This/Reapers song

Coraline looked at her self, a self that was almost identical in every way to the physical being she now was. A soul, of sorts, or part of one. Part of her.

Her self glared right back at her. "You," it hissed, "little, miserable, pathetic, pile..."

Coraline raised an eyebrow. This had not been what she had expected, but on the other hand she wasn't exactly surprised. She did this sort of thing from time to time herself, after all, and this was, technically, herself.

"...of recumbent, flacid, excrementing..."

"Shit?"

"...incrementing... discredit..." It growled at her.

Coraline waited, then said, "You done?"

It started screaming in response. Coraline hit it with a stick. It kept screaming, so she hit it again. It continued, and she hit it some more.

This went on for some time. Finally Coraline threw down the stick and yelled over the screaming, "Will you shut up?!"

"No!"

"Shut up!"

"Shut your face!"

---

Gray-black column, black-gold tower. Obelisk. Obelisk. What are the obelisks?

---

Some stories end badly. Nobody goes home in the end, there are no happily ever afters, and the matter is not settled. There are loose ends everywhere, but over time people simply forget and the entire thing fades away. These stories are buried. Nobody wants to tell them. They don't seem worth remembering.

The problem is, sometimes such stories are the only ones that are worth remembering.

---

From up here, Coraline could see the entire world, or near enough - the City spread out before her, the wastelands beyond fading into the distance, and almost entirely out of sight, a single dead tree jutting from the drifting sands. Beyond that, there was only nothing. A whole lot of nothing.

Coraline liked the dead tree. From time to time she would come up here, to the top of the looming tower, and simply watch it. It wasn't about to change, of course - it never did, and only lingered, alone and out of place - but it gave her comfort nonetheless. It was something that didn't fit, and it was still there.

And then it wasn't. There was a moment of uncertain stillness, and the distant shadows erupted.

An invasion. To date Coraline had not figured out just why folks would attack the City of Death, but from time to time they would, spilling forth into the streets in an attempt to push back the defenders far enough to... well, she wasn't quite sure. As entertaining as the invasions could be, she usually ignored them for the most part, only shooting at anyone who got too close to wherever she happened to be at the time.

But not this time. This time they had harmed her tree. They had harmed her tree, her tree, and that was simply not something she could stand by and allow. They would pay for this, they would.

Coraline raised her staff and fired into the seething distance.

Several minutes later, she woke up at the base of the tower, her nose twinging and a tentacle crab perched atop it. Her staff was a few meters away, but all in all she seemed quite fine despite having apparently flung herself off the tower with the recoil from the blast. Aside from her nose, that was. She batted the crab off before it could pinch her again and sat up.

"Normally we allow them at least the illusion of hope, you know."

Picking up her staff, she looked around, and found Kyrule, the Lord of the Dead, standing behind her. "Yeah?" she said. "Er... what exactly happened?" This was the first time she'd ever actually tried firing the staff at full blast, as she'd always been slightly afraid to do so. Something about its tendency to blast large holes in things even at low power, and something about how that was usually more than enough already.

"The invaders were eradicated before they ever got close."

"What about the tree?"

"The tree is as it was."

"Oh."

Kyrule paused, as though waiting for something. Then he asked, "How exactly is it that you came upon such a weapon?"

Coraline looked at him suspiciously, but couldn't make out anything for the mask. "Sherandris," she said slowly.

"He gave it to you?"

"Maybe."

"What did he tell you?"

"Well... 'Have fun,' among other things." She cocked her head. "And something about being careful, and 'if you accidentally blow yourself up I'm not cleaning up the mess, but seriously don't blow yourself up'. Apparently it's kind of a... dangerous piece."

"Dangerous."

"Yeah?"

"That is a resounding understatement." The shadows twisted and Kyrule was gone.

"Right," Coraline said to the empty space. "Thank you for that assessment. Very illuminating." She holstered the staff, saw a nearby sphinx watching, and hissed at it. It hissed back and waggled its head slightly.

"And what do you want?" she demanded.

"Stories," it hissed.

"A real cat, are you?"

"No stories here," it whispered, slinking closer. "Never any stories."

"Contrarywise," Coraline said. "There are always stories."

The sphinx stared at her with the sort of insane longing she knew all too well - the sort of longing dredged out of unyielding despair, after all other hope had long since died - and Coraline felt her irritation melt away in light of its sheer horrible power.

"Come with and I'll tell you one."

There were essentially three sorts of souls in the Underworld: the Honoured Dead, the Damned, and the Lost. None of them talked to sphinxes. They all either knew better, or quickly found out: appearing as rather large, winged cat and not exactly spirit, the winged cats of the Underworld haunted corners, rooftops, and dead ends, waiting for anyone unwary enough to get too close, where they would then devour them whole.

Coraline, on the other hand, upon seeing this happen for the first time, promptly asked the sphinx why it had done that, if it liked stories, and how pages tasted. She hadn't been entirely sure where the questions had come from - really she hadn't been entirely sure of much of anything at the time - but it was the sphinx that had been really thrown off by it. It had been thrown off even more when, upon running away, Coraline ran after it and asked if she'd said something wrong, perhaps? She didn't mean to scare it. When further questions hadn't proven any more effective, a good ear-scratching and an offering of darkfish did make her a solid friend, even if it wasn't one that could tell her a whole lot. Sphinxes never were much good at that, it turned out. But they did like eating pages.

