The song for this chapter is "Battle Cry" by Skillet. It seemed appropriate for where Jordan is after Amniosis.

This chapter is mostly based off of the Last Purge  and S2 Finale episodes from CaptainSparklez's POV. No, we're not at the finale yet! XD You'll see what I mean.

*Jordan's POV*

"Sonja! I need more time! Keep him busy!" I hissed into my communicator.

"I'm trying, Jordan, but even Tom gets bored of Death Roulette. He's starting to get suspicious too. What are you doing over there, building a whole ME system?" She whisper-asked.

Not exactly. I looked over the machines before me with pride. I was almost done. I just had to hook up the vacuum hopper, and the system would be entirely operational. (*cough* Sorry, I went a little Darth Sidious there.) I had spent ages working on this thing. This array of technology had thrown more temper tantrums in the past month than the Ianitas ever had.

The Ianitas... I shook my head and reminded myself for the thousandth time that the last one was safe with Martha. I had checked with her as soon as the others left Martha's place. Ianita had been as bright and happy to see me as ever, and I had held her in a hug for a long time before leaving. I wished she didn't have to stay hidden when the others were around, but neither Martha nor I wanted to lose her. It was safer for them not to know. I sighed. I was pretty sure I missed my girls more than I ever had Capsize or Ianite.

I struggled to focus as I hooked up the last set of wires, adjusting my headlamp when it slipped. I tried to make my voice not sound tired or sad as I replied, "I need to test one thing and clean up. Can you buy me ten more minutes?" Sonja let out a reluctant groan. "I'll throw in a couple stacks of ender pearls," I wheedled.

"Okay, fine. And get rid of any End portals you still have around my house. If I get teleported to the End one more time, I swear you'll wake up in the middle of an Outer Lands maze next time you take a nap," Sonja threatened.

Ohhh... How did she know? I frowned in disappointment. "You're no fun. I don't know what Tucker sees in you," I mumbled. I may have put a few over at her house before coming to Tom's tree. That was part of why this had taken so long.

"Uh huh. Yeah, just make sure they're gone before tonight, Jordan. I still need to pack up my kitchen. Can't do that if I'm in the End."

"Alright, I'll get rid of them. Thanks, Sonja!" I said, hanging up. I carefully extricated myself from the mass of wires and machines, checked the frequency of the receiver, and crawled my way back to the boards I had pried up from Tom's floor. Climbing back out of the crawl space I'd made between the roof of Tom's dungeon and the floor of the building, I repositioned the floorboards and turned off my headlamp. I tried to dust myself off, then promptly started coughing. Right, I'm not quite better yet. Aside from the dirt I had tracked everywhere, Tom would never know someone had been in here. I quickly grabbed the broom I'd brought with and started in on the clean up.

Why do you have a broom? A voice that sounded like me asked in my head.

Oh great. I didn't usually get this side effect, but I supposed it was preferable to mind spiders. Actually, now that I thought about it, I hadn't heard any voices while I'd had BroRobes. I wondered if he had helped with that somehow.

Most likely, but I'm back now. And you're right; mind spiders are way creepy.

Right... I decided that if it kept the voice from driving me even more nuts, I could explain. Well, I was looking through my circle magic book after Kay fixed the water damage for me, and I found this really cool-sounding ritual. It was to make a flying broom. I'd already made the broom when I realized that it was strictly for flying. My wings were way cooler. At least the broom had come in handy for something. I swept the pile of dirt out of the door and looked back over the room. Perfect.

My communicator beeped showing me a message from Sonja. "Tom knows something's up. He's teleporting home!"

Ball sacks! The voice in my head yelled.

I fumbled for my spectre key as I closed the door and ducked behind Tom's reactor, almost dropping the key in my haste. Come on.

I heard the door on the other side of the building open and the faint creak of floorboards as Tom stalked inside. "Come out, come out wherever you are. I know someone's in here. Sonja was acting hella sketch." He paused to listen; then I heard a weapon scrape against a holster—most likely his war hammer. I knew that thing hurt from experience. I held my breath and waited as the blessedly silent, blue particles surrounded me.

I let out my breath as I made it to safety. That was way too close...but so worth it. A huge smile eased its way onto my face as I sprinted to my portal frame and punched in the address for Steve's farm. Sure I hadn't gotten to test my prank yet, but I wasn't going to pass up this golden opportunity. I jumped through the portal and peeked out of the cave to make sure Tom hadn't seen me leave and lain in wait for me here. I cannot underestimate Tom's paranoia.

