The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Tenth Interlude - Metatron

Even without looking, I sensed him long before he came into sight, the connection between us—the separated pieces of a billion souls—naturally reacting. Figuring out what had happened was trivial, given what I sensed from him and past experience, but there was still the matter of deciding how to respond. I was many things to many people, after all, even as all of those things were me. I decided who I was, what I was, and manifested accordingly. I could be a friend, an enemy, a leader, a teacher, a student, or anything else I chose.

But this time, I approached Malkuth as 'The Brother.'

In that way, I felt myself change in a way that wasn't visible, wasn't even truly physical. Some of the powers I'd held in my previous role fell away, new ones arising even as others altered. A sensory ability that began providing more details, a defensive ability that could be projected and surround a distant person, an ability to shift damage onto myself, and many others besides. Things I was capable of, but altered in how they were expressed, just as a fireball might manifest as a conflagration in one role or a burning sword in another.

None of those things were what I was after right now, however, so I left them aside.

"Couldn't sleep, brother?" I asked, literally radiating a feeling of comfort and safety as I entered the room.

"When can I ever?" He said with a slight shrug, never taking his eyes off the symbols that filled the air before him. He was making adjustments every few seconds, altering the experiment he was working on to see how it changed the results. I could have become 'The Scientist' and unraveled it with a glance, but it could wait. "There's a reason I don't even bother trying. You should have just kept me awake."

"You were tired," I answered as I moved to his side and took a seat. "You stretched yourself too far in that last experiment, breaking down the barriers between matter and energy like that. I won't deny that the results were fascinating, but containing them the way you did…"

I shrugged a shoulder.

"I thought you deserved the rest," I continued. "It has been most of a decade since you last slept. Even the others sleep now and then."

"Except for you," He noted with a snort and a glance. "The only times you ever sleep are when you want to walk through dreams. Don't think I didn't see you."

I smiled.

"But you didn't have nightmares, did you?" I asked. "I kept them all at bay. So why are you really up?"

Malkuth was silent for a long moment, lips pulled into a slight frown as he shifted his gaze away from his work and stared into space.

"It was odd," He said at last. "Sleeping. Being able to sleep without remembering the lives and deaths that made me. Odd, somehow. So when I realized what was happening, I willed myself awake."

At that, I sighed.

"Would you like to tell me why?"

"I would, if I knew," He mused softly. "But even I'm not sure. Maybe…maybe I'm just not sure who I am without it. The nightmares and dreams, histories and tragedies…it reminds me that I'm just the sum of my parts."

"I'd say you're more than that," I replied.

"Would you?" He asked me. "If you stripped away all the lifetimes I remember, all the people I know I once was, all the memories I have—what would be left of me? From the moment I was born, I knew exactly what I was and where I'd come from, because I remembered every moment of it. Everything I did, I did for them. Because of them."

"Did you really?" I wondered, raising an eyebrow. "Is it because of them that you're here with us now?"

He was silent, expression briefly unsure and then blank.

"You remember countless lifetimes," I continued. "And most of them ended in tragic ways. You are, in a way, the sum of those people—but at the say time, there's more to people than simple math. What you remember made you who you were, but you've lived with those memories and created your own, same as I have. None of those people acted like you did, because none of them remember all the things you do. Those lives ended and continued in you, but…you're more than the sum of your parts."

He remained quiet for several more seconds before sighing.

"Maybe," He whispered at last. "Maybe. But sometimes, it's hard to believe. I joke and laugh and I remember Rahel doing the same. I make something and it's Urdu's work I see. Sometimes, I even feel like it's what I should see, what I should remember—because if I don't remember, who else ever will? It's been less than twenty years and I'm the only one who still cares. Who still even knows everyone who died."

"That's a hard way to live a life," I said. "As a memorial to something lost, instead of as a person. Is that what you want to be?"

"No," He answered at once. "I hate it. In fact, sometimes I think I even—"

He cut himself off and looked down.

"It doesn't matter," He said. "It's stupid."

"If it worries you this much, it's not stupid," I replied. "And it seems to have gotten you working pretty hard."

Malkuth's eyes snapped back to the symbols in the air before he closed his hand and dismissed them all.

"That's something stupid, too," He said, looking embarrassed and guilty. "A dumb idea I had."

"About what?" I asked.

He hesitated for a moment before shrugging and admitting the truth.

"Nehemoth," He said. "And the Qliphoth."

I hummed in response.

'Qliphoth.' It was a word with many meanings. The literal translation of the word was 'husks', 'peels', or 'shells'—things that concealed, contained, and protected, but which were inevitably left behind. In that regard perhaps 'Remnants' was a better way of thinking about the term. They were what was left behind.

In one sense, the Qliphoth was meant to be a hypothetical inversion of sorts, the shadows left by the Sephirot when they were imbalanced. Not the absence of them, per se, but perhaps more the singularity or corruption of them—Gevurah, untampered by kindness or restraint, became Golachab. They were untampered, wasteful, and incomplete.

In another, however, it was a theory. The Sephirot were considered to be the 'matter' of the soul and thus far, only those ten types had been identified. There were no Qliphoth elements or at least none that had been thus identified. Instead, they were considered to be something else; hypothetical states that the material of the soul could assume in the proper conditions. It had been an area of interest to the Angels, but not one that had gone very far. One of the Sephirot out of control was still itself, it didn't change in properties or nature. As a result, the Qliphoth had been more a matter of thought and philosophy than of science.

But then, someone had come up with a different way of pursuing the idea, altering their plan for going about it. Instead of focusing on the natural expressions of the Qliphoth, which seemed to do nothing if they even really existed, they chose to attempt to create such a thing for themselves—touching upon the divine with the physical, just as the physical was naturally touched by the divine, creating something extraordinary from base materials. To take the brief and momentary expressions and distill them down into a finished product, to see how it would take shape. It wasn't unprecedented, after all, for the Angels had done similar things before. Alchemy was one example, at least in terms of the end goal. Transubstantiation, the alteration of a physical objects inherent essence to create Dust…it was difficult, something they did only rarely when they had easier methods of acquiring it. But it was most definitely possible.

One couldn't create something apart from the Tree of Life, of course—that would, in a very literal since, be like trying to create something apart from existence—and that wasn't the point. All things took shape in Malkuth, the Sephirot above it flowing down and becoming something definite and defined. Some things could draw more from the spheres above then other; indeed, most things could be said to do that, even without taking into account Aura. But that was the point of the Sephirot, to establish boundaries, differences, and allow for things to exist in different shapes, as different people.

The Qliphoth, too, wouldn't be something set apart, but created from, and there were natural examples of that, as well. Things that go out of control, knowledge that was hidden, lies and deceptions, those were all supposed forms of the Qliphoth, they just weren't 'useful' forms, nor did they have interesting or meaningful applications. A parent lost their temper and screamed at their child, a man took a bribe or lied, people hurt and killed one another, and those things were bad—but what did it really matter?

That was the actual, honest question—where was the line drawn between the body and the soul, a change in Gevurah and a simple loss of temper, and did it make any actual difference, in the end?

By and large, the answer was that no, it didn't, except in literal theory—because that was what the Qliphoth were to the Angels, an attempt to further their understanding of the soul and it's pieces. There were countless theories about the soul, but none of them accounted for everything, even when the math said they should have and they broke the soul down to its most basic level. When all was said and down, he Qliphoth were the remainders, the errors that took shape in the system and needed to be accounted for; the reason why, even if you made two people with the exact same 'amount' of each Sephirot, the results would still differ wildly. In the end, people were separated by their differences and imperfections, their souls distinct no matter what said they shouldn't be. The Qliphoth were something even less 'physical' than the Sephirot and yet undeniably there.

I could see why Malkuth was interested in them, given his own situation. If one could theoretically examine those unseen pieces, if one could understand and prove and account for them, then they should be able to completely understand the nature of the soul. That was why the Angels had been so interested in the field, despite their meager results. In fact, one could even argue that it had been one of the reasons they'd created the Archangels, creating macro-souls to better glimpse the mechanics underlying it all.

A part of me wondered if that had born any fruit, before they all died.

"An interesting topic, to be sure," I allowed after a moment. "Have you made any progress thus far?"

"Only a bit," He answered after another moment of hesitation. "I looked into the information we took from the Angels, but it was difficult to find anything definitive on the subject."

"There hadn't been anything definitive on the subject," I said. "That was rather the issue, in fact."

"True, but I'd hoped there'd been a breakthrough of some kind, that one of them had figured out something before we killed them all," He replied, letting loose a quiet sigh. "Doesn't seem that way."

I nodded quietly, considering the matter carefully.

"Would you like us to help you?" I asked, meeting his eyes as he looked towards me. "I can't speak for the others, but I'm sure they'd agree to help if you asked them to—and I know that I will, if you let me."

Malkuth hesitated again, looking at me uncertainly.

"I wouldn't want to drag everyone into my business," He murmured, looking down. "I know this is…that it would tread into uncomfortable territory for most of them. The experiments, the memories, the nature of the soul…I don't want to do that to them."

I bumped my shoulder against his and smiled at him.

"I know you don't," I said. "But that's why they'd do it anyway. Come on, you look like you need so help. Even if it's just me, you know I'll be fine."

He bit his lip for a moment before nodding, at once seeming embarrassed and relieved.

"Okay," He said after a moment. "Do you have any ideas, then?"

"It depends," I asked. "What are you trying to accomplish?"

"I was thinking—and don't laugh, okay?" He interrupted himself to ask, continuing when I gave him a nod. "I was thinking that if souls could be gathered—"

He gestured between the two of us.

"Can they be separated?" He continued. "I mean, obviously they can, because that's what the Angels did to make us. But instead of being reduced to pieces, could they become something separate and distinct?"

"Like the Preta?" I asked, thinking of the ruined spirits that the Angel's experiments had sometimes left behind. The hungry ghosts, complete enough to retain something of who they were and damaged enough that it only meant they suffered. So far, they hadn't found any way of fixing that and it wasn't the most desirable of fates besides.

"Sort of," He said. "But I was thinking still whole, just…scattered. All parts of the same person, a single being, just with many bodies and minds."

"Distributing the memories?" I guessed. "Dividing the souls that created you to see what changed and what remained?"

He didn't deny it, so I fell silent for a moment.

"That sounds like it would be more my domain than yours," I said at last. "Not to mention the fact that none of the souls within you are complete any more. Even if you separated them, they wouldn't be anything like they were, even if they could exist separate from you."

"What if they had a physical form?" He asked. "A body to inhabit, even if they weren't completed souls."

"A physical form?" I asked, musing over the possibility. It was intriguing in its own way. What if I were to separate my soul in such a fashion and distribute it amongst something real? Ascribing roles to fragments of myself. If it was flesh used, it might be possible to create a Homonculus, but even putting a side the potential moral forms, why bother with something so limited? If I provided the power to give it shape, I could create a body for…anything. The wind, the rain, fire and earth, maybe even greater things.

