Dungeons & Grandma's

Eileen smiles deeply in a way that makes the dungeon hurt.

"They're well," she says, pressing the handkerchief to Orrynthal's forehead again, then brushing a thumb over the edge of where his eyebrow might be. "Audrey's taken quite the interest in butterflies... and insects in general, as you may well know. Some might call her bossy as anything, but that's only because they don't recognize her executive leadership potential. Still, she has some ways to grow. Ghosts for her are still a little too scary and yet she's got the steadiest hands I've ever seen. Never lets a single ounce of fear show on her face. Oh and she learned to sew by feel, too, I hardly helped at all. It was buttons first, then hems and when she doesn't know what to do with herself, she starts fixing things around the cottage. I think she likes putting the world back together a little at a time. Perhaps she takes after her father in that way, in the same way you mentioned your need to create."

A flicker runs along the crypt's edge. Not light exactly more a conceptual awareness.

"Ollan's louder, of course, though he's quieter than he lets people on," she continues, her voice soft and even, as if she's talking over tea in a sitting room and not kneeling in the collapsing shadow of a dying god. "He took to gardening like a jackrabbit in sprint. Not just the planting, but the watering, the hard labor, even the waiting too. There's something about him that understands time better than most grown ups I know. For he sits with the soil like it's a story he's listening to, and he never interrupts it. Just lets things grow in whatever way they wish to."

Noticing a fine line of ash along Orrynthal's collarbone, Eileen wipes it clean with the hem of her sleeve, gentle as a mother brushing breakfast from a child's chin.

"They both learned to swim too," she says, and for the first time, there's a light in her voice. "Audrey was scared of it at first, but Fenn and Ollan convinced her to jump in. She's been trying new things ever since. Still, she says the water felt like it was judging her. And even then, I think she felt the presence of the space you left behind, one that I hope her heart will make for you. So that you may one day see how they race each other back, soaking and proud, dripping mud through the hallway."

"Oh, and they've started meditating. Sitting quiet for their contemplation, not because they're told to, but because they want to hear themselves better. I told them too that's the first step to becoming someone you like. But the hardest part is finding someone good to model yourself after."

She places her palm flat to the center of Orrynthal's broken chest. The warmth of the moment not magic, not ritual, only something humanoid longing for the taste of tomorrow.

"You asked what they've become and I here to tell you they've become children again. Ones who feel safe enough to learn slowly, and laugh without asking."

The presence behind her eye presses in with a force, as if curling all shadows into a submission where they wish just to kneel.

"I wish I could see them again. Hold them. Tell them everything will be alright. But my time has ended. I will soon be no more..."

Eileen feels the open-endedness of Orrynthal's statement in her mind, the intent of what is not being said. So she reaches out to it and it...

SYSTEM ONLINE

Oh bugger, she thinks. Not this again. She had already given it up. What could it possibly want now...

SYSTEM OPERATIONAL
Welcome Back Eileen

"Yes, I can feel it, you can access it. Together, maybe I'll be able to see them again."

Eileen pretends not to catch the implication, perhaps though there was a way to fix this for the children even it would be dangerous to her. But for them, for the children, the risk to her would be worth it.

SOUL MERGE REQUEST
Orrynthal, Creator of the Deathsong, Unifier of the Blighted Legions, Cosmic Admiral of the Dread Cogs, Redeemer of...

Would like to share your soulspace with you?"

"Oh those titles are nothing, meaningless things really. A past life, something I will no longer seek out for I'm a changed man because of your work."

Eileen nods once, stoically, "I'll agree, if you accept that I set all terms and conditions after all."

SOUL MERGE REQUEST
Orrynthal, Creator of the Deathsong, Unifier of the Blighted Legions, Cosmic Admiral of the Dread Cogs, Redeemer of...

Has agreed to your stipulations of setting the contract.

"Do you choose to share your soulspace with this penitent fragment?"

