"Looks like we're just about royally fucked," I say. Trace and Adaline are standing there holding hands the way that Red and Dylan do, the way that Damien and Mary do... who am I kidding. Every single catastrophe of an interpersonal connection in this group is different. I could probably tell you who's who just by the way we grip each other.

Red's grip used to be the tightest of all of ours, like death was squeezing your hand, because he was afraid of what would happen as soon as he let go. Now, as Trace and Adaline explain that two of our group members are dead, as it dawns on us (even though he doesn't know there's an us) that they are probably truly dead, given that a certain someone no longer has the capacity to throw back, I can feel Red's grasp on us all slacken.

I think I can feel something unclasp from around my neck. I can't help but play in my mind, over and over again, the little cockroach Mary squished in the alley this morning. I can't imagine Elle dying like a person, because I know that she doesn't always have bones in there (some of us are more convinced of our humanity than others, but I'm fairly sure that she never kept the joke going under her stupidly perfect silk skin), but I can imagine her being squished, the way the soft sunrise pink of her body would spill out into the road and coat everything. I can even imagine the smell--like insect juice. A rancid proto-approximation of all the other larger animals to come.

I punch Mary in the arm. "Guess you didn't get her," I say, but my voice is shaking. Yeah, I actually might vomit.

Red's trenchjacket rises with him, billowing out in this terrible pretentious fashion as he drags himself to his feet. I'm surprised how long he can make such a sudden movement look, but part of it is that I can almost see his bones pushing through the back of his coat and the exposed front. He's all red under there, alright. No, not as in his skin. As in the shirt. I don't think I've seen him open it in years, well, at least not when he and Dylan are... ah, and I haven't walked in on that forever, because they're not together.

Every single second seems to be taking years. I want him to look in my direction. I want us to recognize we're screwed together. I am begging for this incredibly stupid catharsis, but I want something even better than that. I can feel it in my mouth like Dylan's shoulder, which, by the way, was sweet, and it's unfortunate that getting to it involved almost killing Dylan. (He was a good sport about it, though.)

Speaking of Dylan, guess who's looking up at Red? Expecting disappointment, I can just tell from the look in his eyes... you and me both, 'buddy'. Dylan's bitten his lip to shit, his tongue is definitely bleeding, and I think he's working on his fingers now. It's like watching a wolf shear meat off a deer leg, except for Dylan's on both sides of the relationship right now. Great. It's not like Red was contributing much anyways.

"Go ahead," I say. "You're taking an awfully long time to say anything about our two dead groupmates. Even if you're going to play the cold insensitive front with us, you could at least cry for our first ever deaths."

Red pauses. "I can't do anything about it. They're dead. They are really, really, dead, and it was going to happen eventually. We should keep walking. Running, even. Trace, if you can open us another portal, that would be great, because they'll come here next. Shouldn't take them more than... a half hour? How do you guys want to spend your last minutes alive?"

"Are... you're kidding me," Dylan says. "You make it sound like you're just... giving up."

"Gave up a long time ago," Red folds his arms. "Or maybe my Veritas gave up."

There is a hole in my chest. It's been there for months, but once upon a time, someone thought, perhaps more out of principle than concern, but they thought, nonetheless, that I deserved better than that. Maybe I hated them for that. Maybe I was just upset that I was complicit in their game without being asked be complicit. Maybe I'm just angry. Maybe I'm stupid. Oh no. I'm definitely stupid. I'm stupid and I don't want to die at the long end of a gun, and there's only one other human I'm ready to watch kill me. "Maybe you're just desensitized," I say.

Red looks up, his fogged glasses clearing. "What?" The trees at the edge of the clearing rustle angrily, perhaps in agreement with the things Red hasn't said yet, perhaps because they're proud of me, or perhaps because the wind is going through them the right way, and fuck it, that's just what trees do.

Last second to pull out, Kali. Last fucking second to pull out.

No way in hell. "It's not exactly the first time you've seen one of us die." I shrug. The fur of my jacket bristles up against my ears as I pull myself onto even footing with him. "Take the jacket off. We can all see the weeds through your turtleneck. Get your whoooole shirt off, Red, if you want to go that far. I'm not saying you should, but I'm a nice person, so I'll extend the option."

"Kali. What are you talking about?" asks Red, and his voice has half the gravelly apathy that's marked that last few months.