And if Malkuth did what he was suggesting and did it right…tied the pieces to bodies and bound them to this world…

Slowly, the connection with the Qliphoth became clearer. In theory, if they were too take shape anywhere, it would have to be in Malkuth. Most of them could only be differentiated from their corresponding Sephirot by thought or action; they had no meaning, otherwise. A common way of illustrating the Qliphoth was by setting it beneath the Tree of Life, in fact, with Keter at the uppermost point and Thaumiel at the lowest, implying that if the Sephirot covered the canopy and the trunk of the tree, the Qliphoth were the roots, hidden deep in the darkness. And the points where those two sides connected? In Malkuth and Nehemoth.

But what was Nehemoth? It was, if anything, the least defined of the Qliphoth, the hardest to grasp—but what was the shadow of the physical realm?

The Qliphoth as a whole were like a second tree of life, one representing Sitra Ahra—the so-called 'Other Side.' But what was it? I had no idea, truthfully, but if Malkuth was the endpoint that resulted from the spheres that came before it, Nehemoth should be the same with the Qliphoth, the point where concepts became realities. And if no one knew what those realities were, if no one truly knew what Nehemoth or the other Qliphoth could be…what did that imply?

I wasn't sure, but…

"What did you have in mind?" I asked carefully.

"What do you think of reincarnation?" Malkuth asked, out of the blue.

I allowed my eyebrows to rise, but waited a moment before answering. They were working on altering states of matter, trying to create different things in pursuit of their more distant goal. It was hard to say how quickly they were progressing, simply because there was no way to know what the results would look like when they found them. Was creating semi-solid lasers a step in the right direction? Orbs that reverted into lightning bolts once a current was applied? Things that weighed more than their mass should have allowed or possessed strange properties?

Things had changed since they'd gotten started decades ago, grown. From the very beginning, all of them had been unprecedented and so knowing how to best use their own power was something they had been forced to find out for themselves—and so they had. Exploring new possibilities and venues, crafting new techniques and fields of study, and they'd built upon what they had and what had been left behind.

The place they were in now was somewhere between a laboratory and a factory—the place where we created wonders. Taken on its own, it was nothing, because it could not function without the power they worked upon it. But when they worked together, they could produce things that would have been considered impossible anywhere else.

Largely because they would have been impossible, anywhere else. Much of what we did required Malkuth's power to make the laws of physics more agreeable. Crafting materials that were simultaneously extremely rigid and supremely flexible was normally fairly difficult, but exceptions could be made by force, if necessary. Natural reactions delayed to see what occurred if something didn't explode when it was supposed to, tests to see what might happen if one forced the laws of geometry to make something that was both circular and triangular, if matter was made to occupy the same place. Different forms, hypothetical states, even the products of theories that were proven false, made correct for a time. What they'd learned in the process was almost impossible to describe outside of it, simply inapplicable in places where natural laws had no choice but to behave themselves, but here…

The others got involved from time to time and always paid attention to the results and what we were creating, but by and large this was their lab, their work. The Archangel that governed this world and the one that was least attached to it, forcing it to stretch and conform to see what happened, where errors popped up and holes emerged.

Of course, the results were short-lived without Malkuth's power to sustain them and were quickly ground down by the basic laws of mathematics. I could adjust things somewhat myself, altering the state of myself and my power, but there were limits still, things we had yet to overcome. My power was more personal, a matter of definition rather than of being defined. Still, there were places I could reach and things I could do that even Malkuth could not, reaching above to add new factors and variables to the system.

That was what I was working on now, in fact; I was attempting to raise something above the realm of Malkuth, however slightly, and then draw it back. If—or rather, when—we managed it, we'd see what state it returned in and then if it could be brought back in other forms instead. Things could be hard to change in worlds of concrete laws and rules, but if you stripped them down to the most basic level, to thoughts and concepts and ideas, and then made them real again, there was no telling what would happen.

Sadly, it wasn't going well. There were rules and limitations they still hadn't mapped out and their progress was proving slow.

Still, it was rare for Malkuth to talk about something else while they were working and it was a clear sign that he considered the question important. I just wasn't certain how to respond. I rolled the question around in my head for a moment, trying to take it apart and see if there was more too it, but nothing I did found me answers. Truthfully, it wasn't something I spent a great deal of time thinking about, because death wasn't something I spent much time thinking about, for several reasons.

The first was fairly obvious. When I lifted my eyes to stare at my brother for a moment, he hadn't aged a day in all the years that had passed—just as none of us had. Whether that was a natural product of the amount of the Sephirot that had been gathered within us or how much Aura we possessed or something else, we still weren't entirely certain, but neither of us looked like anything but men in our early twenties. Never would look older than that, near as we could tell, because we'd never age beyond out primes, never die of natural causes. And given the power we'd learned to wield, the natural defenses we had in place, it was unlikely we'd die of anything but direct, personal action of another being and there were few that were up to the task. Really, our odds of killing one another were better than the chances of anyone else doing it.

And wasn't that a sobering thought?

"In what sense?" I finally asked, feeling concerned enough to ask for clarification. "Scientifically? Metaphysically? Personally?"

"Yes," Malkuth answered simply. "I just want to know what it is to you."

I pursed my lips for a long moment before answering.

"Scientifically, it's a proven process, more or less," I mused. "The Angels identified enough souls and later found ones that were exceedingly similar again that it's almost certainly real. There's still a great deal we don't understand about it, though, and answers weren't forthcoming."

"Because they don't remember anything," Malkuth replied. "Nothing of their lives, of the intervening time."

We both remember, in our own ways, I noted. In a technical sense, one might argue that we're both reincarnations, though I wasn't certain how applicable that was to this. As in many things, neither of us were standard or meant to be taken as the norm, so instead I nodded.

"Yes," I said. "And because there can be significant delays to the process, for whatever reason, it was hard to research in a controlled environment. Should someone die, it might be decades or centuries before they return, at which point they will inhabit completely different bodies, possess no memories of their past lives, and apparently be wholly different people. It is believed that certain personality traits remain, certain elements of the original life, but it is hard to prove such things definitively and it's possible that anyone who made such connections was simply projecting what they wanted to see. As will many aspects of the soul, nothing could be said for certain."

Malkuth nodded and went silent for a moment before speaking again.

"The Angels didn't see it as any different from ceasing to exist entirely," He stated. "Some even considered it a worse fate than becoming a Preta, given the choice."

"The Angels were afraid of many things," I answered, shrugging a shoulder slightly. "Death was one of them."

"Are you not afraid of death?" Malkuth asked.

I considered that.

"I'm not afraid of death, in and of itself," I mused. "Though I can imagine circumstances where I might be afraid to leave things behind. Nonetheless, given the unique state of my soul, it is likely that I would stand out from others and you and the others are immortal. Assuming you don't die along with me, it's likely you'll be able to find me again."

"You wouldn't be you, though," He stated.

"I wonder," I said. "Is that true? I am the Archangel associated with Keter, that which lies above the mind's comprehension, and I hold a concentration of it that's impossible to find anywhere else. When I was born, I knew who and what I was, even if I didn't remember it like you did. If I died and was reborn, would I truly be wiped clean, or would some things still persist? If anything should carry between bodies, wouldn't it be that which is contained in Keter? It's possible I'll still be myself, after."

"But what if you weren't?" He asked. "If you did forget?"

Ah.

"If you died, I'd find you, however long I had to wait," I stated simply. "Whatever happens, you're my little brother after all."

Malkuth made a face and looked away, but I saw him relax for a moment before tensing again.

"Would I be?" He asked. "Really? True, Keter might persist between lives to one degree or another and I might even be able to arrange something for myself when the time comes, but if I was reborn, lost everything, and became something new, in what way would I be me?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "No one else seems to, either. But I'd like to believe that something would remain, even if only through luck or our strange natures—if nothing else, I'd want to hold on to hope. If nothing else, however, perhaps we'd meet each other elsewhere."

"Where?"

I shrugged again.

"Souls remain somewhere when they aren't inhabiting bodies," I said. "Somewhere above the Tree of Life. Whatever process governs the laws of reincarnation, logic would dictate that there is some benefit to the process or why would souls even bother? As a result, even if we couldn't remember here, perhaps we might remember there."

"In Heaven?" Malkuth asked in a wry tone. "Do you believe there is one?"

"I don't know," I admitted again. "As it's usually portrayed? Perhaps not. I'm not certain what would qualify as an eternal paradise, especially for people like you and I. I don't have many good memories of people who call themselves Angels, either, and when it comes to God…truthfully, I'm not certain I want to believe there's a being of such power, who could create a Universe as grand as this and yet still allow things like you and I to happen, letting countless souls be torn apart for someone's curiosity. With all you remember, do you feel any differently?"

"If there's actually a God, he owes everyone who became me an apology," Malkuth said. "But then what do you believe in."

"I want to believe that there's something beyond death, waiting to be unveiled," I said. "Or else death would so boring. Wouldn't you like to unravel the mysteries of what awaits us? We know that something exists, after all; it's simply a matter of finding it and understanding it."

"I think that would be more frustrating than anything else," He answered. "Those who reincarnate don't remember what happens between lives, after all. I have no use for mysteries I'm not allowed to learn the answer to."

"Perhaps so," I allowed. "But I would be a way to pass the time. And if possible…I'd like to meet you and the others there, should we all die together. Anything else would be saddening, so I'm willing to label that possibility 'Heaven.'"

Malkuth went silent again for a long minute before slowly cracking a smile.

"Maybe," He said. "Yeah, I suppose."

"What got you so interested in reincarnation all of a sudden?" I asked him.

"I was just considering something," He said. "What might happen if we succeed, if I separate myself while remaining connected? What would it be like? Like dying, perhaps, or being reborn?"

"We don't have to go through with it, even if we figure everything out," I told him. "We're just exploring the possibilities, still. If you're worried…"

"I'm worried," He murmured. "But…maybe a bit intrigued, too. It's strange…I don't know. But I want to know what we might find, where it might take us. Even if it takes a thousand years to figure everything out…I want to know."

"Then we'll find out," I promised.

"Any progress?" Malkuth asked as he entered our lab again. Blue and yellow symbols fluctuated and glowed above his left hand, writing notes to one of his storage systems, but he hardly seemed to pay any attention to it as he entered. It had been some time since they'd last spoken, as they'd both been distracted by other projects and chosen to pursue their research separately for a time before comparing notes.

It probably said something about them that it had been several months since we'd last seen one another but we acted as if no time at all had passed. Immortality didn't make days pass any faster, but it seemed to give them less import after a while. Time flew when one was having fun and if a few weeks happened to pass by in the background…well, what of it?

And I had certainly been having fun.

"Oh, quite a bit," I said, smiling brilliantly.

"Do tell," Malkuth replied, gesturing and causing the floor to ripple and rise into a seat.

