanks to the Edicts—his senses made it look like a tunnel forged of rapidly moving lights. All around him, shooting stars fired rapidly in one direction, opposite the way he felt he needed to go, while images he recognized came and went like ghosts in the night.

  Images… of Seeyela’s life. That had to be what he was seeing. Because of her connection to the Black Gate?

  Whatever the reason, that, there, that had to be Seeyela when she was five or six, a baby Seena in her arms. The look on Seeyela’s face as she looked down on her baby sister was one Hiral had seen a hundred times. The look of being willing to do whatever it took to protect the younger girl. Even barely more than a child, Seeyela was the big sister. Images progressed from there, with more small children joining the group.

  The two that looked almost identical had to be Nivian and Wule—though Hiral was surprised to see Wule as the taller of the two when they were young—after which Yanily joined the group. One of the earliest images of the eventual-spearman showed him with a brutal black-eye, and it didn’t take more than one guess to figure out where he’d gotten it.

  One by one, the group grew, more people Seeyela’s age also joining the memories. There were Lonil and Cal, Balyo—with Yan following her around—then Piccoli and Vix. Years seemed to speed by, each of them growing older and older within heartbeats. As Seeyela grew, a new face joined the group, eventually dominating the woman’s time.

  And… oh boy… Hiral had to turn his eyes from the images he was pretty sure he was not supposed to see. That had to be Seeyela’s husband, Trev. More moments of her life flew by, and then very suddenly stopped on the perfect face of a tiny baby. With red cheeks and an impressive tuft of hair sitting squarely on the top of her head, Hiral recognized the little toothless smile the baby gave her mother.

  Favela, Seeyela’s daughter.

  With the arrival of the girl, it became clear how much she was the center of Seeyela’s universe. No matter where Seeyela went, thoughts of her daughter were never far behind. Even as she leapt from the Grower islands down to the surface, Seeyela always had Favela on her mind.

  It was a unique experience to see flashes of how the Growers spent their time on the surface. Harvesting quills, hunting and gathering supplies they would return to the islands with to use or trade. Compared to Hiral’s time on the surface it was… mundane. Of course, there were plenty of dangers, but with the sun overhead, they never had to worry about the Enemy. Hells, they didn’t even know the Enemy existed.

  Like this—time unmoving along with Hiral—he watched her surface adventures continue until a group of Shapers appeared in her memories. Not long after that, Hiral saw himself for the first time. Even without any dialogue, he could tell she didn’t have a great opinion of him at the beginning. But, he watched how it changed. Especially after she learned how he’d jumped off the island to save Favela, and how her sister trusted him.

  He literally got to watch her opinion of him change. How she’d grown to count on him, and even trust him. He saw, again, the loss of their friends in their first real encounter with the Enemy, and heartbreaking images of her crying alone at night in the first Asylum.

  She’d pulled herself together, after that, though. The image of Favela—of her need to get back to her daughter—had pulled her out of the endless pit of depression.

  From there, he watched many of their adventures a second time. The highs and lows that finally brought them to Terminus. He saw Seeyela watching Seena and the others, with the belief that she would not be returning to Genesis with them. Or, at least not returning with her mind intact. She firmly believed she would fall to the same fate as the Possessed in Trevallen.

  “I won’t let that happen,” Hiral said, looking at the Urn of Ur’Thul in his hand. There, in the strange tunnel forged by the Black Gate, as long as he didn’t move, time didn’t move either. Too bad that basically proved Seeyela’s greatest fear. The pain of carrying Genesis—which sat firmly at one end of the tube—to the other end would feel nearly endless.

  Carrying an urn though, in Insatiable, would be entirely manageable. Even if it felt like it took minutes or hours—or longer—it would truly only be a second passing in real time. That was all he needed to make manageable. That had been his plan. The Urn of Ur’Thul held millions of lives in it already. It would—temporarily—hold Genesis, thanks to the runic rules he’d placed on Terminus.

  The world, speaking of which, that sat beside Genesis at one end of the tube. It too had been pulled into the time-tube, with the Raze sitting on its surface. Here, between seconds, Hiral wasn’t worried about them. The crystal giants were powerful, but they couldn’t influence this process. They’d given up too much to gain their physical superiority.