I'm so ecstatic I can't shut up. "Usually you tell me about this, and I nod dumbly. We have a cute little feelings jam, and when done's done, you start over and pretend that you're asking me about Elle. Now that you can't do that, I guess you'll have to talk to me like a normal person... or however much 'normal person' is left there. It kind of looks like you've got a little something..." I gesture to his entire face, because I can see the dry, grainy texture of bone shoot up it as I speak, "There."

"You knew," Red's voice is so strangled that it no longer sounds human. I can see something reaffixing over his face, and at the same time, the plants finally break free of the collar. A fire flickers at his fingers, as he rubs his thumb across the one next to it, sparking up something that isn't quite flesh anymore.

"Red, calm down. Can you just explain what's--" Dylan starts.

"Whole time," I step in the way, cutting Dylan out of Red's vision. No one gets to fuck with my quarry. I'm too ready for this. "Probably a good time to speak up, huh? This is the part where I thank you for the years you've spent lying to people and going half of the way through with suicide attempts."

"I saved your life hundreds of times!" yells Red. "I have literally thrown away everything to protect you all, and none of you ever understood what I was going through. I've been alone in this hell for years--"

"I've been in hell with you. Feels pretty good to know you're not alone, 'buddy'." I sense movement in the corner of my vision. "Yeah Dylan! Fucking flinch. Say, Red, it'd be nice to have a scapegoat for all this, wouldn't it? Do you need a villain to set in your crosshairs?" I ask him. I feel myself blaze. My innards are practically on fire, and that's fine. There's only one way out of this, and it is death. One of us goes down? Fair. Both of us go down? Justice.

Millions of timelines set on fire. Thousands of wrong way outs. We know it was always going to end like this, and I am never, never running again.

"Oh shoot. We're all going to die," says Mary, thrilled.

"And the best way to end that is with a battle?" asks Damien.

"I'd be kinder than whatever they'll do to you," Red says, but it's not his voice anymore. His head splits open, bloodlessly, and a thin line traces its way down his face. The fire streaks up his arm, and one of his legs cracks, so that a ram's leg and a ram skull glares out at us, curved horns extending from his head. I can still see part of his human head under the skull, but it's partially obscured by the plants wreathing out of his collar. He hasn't transformed, but of course, we wouldn't expect Red to. It's just that something terrible has grown out of him.

"Red?" asks Dylan.

Red's non-burning hand rises, coated by a huge, hellish mess of vine and bramble. Dylan chokes on something that's not there, and his body transforms as one of his arms turns against him. Red watches, his expression hidden, as Dylan begins choking, he cries out, "I can't-- please Red. You have to-- Red please-- Red-- please--" it lapses into a continuous, soft muttering, and then a wheezing silence too soft for words. Dylan releases himself, choking up a black ichor I didn't know was in his body.

Red staggers, body half-broken, and strokes Dylan's body. It's all human now, but Red affectionately, with the vine hand, strokes one of Dylan's horns, and says, "Aren't we all glad that's over?"

I throw myself against him in Veritas form and Gillian falls against me, like her body has been knocked sideways. In Veritas, she's large enough that this stops me, but I want blood, and I want revenge, and I want consequence. I can barely maneuver around Gillian, so I try to tense down into a smaller form, but this almost gets me stomped by a dragon foot.

Gillian roars with pain. I'm still around as large as a car, and Alex bounds up by my side. Gillian jerks her head away, like she's trying to resist (plot twist: she is!) and eventually she rips herself out of some invisible mesh, just for Mary to almost slice her face open. She falls out of Veritas, fast, and Mary almost hits the ground just as fast.

"Oh, what! That's not fair," yells Mary. "Trace! Addie! You gonna help or what?"

"He's going to use me against me," Adaline says, terrified, and her hair bristles up like fur. Not a bad concern. She's probably lethal enough to make a good knife, and Red knows he's bringing a stick to a knife fight in terms of physical power.

He has to know.

What am I saying? I don't even know if that's Red.

"I'll protect you, Addie!" Trace's Veritas, her face covered in crystal, collapses space around Red, but just as she does another version of Red appears behind her. Great. Teleportation too-- at least we know he's probably got his time travel back, for whatever good that does us in this situation. One Red disappears, another cracks the crystals of Trace's face open with vines just as Adaline transforms, and when she gets her teeth around him, another Red kicks her in the face with the ram leg. It's a surprisingly accurate kick, and as I look around the battlefield, I notice Mary dueling with another Red, who transforms Damien against his will with an upwards swing of his hand.

I don't need to see the gold fire or hear Mary's cry to know what emotion that fire's attached to. Damien yells, "Sorry, I-- Mary! Mary?" and as I clench my teeth around another version of Red, which disappears just before my jaws snap closed, I hear a sword pierce flesh. Probably deer flesh.