"I think we may have made some faulty assumptions when it came to matters of the soul," I replied, raising a hand. At once, the air began to ripple and gather, swirling throughout the room centered on a space just above the palm of my hand. Slowly, a form seemed to take shape, shifting in and out of transparency as the edges of the winds took color and shape. Soon, there was a tiny figure, no more than six inches in height, floating just above my hand. "Malkuth, meet Stribog."

"Stribog?" He asked, blinking as he looked at the new figure before his eyes widened and he leaned forward in his seat. "You did it?"

"In a way," I said. "I had a bit of inspiration and an idea came to me, so I began an experiment that bore fruit. As you already know, I've been trying to empower something physical with a part of myself, to give it a role and place in its own right even as it remained a part of me, but nothing I did seemed to work even if everything we knew seemed to be correct. So finally, I went back to basics—because if the results don't match what we think we know, then there are only three possibilities; our results are in error, our observations are in error, or our knowledge is in error. So I threw out everything I thought I knew and started all over again."

"And you found something," He stated. "What?"

"We began with the assumption that whatever I did, I would be adding something new to the equation," I replied. "That I would be pouring a soul into an empty vessel, essentially. The air, the water, the wind—whatever I chose. After all, only living things have souls, right?"

He frowned.

"Normally I'd say yes, but given the context of the conversation so far, I assume the answer is actually no?" He asked, sounding vaguely baffled.

"Exactly," I said. "When I started questioning the basic theories we'd built our assumptions on, I started to wonder exactly what separated things that had souls from those that didn't. Was it life? But when you got down to it, life is nothing but a biological process. So I began to wonder if that process was somehow key and examined a variety of different species, starting with the creatures most closely related to Mankind and diverging further and further. I tested fungi, plants, insects, fish, and more. By the time I got to algae and sponges, which I think we can agree are fairly different from humans, biologically speaking, and yet still proved capable of manifesting an Aura, I concluded that the only common denominator was that they were all organic. I even experimented with several kinds of single-celled lifeforms, just to be sure."

"That sounds like it would have been tricky," Malkuth noted. "I hope you took precautions, as well. I'd hate for you to have created some kind of magical super plague."

"No need to worry," I stated. "Wormwood is remarkably well-behaved and has promised not to plot against Mankind while I'm still alive."

"The sad part is that I don't know if that's a joke or not," Malkuth murmured to himself. "Pretending it is for my own sake, however—we knew this. Only living things can generate an Aura. Except maybe not?"

"Yes, yes," I gestured towards him, rolling my eyes slightly as I ignored that last part. "We 'know' that. But I was wondering why. It's not a matter of sapience, clearly, or even a matter of sentience once you get to a low enough level. What is it about a particular mixture of hydrogen and carbon that decides what does and doesn't have a soul?"

"I have no idea," He answered.

"Neither did I," I said. "And I couldn't find one, either, couldn't make since of why it was true when I chose not to accept it as fact. With the existence of reincarnation, we know that while souls may attach themselves to living things, they can and do exist outside and beyond them. One doesn't have a soul, one simply has a body. Is it a matter of choice on the soul's part then, a desire for a living and active form? But a variety of living species are scarcely more active than, say, water or air molecules. And because of the Sephirot, we know that all things come from the same source, the Light taking shape through the descent to Malkuth; that's as true for earth and steel as it is for human flesh and the soul. And if we're made of the same thing, with only a slight change in somethings molecular structure allowing for life, then what's the difference, really?"

"I still have no idea," He said again when I paused for him. "Are you going to explain at some point or…?"

"What if there's no difference?" I asked him. "What if it's not a matter of presence, but of structure. Every person's soul is different and the souls of plants and animals differ in nature from those of humans—and the further you get from a human in terms of biology, the more different the structure of the soul. Every species is unique, just as every organism differs if only in subtle ways. Some are extremely simple, such as microscopic life and hardly detectable without proper training. It doesn't feel like a human soul, either. But then, if that's the case for simple life…how strange would something that wasn't alive at all?"

Malkuth frowned at me again.

"You're saying that everything has a soul then?" He asked. "Just that some are so different they aren't recognizable as such."

"Exactly," I said. "Or perhaps soul is the wrong word for what I'm talking about—but there's something there, some connection to the source if you reach back far enough. You've felt it too, haven't you? The massive currents of power that run through the world? What if they're like Aura—just from something a lot bigger than a human? What if, instead of trying to fill a void, it was a matter of connecting with and awakening something that was already there? A connection and an exchange?"

He was silent for a moment.

"Perhaps," Malkuth murmured at last. "Seeing as you produced results, I can't do anything but believe you. It's a bit odd, but that's us for you. But there's one problem with that theory of yours."

"Hm?" I wondered, tilting my head.

"You pursued the idea that everything had a soul, live or dead," He stated, lifting a hand and opening it. In the center of his palm rested a quivering lump of black material. "I went the other direction. If the nature of Nehemoth is that which isn't supposed to exist in Malkuth, if what we needed were empty vessels to fill…then wouldn't the logical assumption be to create something that was alive, but which had no soul of its own?"

I was silent for a moment, surprised. In a way, it was almost funny how our research had taken us in such similar yet different directions, but I didn't voice that aloud as I considered Malkuth's strange creation and sensed a strange sort of nothing from it.

"Much like you, I went back to basics and tried to figure out precisely how to do what I had in mind," Malkuth explained as things bubbled and writhed between his hands, black ooze growing. "But I went in a different direction. While creating life is relatively simple, that's not what I wanted, at least not entirely—because if it was alive, it would have a soul of some sort, right?"

"Right," I agreed, frowning as he worked. "But given what we know now, so should everything else. How did you create something that doesn't?"

"Like I said, I went back to basics," Malkuth answered. "And what are the basics of a soul? The key elements that everyone must have to some extent or another?"

"Keter," I stated. "Yesod and Malkuth, too, as well as something to link Keter and Yesod. Even if the structure of other souls differs, as near I can tell that remains true."

"Yes," He answered. "And what if you removed parts of that equation?"

"The soul wouldn't form at all?" I guessed. "Wouldn't function, at least. Without Keter, there's no source of power to feed the process. Without Malkuth, there's no result. And without something inbetween, the connection is broken and there's nothing to guide or shape the flow."

"Exactly," He stated. "So what if, instead of removing elements, you simply…substituted them?"

"With what?" I asked before tilted my head and narrowing my eyes. "The Qliphoth? You found a way?"

"Perhaps," He stated. "I'm still not entirely certain I've found what I'm looking for and it could use some refinement regardless. But I kept coming back to the same problem—if Nehemoth is the shadow of Malkuth and where things that aren't supposed to exist do anyway…then what does that mean? How do you create something that isn't supposed to exist? You can create things that don't exist yet or don't exist naturally, but if you can create something, whatever the means, it has the potential to exist. Even if the probability is tremendously low, it's still there; even if it requires my power to create, then that still means it's possible."

I nodded. We'd realized that much pretty early on—that part of our very premise was evidentially impossible. But we'd persisted anyway, just to see what would happen and if we couldn't redefine possibility. Between us and the growing nature of our power, it wasn't impossible that we might be able to draw something into this world that couldn't be created otherwise. But…

"You found a different way," I assumed.

"I wondered if maybe I was wrong," He answered. "It's rare, I know, but it happens occasionally. Nehemoth is the Qliphoth we know the least about, after all, and maybe I'd made a faulty assumption somewhere along the road. So I went back and reviewed everything I knew about the others and changed my hypothesis. Nehemoth is where the other Qliphoth are given form, of that much I was certain, but what were the other Qliphoth? How would they appear once manifested?"

He shook his head and made something between a grimace and a smile.

"It was hard, because all I had to go on were the 'mundane' expressions of the Qliphoth, such as they were," He said. "They aren't something that we understand very well, by their very nature; they're what we labeled something we didn't understand. They're mistakes, flaws, and imperfections in our view of the world—things that seemed to occur independent of what we knew of the soul. If our grasp of the system by itself would be perfect, the Qliphoth are why it's not, the errors that occur because of the human element."

I nodded again.

"People have the ability to make choices," I said. "To decide how they want to act and live—and that carries with it the potential to make mistakes and do the wrong thing. Whatever your soul might say about you, who you are as a person matters as well—it's why the same soul can take the form of completely different people. Your actions, your decisions…they make you who you are."

"Precisely," Malkuth said and the topic seemed to excite him—which was natural, I suppose, considering that it was partially what he was after. "But that made me wonder—how did that apply in terms of Aura instead of emotion? Especially to Nehemoth? If the Qliphoth are simply imperfections and limited views of the truth, how would they take form, especially when it came to the shadow of Malkuth? What if, instead of making something that couldn't exist, I made something that simply shouldn't exist?"

"How?" I asked, tilting my head.

"I broke the rules," He stated. "The realm of Malkuth is where things come to be, taking shape based on the flow of the Sephirot. In some cases, that just means that things in this world are solid and real—but there also exist things that aren't. Thoughts, emotions, the mind…they're real, but real doesn't necessarily mean tangible. But what if I made them that way?"

I paused, tilting my head.

"But you make things that wouldn't normally be possible all the time," I said. "Wouldn't that be an expression of Nehemoth, too?"

"It is," He replied. "We keep thinking of the Qliphoth as separate from the Sephirot—and they are, in a way—but they grow from them, too. They exist within each other. Elements of Nehemoth have colored my power from the very beginning, just like elements of Thaumiel must color yours. But what if I took the expressions of the Qliphoth and made them real in the most literal way possible? What do you think would happen?"

"That?" I asked, pointing to the mass floating between his hands.

"Mhm," Malkuth answered, smiling and looking pleased with himself. "It's alive and it isn't, but…it's real."

"Does it work the way you imagined it would?" I asked him, frowning even as I tilted my head.

At that, his smile dwindled slightly.

"Not yet," He admitted. "There's something there, I think, but it's still incomplete—like it's not finished yet. It's soulless and 'alive,' but not…not whole. I built it from parts of myself, from my memories of…of before, but there's still something missing. It's the power source, I think."

"Thaumiel," I said. "I can see the problem. If you draw upon the Light directly, then they'll likely have a soul of some kind, so it's important to stop there and pull from something else. Maybe even just Thaumiel itself. The Dual Contending Forces…"

"That's a bit outside my area of expertise," He admitted. "Could you…help me?"

I smiled at him, putting aside my uncertainty.

"Of course," I said. "You used the memories of your past lives, correct? Perhaps the issue is simply that your memories aren't complete. After all, you weren't the only one who inherited their will. They gave you Malkuth and they gave me Keter...let's see if we both can't give something back."

I realized that Malkuth was right soon after we began. The line between Keter and Thaumiel was so fine that I wouldn't have noticed it had I not known to be looking, simply failed to notice a force that was at once of and apart. Thaumiel was Keter, but cut-off from its surroundings—from the Light above and the path leading down to Malkuth below. A power that had no apparent source or destination and yet was, existing in its own right as if to spite the world that said it couldn't, to challenge possibility.