With a snap, Eileen finds herself awake. Seated in her favorite rocking chair, though she doesn't remember sitting in it. The air is warm but not heavy, scented faintly with lilac and the darker comfort of baked bread long since cooled. A soft clack of wood sounds beneath her heel as the chair tips gently forward, then back again. There is no fire in the hearth, but the stones glow with a light of their own steady and pale, as if forming a new dawn left waiting on the horizon.

Across from her, on the couch that has seen more naps than sermons, sits Orrynthal.

Or at least, the emotion of him.

Somehow he is even thinner here, beyond skeletal. Clothed in a patchwork of borrowed softness, a cardigan too large at the shoulders, trousers cuffed awkwardly above the ankles. His legs hang, too short, his feet not quite touching the floor. But this time, Orrynthal has a face she can look at. Even if it is blurred around the edges, the way dreams sometimes forget to finish sculpting their guests.

The teapot is the first to emerge, not carried but escorted, hovering a few inches above the kitchen floor with the quiet dignity of a hostess too polite to speak. Two cups follow in its wake, not floating but hopping, their ceramic feet tapping lightly over the wood as if auditioning for a part in a bedtime story. The cups bow to the teapot, then to the room. The teapot bows back and tips in return. Together they perform a tiny pantomime, one that involves a few careful pirouettes. A sugar bowl joins them partway through, scooting in from the left as though late and slightly embarrassed to have forgotten its cue.

But if it seems out of place to Eileen, she doesn't show it. In fact, she claps softly at the end of the performance, her eyes warm with delight. The teapot acknowledging her with an extra generous pour, and the steam rolls into the air, golden and strange, as if the water inside has learned to carry stories. The cups receiving the liquid with neither clink nor spill, only a kind of wordless gratitude, before hurrying off to serve both her and Orrynthal with purpose.

It is Orrynthal who breaks the moment, not cruelly, but with something close to discomfort and his voice is quiet when he speaks. "I don't require this."

Eileen smiles and folds her hands in her lap. "Neither did the children. And yet, seeing bright little things like this made their play easier all the same."

Orrynthal turns his gaze toward the teacup, studying it as if it might blink first. The steam has slowed but still curls gently in a halo above the rim. One of the cookies from a tin somewhere in the kitchen has found its way to a saucer beside the cup. The saucer didn't exist a moment ago, but no one comments on that.

"When, then," he asks, slow and deliberate, "may I see them?"

Eileen rocks once, then stills. Her hands rest in her lap again, her palms folded like notes tucked between pages. "That's not up to me, love. I know you know that, even if your not ready to admit that to yourself."

"But you've taken care of them," Orrynthal replies, his voice too practiced to portray authentic curiosity. "You've shown them warmth. Their allegiance is... different."

"No," Eileen says, interrupting gently but without hesitation. "They showed me trust. It's not the same."

He considers that while his tea goes untouched. "They were shaped by me," he says. "Their gifts come from my will. Their instincts, from my design."

"And that may very well be," Eileen replies, brushing the hem of her skirt with idle fingers. "But they chose what to do with those gifts. And what they chose may not be a path you would have led them down."

Orrynthal's blurred face does not change for perhaps it cannot. But the couch beneath him seems to tense, the upholstery pulling ever so slightly at its corners, as though it too is listening. He speaks after a pause that seems to ripple through the fabric of the room.

"But I wish to teach them. There are things I know. Legacies, powers, skills, abilities, classes, titles. They deserve to inherit all that I will gift them."

"They deserve to become," Eileen replies, her hand reaching for the sugar bowl, allowing her to stir a second cube into her tea, watching it dissolve. "They deserve to become, what they choose for themselves. And that is not quite the same thing as what you are suggesting."

He leans forward, slightly. "You speak as though I would harm them. I let them live off the majesty of my domain."

Eileen hums, not in disagreement, not quite, but in thought and yet the hum silences Orrynthal.