She had had to apologise to the depressing book she had used to test it afterward.

The sphinx following her now hadn't tried to devour her, but the story it ravenously took in, poking at her when she paused too long, picking apart the words, and staring. Always staring. The story itself was a fairly strange but standard children's tale about birds and hills and the strangeness of words that she'd often tell her brothers long ago, but here it was probably entirely new.

"And?" the sphinx prompted when she got to the end.

"And nothing," Coraline said. "It's the end."

"Whyso?"

"Because everyone went home and lived out their lives after that. And then they died. And that was that."

"Then what?"

Coraline frowned and looked at the sphinx. Of course that would be an issue here, where everyone was already dead, but it never had been before. There'd never been much talk of any afterlife at all, back home - odd mention of heaven, the usual cursing of hell - but all in all most folks hadn't really believed in any of that anymore. All the science just said folks died and that was it. Hells, even the deathgod had said that folks died and that was basically it, at least most of the time, and he of all should know. But that was... there. Here... was different.

"Well," she began slowly. "Back in the world I know, they'd probably just forgot it all and do the same thing all again. That's what happens where I'm from, see." She gestured around. "Nothing like this, of course."

"No stories?" the sphinx growled.

"Lots." Coraline laughed. "Somebody always remembers something. Nothing-"

A hiss interrupted her and she looked back. The sphinx was crouched, watching a soul that came toward them, and ready to pounce. Eyeless, the soul stared unseeing, but stopped as though sensing their attention.

"Hello?" Coraline placed a hand at the base of the sphinx's wings, not that it would stop the creature from pouncing if it decided to.

The soul mouthed wordlessly and flickered slightly. The sphinx hissed again.

"What eyes?" Coraline asked.

Again it mouthed the words that she couldn't hear but understood nonetheless.

Coraline shook her head. "I don't see any eyes here."

The soul threw its head back and screamed silently, a horrible piercing non-sound that filled every crevice and rebounded upon itself. The sphinx ran for it. Coraline staggered backwards.

"Stop it! Be silent!" She finally managed to shout, and amazingly the soul stopped, only flickering slightly, back in its original position as though it hadn't done a thing.

Coraline stared at it. A Lost. They were something of a mystery, wandering in and out of nowhere in particular, lingering, generally being, well... utterly lost. She supposed sometimes she might be one of them, but hadn't particularly wanted to ask any of the other denizens. It didn't seem right. Was that how it was for all of them?

"Who were you?" she asked it.

Nobody. The word was nowhere, whispered in nothing, but in its echo, she heard a name.

"David Weaver?" she repeated.

No.

"Yes. You were David Weaver."

It took a step backwards.

"How came you here?" she asked.

The response came all at once, bundled fragments that only unfolded slowly, but the soul itself was already fading as the answers formed in her mind.

Don't know.

Please!

Madness. Nonsense. Impossible.

World fell apart.

Roof caved in.

Just a dream.

He was in the wall, half in, half out.

Wake me, please. Please.

And then it was gone.

Fragments

Time passes, though there is no time, no change, no passage. Everything is still. Silent. A swirl of dust rises and falls, leaving behind nothing to mark its brief existence. Fish drift in and out of endless passages, glittering and turning with austerity. Shadows feast in the light. Layered in nightmares, a feline slumbers, wings rising and falling in a long interminable rhythm.

As empires rise and fall, names change and centuries pass, but in this place at the center of all worlds, where all things come to die, they have no meaning. In death and in judgement, all are the same.

---

She held up her key and saw in its silhouette the shape of the twisty tower, wreathed about the sinister black spire at the heart of the City of Death like the memory of a lover, not quite there, but never really gone. In its shadow, other shapes drifted almost into view, shimmering atop the City like a mirage. The other City. The one that wasn't quite there, but if you squinted properly you could sometimes see it, and if you didn't watch where you were going you could easily hit your head on it. At least she hoped it was that. If she were hitting her head on something else entirely, that would be somewhat concerning.

Coraline didn't know what the key went to or where it had come from, but at some point she had reached into her pocket, pulled it out, and absent-mindedly held it up to the light. It was then that she had seen the tower's Lover for the first time, matching shape for shape exactly.

Later, when she had discovered the stairs etched into the Lover's heart and climbed them, she had hesitated on the final stair because she knew full well that the point of monumental stairways was that you never got to climb them, not right to the top, and monumental as this one had seemed she was a bit afraid of what she might see there...

When she had looked back, the entire staircase, and the Lover itself, were gone.

And at the top she had found a tree.

---

This is the place to be for the end of the world show.

---

"It was like walking into someone else's story well after the fact, after everyone had failed and those who survived had already gone home, lived out their lives, and died of old age.

"It felt like trespassing on a cave-in."

---

Worst god in ages. So bad she got kicked out of the God Impersonation Guild. Died too much.

---

"Of course you are welcome here, for all that you have sacrificed. You are no Lost soul, Coraline Henderson."

She stared at the deathgod. "I never even thought to ask."

---

"Do you know why I'm here, why I'm really here in this place, or even this universe?"

"It is understood to have been something of an accident."