I could respect that—and it was exactly what we needed for this. A power that stood separate from the natural way of things, emanating its own power against all reason without allowing itself to be colored or shaped by exterior forces.

Of course, that simply raised more questions about the nature of the Sephirot. Even when separated from what should have been the source of its power, Thaumiel was able to emanate the exact same amount of 'energy.' Basic logic dictated that it had to come from somewhere, but there was no apparent source but itself. Was there something I couldn't feel, even though it was a part of me? Could that power be coming from a place they simply couldn't detect—the still theoretical 'Other Side' of Sitra Ahra? Or was this an insight into the nature of the Light and the Sephirot, that I could draw such power while standing away from and against what should have been the source of it?

Perhaps that was it. The Sephirot were formed of the Light, but somehow made distinct—in fact, at the most basic level, one could argue that they were the only things that were distinct from the Light, with everything else being shaped from their interactions. They were, perhaps, the 'matter' to the Light's 'energy,' but why did they exist in a different shape to begin with? And what did that state mean? I wasn't sure, but they were still composed of the Light, made of the same boundless power they were designed to channel. They were the same and yet distinct, just as Thaumiel was proving to be now; something that existed in a distinct way despite everything that said it shouldn't.

Or, at least, that was the feeling I got from it. But in the end, the truth of the matter was that I simply wasn't sure; this was an area that even I couldn't say I had any mastery of. Now that I had found it, I could feel the difference between Keter and Thaumiel, but it was hard to describe; like flipping a light switch, except the light didn't turn off, it just shifted. A connection vs. a closed circuit, but the same results either way. At least, maybe? Would the results be the same? I hadn't had time to try and test what the differences would be in using power from Thaumiel in place of power from Keter, but it felt much the same.

But maybe that was simply because the power was familiar, as if it had been there all along—which perhaps it had been, in hindsight. Looking at it now, I could see shades of myself in Thaumiel—or, perhaps, shades of Thaumiel in me. The will that drove me to defy the Angels, to set myself apart from the world that tried to define me and to define myself instead. The need to be, to know myself even if it wasn't acknowledged by anyone else, the knowledge of my name, the distinction between who I was outside and within. The separation of my 'self' from the 'world' and my 'mind' from my 'body,' and more besides…now that I knew what to look for, I could see the lines and similarities, down to the very way I existed in this world. There were elements that showed marks of Keter and Thaumiel, the two intermingled so much that the lines could only be guessed at.

Was this a natural thing, I wondered? Or as natural as such a thing could be, at least? We were artificial gatherings of such absurd amounts of the Sephirot that perhaps the Qliphoth were bound to manifest in extremes in turn—and, indeed, the method of their creation likely made that even more probable. In a way, they were as good an example of the Qliphoth as the thing they were now creating—the crafting of a soul within the mortal realm, the binding of many separate pieces and people into a distinct and separate whole. We were something that couldn't have occurred naturally forced to occur by the madness and greed of the Angels. Add to that the state of the people who'd gone into our creation, how they'd felt in their final moments and how those thoughts must have translated over into them…was it any surprise? And then there was the matter of who they were, what they'd chosen to be…yes. Thinking about it and looking back, I could all but imagine it now—the Qliphoth, always there and always unseen, an invisible and intangible part of us as much as our very souls.

In fact…as I felt that knowledge sink in and take hold, I could feel something stirring and rising closer to the surface. It wasn't something new, per se—more like something I'd simply never noticed before, except that thought in itself was ridiculous. I'd always known what I was and what I could be, even if certain paths only became clear as I learned more about myself and the paths that led to them; if this had been there all along, I would have noticed it.

Should have noticed it. But I somehow hadn't?

No, that wasn't quite right, either. It was close, but it didn't feel like one of the masks I wore or the roles I adopted—not entirely, at least, though I could feel possibilities forming and taking shape within it, now that I was aware of it. If anything, it felt more like when I first found and noticed my name, Metatron.

Except that still didn't make sense. Metatron was more than just a name—it was my name, the part of me that remained even when all else changed. It was who I was, the essence of my self that everything boiled down to; it wasn't something I could have another of, without being someone else.

Or was that it, perhaps? The name and the role, it was…who I was when I wasn't myself, maybe? Who I could have been if I hadn't been me? Or something else along those lines. A possibility that had always been there, even expressed itself in ways, but just a possibility, a choice I could have made. I had always been one to define myself and choose my paths; this was just a decision I'd made without realizing it, as a result of all the other decisions I'd made.

And here it was now, spelt out clearly. Not reaching out, not inviting me, but there and waiting to be explored if I so chose. A chance to take the path not traveled.

But seeing it now, feeling it, I was startled. I drew back metaphorically, shied away, and the certainty I'd had for what seemed like all my life briefly faltered. I couldn't understand it completely, couldn't truly comprehend it without reaching out, but I could still vaguely feel it, who I could have been.

This was what they could have made me. What I might have been born to become. And I wasn't sure how to describe it. 'The Opposite' didn't quite fit the feeling, though parts of it applied; it was more than that. 'The Other,' 'The Reverse,' there were shades of applicability, but it still didn't fit. If I had to define it, name the sensation…I would have called it 'The Adversary.' The opposing force, the nemesis, the enemy. Not 'Thaumiel' instead of 'Keter,' but what I could have become had things been different, had I remained alone.

Of who? Of what? Maybe me, maybe someone else, maybe everything. I wasn't sure—and I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.

Before, I'd have pushed forward, reached out to examine the sensation, pushing on my scientific curiosity and wonder, sure that whatever came of it, I'd be able to see myself through and that there was nothing to be afraid of. Why would there be? We were the strongest beings in this world, dwarfing the Angels when we were young and dwarfing ourselves then as we were now. There shouldn't have been anything in this world that could frighten me and there wasn't.

But for the first time in a long, long time, I felt doubt. Faced with what could have been, what could still be…

Maybe this wasn't a good idea, I thought.

"Brother, look!" Malkuth spoke, drawing my attention moments after the thought crossed my mind. "We've done it!"

I turned at once, a pang of dread striking me as I looked towards him. The black mass that had gathered between his hands began to shift and writhe on its own power, something filling the empty vessel. It wasn't a soul, as such, wasn't complete—but it was something we'd made from the pieces of what had once been a person, altered by power and will. It was a semblance of life, except that wasn't the right word, because whatever this creature might be, it was most assuredly alive. Soulless? Perhaps, but alive.

It opened its eyes slowly, the orbs completely and brightly red, with nothing to indicate an iris, pupil, or sclera. Even so, I could feel it as it looked around, turning it's gaze first towards me and then to Malkuth. It didn't have a true shape yet, still confined to the amorphous blob Malkuth had created, but I could feel the potential within it in a very literal sense. It was something I'd always had a knack for, judging others; perhaps a side-effect of my ability to determine my own place in the world. I could look at another person and see where they stood, what they were, and sometimes even what they might become.

Perhaps for that reason, new things had always fascinated me. Children, my creations, and more—to me, they all but glowed with possibility and potential. It was something I'd taken an interest in over time, trying to guess what things might become when they grew up or reached their conclusions…it might have been why I'd become a scientist in the first place and pressed the boundaries of what was and could be. What new things would I find? What new thing would I create and what would they become?

Here I was standing before one such thing and I…

I wasn't sure. I could see the potential in it, vast in a way I'd only seen when looking at my siblings. This was something truly new, both for us and for the world, and there was still no telling what it could become. My sense of it wasn't clear enough to break into distinct images yet, not this early and so far from the choices that might define it, but I could make guesses. I felt positive possibilities and negative ones, ones that felt steady and protective and ones that seemed almost sharp against my thoughts. I could imagine where we might go from, building upon our creation in countless ways. New futures, new theories, new everything—I could feel the bold futures we might create. Would we go further, making greater things or perhaps breath truer life into what we'd made? Or would it become something else entirely, surpassing all expectations?

There was no way of truly knowing what something might be except to watch and wait—but for the first time, that idea worried me. Because while many of the futures were bright, others were frighteningly dark, shadowed beyond my ability to see. I could feel danger from them, however, feel the possibility that my greatest fears might come true. This thing could grow up to become a wonder, yes, but it could also be a terror.

It wasn't too late to stop this, I thought. I could end it here, ask Malkuth to set things aside. It would bother him, especially this close to success, but if I asked, he'd do it. We could leave the answers to our questions a secret instead of searching them out and put all this behind us. I could destroy this thing before it became any of the things I saw, instead of risking it becoming a threat.

But I recoiled from the thought at once. What since did it make, to destroy something because of what it might become? It was something new and young, still able to become anything—of course not all its futures were bright. Our hadn't been either; no one's were. That was the point, the possibility inherent in free will, and the true meaning and value of the Qliphoth.

Slowly, hesitatingly, I relaxed. The Angels had wondered about the Qliphoth, sought to unravel why no two people were the same, even if their souls were constructed along the exact same lines. They looked at it as if it were some grand secret, adding chaos to the system as a byproduct of something greater—but what if that was the point, in and of itself. The Qliphoth added decision and distinction, division, separating people from one another by the simple matter of choice. It was a risk of sorts, giving people the chance to be less than what they could be, but also to rise above their nature and become more, giving them the opportunity to strive alongside the risk of faltering. It was the power of free will, creating variables in the system to keep things from becoming static, to allow for possibilities and create futures.

The possibility I'd found within myself, the Adversary—it wasn't the power of Thaumiel turning me evil. The Qliphoth didn't work like that; they were byproducts of choices rather than the causes. What I'd seen was simply something that had always been present within me, but which I hadn't chosen. If Thaumiel was Keter cut off from all other things, the person I'd seen and imagined was myself cut off from all others. If the others hadn't been born or if they'd been born to late, if I'd been raised as the Angel's had planned and hadn't pushed things ahead of schedule for the sake of my brothers and sisters…yes, I could have been something horrific. I might have still slain the Angels, true, but what would I have done then? What roles would I have taken up, what powers would I have wielded?

I had the power to be anything I wanted, good or bad, and I could have been an Archdemon as easily as an Archangel.

But, as I knew better than anyone, I could have been a lot of things. So could my brothers and sisters, so could my newest creation. There was no way of knowing what it might become other than to watch over it and raise it, as a parent did a child. My own creators had been monsters—so I'd just have to be better than the Angels.

"How is it?" I asked. "Everything okay?"

"I can feel it," Malkuth seemed to marvel. "I can see through its eyes, feel what it feels. It's separate, but it's a part of me."

Like my Elementals were part of me, yet separate, I mused.

"Is it okay?" I asked. "Are you?"

"What?" Malkuth asked, seeming startled. He blinked once, looking confused, before nodding. "Yes, yes, of course. I'm great—I'm better than ever! It worked, brother! I can feel a part of myself in it and it's still me, but it's not!"

He was so excited that he was babbling like he had when we were both still children. I smiled, even as I looked him over for any signs of change, any unintended shift. I watched him carefully, still a touch worried—but there was nothing. Near as I could tell, he was the same as ever.