"Don't play me for a fool. You've harmed everything you've ever touched dear. I've seen it too. I walked through that dungeon of yours, through and through. Don't expect me to believe that was some kind of tough love dressed up as parenting."

But her voice does not accuse, her words fall like flour dust across a kitchen counter, soft but revealing where the surface is uneven. It is not a blow, she is just dusting to reveal a truth. "You may want to be their father now, and that's a noble idea. Perhaps it may feel natural to you. But wanting something doesn't make you fit for it. That takes work and I mean real honest work. And fitting yourself to the idea of this new parenting style will take work."

"I know it will," he says. "I can put in the work and in return for your guidance I can offer you anything." His voice holds no menace, only certainty, like an old man pointing out the weather. "I could mend this world or bend any other being here to your liking. I could grant you dominion over the veil between life and what dreams beyond it. No illness, no fear, no limits to how long you might protect them."

Eileen does not look at him. She reaches instead for her knitting supplies, which arrives without ceremony, simply appearing in her hands as if it had always been there. The needles clicking softly by the time he finishes speaking.

"I don't think they need a kingdom or a pantheon and I certainly do not want one either." she says. Her eyes remaining on her stitches. "I only need what they need, which is a place they can leave when they are ready, and still be welcomed back when they need it. And that place can't be the cottage if that somewhere feels like it owns them."

Orrynthal leans back. The couch groans beneath him, not in protest but in caution, as though aware of the weight he carries. His voice shifts, trying to find footing. "Ah, I understand. A messiah complex. You think you can protect them better than I can."

"No," Eileen answers, her fingers moving with calm purpose as she works a cross pattern into the yarn. "I have no plans to hold their hands forever. But I will love them. And I will be kind to them. For any and all of their qualities. And that kindness, unyielding as mine is, is usually enough for all of the children I have cared for to eventually grow curious. Curious on how they might best grow even if they do not phrase it in the way in which we are speaking."

He frowns, or tries to. The face he wears doesn't quite know how to shape disappointment. Instead, it folds inward, like parchment beginning to burn at the edges. The expression dissolving before it can deliver its meaning. "You think your kindness is stronger than what I've built? My archives? My legions? My understanding of power? My concepts of the transcendent paths, borders on creation itself? And you would dare..."

Eileen snips the yarn. A small square now rests on her knee, soft and slightly uneven at one edge, exactly the sort of thing a child might wear proudly anyway.

"I think kindness or the purest idea of it, at least is the only thing that doesn't ask what it can get from someone," she says. She places the small patch of wool politely beside the teapot, as if setting out an offering.

"I understand completely. It is like my class. I can transfer it to those who are worthy. I can offer you eternity to practice your kindness."

"And I would offer you tea in return for such a gesture." she replies, topping off his cup which he still has not touched. "Both have a great kind of power to them, but only one of us is offering something that's actually warm."

At her words, Orrynthal leans forward. His elbows rest on knees that still do not quite touch the floor. The cardigan bunches awkwardly at his shoulders and his voice takes on the gentle firmness of a teacher correcting a pupil. "You are being foolish. My powers can lift the veil for them. Show them the truths beneath things. Spare them the agony of confusion, of mortality, of effort, of not understanding their cosmic place."

Eileen glances up from her knitting, threading a new length of yarn through her needles. "And then what would they do with all that?" she asks, her tone soft. The kind one might use when inquiring if someone planned to have a second scone before supper. "Float above the world, knowing everything, but living none of it?"

"They would be spared the pain of not knowing. They would find peace in the hand of service," he says, as if the logic completes itself.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"They would be spared growth dear." Eileen replies. "And choice. And the feeling of mud between their toes. And falling in love with something that doesn't make sense."

"You think pain is beautiful then? That all the world's creations deserve to suffer the pain of the unknown."

