The Ministeress of Life and Death easily stepped out of her frozen spider body, as if from a heavy mantle, and walked through the rose petals without disturbing them. The spider legs still touched the motionless pavement, but now with a slightly altered rhythm due to the loss of a limb.

  "Using this in a battle with a man," the immaterial spider-woman whispered, walking around Ortahn's outstretched arm, which was embedded in her comrade's ribs. Her voice, deprived of a sound medium, penetrated the consciousness directly, bypassing the ears. "One who used at least seven aethers. This day is more interesting than a thousand thousand others. How truly old has this made you? About three hundred and fifty?" she chuckled, without a picogram of compassion.

  The reptile stood over her mangling physical body, grimly gazing at the picture of her defeat.

  "I wouldn't have had to resort to this," she hissed quietly, her pupils managing to narrow even further, "if Isila were with us."

  She folded her fingers in a summoning gesture and pulled Isila's essence. A black spot appeared in the dead air, which twisted and disgorged the figure of the Ministeress of Supreme Joy onto the pavement. There was a cold sound of cracked porcelain breath, and as soon as Isila toppled into this space, a part of her external face crumbled to the ground—in the cracks, liquid darkness flowed, outlining the contours of her skull in a black stream.

  "Where are you?" the reptile demanded.

  Isila raised her chin. Red pinpricks of light glowed in her abyss-like eye sockets.

  "I am fighting the witches of the Chancellery," she said evenly, sitting on her knees and resting her hands on the ground. "I believe I have neutralized approximately 90-92% of their total personnel."

  "You are doing what?" The reptile's rage manifested here as a crimson fog that swirled around her head. "If I didn't know you, I would think you had betrayed us. But it seems you are once again committing another unimaginable foolishness, correct? Would you deign to grace us with an explanation?"

  "I lost a duel," the Ministeress of Supreme Joy stated indifferently. "I am now obligated to serve my mistress for a year and a day."

  The reptile struck her sharply on the shoulder with a force that, in the real world, could have toppled a tower. Isila didn't even flinch.

  "So you've been enslaved by a stupid idea? The Dueling Codex? You idiot! You mad jririviska (female baresteether)!" the Ministeress of the Outer Contour screamed.

  "This tradition is older than I am," Isila said, a sudden note of chilling power breaking through. The darkness in her cracks began to stream faster. "If we stop honoring traditions, then perhaps we should tear down our entire civilization every day and rebuild it on a new whim? Without traditions, without these bones of our world, it will be easy."

  "And how did you manage to lose?" the spider-woman interjected, her mental voice sounding with a clawed curiosity.

  "I can't use my full power, obviously," Isila returned to her flippant tone. "And my mistress deviously used tactics and outsmarted me."

  "Idiot," the reptile repeated, but now without her previous rage, only with weary despair.

  "If I am an idiot, then what does that make you?" Isila nodded at Ortahn, frozen with his fist in the Overlordess' body. "Ah, I know him. A very sick boy, but it seems he has conquered his sickness."

  In the absolute silence of the frozen world, the spider-woman laughed, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation: three Supreme Beings arguing about duels lost to mortals who had shattered their immaculate order. The mental clicks of her chelicerae added to the rustle of her laughter.

  The Ministeress of the Outer Contour, ignoring the laughter, looked thoughtfully at the frozen crimson horizon and said quietly, but so that everyone in their ghostly council could hear:

  "We will destroy this canton with the Fire of Eden."

  "And I'm the one you call mad?" Isila burst out. "You are proposing to use a planetary spell on our own civilian territory!"

  The reptile took a step back and, as if striking with a small bio-whip, pointed a finger at Ortahn.

  "If the world finds out about a man capable of using female magic, a civil war will begin," she hissed furiously, and the hiss suited her appearance perfectly. "The outer colonies are just waiting for us to weaken. They will latch onto this schism and tear the Empire to pieces. A civil war on top of a galactic one... Can you think of a better recipe for total catastrophe? I cannot."

  "That is only a recipe for the fundamental change of all our lives," said a grim Isila. The space around her darkened and shriveled. "I often think lately about what I did. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps now we should try a different path and see where it leads us. We are not real gods, no matter how much we forget it."

  The Ministeress of Supreme Joy, having made her decision, disappeared. The spider-woman looked after her, then smiled faintly.

  "I am on your side, Morigana," she said, addressing the reptile by her old name. "The threat is systemic. I sanction the death of one million, six hundred forty-three thousand, one hundred forty-five people. An acceptable price for stability."

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  "What difference does it make, Neitma?" Morigana stared into the void. "Without Isila, the 'Rule of Three' cannot be fulfilled. And the other Overlordesses are out of reach."

  The spider-woman tilted her head, and her smile changed—it became the one that precedes an order and an execution. The smile of a being who knows that the righteousness of the strong is the only righteousness that matters.

  "It is Isila, after all," she said, making a dismissive gesture. "We'll say she agreed. Whoever doesn't believe it will still recognize the righteousness of our actions. She'll forget she was ever against it herself. Bones must be broken so they heal stronger."

  With a deafening clap from the exchange of atmosphere with another place, the Ministeress of the Outer Contour disappeared. Ortahn collapsed forward, smashing a crater in the pavement. Getting up, he shook off the stone fragments and glanced at where, a heartbeat ago, the Ministeress of Life and Death had been. She, too, was gone.

  "They... left?" he asked the air, not believing the silence. "They got scared and ran away?"