"That's good," I replied. "Does anything feel different? Do you feel better now?"

At that he paused, smile replaced slowly by a look of confusion.

"Maybe," He mused. "It's still hard to tell, since there's only one of them. But…I think so? I feel happier, more certain. But there's something else."

I tilted my head.

"What?" I asked.

"I don't know," He muttered. "I can…sense something, just barely. From that direction."

He pointed and I frowned, switching roles and then peering through the veil of space. My gaze flew over the terrain and then back, which didn't help much.

"There's nothing in that direction but the city," I said. "Is that what you're feeling?"

He paused and then shrugged.

"Maybe," He said again. "It's too faint to really say. Maybe it's nothing."

But the frown on his face remained, as did mine. I didn't see a change in him, nothing acting upon him or coming from our creation, but…

I'm still worried, I thought. But of course I'd be—this is something we have to handle with care.

"We'll look into it," I said out loud. "For now, let's be careful, however. We both know the dangers of tampering with the soul."

"Right," Malkuth replied. "Of course, brother—there's no rush."

As I entered the laboratory to prepare for our next experiment, I smiled as I noticed that Malkuth had already beaten me to it. The gravity engine was spinning slowly to life, twisting a hole in worlds so that we'd be able to draw matter and energy from elsewhere. Today, we'd be working on my side of our shared work, testing the lifts of my 'Elementals' and seeing how they were defined—and to that end, we'd see precisely how far the nature of 'inorganic matter' went, using both my and Malkuth's power. It was something I'd been looking forward to for a long time now, and I'd be happy to see the results.

Sadly, my enthusiasm was short-lived as I turned my attention towards my brother. The room we now occupied had been shifted out of conventional space, only technically existing at the edge of the exosphere, so I hadn't noticed anything wrong on the outside, but as I opened the door, the details were impossible not to take in.

Malkuth was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, staring off into space with hands trembling slightly on his legs. He didn't even react as I entered the room.

"Malkuth?" I asked, suddenly more than a bit worried.

He twitched once but didn't answer and if there'd been any doubt that something wasn't right before, they died a quick death.

"Malkuth?" I tried again, ignoring the distance between us to kneel by his side. "Brother, what's wrong?"

His eyes flickered towards me, both of the orbs wide, but it seemed to take him a moment to recognize me, because for a moment, he seemed baffled.

"Keter," He said at last, the words sounding almost uncertain.

"What happened to you?" I asked. "Tell me and I'll fix it."

His mouth opened for a long moment but closed with a click without him saying a word. A second later, he tried again, but not before giving me a helpless smile.

"They…" He began before faltering slightly and shaking his head. "They're…afraid of us. They hate us."

The words didn't make any sense to me. They? Who were 'they?' There was no one here and even if there were, who could drive my brother into a state like this? But if he hadn't realized that his words would be unclear, hadn't been able to formulate a real reply, then trying to get answers out of him would be slow.

So I switched gears and began to change roles. I looked him over with the eyes of the Healer and the Protector before turning my gaze outwards. The Seer, the Farsighted, the Theocrat, and more all shifted to the forefront, taking the stage for only a moment before moving on. I scaled our surroundings, this time piercing the physical and metaphysical distance that separated this place from the outside world, looking for anyone who might be a threat.

It was only as I adopted the role of the General, however, that I truly saw them. Patterns lit up across the globe far below, written in shades of hostile colors. These places, a threat to what I wanted to protect. Here, weaknesses, ways to cripple them, draw them out, and strike them down. Without even thinking about it, I felt my power assign them priorities, threat levels, and more, and I felt a plan taking shape to cripple them all and remove the threat.

Except the threat was 'everyone and everything.' All of Mankind.

"The people?" I asked after a moment, still feeling a disconnect. "Brother, I don't understand. How are they hurting you?"

"I can feel them," He whispered. "All of them."

I analyzed that reply for a moment and then shifted to the Researcher to do so better. My natural awareness of people remained no matter what my role, but it sharpened in some ways and dulled in others. As I looked at Malkuth now, I could feel…something, a connection that flowed this way and that, shifting endlessly, and the texture of it was—

Ah.

"You can feel their emotions," I said at last, pieces finally coming together. "That what you've been noticing in our experiments. But it was never like this before…"

"Something finally clicked," He said. "And I finally understood what I was feeling. Everything became clearer then and I realized why it was so familiar. They think we're monsters."

I took a breath and then shrugged a shoulder.

"Hardly a surprise," I answered evenly.

"They think we're monsters, Keter," He repeated, voice growing as he rose from his seat. That anger seemed to allow him to push through the feelings that had been distracting him and I could see him clinging to it. "They hate us—and they hate each other, hate themselves, hate this world!"

"Hopefully not all at the same time," I replied, tilting my head. "But Malkuth, think of what we are to them—immortal and unspeakably powerful, guided by what are, to them, unknowable whims. At times we appear and get involve, forcing order on the chaos before things get too bad, but then we leave and fade away. They know we're real, but they don't know us, so why wouldn't they be afraid? They don't know our motivations and intentions, so what must our actions seem like to them? We're all but gods to them, Brother, and that must be terrifying."

"After everything we've done," He continued, as if he hadn't heard me. "After all the times we've helped them and protected them, after the things we've saved them from, they hate us. We were the ones who saved them from fates they can't even imagine in this happy, healthy world. When the Angels ruled—"

"The Angels died hundreds of years ago," I interrupted. "No one alive remembers them except us."

The reminder silenced him for a moment, probably because what everyone else had forgotten had long been a sore point for him. I used that opportunity to continue.

"People don't judge the quality of their lives based on some grand external measure," I said. "They judge it based on what they have and don't have. They're lives may be wonderful compared to what they were, but they aren't perfect. They fight with each other, still, and when they wake up and look to the sky, they think of us—beings who could tear down their world at any time, for any reason, without them being able to do a thing to stop it. If we were there for them to see, people they could speak to and understand, that might be one thing, but we didn't. We walked away after getting tired, doing only what we feel obligated to, and otherwise left them be. We didn't care to do more than what we had to so we didn't."

"Are you saying we're to blame?" Malkuth asked, sounding tense.

I shook my head.

"We don't owe them anything," I said. "The only people we ever owed anything died to create us and we laid them to peace when we killed the ones responsible. What we've done since, how we've taken care of them, has been because of what we felt was right or remembered—but we don't have to do anything. I'm merely saying that if we do little, it should be expected for some people to see us that way. Why do you care? They have their reasons to hate us, so let them hate—it doesn't change what we've done or who we are or anything. It doesn't mean everyone things that, either. While some people might loathe us constantly, others likely just go one with their lives; you would know that better than anyone, I think. So Malkuth…tell me. What's this really about? Tell me what's wrong and I'll try to fix it."

He was silent again for a long moment before answering.

"It hurts," He said, making me frown.

I considered what he'd said, shifting roles a few times to fill in the blanks and put the pieces together in context. Empathy was a known but largely undesirable ability, owing simply to the fact that…well, if you could know what everyone around you was thinking at all times, would you really want to? Worse, because of the simplicity of the ability at its most basic level—reacting to fluctuations and changes in surrounding Auras, effectively reading the body language of the soul—most recorded Empaths had a fairly extensive range, often covering kilometers at the low end. More than large enough to encompass good-sized chunks of cities and countless people as a result; generally, that alone was enough to drive most such people away from civilization. I figured that alone would be enough to harm Malkuth on the scale I'd detected.

But what if there was more to it than that? This wasn't conventional Empathy—it was like calling to like. The manifestations of the Qliphoth that Malkuth and I had created…the could sense manifestations of themselves in others and they were drawn to them. It wasn't particularly relavent since they were all tied to each other through Malkuth anyway, but I was willing to bet they could sense each other fairly well, too.

And it occurred to me that perhaps being an empath who could effectively only sense negative things might have unfortunate side-effects on a person. If it had been me…well, I probably would have any more difficult than I did with normal Empathy; I was above such things, generally speaking, just as Keter was the crown above the head. But Malkuth and I were very different in a lot of ways, however similar we were in others.

Even so, I hadn't expected it to affect Malkuth this way. His memories of his past lives gave him an enormous amount of experience at resisting such things, both from what he'd gone through in those lives and this one. While he didn't have the blatant immunity to mental assaults I enjoyed, he was about as resistant as he could otherwise be, a mental fortress of countless lives.

But perhaps that was the problem here. The same thing that had given him peace had left him vulnerable, opening holes and forging a connection that let things in.

That…could be problematic.

"Malkuth," I said carefully. "Perhaps we should put our experiments on hold for a while. Deactivate everything, until we can get this sorted out."

I saw his fingers spasm at the idea, which told me pretty well what he thought of that idea, which I'd unfortunately guessed already.

"They aren't the problem," He answered a moment later.

"They're why you're feeling this way," I reminded.

"That's like saying my skin is a problem because it's what lets me feel pain," He replied. "And, to continue that analogy, that flaying myself alive would be an improvement. I need that—and you know what will happen if I draw back all my pieces. You're asking me to suffer for the sake of people who hate me."

"No," I answered gently. "I'm asking you to do it for me. Just for a few days, until we sort everything out. This is hurting you, Malkuth, and I don't like seeing you in pain."

He seemed ready to retort again, but my last words seemed to take the wind out of his sails.

"I'll be in pain either way," He muttered before going silent for a minute. "Just for a few days? You promise?"

"I promise," I answered. "I know this is painful for you, Brother—but I also know you're strong. You endured it for centuries and I'll do everything I can to make sure we fix this."

"It's not just a week of hell," He whispered. "It's a week of a hell I thought I'd finally escaped."

But then, his eyes drifted to the spot where he'd been sitting, huddled alone far above the world to try and escape, and he closed his eyes.

"But you're right, of course," He said. "So I'll do it, because you asked me to."

I did my best to keep my word. I met with our brothers and sisters and we agreed to change things. We took a more active role in the world again, going back on the decision we made so long ago, the way we'd withdrawn from the world. I could tell that it was tough for a lot of my siblings, putting aside the freedom we'd embraced for an obligation we'd never really held to in the first place—but they did it. We did it.

For Malkuth.

We returned to the world and split it between ourselves, taking a kinder, more personal hand. Four for the largest continent, one for the smallest, and two for every other. I stayed with Malkuth, rebuilding the lands of our birth on the continent of Grimm. At my urging, we leveraged our research to the cause, using it to create a better world. Medical technology, transportation, energy, and more—I made it a challenge of sorts, urging the others to explore paths we'd never had any use for personally. Even our projects with the Qliphoth turned to aim in a new direction, in an attempt to build strengths upon weaknesses. The power that made Malkuth so painfully aware of the world also served as a way to detect sources of that pain, letting us act before things went out of control. I tried to make it into a self-resolving problem, tried to create a cure from the disease. I tried to solve the problem.