"No." Coraline laughed, shaking her head, and picked up the sphinx. "No accident. That was just what folks were supposed to think. Cover story, if you will."

Stroking the sphinx, she looked around, searching for the right words to explain. "Sherandris sent me here, to this 'verse," she said. "He asked me to do something crazy, something utterly insane, and noone could know, and I agreed to it for the very same reason he asked. For her." She shook her head. "He was willing to destroy himself for her. All I had to do was survive, and maybe it would work.

"But really I don't know why I'm here. I don't know how it was supposed to help, or what the hell Sherandris was thinking or if any of this had any chance from the start... but... but I am here. Thing is, I'm here because I trusted him, and that's really it."

---

"There will be expectations."

"There are always expectations."

---

The champion drew his sword. Realising she didn't actually have a weapon, Coraline held up the sphinx she was holding in what she hoped was a plausibly threatening manner.

The champion paused uncertainly for a moment, then after a hissed command from his god behind him, he raised his sword and charged.

Coraline took a step backward and then, for lack of any better idea, threw the sphinx. It caught him full in the face, a hissing ball of fluff and claws and teeth and wings that scrabbled for a hold and immediately dug in. He dropped his sword and screamed, flailing at the cat to get it off, but to no avail.

A moment later, at Orin's gesture, the champion was standing beside him once more. The sphinx, with suddenly nothing to hold onto, fell to the ground, hissed at noone in particular, and skulked out of the circle into the nearest alley.

"Er, sorry about that," Coraline said after it.

"You cheated!"

Coraline looked back to the champion she had, apparently, defeated.

"You cheated," he repeated. "That wasn't fair at all."

"Oh?" Behind her mask, she gave him a look it was probably fortunate he couldn't actually see. "I didn't even have a weapon, and here you come at me with this big old sword! Arguably that might be considered cheating too, then."

"It was a fair fight," Orin said, and bowed slightly to Kyrule. "Fair by the rules we agreed."

"Right," Coraline grumbled to herself. Rules. Whatever those were.

"My champion will challenge," Ghurasis growled, waving his own, a large orc, forward. The orc glared at Coraline.

She smiled brightly. "Great! Can I forfeit yet?"

"No," Kyrule said behind her.

"Okay," Coraline said, trying not to sound too noticeably disappointed. "Just checking." She rooted through her pockets in the hopes they might contain something useful, but only managed to pull out a large wad of lint. The orc, in the meantime, hefted his axes and began sinuously twirling them, faster and faster, creating a devastating whirlwind of the sort which would probably decimate entire armies, were they stupid enough to get close.

The whirlwind moved toward her.

She sidled away along the edge of the circle, fiddling with the lint wad, and then, realising it was mostly just a single piece of string wrapped around her key, tied the two together and flicked it at the orc.

It was the sort of move that only worked in the movies, and yet somehow it worked here - the string tangled in the axes, one of them bonked the guy in the head, and he fell sideways, impaling himself on the other.

"What." She stared in shock.

Then the orc was back by Ghurasis' side, intact and unbloodied. Coraline recovered and picked up the key, its string conveniently no longer tangled in anything, and moved back toward Kyrule.

Ghurasis bowed as well, much deeper than Orin had. "Your champion fights well, if... oddly," he conceded.

"Yes."

Coraline snorted, then tried to turn it into a cough.

Nausica's champion stepped forward and bowed to Coraline. She bowed back, surprised that apparently this basic courtesy was apparently somewhat at home in this world after all.

Then he blurred and came at her. She reacted, blurred as well, and then the other champion went flying.

There was a stunned silence. Then the champion was back beside Nausica, but flat on his face, and murmurs rose amidst the other gods.

"What did you do?!" Nausica shouted, covering his champion.

"Er," Coraline said. "I... tweaked his nose?"

The murmurs rose, so Coraline tried again. "I tweaked his nose really, really forcefully," she announced resolutely, holding up finger and thumb for emphasis.

They all just sort of stared at her.

"It's like you all never saw anyone tweak anyone's nose at impossibly high speed before," she said, shaking her head. "Really, and you call yourselves gods."

After a long pause, Kyrule asked, "Have we any other challengers? No?"

"I challenge," Veshura said. "Let us observe the interaction between death and undeath."

His champion stepped forward.

Behind her mask, Coraline eyeballed it. The champion appeared to have once been an elf, but true to the ways of Velshura, in undeath it had since become a powerful liche, both befitting and yet very out of place in the City of Death. It rolled its head and smiled slowly, and Coraline realised it was a woman. Or it had been.

Then it threw back its head and raised its arms, and with them a small army of minions were summoned forth into the circle.

Coraline glanced back toward the book she had left by Kyrule's feet. Not a weapon, and probably not helpful, but it had been, on account of the complete lack of any prior notice about this... event, the only thing she'd brought.

Looking back to the circle, she watched suspiciously as one of the minions came up to her, but it didn't seem particularly threatening. Then, almost like a cat would, it rubbed bonelessly against her legs. She nudged it with a slipper and it jumped away.

The liche raised an eyebrow.

"Er?" Coraline said.

"They like you." The liche cocked its head. "That's not supposed to happen."

"It's not that unusual. Tame minions generally just ignored me in Ain, anyway."