"What are you," yells Mimsy, behind a cat mask. She's not fully transformed, but she's at least going to distract Red for long enough for me to actually get him, this time. Let alone that there's nothing to do after we "get him", because that's future Kali's problem.

"The place where rivers end," Red says to Mimsy, swinging Gillian into her with a quick flick of his fingers. The two of them barrel into the woods. "Nice try."

I breathe a stream of blue fire. Mimsy bounds out of the woods and straight into the fray, under Red's guidance, and I catch the fear in her eyes just before she burns alive. I can't cut the fire off fast enough. Red's empty eyes under the skull fix me as we both stand in the scent of smoke. I can't look at the body. I don't want to look at it. I dive for him, feeling my own flames tickle my stomach as I lunge, and Red's gone again, halfway across the field. Blood litters the grass. Red breaks Adaline's neck with Mary's sword, and then Mary-- I can't even tell if Red did it to her or she did it to herself-- runs the sword right through her own chest.

Gillian falls out of Veritas as Alex falls out of his, the former electrocuted, and Alex holds her in his arms, looking up at me. "Kali." His voice is raw.

I turn back and reach out for his shoulder.

Red drags his fingers up. Alex's eyes glow and a brilliant field of electricity glows around his human body before exploding outwards. I brace myself, which is a useless gesture, and there's a crater where a human used to be, and me, covered in debris, in ash, in death itself, still walking. I keep walking across the field, and Red moves his fingers apart. I feel something tug in my gut, but I can't tell if it's because of him or just because I'm so fucking angry right now.

Can't complain. I poked the hornet nest.

"I'm immune to that, too," I warn him.

Brilliant fire razes the area, devouring everything it touches. It pleads to return the world to ash, to reshape it in its desolate image. It is man's element, but I must've set it. It must've stopped feeding on Mimsy and fed on everything else. Red looks at me out of his empty eyes, and I can hear every breath suck in and out, like there is something stuck deep in his throat. "You erroneously believed that you were death," he informs me.

"Red, when I said you were the most dangerous Amalgam..." I pause. There's not enough breath in my lungs, those futile organs I shouldn't even need, to take in air. There's not enough air to take in. I pause a little longer. My face tenses up. I can't bring myself to finish the joke. "I thought I was empty," I say, "so I don't understand why I still feel... like crying."

Red stands silent. It's like talking to an effigy of everything I have ever loved, hated, or been afraid of. I've talked to the river in the same way I've standing before him now.

"Please take us back," I tell him.

"I thought I was alone," he responds, slowly. I can hear flesh moving around behind the skull. "You must despise me."

"I should," I say. "I want to hate you. I think you've finally done something bad enough with your powers that I should be able to hate you, forever."

"Then what?" he asks.

"Turn back," I say. "Fix things."

There's whining in the distance. It's the sound of the end of the world.

"This is what I am, Kali," Red says.

"The Veritas is what we think we are. It's true because we make it true," I say. "I know what you really look like, Red. You can't hide from yourself, because I know everything about you."

"Would a human have done this?" asks Red.

"No," I say, "A monster did, and the monster is time."

"I am time."

"You're time's tool."

"I make myself cry."

"I know."

"I burn my skin if I can't make myself cry, so I can feel bad enough to start caring again."

"I know."

"Sometimes I hold my head underwater. Anything, just so I can feel enough to keep going. So that I can save them, over, over, and over again, because they are everything to me, and if I can't make myself feel like a human, then I'm not human, and if I'm not human... I'm that. Absolute power. Absolute authority."

"I know."

"I wanted them to know... what it felt like."

"And there will be no consequences."

"You are the consequences."

"Well?"

"Go ahead. Kill me."

"I was going to ask you the same thing."

We look back. Any second now, the end of our world occurs, and we experience it together. I run a finger across his face, covered in blue flame, and I feel flesh beneath my fingers. I rub the ash off of him, so that we're standing there, as close as we'll ever get to human, unstoppable force, unmovable object, death and life, or perhaps just death and death.

"Could you feel anything?" I ask.

"No," he says.

"Can you, now?" I ask.

Red raises a hand, which glows gold. He looks up at me. "I don't deserve this."
"It's about what they deserve," I say. "And then, when we've gotten out of this, it'll be about what you deserve."

"Worse or better?"

That's his fight. Not mine.

The gold light flickers over sets of people waiting in white jackets on the hill, and they see exactly what they expect before they see nothing at all.

I win.