But…

Malkuth was crying again, staring forward with the empty gaze that always frightened me, because it meant he was more somewhere else than he was here. This had happened before, if only rarely over the last few centuries, in moments were things broke down and fell apart. It meant that something had happened that had spiraled out of control despite their best efforts, that there was a war going on, or a riot, or a plague, or a disaster, or a panic—something that would be short lived in the grand scheme of things, but which was horrifically and dangerously real in the now.

To the people and to Malkuth.

It was a frustrating reminder that even they couldn't control everything—not everywhere, at least, not all the time. It made a part of me wish that we'd never made them, what people now called the creatures of Grimm, but no, that was only part of it, a side-effect of the greater issue. Malkuth was suffering, had suffered since the beginning, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was an issue made all the more galling by the fact that if it had been me, if I had been able to take everything he went through upon myself, it would have been nothing. I could have born the pain he was forced to endure, I just couldn't bear it for him. All I could do was try and help, in ways that never seemed to last, never seemed to address the real issue.

Which is what I did now. Silently, I laid a hand on Malkuth's head and kept it there, feeling my power take hold as I changed roles. He didn't resist, didn't even seem to really react, and silent sobs cut off abruptly as he was driven into a senseless, dreamless sleep. Only then did I lift a hand and rise from my place at his side.

"Gevurah," I said, voice quiet and calm. "Whatever is causing this, find it and put an end to it. Now."

Gevurah shifted in his place at the doorway, glancing towards me for a long moment. I glanced back at him and looked into his eyes, staring firmly into the windows of his soul. Like the rest of us, his eyes had always been different, distinct, but his were more noticeable than my blue or Malkuth's red. Instead, they were like mirrors, but with flames filling the background of whatever they reflected. When he grew angry, those flames flooded closer, filling his gleaming eyes with clouds of smoke and burning corpses that ran and screamed in silence.

And he was always angry, nowadays. Frustrated, upset, tense—at the situation, at what he was forced to do, at what kept happening to Malkuth. Maybe even at me, for some reason.

But after a moment, he nodded and left without a word.

I stayed where I was, knowing I wouldn't have to wait long now. Gevurah worked fast, especially when it was stuff like thing, and he was as smart as the rest of us. He'd find whatever was wrong and fix it in minutes.

Sure enough, in less than three minutes, Malkuth stirred, fighting off the effect I'd laid upon him with ease and opening his eyes.

"It happened again," He whispered.

"What was it this time?" I asked.

Malkuth lifted a hand to his eyes, covering them for a moment as he began laughing quietly.

"Does it matter?" He returned after a few seconds, when he finally settled down.

I waited silently.

"An earthquake," He eventually said. "Worst in about a century. I tried to stop it, but people started panicking when the buildings started falling. Things got worse afterwards, when fear turned into other things, becoming grief and anger and more."

I nodded, figuring as much. Enki had alerted me to a disturbance on that front and moved to act, but I'd figured that anything on that level would hit my brother hard and had headed here instead, calling the others on the way. Gevurah had headed over as well, probably expecting my request, though why he even bothered waiting, I wasn't sure.

"I sent Gevurah to handle it," I said after another brief silence. "And he did. It's enough, at least for now."

He lifted his hand to look at me, eyes disbelieving.

"No," He said. "It's not."

He rose to his feet, standing until we were eye to eye, but his hands were clenched into fists at his side.

"These are stop-gaps, Keter," He continued. "They aren't solutions. This keeps happening, again and again and again."

I nodded quietly, sharing his feelings.

"I know," I said. "It's not perfect. But it's at least rare, now, something that only happens every few decades, every couple of centuries. It's not as bad as it could be."

"'Not as bad as it could be,'" He repeated, nodding but not in agreement. "Yeah, that's great. My life 'isn't as bad as it could be.' It's just, I was expecting a bit more than that."

"I didn't mean it that way, Malkuth," I replied. "You know that. But…it was this or disabling the Qliphoth, suffering occasionally or suffering constantly."

"I'd rather not suffer at all, I think," He murmured.

"I know," I said the same way. "I…I might have a solution."

At that, Malkuth seemed to perk up, eyes brightening as they met mine.

"You've figured it out?" He asked, phrasing the question oddly.

"It's something I've been working on, a barrier that should cut you off from this dimension and the people in it," I said. "I can show you the math, it's almost done, but—"

"It won't work," Malkuth cut me off with a snarl, stepping towards me. "Do you think I haven't tried that? Cutting myself off from them? Don't you think that was the first thing I tried!? It doesn't matter. I'm the Kingdom, Keter, and I can see through the walls of dimensions like they're made of glass—and so can all of my creations."

I fell silent at that, momentarily surprised before accepting his words as truth.

"Something else then," I proposed hesitantly. "It's something I've been working on—a way to reach above this world, above Malkuth. Above time and space and distance and everything else. If I finish it, we—"

"Could do what?" He asked. "Lock me away from the world? Lock me up alone in a hole for all time?"

"Not alone," I continued, still whispering. "You know I'd never do that, Brother. I'll go with you. And it won't be forever, either, just…until we figure out a solution."

He was silent for a long minute at that, bowing his head until his hair hid his eyes.

Then his shoulders shook slightly as he laughed again, the sound barely audible.

"There you go again," He said. "You and your solutions, again and again. Every time, you tell me to suffer for a while, because things will be better, and when they aren't, you do it again, always trying. But there's only one answer and we both know what it is. The way you handle it, every time you fail."

This time, it was my turn to fall silent, and I bowed my head as well.

"What you're suggesting is monstrous, Brother," I whispered. "Understandable, given what just happened to you—what keeps happening to you—but—"

"But what?" He snapped. "Don't you get it? Can't you see what's right in front of your own eyes? We are monsters, Brother! Look at what we've done, the things we've created, how we act and view and think about the people we rule over! Don't you get it? We don't care. The others agreed to play their part for my sake, not for Mankind, and it's something they hate when there are so many things we all would rather do. And you, you sent out Gevurah again, to do your dirty work—to kill people en masse that you wouldn't have to see die yourself—just so you could keep your hands a little bit cleaner."

"That's not what I told him to do," I said.

"It's what you meant," He snarled. "It's what you knew he'd do. You could have stopped him, sent someone else, gone yourself, handled things differently, but it was the fastest way, wasn't it? The quickest way to help me. So tell me honestly, Archangel Keter—why did you send Gevurah to do it?"

Slowly, I heaved a sigh and looked up at him.

"He's the best at such things," I answered. "The least affected."

"Because he doesn't care anymore, Brother. Go and ask him," Malkuth challenged. "I have and do you know what he said when I questioned him on how it felt, how bad it was? He shrugged and told me what he really believed—that people die all the time. They're nothing to him now, after all these years, if they ever were to begin with. But tell me, is he really the least affected? Tell me, do you really feel a thing for them, for the people you abandoned all those centuries ago? Have you ever really felt sadness for those who died because of us? Would you really cry if they all died? Would you even really care? Nothing ever hurts you, Keter. Nothing ever haunts you, ever leaves a mark. But you're telling me that this would?"

I couldn't say he was wrong or refute his demands, but I didn't flinch away from them either.

This time, I told him the truth.

"I don't think it would," I whispered. "But I think it should. I think that I should care, that I should be more than what I am, be kinder, that all of us should be. I know I'm messed up—given everything, is that a surprise to anyone? But I already killed everyone who did anything to me personally. Why should I take my problems out on the innocent needlessly? Why should I let what was done to me make me a monster in turn? More of a monster, at least."

"And yet you still kill them," He stated. "Like you did today."

"For you," I said. "Like I would for any of us. I can kill when I have to, be a monster when I have to, if it means protecting my family. It's a compromise and still a sin, but that doesn't mean I should act that way all the time and kill whoever I want, whenever I want. If we did such a thing, we'd be no better than the ones who made us. Perhaps worse, at least in some ways. And we promised we wouldn't do that."

"We said some words," Malkuth said. "Caused some vibrations in the air nearly a thousand years ago. It was a promise, but guess what? Promises are broken all the goddamn time, Keter, and we broke this one. If I contacted Keter right now and told him to wipe Mankind from the face of the world, what do you think he'd say? 'Okay'? 'Sure'? Or do you think he'd demand an explanation or an excuse before doing it? We've held back from staying into the same experiments the Angels stated, but do you think we haven't thought about them? Haven't wondered about the mysteries contained within the soul, have never wanted to find out? Haven't you? We've toed the lines so often, haven't you wanted to cross them? How much longer until we do? We're not like the Angels, no—because we're stronger. Because we won. Because we know what killed them and how to avoid it."

"Not the most ringing moral justification I've ever heard," I admitted, but couldn't deny what he said, which worried me. I'd wondered before and I suppose I'd known we all had, but I suppose I'd always figured that some things had never changed—that some things never would change.

Malkuth laughed again and I could tell from the cadence that it was directed at me.

"Look at you," He said, voice almost found. "You never were good at stuff like this. You change who you are at a moment's notice, can adopt new powers and faces in a second, but at the core of it all, you're still the same. You never really changed from that day, did you? From the day you were born. What was it you told me—"

"If that even with all that's happened, who I am hasn't changed," I repeated quietly. "Then that must be strength."

He smiled at that and pointed at me.

"And maybe it is," He said. "But it's funny, too. In the beginning, when we were all children, you seemed like an adult, strong and calm and certain—but you're also static. The rest of us grew up and changed over these last thousand years, but you? You didn't."

I tilted my head.

"Right now, I'm not so sure that's a bad thing," I replied.

"Good or bad, it doesn't matter," Malkuth said. "It's just a fact. But what do you think the others would think if I told them what I wanted.

I went silent again, honestly considering it before answering.

"Gevurah might agree with you, perhaps," I said. "But not all of them. Netzach, Hod, and Yesod might go along with it, knowing it would help you, but Chesed? Tiferet? Binah and Chokhmah? You'd be splitting us in two."

"Perhaps," He acknowledged. "If it was just a request from me, perhaps you'd be right. They draw from the higher Sephirot like you and they're less…affected by it. They're curious, still, and they restrictions imposed on them chaff, but they'll follow your lead if you say to refrain. But at the same time, they'll do it if you ask them to."

I closed my eyes for a moment.

"What would you have me do, Brother?" I asked him.

"Something painful," He said at once. "And it's awful and it's selfish and it's going to hurt—but it's for me. Everything I did, all those times I held back and suffered for people I didn't care for or about, it was because you asked me to. I want you to prove you'd do the same for me."

"And if you asked me to cut off my arms and legs, I'd do it," I said. "If you told me that the only way to help you was to flay my own skin off and gouge out my eyes, I'd have already done it. But this is—"

"What's physical pain to you?" He interrupted, voice almost scornful. "You say you'd do those things and I believe you, but they mean nothing to you and me. You'd barely notice any of those things, much less be hurt by them. What I'm asking you to do…I know it's bad. I know it's wrong. And I know it would actually hurt you. But I'm asking you to do it for my sake."

I took a deep, slow breath, dropping my gaze to the floor.