The liche looked surprised, then said, "You can't be a necromancer. I'd know."

"Naw, just got basic coverage - corpse disposal, the odd dancing skeleton, you know? Illusion was my main."

"Of Asmodeus? What in the nine hells are you doing here?"

"That's a long story."

"You're supposed to be fighting," Veshura prompted flatly.

"Ah, yes. Pity," the liche said. "You do seem so lovely, for a living." It swept its minions forward.

"And you seem so lovely, for an undead." Coraline said, reaching up as she had seen Vardaman do so many times before, and then did what she had imagined he had done as well - called the reaper's scythe into her hands. To her utter surprise, it appeared, glinting dangerously in the off-light.

She gave it a sweep into the oncoming minions. Those it touched dissolved. Those it didn't shied back, but Coraline was already whirling, sweeping the scythe through the undead swarm, reaping what it was owed.

Suddenly she stopped, crouched over the liche, who had fallen backwards in the onslaught. All the minions were gone. The blade was a breath away from its neck.

"Yield?" Coraline asked.

"I yield," it said. "No army can stand against death."

Coraline drew the scythe aside and helped the liche back up. "Aye, so it is."

As their champions returned to their sides, Veshura, too, bowed to Kyrule. The liche smiled at Coraline, but she was too busy poking the scythe to respond. It seemed unusually... real.

Thing.

"Riddle," someone said. Coraline looked up and saw Neiryo's champion had stepped forward.

She did the same. "Riddle?"

"What's green, hangs on the wall, and whistles?" the champion asked.

Coraline stared. "A herring?" she said, utterly confused.

He raised an eyebrow. "Nobody has ever gotten that one before."

"It's straight out of Mirrormask! How could I possibly not get that?"

"What is your riddle, Coraline Henderson?"

"Well," she said, trying to think of something even less obvious than a green-painted herring nailed to a wall, but came up with nothing. Where was Google when she needed it? She looked up into the abyss that was the sky and asked a somewhat more standard riddle instead. "Poor people have it, rich people need it. You cannot eat it or you die. What is it?"

"Nothing." Coraline nodded, so he continued. "I have a hundred legs but cannot stand, a long neck but no head; I ease the maid's life. What am I?"

Coraline smiled. "I preferred the 'eat the maid's life' version. Though that might have been a typo... it's a broom. What time is it when an elephant sits on your fence?"

He stared at her. "Time..." he said slowly. "Time to get a new fence?" A sphinx dropped from somewhere above and landed next to him. It slinked towards him and started rubbing against his legs.

Coraline grinned. "Exactly."

"Why do guardsmen wear belts?" he asked.

"To hold up their pants, of course," Coraline said. "When is a door not a door?"

"When it's a jar." He tried to nudge the sphinx away with his foot, but it simply rubbed against the other one. "How many surrealists does it take to light a lantern?"

"Two. One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly-colored power tools."

He snorted, then looked confused. "Power tools?"

"They're like regular tools, but with power. What has an eye but cannot see, will kill but brings new life, and dies but never lives?"

"A storm. What has four wheels and flies?"

"A garbage truck. If you've got it you'll want to share it, if you share it you haven't got it."

"I can't tell you because it's a secret."

Coraline smirked.

"Why did the squirrel fall out of the tree?"

"Because it was dead." She realised, however, that as was this was going nowhere and so long as it remained the same, with fairly standard twists and turns, it would continue to go nowhere. It needed something more. And as much as she hated to go this route, she had an arsenal of her own - nobody comes out of school unscathed. "What's worse than ten dead babies stapled to one tree?" she asked. Freshman humour at its finest.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Alyr's champion simply gaped, but though several others looked around in confusion, the predominant feeling of shock was almost tangible. Great move, she thought to herself. Show the gods what a tasteless arse you really are. That'll really make your life easier.

"What could possibly be worse than ten dead babies stapled to a tree?" her challenger asked incredulously.

"Do you give up?"

He shook his head, but it was unclear if this was simply because he didn't want to find out the answer.

"Do you?"

"No!" He stared at her furiously.

"Well?"

"I don't..."

"What is it, then?"

Finally he said, "One dead baby stapled to ten trees."

"Yup!" Coraline said brightly, though behind her mask, she winced. She realised some of the gods were nodding, however. Lovely.

The champion shook his head, glaring at her in mingled disgust and anger that he had been forced to answer such a low question. "No more," he said, and turned and returned to Neiryo's side.

---

We are not who we were. In every moment we live, we die, and from every death we are reborn. Our existence deforms the universe, through action and response, choice and consequence. Thus is the evolution of presence, and thus we live and change.

---

It is believed that souls are rather akin to stars - that they are simply patterns of dust that have over time emerged to form configurations of impossible brightness, repeating themselves throughout the universe.

---

In the Forgotten Realms, in their version of the Underworld, there's this wall around the City of Death, built of the tormented souls of the damned.

At some point I told this old friend on Kanata about it and of course he had to go and build one of his own - not a real one, obviously, but a scaled-down fence contraption of ordinary wall and holographic technology. Thought it was a right lovely idea to have this screaming, writhing mass of hopeless horror around his house, apparently. Neighbours thought otherwise, of course, but all the city ordinances in the system couldn't convince him to take the thing down, since technically it wasn't illegal. Classified as a 'standard annoyance' and that was it. Efforts to sabotage it didn't go anywhere either."