  His plan had been flawless. He’d rewritten the rules of Terminus, so that its power would bolster Genesis through its transportation. In exchange, it would come with it, regaining the time it had lost. That still left the Raze a threat, but he’d accounted for that as well. As Terminus went back in time, so too would the Raze’s power. They would return to the same level they had been at the point in time they were going to. They’d regress to just the power they had when they’d fought the Fallen in Visionary.

  If they decided to try and conquer the universe again, they’d need to take the time to build up their strength. Time the rest of the worlds could use to also get stronger. It didn’t remove the threat of the Raze, but it gave everybody else a chance to stop them. The Raze’s power would increase faster than most, being tied to runic energy as it was, which was a big part of how they’d accomplished the atrocities they had the first time.

  They’d also had one distinct advantage over the rest of the universe as well. One that had been built to promote growth. They’d had a PIMP.

  When the twin worlds returned, both Terminus and Genesis would have a PIMP, yes, but that wasn’t enough to tip the balance. Which was exactly what Hiral had needed the PIMP construct for. Why he’d needed it to connect to Terminus’s PIMP without destroying it. Between the two of them, Hiral had created a link. A Connection. More than that, he’d created a net that would grow. One reinforced with the Urn of Ur’Thul and its sympathetic power.

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  The two of them worked so similarly, and the PIMP would provide the base structure for how it could expand, while the Urn would provide an avenue for expansion the PIMP wouldn’t normally possess. Hiral and Ur had worked carefully to make sure the Urn wouldn’t spread of plague of Undeath across the universes as well. Would’ve been inconvenient…

  Oddly enough, Hiral could thank Vorinal for making this whole plan possible. His adjustments to the Urn to move his soul from one body to another had been the catalyst that set them on this path. A path that would lead to massive growth for both the PIMP and Urn.

  And, with that growth, the PIMP would spread to other worlds. Other universes. It would integrate with all those distant places, offering a system to allow people to grow at a rate they could’ve never imagined. It would give them abilities, power, and the strength they would need to defend themselves when the Raze and Endless arrived.

  It was the best chance he could give the universe, because he had made sure Terminus would not physically end up anywhere near Genesis. No, they would take up opposite ends of the universe, like a north and south pole on a world. Between them, the fabric of reality would stretch. Worlds, realms, planes, or whatever else existed. Even the Nine Hells.

  All of them would be bolstered by this new system with the prime directive of stopping the Raze and giving each world the best chance of survival. Hiral couldn’t deny there were probably loopholes he’d missed, but this was his first time designing a universe-spanning system that would interface with individuals and grant them magic powers! Maybe if he had to do it a second time…

  Hiral stopped the thought. He still needed to get Genesis through the path without destroying Seeyela’s mind. Terminus, that didn’t matter. It would get through with or without Seeyela, though it might feel like it takes a lifetime—in reverse—for the Raze.

  Turning his attention to the actual problem, Hiral looked down at the Urn of Ur’Thul in his hands. There, in that place between time and space, he could feel what Li’l Ur had talked about. The Urn needed a soul to do what Hiral wanted it to. It wasn’t a curse or a cost, but a fuel.

  The Urn of Ur’Thul normally took a tiny sliver of the power of each soul that passed through it. Those things were normally dead, and the loss was hardly noticeable to the spirits. The usual power-source for the Urn wouldn’t work in this instance. There weren’t enough people on Genesis to pay the fuel cost. At least, not without killing most of them to take enough of their souls.

  Somehow, taking a whole soul would provide exponentially more energy than taking a fraction of thousands of souls. And just enough energy to allow Genesis to exist within the Urn for the second it would take to traverse the tube.

  Only, where was Hiral going to get a soul?

  His eyes went to one of the memories outside the time-tube’s walls. An image of Seeyela with the raid party around her. The last time they’d all been together before they left for Terminus. They’d been nervous about what they’d face, most believing they wouldn’t all be coming back. It was sad how right they’d been, but the looks on their faces…

  The quiet confidence. The willingness to go, even though they knew they might not come back. The resolve to do whatever needed to be done to save their world. Their love for each other.

  As much as Hiral was fighting for Genesis—his friends and family back there—he was also fighting for his raid party. His friends. As much as them, he’d known there was a chance he wouldn’t return.

  That’s all this is. Except, it’s not a Raze or other S-Rank enemy killing me. It’s my choice. One I have to make to get everybody back, including Seeyela. I promised her I’d deliver her to Favela. This is just me keeping that promise.