"You're my brother, Malkuth," I whispered. "I promised I'd protect you, no matter what. That I'd keep you safe, whatever the cost."

But I knew I couldn't do this. That this was a line I couldn't cross—not because of Malkuth or even because of the people who'd been hurt, but simply because of me. This wasn't who I was.

Of course…I could always change who I was, couldn't I? That was what all this boiled down to in the end, wasn't it? So I reached down inside myself, touching a place I'd hidden for so long, pushed out of my mind since the moment I knew it was there. The path not taken, but which had been there all along as a possibility.

The Adversary. The power of Thaumiel given shape within me—and this time, I accepted it, embraced it, and let it come over me.

I expected the change to be something enormous, as ominous as the feeling I'd gotten when I first seen Thaumiel itself. I expected it to feel like darkness and rage and worse, to feel like a darkening of my soul, to feel evil.

But instead, I didn't feel different in the slightest. It didn't clear away the doubt, didn't show me the way, didn't give me anything that I could see. In fact, instead of giving me any new powers, I felt that had been bolstered dull and what had been lessened swell. My many masks and roles were still there, waiting as they always were, but I wasn't connected to any of them right now, wasn't wearing any particular face. In fact, it felt as though, for the first time in my entire life, I wasn't playing any particular role. That I was just me.

Had I failed or was this a sign that I'd already become what I'd feared, that I was becoming it on my own right now? Or perhaps, was this another insight into the nature of Thaumiel, something that stood apart from all else, that didn't touch my mind or incline me in any particular direction—something that was opposed, yes, but more than that, was independent? That was wholly and solely itself?

I wasn't sure. Maybe it was nothing or it just took time to kick in. But somehow, it was that lack of anything that gave me strength. A lack of surety that made me certain. I let my senses expand to look over the world again, feeling my power come to life in a way that was entirely mine. I could feel Thaumiel reacting now that I'd made my decision, but it was hard to define or describe, nothing like what I was used to. It didn't feel like it was congratulating me for making the right choice—if anything, it just seemed pleased that I'd made a choice, for myself. It still didn't feel like much of a role or a secret weapon or a hidden power.

It just felt like me. As I could be, as I had been, and most of all, as I was.

And it was enough.

I looked back up at Malkuth and smiled as I saw him draw away from me, looking stunned. I suppose that was to be expected, seeing as he'd never seen me cry before—because I never had, until now, except when I was faking it. Nothing had ever hit me like that, but this…this hurt. And it would hurt more.

But I'd made my choice.

"But I'm sorry, Brother," I said to him. "I can't."

He seemed frozen still, simply looking at me—but slowly, both his head and shoulders fell. His hands clenched into fists and his teeth grit even as he shook.

"Fine," He finally answered, voice colder than I'd ever heard it. "I'll do it myself."

As he made to leave, I lifted a hand and he paused by the door.

"I'm sorry," I said again. "But I can't let you do that either, Brother. If this is really the only way, if you really can't think of any other answer…I'll stop you."

He looked at me and I almost marveled. Here we were, Malkuth and Keter. The two brothers that had stood against the world, now standing against each other.

Malkuth looked away first and stepped over the threshold before answering, silently making it clear that his decision was made.

"Go ahead and try," He said.

We went to war. It started slowly at first, simply because none of us truly wanted to hurt each other, but hesitation had soon given way to curiosity. In many ways, the battles had been like a game, a new experiment with which to test our powers. We would protect what they would harm, they would harm what we would protect. Both sides came up with measures and countermeasures, possibilities and alternatives, leveraging past research to new purpose and inventing new things.

Even I had to admit that it was exciting on a level. We'd never had much need for battle, having defeated the only people we'd ever considered enemies in the early years of our existence. We'd accounted for the possibility, of course, the idea that others might rise in the Angels place, but as our powers had grown over the years, it had been a relatively minor thing. Martial prowess or not, what was the enemy to do again an opponent that could rewrite the laws of nature? Swim through dimensions like a fish through water? Create stars and erase continents and twist time and space? We'd prepared for it, making sure we were aware and durable, but we'd never truly needed to fight. We'd done everything in our power to make sure that nothing could threaten us but one another and we'd succeeded.

So, in a way, it was fun. Fighting—not just as a spar that was stopped before anyone was hurt or confined by dimensions and rules and things that were not to be destroyed, but as something serious, with nothing held back. To innovate new means on the spot, to design weapons meant for practice instead of play, to pit ourselves against one another and drive ourselves to the limit. It was a call back to the days when we weren't certain of our power and safety, when we didn't know the results before a battle even started. It inspired us, motivated us, and brought out the best and worst, as though we'd all been sleeping in anticipation of this day.

But whatever it might have been, this wasn't a game. It wasn't a fight we could afford to lose, not for me and not for Malkuth. I think it may have taken time for that to become apparent to the others, but they realized it too, in time. Mankind was something so different from us, so distant from us, that it could be hard to recall that we were in anyway the same when we lived so far apart, but war has a way of breaking down barriers and opening doors. We—Binah, Chokhmah, Tiferet, Chesed, and myself—we all that stood between Man and a force they could not survive or withstand, the only thing that could protect them when the world itself seemed to turn upon them. Man, woman, or child, it didn't matter; they relied on us, huddled closer when the skies turned to fire or the air to poison in their lungs, spoke to us and wished and prayed.

We'd always been figures of extraordinary power and authority, held up high above it all and far from the normal man, but that all vanished before the coming end. People came to us, spoke to us, asked for news and promises and hope. It's hard to think of them as anything but people then, when you could see them shaking in fear when a battle was about to begin. When you could see their corpses when a battle was lost. When you could feel the absence in those left behind, the effects of you failures on a person instead of a city or a nation. When you could fly and do battle around the orbit of the moon, it was easy to look down and see nothing, to consider the lives of the people so far beneath you as beneath you, but it was harder to do that when you looked them in the eye every day.

It wasn't a game and in time those who sided with me learned that. It was a war.

And we were losing.

It was an unfortunate fact, but not necessarily a surprising one. We, the Archangels embodying the upper parts of the Tree of Life, were less affected by the rigors of the physical world, but also less attached to it. We relied upon less physical means to manifest our powers, like I did with the roles I played, rooted in what could be, while the other side was tied more closely to what was. Our nature allowed us to ignore some of the rules that characterized Malkuth, but Malkuth could outright define those rules. The Sephirot were meant to be connected and all the things formed above where meant to be given shape below. Sadly, that gave them something of the home field advantage.

Added to that, Malkuth unleashed his creatures of Grimm in a growing array of horrific forms, some of them too powerful for even us to ignore—and there seemed to be no end to them. What started with just a few of us quickly grew into something enormous as the Grimm grew to number the millions, the billions, building off principles Malkuth had discovered and learnt to use and designed to learn. With only the five of use to stand against them, we had no choice but to draw on aid for our side as well, taking strength from the people themselves. The power of the soul had not been forgotten during our reign, becoming, if anything, even more common place, but some of its military applications had fallen out of favor with no one to war against. But as we relearned the arts of battle, so did Mankind.

It helped slow the fall, but it wasn't enough. Not with the Grimm growing ever stronger and Malkuth finalizing the details of projects we'd worked on, unleashing his Riders—Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. It was a joke, as I understood; things we thought we'd undone, made into our undoing. I didn't think it was very funny, personally, but I lacked much of a sense of humor at times like these. What mattered was that we began to lose more and more battles and we felt the losses much more sharply than they did theirs, because we had so much more to lose.

This had gone on too long. This world hadn't been made for battle on our scale—hadn't been designed to allow it or survive it. Gevurah burning down nations, Yesod reducing all to nothing, Malkuth rewriting the rules…it was too much for the world to endure forever. Too much for Mankind to endure, with the Grimm eating away at them constantly.

So I'd decided to end it, on the same fields were we'd defeated the Angels. We hid what was left of Humanity away as best we could, planned for the occasion, and made our preparations. Just in case, I even took measures, in case we should fail. Truth be told, it was quite possible, even likely, so I did my best. But at the same time, I resolved myself for what was to come.

And then we fought. For our lives, for the lives of Mankind, for what we believed in—for all those things and more, we burned down the field of Megiddo once more. Nothing remained in the wake of our battle. The land had been scoured of all signs of life almost before the battle began and then it had been used as a tool to wage our war. Parts of it had ceased to exist, while others had been reduced to shapeless primordial chaos. Others had been removed via more physical means, burnt away or shattered or shunted elsewhere. Some areas bore marks of effects that seemed frozen in time, while others continued as if holding their last note without end. In some cases, they even did both, such as with a lightning bolt that was utterly still on one end and writhed in the air on the other.

We'd divided the battlefield as we'd planned, facing our opponents on our terms, and things had gone as well as could be expected—which was to say that my brothers and sisters, the people I loved more than anything else in the world, all laid dead. They'd killed and died for me, except that wasn't quite the case; they'd done it for what they believed in, what they loved, and what they'd valued at the end.

Funny what a difference of opinion could amount to. Almost all of my family laid dead around me, a fact that I'd never be able to forgive myself for our forget—at least, not in this life, meaning it might not be a long-term issue for me. Not for the first time since this battle began, my thoughts went back to the conversation Malkuth and I had had concerning reincarnation and I wondered what it would mean for us. Would we remember? If we found each other again, would we know? Would we take the same path or repeat the same mistakes?

What a depressing thing to think about, here at the end.

"Keter!" Malkuth snarled, slashing a hand through the air, and a corridor of matter about the size of a building suddenly vanished as fundamental forces ceased to operate. I came apart and back together, focusing on the battle through my own musings.

I was losing, which was unfortunate but, again, not surprising. If anything, the way I was losing was a bit ironic. Malkuth had made himself untouchable, becoming a constant, something unchangeable. I, meanwhile, was ever changing, shifting roles with every second, often pausing only long enough to release a specific effect before moving on. I drew parts of surrounding dimensions into ours and then fired bolts of piercing energy. I switched places with those same bolts as they connected and struck Malkuth with a blow that was overlaid with a hundred thousand possible variations of itself, multiplying the impact accordingly. As I made contact, I tried to alter his position in space, pushing parts of him into other dimensions with severing force, and then I withdrew by becoming a part of the land beneath my feet and growing a new body from the earth even as Malkuth scattered the previous one. I marked out possible futures and moved to avoid them, not dodging attacks but preventing openings from appearing in the first place, and then I unleashed a reality storm, assaulting Malkuth with an area of violently alternating time, gravity, and space that could annihilate nearly anything. Nearly because Malkuth survived it.

Unsurprising. He'd seen it before, alongside pretty much all of my tricks; it was to be expected that he'd prepared countermeasures. It was sad that it stripped me of most of my best tricks, however.