Then it got interesting. A few months later, a horse appeared out of nowhere in his bathroom. Wouldn't move. Resisted all efforts to remove it. Animal control agreed to take a look if he turned his wall off, found it didn't seem to be a normal horse. They called in a mage, found it didn't seem to be magic, so he brought in some priests from one of the local religions, who called the God Impersonation Guild, who called me, and I told them, 'yeah? So what? Who do you think looked at it in the first place and called animal control?'

I hadn't actually, but you should have seen the looks on their faces.

Anyway, turned out it was just some god who'd absolutely had it with godding so for some reason he'd decided to be a horse instead, but he didn't get it quite right. Refused to move any more than the planet did. And he decided to do it in this guy's bathroom, for whatever reason.

We wound up just moving the entire house out from under the god, since it didn't budge even with the floor gone. Seemed like a good enough idea at the time, and the neighbours loved it since it meant Gellin would be moving too, and since we left the wall there as a sort of creepy 'don't ask' sign... well, I dunno. Entire thing certainly looks strange in the middle of the night, though, that's for sure. Floating horse, eerily glowing, though now muted, wall of souls. It wasn't even a standard annoyance at this point, just an eyesore.

Just like art.

---

People often forget that the God of Death began his divine career as the God of Practical Jokes. They especially tend to forget that he never stopped.

Sherandris, of course, remembered. He remembered most everything, at least so long as he deemed it worth remembering, and since he wasn't really sure about the bulk of it and erred on the side of caution, that really did mean everything. For the most part. There had, after all, been that time he had spent dead - he didn't really remember that, of course. But he had been dead. Perfectly excusable, and as for the Duty, the Dark Sister would surely have seen to that.

Sherandris was the God of Death. He was not what most people expected, of course, but by the time it mattered, it really didn't matter anymore anyway. They entered his realm, what he called his Room, in the space outside of space in the time outside of time, and everything faded away. The dead were laid out according to the customs of the soul, and he passed them on into whatever next life was appropriate. And that was that, as far as he was concerned.

This left plenty of time for meat.

Sherandris rather liked meat.

---

"You weren't here," he said. "But I talked to you. Isn't it wonderful to have friends? They stave off the voices that come with the solitude."

---

"My agreement isn't requisite to my compliance."

---

She ran her fingers across the spines, glancing over the titles on those few with labels. None stood out, in their myriad scripts, as anything particularly worth reading at the moment, though in this place she could undoubtedly have read them all. Biographies, manuals, catalogues, legends... what was she looking for? Was she even looking for anything?

Her fingers stopped on a spine that read simply, in flowing letters, 'A Very Useful Book'. She looked at it for a moment, then pulled it out. It was bigger than she would have expected, rather like a large textbook, but even so it had gotten her attention.

The first page was not an index. Instead it had a picture of a cat, curled up as though asleep, but with one eye open.

"Hello kitten," she said. The cat's eye closed.

She flipped through to a random page. It said:

This is what you were looking for.

She looked around. She was essentially alone with the books. Two keepers were in the vault as well, but they never paid her any heed but to move out of the way if she got too close. But even so, it felt claustrophobic, as though the other books were watching, waiting to see what she would do...

---

Sarathi de... a story, a game, an MMO, a webcomic, a crowdsource exploration project, a cursed world, a broken world, a myth, a legend, a bedtime story, a list of names scratched into a tree...

If the answer is what is it, the question is probably yes.

It shows up, time and again, in different places, different shapes. The ending is always different. Sometimes the lovers live happily ever after, sometimes everybody dies, sometimes those lost are found, and those found are lost. Sometimes there is a breadstick involved with disastrous consequences. Sometimes the little girl grows up. Sometimes it all just sits there and everybody ignores it. Complete box office failure. Dismal, said the critics before the onset of the end of the world, and then there was nobody left to prove them wrong. Game of the year. Oversized spores drifting all about, leading to an overwhelming question.

Do not ask what is it.

She turned the page and found the rest of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

---

Why is it that the same names show up in so many places? The same souls reappear time and again, and the same faces and stories haunt us, reminding us of all that had been, all that had never been.

We see them here, these names - Lokshmi, Kessica, Ypherod, Sherandris, Mystra, Rhi, Sarathi, and others - and then we see them again. Our worlds have different pasts and different futures, and yet they act as mirrors, tethered by coincidences. Always at the edges lie the dreamers, the mad ones who give them names and take note, and always at the center lies something else. A Dark Sister, a Dark Tower, a little girl, an expanse of nothing... something. It holds it all together, and we call the one what stands at its shadow King.

I am writing this to establish facts, to put the universe down on paper and fold the multiverse up neatly into a small assortment of words, or some similar such, quite simply because I do not know what to make of any of it.

My name is Fern. I am not who I was, and I take this name now to make that distinction, but there is no reason to it, no merit. I could just as easily keep my old name, for we all change, always. Nobody who lives remains exactly who they were before, at any point in their life, for that is what it means to live. This, though, seems different. It seems like more. So now I am Fern.