"Please dear, its far more complicated then that. I think pain is honest. And that being honest with yourself is how you learn what kind of person you are. What kind of person you want to become." She loops another stitch, slow and steady, each motion as calm as breath. "And I think the worst thing you ever did to that dungeon and all its denizens wasn't the wars you waged. It's that you taught entire generations to be afraid of what might grow into if you just left them alone long enough to find themselves."

"I only ever wanted to guide them," he says, and his voice trembles just enough to sound almost sincere. "They needed something greater than instinct. They needed structure, something to aim themselves toward. When I showed them their insignificance, it was never cruelty, it was a truth of their live and that admitting it was the first step towards their own transcendence." He shifts slightly, the fabric of his cardigan pulling back just enough to reveal a sliver of armor beneath, old and burnished with misuse. "I know you think I failed them. Before I sealed myself away. Before I woke to this version of the world. But you see them in a way I never could. You could be the one to temper me. To finish what I have begun. With your love, and my reach, think of what we could raise. Not just children but gods, immortals, titans."

Yet Eileen laughs, but it is not mocking for it is light, as though he has said something sweetly outdated.

"Dear," she says, setting the needles down, "You can't parent on resources alone. Besides, I saw how those little ones lived. All of your resources, and yet they lived in squalor. They didn't even have bandages and they only ever got a treat when a ritual completed. And you think that should be the total extent of your generosity?"

Something flickers behind Orrynthal's eyes, something old and resistant and used to being obeyed. The room answers him first and lights begin to flicker along the walls, like shadows remembering an old performance. Gold and crimson scroll out from the hearth, symbols blooming across stone and air. They do not belong to any one language, until suddenly, they belong to all of them.

A table of numbers appears in the air. Columns arrange themselves, layered with titles, metrics, ranks. A dream shaped ledger no human should be able to comprehend, and yet it is perfectly clear in the way dreams often are. In that it does not speak, it reveals.

Kill Count:
846,113,207,990,120,774,330,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Dominion:
One hundred eighty-seven million star systems
Twelve thousand metaphysical layers held in recursive suppression
Seventy two dead pantheons, all existences purged from divine record
Four thousand and forty-three sealed timelines, nine with fractured paradox's
Conquer of eight of the nine known afterlives
Unifier of the Blighted Legions
Cosmic Admiral of the Dread Cogs
Creator of the Deathsong
& Nineteen thousands various other titles.

Eileen sets her cup down with a soft clink of ceramic. Her voice holds no sharpness, no judgment, only a steadiness that wraps itself around the room like folded linen. "Dear," she says, "this looks like a receipt, and you didn't even bring any milk from the market."

She lifts her knitting again, not because the moment demands it, but because her hands find comfort in doing what they know. The yarn resumes its rhythm, quiet and unhurried, a conversation in texture and breath. The needles clicking gently, not breaking the silence but making space within it.

Until she speaks again of her own accord, "All those wonderful creatures," she says. "All these things you took. All the layers. All the lives. I suppose you thought that somewhere, someone was meant to be impressed by this."

Orrynthal shifts, his outline ripples at the edges, his presence pressing outward as if trying to take up more space than the room can hold. The shadows around him thicken, not with anger, but with a brittle that needs to be seen.

"These are accomplishments," he says. "Accomplishments no one else has ever come close to repeating. This is greatness. The kind that defines the definitions of everything else. The kind that shapes the characters that shape entire realities. And I would give it to you, so that my children can become what I am. I have shaped extinction with the precision of an unyeilding craftsman. I have ended gods whose names shattered minds to hear. I have swallowed stars whole and rewritten law in their dust. I..."

"Mr. Bones," Eileen says, not unkindly, as if correcting someone who has wandered off mid-recipe. "You have killed more people than I can count. And now you want me to believe that you are ready to teach Ollan how to garden and help Audry catch bugs."