Gesturing, I summoned my Elementals before closing my eyes. Letting my senses expand, I could feel lights dimming around the world despite my best efforts to protect Mankind, but I reached out to them now and drew them from their intended course to give them a chance to defend others. Their spirits took shape within my Elementals, bodies and faces rising from a colossus of moving earth even as spectral figures appeared on the wind. They stood tall, each dwarfing the tallest of mountains, and the others soon joined them, combining with a gesture. My soul took shape as a figure of light, as massive in truth as my soul appeared to onlookers, and I withdrew for a moment, bracing myself. I shifted us into another reality just before the first blast went off, minimizing the damage to the world around us.

"Keter!" Malkuth shouted again, pushing at my Elemental and forcing the giant back with a hand. He was multiplying and broadening the effects of physical force, I noted. "Is this what you wanted!? They're dead! They're dead because of you!"

Our siblings, he meant, but I couldn't see if he was crying in his grief for them. He may have been, but if so, the tears probably vanished in the bombardment centered on him. Either way, I didn't answer, instead choosing to consider alternatives. Using physical force was proving about as effective as I'd expected, even if it had kept Malkuth busy while the others fought. It was time to change tracks now, though, which meant choosing how best to do so. If I failed, I may not get another chance.

In the end, Malkuth chose for me. He unleashed a roar and the sound itself came alive, turning into a physical being that tore at my Light Elemental even as it became a resonance. Even as it did, however, Malkuth tore through both of them, black ichor forming around his hands into some kind of energy-annihilating field. He leapt at me, moving fast enough to outpace light—or else, altering the pace of light—to strike at me.

So I met his eyes and didn't dodge. I left myself open, lowered my defenses, and put my life on the line.

And in the end, it wasn't any of those defenses that made my brother falter and lower his hand a touch so that it only erased most of my remaining self. It was the same thing that had started all of this, something above the physical.

A thousand years and the memories that went with them. Even now, even with all this, we were still brothers. It was enough to make him stop, to make him hesitate, to make him wait just a bit too long.

I'm sorry, Brother. I win.

For a long moment, the battlefield fell silent as we stared at one another—and Malkuth was the one who finally broke it, closing his eyes and dropping his head.

"Why, Keter?" He demanded in a whisper, drawing back a step before raising his hands once more. "Why? Look at them, Brother—you killed them!"

"If anything, I'd say we killed them," I mused in reply, refusing to falter. "But I told them all what would happen today. They knew this would end with their deaths."

"Then why?" He asked. "Why fight? Why would you all sacrifice yourselves for them?"

"So it would end, Malkuth," I said. "We aren't the only one who've died for this. We're not the only ones who gave their lives for something we wanted or believed in. We're just the only ones that mattered to you…so I suppose it had to be us. There's no other way to stop you"

Malkuth's hands twitched at his side and he grit his teeth.

"Because they can't reincarnate without Humanity?" He asked. "You bastard—don't you get it? Death is it. Even if they're reborn, it won't be them anymore."

"Maybe," I whispered quietly, unable to keep myself from mulling over the same possibility. "Maybe not. I guess we'll just have to wait and see."

"It doesn't matter," Malkuth insisted, almost taking a step forward as a growl entered his voice. "Humans…they're nothing. I can create and destroy them as easily as breathing. They aren't worth this, they aren't something you can hold over me; if I have to, once I find a real solution, I could grow men like grass in the summer. But our brother, our sisters…they're dead because of this fight. Because you made them give their lives for people who don't even matter."

"There's more to the value of life then how easily it is taken or given away, Brother," I replied, meeting his eyes calmly. I had to try not to sigh. "You of all people should know that. Wasn't it a matter of human lives that brought us here in the first place?"

"Considering everything that's happened?" He replied. "Not the most convincing argument for leaving them alive."

At that, I chuckled and exhaled slightly before looking up at the sky. Our battle had utterly ruined the world around us, but the skies remained largely clear and I could see the stars. It was a funny thing, really; watching them change their place ever so slightly over the years. I wasn't much for star-gazing except in the pursuit of science, but I could remember the day we'd first freed ourselves and declared our independence from the Angels, when we first felt the touch of fresh air and looked at the night sky.

Such a long time ago, now. It was a path filled with memories, from beginning to end—my story. Except, given the choice, I'd rather think of it as our story; the Kabbalah. There were good memories and bad memories, memories I'd thought good that were no painted in sadness and sad that I now recalled fondly. On the whole, however, it was something I remembered fondly, if now with melancholy. Given my nature, I'd always held a love for stories, or at least the idea of stories; the roles characters could play in a cohesive narrative, set against all the roles they could have played, the people they could have been.

As endings went, this seemed like a sad one, but it was the nature of people to be more than they were intended to be. I wondered if that applied to me in a way, too, or if I was still the same in the end.

I wondered if it made any difference, either way.

"Perhaps," I said aloud, deciding not to bore Malkuth with my final musings. "I suppose it doesn't much matter now."

A point of light appeared above and to the side of us, as blue as my eyes and shining with a brightness that couldn't be described—couldn't be confined—to the purely physical. Although the point was indescribably tiny, it cast enough light to illuminate what was left of the lands of Grimm out to the lefts of my basic perceptions, casting the sky in odd colors in the process.

And no sooner had the light appeared than did it start to move. Like a blade being taken to the fabric of reality, the point was drawn into a line before changing directions and tracing a different path until it formed a perfect square—and it was perfect, lacking anything but length and width for a single, solitary instant.

Then, that instant passed and it continued to expand, new paths tracing from the corners to encompass us in a cube, sealing us within. Then, the cube itself grew, branching out along new paths to become a tesseract, something that couldn't wholly exist within normal space and so simply expanded beyond them. Moments later, it expanded to a penteract and then to a hexeract, multiplying in size each time yet staying confined to the same volume.

"What are you doing?" Malkuth asked, eyes widening. The process was occurring at speeds even he couldn't track and we were already sealed in. I felt his power try to resist my own, but it seemed to struggle as it did, power over the physical realm slowly losing meaning as we my 'cube' spread—and drew us—into higher dimensions. Already, things like sound were becoming distorted, the words impossible to speak and thus simply conveyed by intent and idea, and it was only just beginning.

Even so, I looked at my brother and answered.

"Previous, I was buying time," I told him without lifting my voice in the slightest. "Presently, I'm winning."

To his credit, that was all Malkuth needed to hear to start putting the pieces together.

"This was your plan all along," He said. "You could kill all the others, but you knew you couldn't kill me, so you decided to…to trap me, like you said before. Lock me up alone in a box, far away from reality."

I was silent for a moment as I considered how to reply, what I could and should convey, but in the end I chose to go with the simplest explanation. He could put together the rest.

"No," I said quietly. "Not alone."

Malkuth's physical form was beginning to…not unravel, that wasn't the best way to describe it. Instead, it was more like it was simply losing meaning. It was there, but it didn't matter here. Even so, I could tell that he was surprised by my words and for a moment he seemed speechless.

"You'd lock us both in hell?" He asked. "Why?"

"Because you're my Brother," I answered simply. "And whatever you've done, whatever you've become, I had a part to play in it all…so I'll help pay the price as well. Besides…it's better than being in hell alone, isn't it?"

He stared at me for a moment that I couldn't really define, since time was starting to breakdown, too. Instead of waiting, I decided to continue to speak, while I was still able.

"This is the end," I said. "You and I, locked up forever. The others will be reborn eventually and hopefully they're find each other again—or, at least, find something like happiness and peace. They're strong and they'll be strong, perhaps strong enough to fix things, but who they'll be I don't know. But…I hope they'll be good people, that being born and raised among Humanity will ground them and help them. But you and I, we always we the strongest, too strong not to shape the entire world around us, so…let's just fade away into the storybooks. Okay? Perhaps I'll never truly understand what you'd had to go through and live with, but…I'm your older brother. I'll stay beside you until everything is over."

Our bodies were almost completely gone now as we ascended into the uppermost reaches of Malkuth and began to touch upon Yesod. But Malkuth hardly seemed to care about that now.

"You and me?" He said. "Trapped forever?"

"Hopefully not forever," I said. "Perhaps someday, we'll find a solution or perhaps even figure something out for ourselves. We'll still exist in some form; we might even retain ourselves to some extent or another. But if necessary, if this world is too painful, why not just leave it behind? This…is the closest I can get to doing something that truly hurts, with a price I can pay. Isn't this enough, Brother?"

Instead of answering, Malkuth just seemed to look at me and then away—and then something pierced straight through me. I looked down at myself, startled for the first time in a long, long while, especially when I saw the source. A number of blades had impaled my chest, striking through me from behind, and the weirdest thing was that while everything else seemed to fade, they seemed utterly and wholly real. It pierced through the walls around us as if they weren't even there, slipping through the reality trap as though it weren't even there, as if there were no greater truths to trap.

It took me a moment to recognize it and only then did I relax. Something like that would have been impossible for even Malkuth, by design, but I knew of at least one thing that could—and though I'd planned for it to be separated by Malkuth, it didn't matter much at this point,

"Killing me won't stop this, Brother," I said. "It's already too late for that, bound to the two of us. If I die, it'll just leave you even more alone."

Even without touching the extension of Death, Malkuth seemed to draw strength from it, growing more real in its presence—enough that when he looked at me again, I could make out a smile and see that it looked sad.

"Who would want to be trapped with you forever, Brother?" He asked. "Such a thing would be a fate worse than death, so instead just…just die and forget everything."

I looked at him for a moment, not sure if this was meant as an act of kindness or of spite.

"Malkuth…"

"You have plans, I'm sure," He continued, seeming to ignore me. "You always do, don't you? For what to do if this happened—if you lost or if I killed you. You'll be reborn eventually."

I didn't deny it.

"If Mankind survives, at least," I replied. "You won't be able to act on the world the way you're used to; that'd go against the entire point. If you kill them all…"

"Of course you'd plan for such a thing," He said with a scoff, but didn't seem surprised. If anything, he seemed calmer than I'd seen him in a long, long time. "It doesn't matter."

Not the most assuring statement of Mankind's survival, but I felt confident that they'd remain in some capacity. That there would be hope, however slim. I hadn't wanted this to happen, hadn't wanted to shift my responsibilities onto others when I was supposed to be my brother's keeper, but I'd known I might fail. I'd taken precautions to ensure there'd be a chance to set things right someday.

But…

"Maybe in my next life, I'll manage to be a better brother," I mused, thinking both of the brother before me and those who'd led the way in death.

"Dead is dead," Malkuth said, the words soft and sad despite their ferocity. "In your next life, you won't be the same. You'll be nothing to me, no one. I'll take what I need, rip you to pieces, and finish what I started. I won't hesitate or show you mercy again, Brother."

I wondered if that meant what I thought it did, if he planned to wipe me clean—if so, it wasn't unexpected. I'd suspected that would be my fate if I fell in battle, assuming I wasn't outright annihilated. I wondered, more than that, if anything would remain and what.

There were no answers, even as I was dragged back into the realm of Malkuth and caught in the hands of Death.

I'm sorry, I thought, not certain who I was apologizing to—there were so many who deserved it, after all.

And then, I closed my eyes.

I died.