I am one of what I shall call the dreamers - mirrors all who stand somewhere within the mess of what we understand to be our worlds, and who came together in one disastrous series of coincidences. None of us now are who we were. Some of us are dead. Some are missing, not all there, or where we weren't. Some are twins, or had twins at one point. Some are all the same person. Some were the same person but no longer were. Some were King, some are now. We are very different, and all have problems of our own, but the same different somethings happened to us all. We wrote it to be so. We wrote the entire universe to be so, in our dreams. The entire multiverse.

Our worlds are universes. We connect them with names and announce them to each other, spreading knowledge of an impossible ever-growing whole through a vast network of interconnected minds. It it utterly impossible. It is nothing but a dream. And it works.

I don't know how.

I came to this world, this planet, as Dira Azzain, set up camp in the woods at the end of the road, and let everyone else sort out the legal issues for me. The neighbourhood sprung up around later, and at some point I became something of the local witch, not that they have witches around here. But a neighbour who will fix your plumbing is a neighbour who will fix your plumbing, so there I was, central feature, welcome everywhere, get your goats out of my tree.

They were the ones who called me Fern - when the neighbours moved in, some came by to say hi. They caught me digging up a fern. Caught me rather by surprise, to the point where when someone asked my name I just said 'Fern?' And it stuck.

So now I'm Fern. Might as well be. Not that I'll be leaving Dira behind entirely, but having died it feels appropriate to have a bit of change. Make things more official now. Really be the lunatic at the end of the block, because why the hell not? You only live as many times as you live, and sometimes things just get you. Some of us died by choice, sure - and I mean really died. Others... well, I was probably just collateral damage. And no real damage done, in the grand scheme of things. It was those who were lost entirely who were the real damage. But those were mostly choice. Mostly.

Though I suppose in truth we all chose this by getting involved in the first place. There was, after all, no requirement that we should. The Kings came calling for aid and we came, but they weren't even our Kings. We answered simply because that's what we do, it's what we do for our families, for our brothers and sisters and all of our people that we hold dear, so we hold the others dear too, because we know how dear they are to their own families.

Answered, the call even worked, mostly. Mostly we all came out unscathed. Mostly the dreamers who had died died for something. Dark Sisters given life, Dark Towers given strength, borders of reality reinforced and the worlds within living on. We were all just a bit dazed, after. A bit dead in some cases, and a bit dazed, but nothing a goat crashing in through the window won't solve. Goats are amazing for solving problems. You know exactly where you stand with a goat, so it all works out.

We'll yet see what comes next.

---

Cloud Atlas

---

After some time, Coraline realised she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the throne at the head of the Hall of Justice, Book open in her lap, pages set to nothing. She didn't know how long she had been there, or how she had gotten there in the first place, but in light of what it had shown her, none of it seemed to matter.

The Hall was largely empty - no waiting sea of the newly dead, no throngs of petitioners, no assortments of general loiterers - just her on the throne and Kyrule and another arguing in front of it.

Kyrule had his back to her, but as a result she could see the other clearly - a handsome figure, large, well-built, and very brown. Another god, from the look of him.

She stood, and the argument stopped. Kyrule turned to look at her.

"And who is this?" the other said.

She smiled. "I'm the Librarian. Who might you be?"

"I am Orin."

"Honoured," she said. God of something all right, but she couldn't place what at the moment. It didn't really matter.

"How did she get here?" Orin asked.

And where was I before, Coraline wondered vaguely. Most of her mind was still on the story.

"She is my Hand," Kyrule said. "No aspect of my realm is barred to her."

"Death is a door," Coraline said dreamily. "Doors open funny places. The physicist used too many buzzwords, the lawyer not enough. I need a hat."

"Is that so?" She heard Orin say.

And then she was somewhere else.

---

"Alright," she said, "then I want steel-toed fanged bunny slippers, with thick leather soles and soft interiors that I can just lose my toes in. And I want matching wrist cuff thingies with claws, because they have to have claws. And a big fuzzy hat. With fangs. And I want it all in plushy black.

"And I want a really big sword, but not too big or heavy. I need to be able to lift it and such."

The shade bowed its head and retreated into the vault. The door thudded shut before Coraline could follow.

So she waited curiously, and then walked around the back. There was nothing interesting there, just a few odd rubbles and a dusty dog sitting on a sullen-looking shadow. It had too many legs, or possibly not enough; she couldn't quite tell for sure.

She turned around and nearly ran into the shade, its arms full, standing immediately behind her.

"Er, thanks," she said, taking the bundle. The shade disappeared into a passing flock of fish, and Coraline ducked into an empty building to investigate with more privacy.

It turned out to be a rather good set of things wrapped in a robe-like cloak, or possibly a cloak-like robe - she wasn't sure which, but it seemed like the sort of thing a Jedi might wear, if Jedi did grey, and that suited her fine. The contents were indeed pretty much exactly what she'd asked for, too, with a few additions - along with a disturbingly light sword and a set of plushy gloves, slippers, and hat, there was a tunic and amulet to match the robe. A uniform of sorts, common among keepers and guardians here, and also rather like what she'd seen doomguides wearing back in the world of the living. She wondered if the deathdealers also wore similar; Vardaman never had, but then again if he'd been visibly identifiable as such he would probably have very quickly become a serious embarrassment for the church. But Vardaman had always been a bit... different. She missed him.