  The air answered him with a mocking echo: "...ran away..."

  Ortahn suddenly realized that the city had stopped. Through the whitish horizon, cracks of pure light began to spread, burning away the crimson colors of the sky. Shadows evaporated, along with the sweat on his skin. A silence fell—the kind that precedes a hysterical scream.

  And then he saw it: one of the Fires of Eden bent, like an executioner raising his sword. It was clearly being aimed here. A few more moments, and everything Ortahn knew would burn, like the last thought in a dying mind.

  The moments passed quickly. The focused energy, capable of destroying non-physical objects like Virion metacruisers, struck the canton. The world jolted, as if its axis had been knocked out.

  The Fire of Eden did not incinerate them. It spread across the surface of a giant, transparent dome that had risen to protect the canton. The deadly power was transformed into a blinding light, which rained down over the city as meteors of ash. Each one was a death averted.

  The galactic fury tried in vain to consume the metropolis, and at the epicenter of this grandiose confrontation stood a small human man—Ortahn-son-Stella, holding this stalemate between being and non-being by the sheer force of his will.

  A familiar voice spread across the sky, but this time it was clearly laced with disbelief at pronouncing such forgotten terminology:

  "Attention. Attention. Divine magic of the 'Demigod' class is active in this area. Remain calm, for your actions no longer influence your survival. Your survival depends solely on the intent of the spellcaster. Offer up prayers. All of them that you know. Attention. Attention..."

  Ortahn was clutching a star in his palms. And it was unbearably heavy. Thin flakes of ash were peeling from his skin and drifting upward.

  "It's over," true despair slithered into his mind like a coldheart. "This is just an agonizing delay. I should have known. Who am I to challenge the Overlordesses themselves?"

  "Live," the memory of Viya whispered, and that whisper was quieter than a mote of dust falling, but louder than any thunder.

  "Yes, Viya. It's not over!" his cry tore through the burning air. "I am alive! And what does this pathetic little ray mean against Viya's mandate?"

  "Break apart the immense streams and gather the scattered ones," his aunt's voice sounded from the depths of his being, calm and stern. "Concentrate not on the whole, Ortahn, but on its parts. Cling to the details."

  "No! It's impossible!" he screamed, feeling his flesh begin to disintegrate. His tears evaporated before they could leave his eyes. "I can't take any more!"

  And then, the energy of others slammed into him. Streams, warm as breath, touched his palms, his shoulders, his heart. He recognized them, as if they were speaking.

  "You're alive! You didn't die!" — that was the clumsy and lonely Vitl.

  "Hold on, child! You are our Axis!" — that was the desiccated but mighty Taut.

  "We're with you! Take it!" — that was Gron, whose coarse strength had become crystal-clear energy.

  "You promised!" — that was Esh, but it was impossible—she was forever cut off from magic.

  "You learned the most important lesson, Ortahn," — that was the bitter, strong, and proud stream of Tulila.

  It was immediately followed by the enormous, ancient, and mad power of Isila.

  "Save us, cattle! I mean... he-mistress!" — the energy of Basti lunged at him furiously.

  "You are our only hope," Ghi's calm stream added to it.

  The others were strangers, but he felt them. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, more than a million. Men and women, old and young, all who knew how to love, fear, and hope. Everyone who was alive. And even the weak, barely perceptible whisper of the homunculi, begging for salvation. That meant they, too, were alive and needed protection. For the first time, the world spoke with a single voice.

  His body continued to disintegrate, long past its limit, but he was engulfed by a powerful light of healing, noticeable even against the backdrop of everything else.

  The Fire of Eden abruptly retreated, admitting defeat. And in the ensuing silence, Ortahn realized that someone was hugging him from behind. It was Esh-Faya, pale, trembling, but alive. Her fingers were glowing, fusing with his charred skin. The brand of the unblessed was gone, leaving only a faint smolder on her shoulder. Around him stood the "Wild Roses," their hands pressed against his shoulders and back, forming a living stockade. And behind them, a tense, silent crowd of saved inhabitants. The world did not immediately understand that death had passed it by. The air trembled, not from the wind, but from the shock of returning to life after touching the absolute end.

  "Live..." he whispered to the city, his lips touched by a smile full of inexpressible exhaustion and immeasurable peace.

  Ortahn disintegrated into golden dust.

  The golden dust settled slowly on the pavement, the towers, and the faces of the stunned people. The enormous dome over the canton melted away, turning into billions of sparks that hung in the air for a moment, like a blessing. From a dark alley, Tulila, who had watched it all, slowly closed her eyes and lowered her head. Her body was sliced with deep wounds, and of her hands, only the living one remained, covering her orphaned shoulder.

  "Now... now the real thing begins," she whispered, without joy and without fear, only with acceptance.

  "Interesting times, mistress," an old voice sounded behind her. The face of the speaker, Isila, remained in shadow, untouched by the golden light.

  The light-lines, broken until now, surged forward, bending and accelerating. They raced, circling the cantons, the geometric fields, the sharp mountain peaks, and the blue seas, girdling the entire planet. They carried images within them: of a man who had fought two Overlordesses as an equal; of a man who had stopped the Fire of Eden; of a man who had loved, fought, and wielded magic available only to women; of a man who had transformed death into light; of the golden dust that had settled on the city. Everywhere, these lines ignited different flames in the hearts of the people—fear of the future, mad anger, desperate hope, and a thirst for change.

  The end. Or rather, the beginning.