Orrynthal's mouth opens, but only a sound escapes, a wet and shivering distortion, like pages catching fire beneath water. "At least tell me you see what I offer," he says. "Tell me you feel the potential of it. I know you do. I know you feel it through the link we are already beginning to form."

Eileen looks up, calm and unchanged. Her eyes rest on nothing in particular, not confrontational, only still.

"I see what you've hoarded," she says. "even if I don't see who it was for and even if I did, I don't need to understand the real why. For none of it really matters."

She reaches forward then and plucks a glowing strand from the air. It hangs between her fingers, bright and humming, trembling with titles bound too tightly in their own importance. For a moment, it resists, and then it vanishes.

"This one," she murmurs, as though reading aloud from a dusty recipe card, "Conqueror of eight of the nine known afterlives. That one sounds like it needs therapy and a good cup of tea. We are not keeping it."

Orrynthal flinches, not from pain, but from something more internal, a recognition. A recognition that his manipulations were about to face the weight of dismissal without wrath. The understanding that this soft refusal would cost him more than destruction ever could for she would erase him.

She reaches for another.

"Emperor of the Ninefold Death Choir," she says, more to the room than to him. "Not really a choir person myself, I don't believe you are either. Gone."

The title flickers. It hesitates for a breath, trying to cling to its place in the air but then it folds inward like candle smoke and vanishes.

"I am already giving you those," Orrynthal says. His voice lowers, not to menace but to pleading. "You are only hurting yourself in their destruction."

He stands, or begins to. The shape of him unfolds like something caught between memory and the silhouette of it. "You are destroying the gifts I am giving to you and by extension my children. Do you understand what I have to offer? What you could be? What they could be?"

Eileen leans to one side and picks a bit of lint from his cardigan. She does not look at him when she answers.

"I could be a lot of things, dear. That doesn't mean I want to be. Or that I should be." She pauses, then smiles softly. "I've always liked gemstones dear. But my eyes don't work the way they used to, it would be a travesty for me to ruin so many beautiful gemstones just because I wanted to be a jeweler."

She plucks another title from the air. It comes away from the ledger like a thread being pulled loose from tapestry.

"Seventy-two dead pantheons," she reads aloud. "All existences purged from divine record. That sounds exhausting dear."

Orrynthal bellows, not with rage, but with disbelief. A sound like something coming apart at the seams. Not a god unmade, but a god unnoticed. The kind of grief that comes not from opposition but from indifference. Not being denied, simple from being dismissed.

"I am trying to elevate you," he demands of her as if trying to make her listen but there is something in his voice now that breaks, not like thunder but like ice too long under tension.

"You're trying to make a mess in the kitchen that feeds your children dear," Eileen says, her voice neither amused nor cruel, simply honest. "You're trying to tell the children what you want them to be, without ever considering what they might want to be. I cannot allow you to do such a thing. And if I must break you to help you understand that, then I will. Even if it costs me my life."

Another title unspools and its color dims from imperial violet to something flat and grey. The font too warping slightly as if embarrassed by its own ambition.

Eileen rises slowly then. She dusts off her hands and looks into the center of what Orrynthal has become. Not a god. Not a tyrant. More something adrift in the space between apology and assertion.

"I don't want to be remembered in the same way you do," she says. "I want to be remembered the way one remembers a loved one long after they have passed. Not because they were powerful. Not because they were terrible. Not because they were vast. But only because they were kind. Because they made someone feel safe. Because they knew how to help that someone sit beside their grief."

She breathes in, slow and quiet. Her hand moves through the air as if smoothing the edge of a blanket.

"That's the legacy worth leaving."

Orrynthal puts his hands up then in a stopping motion or at least the blurry figure of it. "Perfect, I can help you with that." his voice holding something too eager, like a student repeating back a lesson without quite understanding it. "I can help you do that for everyone, just by being worshipped. You'll be needed by every soul my creation ever creates. Can you imagine how far reaching your legacy will be."