Figuring what the hell, she tried it all on, fashioning a mirror on the near wall so she could see the effect.

The effect caused her to burst out laughing. She looked absolutely ridiculous. It wasn't just the irony of the uniform on her, it wasn't the overly large sword at her side that she had no idea how to use clashing with the ornate staff holstered on her back, it wasn't the fuzzy hat with kitty ears and fangs or the fluffy partial gloves or the fanged bunny slippers poking from her baggy trousers, it wasn't even her hair ballooning out from the bottom of the hat in a terrible staticky frizz, but simply the entire horrible combination.

It was, all in all, rather excellent. Horrible, but excellent. Grinning, she dismissed the mirror charm, stuffed the rest of her clothes back into her bag, and wandered back into the twilight.

---

There are no windows. No eyes. No silence, no default.

---

Is hell endothermic or exothermic?

First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass.

If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for souls entering hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since, there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant.

So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose (i.e., Hell is exothermic).

Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, than the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over (i.e., Hell is endothermic).

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given by Ms. Therese Banyan during my freshman year, "That it will be a cold night in hell before I go out with you," and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having a relationship with her, the second case cannot be true. Therefore, hell is exothermic.

---

"There are no gods. No gods worthy of our freedom."

---

I hate that I love you. You either have a hideous heart and a beautiful mind or a hideous mind and a beautiful heart. I love what you are but I hate what made you that way. You have the logic and kindness born of rage and despair. What happened to you? Who did this to you?

---

This is Shalias. She is the one who came before, the one who failed.

She grew up in the shadow of her brother, Murias, and in the manner of little sisters everywhere, she idolised and hated him in equivalent proportions. When he went to find his fame and fortune, she went her own way, left behind with a religion that was somewhat out of place in those parts and an overwhelming curiosity that was only the more so

As the years passed by, she grew up in turn, but no news of her big brother ever came home. Soon, she would set out to look, to see what trail could be found and what had come of him, for how hard could it be? Zealots stand out, and Murias had ever been obessive. But before she could look into it, her own story took hold, and the mystery of what had happened to her brother would have to wait.

From the beginning.

Shalias knows the gods, and she's very astute. How did this happen?

The same way it always happens. Quickly, and without her realising until it was too late.

---

Dear Zachary

---

Standing at the base of the tower, Coraline didn't really know what to think. It was a tower. It was quite tall. It was the center of the deathgod's realm.

It was a tower.

She kicked it experimentally.

A solid tower. Very real seeming. Considering the fairly small size at the base and sheer height, probably not possible in the world of the living. Kind of a like a tree - a redwood, granted - but a lot taller and not nearly as interesting. It mostly just seemed to go up. It had a lot of bricks in it.

Of course it had a lot of bricks in it; it was made of bricks.

Coraline watched it suspiciously. Bricks were dangerous things.

At some point a sphinx stalked slowly into view around one of the curves, so Coraline tracked its progress, waiting for something to happen - maybe for a brick to attack it - but nothing did. The sphinx sat down nearby and started preening itself.

Coraline narrowed her eyes. This was all too obvious. Just a perfectly ordinary - if very tall and suspiciously bricky - tower and a sphinx. Nothing stood out, so clearly something should. What was it?

The sphinx belched loudly and shook some feathers out its wings.

---

"Lord. Coraline." The angel bowed, then gestured its companion forward. "Shalias zu Harenai."

Coraline jumped up in surprise. "Shalias!" she yelled, then she slowed down a moment to more carefully jump down from the throne.

The woman watched her carefully, then glanced at Kyrule. Her expression was unreadable.

"It's an honour," Coraline said. "To see you with eyes, and meet you in person. I'm Coraline."

"You," the purple woman said. "You are honoured to meet me?"

"You did what I could not."

"Aye, and I wouldn't be here at all had you done it. But I also wouldn't be here were it not for the decisions I made as well."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You lived."

"You're human?" Shalias asked.

"Mmm, yeah."

"Not exactly," Kyrule corrected. "She is a demigod."

"I am?" Coraline said. "Since when?"

"Since you came to this world."

"Er," she said. "Cool?"

"I feel like I should say something."

"What?"

"No idea, but something this momentous should have some sort of commentary."

---

One of the symptoms of those going completely yo-yo was that they broke out in chronic cats.

Coraline looked up. There was a sphinx preening itself on the shelf across from her, and another on what looked like an old record player. Another two dozed on the bookshelf. Several were scattered across the floor, clustered in corners. Like the entire City, the room was full of sphinxes.

One of them hopped into her lap.

Chronic cats. At some point, Kyrule had broken out in chronic cats.

---

"Do sphinxes have names?" Coraline asked, smoothing the feathers at the base of the sphinx's wings.

"Mayhap," it said.

"Do you?"

It eyed her suspiciously, then flicked its head. "Mayhap."

"What is it?" Coraline stroked its neck, working her way up to the ears.

"A name," the sphinx purred.

She scratched its ears, and whispered, "Tell me."

The sphinx let out a low growl. In too much ecstasy now to argue, it said, "Gruntloons."

"Hi Gruntloons!" Coraline said, stopping.

The sphinx glared at her.

---

Coraline let the book fall open on her lap...