  Hiral’s eyes went to one particular person in the image of the raid group. Seena. His heart ached just looking at her face, knowing how much it would hurt her when he didn’t come out the other side. They both… wanted to get a dog. As stupid as that sounded sometimes, it meant something to her. No, it meant a lot to her. So it meant a lot to him too.

  The start of their family.

  They were supposed to have all the time in the world to spend together. To grow and explore. To see what Genesis had to offer, beyond Fallen Reach. Maybe to see what lay even beyond Genesis itself. They had enough power to, now.

  Hells, Hiral was pretty sure Seena had made a big step forward with her new advanced class, whatever it was. Li’l Ur had said the stronger they got, the more years they could live. Years they could live together.

  And Hiral was going to cut that short before it even started. The Urn needed a soul, and even if there was somebody else around—there wasn’t—who could make the sacrifice, he wouldn’t allow it. This was his plan, and his mistake for not catching this detail. He was the only one who could pay the cost.

  The Urn of Ur’Thul needed a soul?

  Fine, he’d give it his. Waffling over it—or what he was giving up—any longer wouldn’t change what he needed to do. There was one path forward, and it was his step to take.

  “I’m sorry, Seena,” Hiral said, putting both hands on the Urn. With all the runic equations he’d layered around the Urn, it knew what its purpose was. It would suck up Genesis and hold it long enough for Seeyela to pass out the other side. As soon as she did, the Urn would release the world, and that would be that.

  Now, as he looked to activate that ability, he saw what he’d missed. Clear as day. There, in that part of the equation that Hiral had instinctively built, was the slot where the power needed to go. Where the soul needed to go.

  Thanks to the runes, it wouldn’t even be a challenge for Hiral to insert his own in there, because it was his choice. All he had to do was… let go. The Urn was already gently tugging on something within his chest. As soon as he let his defenses down, it would get what it wanted, completing the runic equation, and set it all into motion.

  Hiral took a deep breath in… and held it. Taking this final step, knowing it would kill him, was harder than he’d imagined it to be. He… didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to leave his friends.

  It was selfish, but he did want to live.

  Holding the breath in his lungs, he allowed himself a few more seconds to enjoy the memories of the time he spent with them. Then a few more to fantasize about the ‘what-ifs’ of spending his life with Seena. It was… kind of beautiful.

  It would’ve been.

  Hiral pushed the air back out of his lungs. If he kept delaying, his resolve would break. It was already cracked and teetering on the edge. He had to do it now.

  Eyes on the blank spot on the runic equation, Hiral…

  Hands slapped on to the Urn beside his, one on each side. On his right, the hand was encased in a gauntlet of solid-solar energy, lines of purple flame running up the forearm. On his left, the Dagger of Sath lay inked on the forearm.

  “Guys?” Hiral asked, his eyes rising to take in Left and Right.

  “You were going to do something reckless,” Left said. It wasn’t a question.

  “So, here we are,” Right said. “To save you from you. Again.”

  “You can’t save me,” Hiral said. “I have to do this to make sure Seeyela gets back to Favela.”

  “No, you don’t have to do anything,” Left said.

  “Of course I do!” Hiral said. “I promised…” he trailed off, something about the intonation of Left’s words striking a nerve.

  “The Urn needs a soul, huh?” Right said. “We heard Ur talking to you.”

  “So we deduced what you would do,” Left said. “We can’t let you do that.”

  “Don’t have a choice,” Hiral said. “The urn needs a soul.”

  Right looked at Left, and gently shook his head like he was disappointed in something. “Are we that dense?”

  “You are,” Left said without mercy, though he looked at Hiral. “Hiral, when this is over, don’t blame yourself.”

  “Blame…?” Hiral said, something in his stomach dropping like a stone.

  “And don’t forget us,” Right said. “It’s been a good time.”

  Then, before Hiral could even respond to that, Right put his free hand against Hiral’s chest, and pushed. With the truly impressive strength at the double’s disposal, Hiral had no chance to resist, and he flew back from the shove.

  “One soul,” Left said.

  “Or two halves of the same soul,” Right said.

  “No…” Hiral said, but his doubles—his best friends—looked back at him, each of them smiling in the way they did.

  Then they winked, before a blindingly bright light filled the tunnel.

  After that ending... should we just wait until Monday for the next chapter? ?? Nah, we'll do one more weekend of chapters. See you tomorrow!

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