Eileen steps closer. Her presence does not swell, does not command. It simply arrives, quiet and inevitable, like a lamp left on in case someone finds their way back home and she corrects him gently.

"Worship requires fear, dear."

Another title disintegrates. Then another, soon enough they are dropping like loose leaves shaken free of their stems. The room grows quieter with each one, less crowded by history, less clouded by performance and what starts to remain behind is not shadow. Or stillness, rather it is possibility.

"We will not carry all this dreadful weight around anymore. We will not allow you to choke the little ones with it."

Orrynthal's form flickers, the colors of his outline shifting in subtle waves, like a failing projection. His cardigan, the borrowed softness he facades himself in, ripples with the undercurrent of something older and colder trying to reassert itself.

"I gave everything I had to my goal," he says. "I broke myself open to make sure everything around me was strong. I built legions, gave them purpose, showed them how to survive. You speak of kindness, but the universe is not kind. The universe is hungry, I am hungry. I am destined to consume, the same as you, the same as them."

Eileen does not argue. She walks to the window instead, which hasn't been there until now. Outside, the world is forming slowly, as if her memory and intention are drafting it together. A field followed by a crooked fence. Some wildflowers that don't know they're supposed to bloom later. Morning light that is too soft to be real and too kind not to be.

She watches it for a moment and then she speaks. "You gave them armor before you gave them rest. Gave them war before you gave them names. You taught them survival without teaching them who they were surviving for."

She turns back to him, not accusatory, only present. "They don't need your might. They don't need your strategies. They need to laugh. To be wrong and safe at the same time. To grow crooked and loved and curious. You cannot force that into them with gifts. They can learn all of that later."

Orrynthal rises.

Not fully, not proudly, but like something remembering how to wear a body. His form ripples again, and when he speaks, his voice is lower, not by pitch, but by temperature. Something colder than truth hides inside it. "I see," he says. "You won't be moved by power, not by numbers, not by titles, not by promises."

His form shifts again, just slightly, and the light bends in sympathy. Not because he commands it, but because his manipulation has always worn the costume of gravity. "So let me show you something else," he says. "Not the wars. Not the victories. Let me show you how I hungered, how I learned the shape of it early."

He lifts one trembling hand and the room listens. The walls falling away.

In their place is a memory that does not belong to Eileen. It is a cradle.

One that is plain and wooden. It rocks gently on a floor she did not shape. A child's blanket drapes over the edge. It is too small to cover anything now and a pale song hums somewhere just out of reach one that is not sung by any mouth.

Inside is a child in the cradle. Not one of hers, nor one she knows. But her arms ache with the knowing that it lies their. Her body firmly reminding her she remembers how to hold something small. How to make space for breath not her own. The child cries, and though no sound escapes, the idea of the grief it forms is encapsulated perfectly.

"Do you see?" Orrynthal says. His voice is gentle now, almost reverent. "Even I began somewhere. Even I came from a place that needed warmth. I did not become hunger because I wanted it, I have been hungry since I was born, I was always hungry because I was something left unfed."

The cradle flickers and the child begins to look like Audrey, like Fenn, like Ollan, like Joey, like Sarah, before coalescing into something formless and radiant and terribly quiet.

"You could heal that wound," he says. "You could feed all that is forgotten. You could raise what they never had the strength to love."

His eyes gleam, not wet, but polished with effort. "I would give you every piece of me. Every shape. Every dream. Let me belong to something that isn't teeth."

Eileen's voice is soft, but the fabric of the world answers to it. "No, I cannot."

She looks at him then and there is no pity in her, only truth. "You want to be small now, so I'll make room for your apology. But you're not a child, dear. You're a legacy of your own creation. And that means you're responsible for the shape of what your wrought even if you believe your pain justifies it all."

Orrynthal flickers once more, a ripple passing through the last illusion of skin.