---

How do you even describe things like having three versions of the city, all sitting in the same time-space, right on top of each other, and if you look right you can sort of see them all, but usually you only see the one you're mostly in, but not always. Sometimes you'll just catch bits... something that isn't there, out of the corner of your eye, and then you look but it's not there, but then you really look and it is, and there's a sphinx sitting on it staring at you longingly.

It would be easy to call The City a place of uncertain dimensions. It would be a joke to call it three-dimensional. It wasn't really that they were dimensions, either, the three layers of city that, when put together, compiled The City. Neither did you really need all three of them to have a city, since they were all complete, and for that matter, they were all the same city. But only when put together did you truly get The City.

I don't think most people cared. They were used to the glimpses of the other cities shining through into the one they were in, only in the corners of their eyes, never quite there after all if you went to look closer. Sure, it could be a bit of a nuisance if you suddenly took a step and instead of just going forwards, you went into another dimension (though as I said, dimension really isn't the word you'd want to use), where the milk you had just bought in the local store turned out to be a whole month older and starting to have funny bits in it and giving off a rather unpleasant smell... but that usually didn't happen. Most people stayed where they were, or if they didn't, perhaps they didn't notice. The three cities were, after all, the same city; The City. Just... not completely, and not all the time.

Why is it only three? What of the shadows you see in the corners of everything, the variants and the fragments that don't belong? What of the other Cities, the hidden Cities, the ones that don't fit in, the ones... the ones that lie forgotten?

If I had to give a guess, and mind you this is only a guess, it has something to do with power. For Kyrule, threes are holy, they're everything, they're exactly what people see. And in doing so, they hide the others - three stand out so the other six can linger in shadow, adding force, but hidden. What people don't see is just as important as what they do. Perhaps more so.

Kyrule knows this.

The Emissary chose Kyrule of Arling Tor for what he was. It was not a political move but a practical one. It looks terrible on paper and indeed it was disputed almost immediately, but the decision held precisely because of why it was made.

We look to our Kings, but it is the Emissaries who hold the real power, because they are the ones who have to know their shit. And they do.

---

"Hello Merrs," Coraline said.

He cocked his head, then recognition lit his expression. "Gloria? Hello."

"You look happier," she said.

"You look less lost."

She laughed. "Oh, I dunno about that. If anything I'm probably even more lost now. But I guess now at least I've got somewhere to be, so that helps. What brings you here, anyhow?"

"Ah, right. A message from my Lord, as were. To... your Lord?"

"Well," she said, "I don't know where he went."

"No?"

"Naw, I mostly just mind the cats. Stay nice and clueless. You know. Health reasons." She grinned, then shook her head. "Seriously, though, whatsit?"

---

Found:

• book
• key

From vault:

• sword
• robe
• tunic
• amulet
• slippers
• gloves
• fuzzy hat

Summoned:

• mask
• scythe
• spear

From random soul:

• hairdo

Brought with her:

• bag of sundry random junk
• better part of Vardaman's liquor cabinet
• staff
• knife
• earpiece

---

Consider the universe. It is, by definition, all that we know, the totality of existence, the boundaries of reality. There cannot exist anything beyond it, because that would be a part of it as well - whether we know about it or not.

Now consider the multiverse: the idea of a multitude of universes, an infinite set of possibilities existing in parallel with our known existence. Other realities. Existence beyond existence, space beyond space, time beyond time.

But by the very definition of a universe, a 'multiverse' is impossible. The rest, the 'other realities', are also universe.

There are those who would name their universes. Their pockets of reality.

There is an inherent problem with this proposition. To name it, the name is replicated throughout all direct parallels. A name is meaningless for identification. Identification itself is meaningless.

This realisation can either help to clear things up, or to make things a whole lot more confusing.

---

"You bargained for your soul, and it returned to you."

"Aye?"

"I had to go into the space between worlds and find mine myself. And when I did, do you know what I found? It'd glued its feet to the ground! And when I got close, it just swatted me away. When I tried to talk to it, it pointedly ignored me. I had to hit it with a stick until it'd even respond, at which point all it did was insult me."

"That... seems wrong, somehow."

"Yeah, well, that's what happened. And I was at a loss, let me tell you."

"So how did you...?"

"It was the kids. Showed up with that dog. That dog that'd been the crux of the entire thing. My other completely softened up at the dog, knelt down as far as it could go with feet glued to the ground and hugged the thing, and they both just went all melty. And then, well, then it was a matter of magic, and I knew what to do. Stuffed them back and taped everything all up and squish."

"Squish."

"Technical terminology, of course. Of course then it was all like now the hell what? 'Cause the door I'd taken in wouldn't have worked for going out, see."

"Why?"

"It went the wrong way. I'd taped up too much. Had to stay in the realms of the dead or it'd fall apart and the Death of Souls would start all up again. Wasn't a real solution, obviously, but... well, you know how stubborn I can get."

"But if you'd let it go, couldn't you have found a real solution?"

"You know, that's exactly what you tried. Our you, anyway. Let it back into the world and vowed to find a proper end for it. And everyone called you Betrayer for it, and yet you were anything but, held true and wouldn't give up even after going through such torment yourself..."

---

"Holding omnipotence in your hands..."

---

Hazz'ridan.