"If you can't be reasoned with. Then I will burn away all your uncertainty," he says. "I will sculpt your hesitation into weapons. I will reshape your ideology into the perfect model of what made me into who I am today and I will use your body to fracture all of that which questions my rule. And if the children mourn, I will rewrite their mourning. If they love, I will bury it in doctrine. They will not remember you as you are now, they will only remember the bastardized blend of terror you will yield upon them."

He reaches for her, not with hands, but with will. A thread of language twists in the air, covered in titles and twisted echoes of children's names. A system command. A forced rewrite. A demand for servitude.

Merge with me. Bind. Confirm. Finalize!

Eileen does not flinch. She looks only at the thread between then, then at him. Lifting her knitting needles she calmly cuts the thread with one flick of a tiny silver scissor that was never summoned, only always present, hidden in the folds of her hands. The command whimpers out of existence.

"You will not ever associate the intent of their names with such foul thoughts." she says. "You do not own them. You do not get to shape their futures or rewrite their pasts. You are not their creator. You are their failure."

The walls stop shaking. The room inhales. The entire reality of time and space, deep and vast and ancient, listens for what comes next.

"You will not feed on them again. Not their worship. Not their fear. Not their confusion. I have walked through the wreckage of your rule, Orrynthal. I have seen children starve next to sacred engines. I have seen joy punished, tenderness turned into sacrilege. I have seen what you call structure, and it is rot. It is stagnation wrapped in command lines. It is disgusting. It is repulsive. You may have rewritten everything to serve you."

She steps forward. He recoils without meaning to.

"You may want to be a god. But all you ever were was a bully in a cathedral made of paperwork. And I'm done letting you file children into folders."

Orrynthal snarls now, no longer able to wear civility. His form distorts, not with grandeur but desperation. Symbols burst along the ceiling, blazing languages never meant to be read by anything that breathes. Reality stutters and the floor fractures into glowing script. Timelines cracking open like ribcages. Somewhere, something screams in reverse.

"I have ended multiverses for less," he hisses. "I have conquered pantheons that spanned epochs. My breath is law. My mind is scale. I have fed on the prayers of dead civilizations and made temples from extinction. You are a footnote. A sentimental flicker clinging to a species that barely survives its own dreams."

Eileen picks up her cup and takes a slow sip. The tea is still warm. "And yet," she says, "You are losing. You are losing to a species that barely survives its own dreams."

Orrynthal reels, but not physically. Something deeper inside him splinters, something foundational. "You think kindness is enough?" he roars. "Do you think your little rituals of comfort will matter when they come begging for purpose, for certainty, for the strength to survive the coming darkness? My Deathsong will continue long after you and this fragment of my form are gone and another instance of me reforms in my place."

"That may be true but they will have themselves atleast." Eileen says. "And they will have the space to become what they choose and that Deathsong of yours will take them anyway before that future fragment of yours can ever touch them. I don't care if that means a quiet life for them. I don't care if that's crooked to your plans. But it will be their choice to make, not yours."

He tries again. He tears open a portal in the floor and floods the room with infinite memories. War torn fields, starving children, whole galaxies in collapse, paradoxes of ruination. He shows her what he has allowed to die. What he has consumed, what he will consume again.

"You cannot win," he says. "You are finite. You are mortal. You are nothing but soft edges in a universe that demands precision."

She sets down the teacup with care. The sound of porcelain on wood carries louder than his threat.

"And you," she says, "are afraid."

He falters. "You are afraid that anything you create, if freed, will never choose you again."

The portal closes then and Orrynthal looks up to the scroll near the hearth, his heart finally breaking. It is blank, its is empty, his legacy is gone and with it the final glyphs sputter and die.

Orrynthal collapses into himself then, not dead but reduced. Stripped of pretense, a tangle of wrong equations and old hungers with nothing left to bind themselves too.

But Eileen does not look triumphant, she looks tired, held together in the way mountains are tired. So she lifts the teapot on the table and hugs it, the lingering warmth carrying her off into the light.