The dude had almost developed a sixth sense for danger and mischief since we arrived in Ruxomar. I couldn't even get away with using an invis potion around him anymore. The last time I'd used one was when Tucker and I tried to set up a blood magic ritual under Tom's base. Tom had found our access tunnel (because someone didn't cover it like they were supposed to). When he got down to where we were working, we'd already taken our potions and were creeping toward another exit. He had just raised one eyebrow and stared right at us with his arms crossed, expression thoroughly unimpressed. (Remember how some setting on Tom's end made him able to see invis people? It frustrated the others so much. XD I'm not going to make it a big thing, but all I'm saying is maybe killing Dianite did have an effect on Tom...)

This time Tom was nowhere in sight. It looked like I'd made a clean getaway. I pulled a remote control from my pocket and dialed the frequency I'd set on the other end. Then I pressed the power button. A large bubble of blue energy surrounded the building I had just been in. It sparked with electricity and shimmered as the wind played over its surface. Then a death message appeared on my communicator: "Syndicate was incinerated by a force field."

"It's yer boiiiiii!" I yelled and threw my arms in the air. "Oh my goodness. I can't believe it worked! Haha!"

There was a solid thirty seconds of silence before I finally heard from Tom. "Jordaaaaaan! What did you do?!" He yelled into the communicator.

"What happened?" I asked between laughs, playing innocent.

"You know d*mn well what happened! Now turn this thing off! I can't get to my stuff."

I decided to give him a break, and I deactivated the force field as I flew over. I landed to see Tom running around his ME and reactor building frantically, trying to find his "stuff". I leaned against the wall and watched with a grin until he realized I was there. "I swear I died right here. Did your prank incinerate my gear?"

"Nope," I said, popping the "p". I walked over to the section of loose floorboards and started lifting planks. With a flourish I handed Tom a spare headlamp and pointed below. "May I introduce you to your new basement!"

He eyed me suspiciously before taking the light and following me down. When he saw the tangled nest of wires and machinery down there he looked between me and it a few times. "What is this?"

"A force field generator. I figured out how to program it to kill anything inside its radius, and well..." I shrugged as I started disconnecting wires. I didn't want there to be any way Tom could accidentally turn it back on with both of us in the kill zone. I pointed over to a chest. "Your stuff got picked up by the hopper and put there."

Tom army crawled over to the chest and started fishing items out: an earth armor chestplate, a pickaxe, an angel ring, etc. One item caught my attention. It was Tom's sword—the one he'd lost in Amniosis. "Tom, did you go back to the Nether without us?" I asked, wondering if he would really take such a big risk to reclaim a weapon. We didn't know if that area of the Nether was even stable, and World Historian could have been waiting for him.

"Huh? Oh, no. I'll explain once we're back over at Mianite's place with the others," he said distractedly. He determinedly ignored my questioning look and continued digging his things out of the chest. I had another coughing fit when Tom dropped his armor on the ground, stirring up the dust. I decided to wait for him above ground. I could come back for my force field projector and tesseract later.

Once assured that everything of his was intact, I thought that he would be a better sport about the prank, but he was still brooding by the time he climbed back to the surface. He only broke his silence to shoot me a concerned look and ask, "You still sick? I thought Martha's potions cleared that up."

I sniffed back a sneeze and tried to reassure him with my stuffy voice, "The potions are helping. The dust just started to get to me. That's all." I looked at the clock on my communicator and rose to my feet. "Speaking of, I'm due to go take one now. I'll catch you over at Origin Ranch in a few hours."

"A few hours?"

"Yeah, I have to swing by Sonja's place and pick something up; then I'm going to get some rest. The potions make me sleepy anyways." I stretched before lifting my spectre key out of my pocket. "I'll be over at my witchery area if anyone needs me."

---Time Skip---

Zombies beating on the walls of my hut woke me up. It was pitch black outside; I had slept through the entire afternoon. I had a little bit of a headache, and my eyes felt like they were burning when I attempted to rub the sleep from them. Rather than fight my way out, I decided to just grab my stuff and teleport to my spectre dimension. My thaumcraft side effects must have still been acting up, because the world looked a little distorted once it came into focus. When I looked at myself in a mirror I had hanging in a corner, my eyes were tinted purple around the edges. The weird thing was that it didn't freak me out; I was still half asleep to be fair.

I pulled a sleeping bag out of my ME system and started to settle in. I intended to finish my night's sleep in peace, even if it was really bright here. I slipped my sunglasses on to dim the light and yawned. I'd just set my head down and closed my eyes when I heard something shift behind me—over by my smeltery.

I rolled over, not sure what I expected. The only ones who could get into my spectre dimension were the wizards and gods, and none of them had a reason to be here. The last thing I expected to see was Ianite inspecting me with cool detachment. The expression looked unnatural on her, and I immediately suspected I was dreaming or hallucinating.

"Wat," I stated more than asked as I sat bolt upright. I pushed my sunglasses back up on the bridge of my nose and stared at her. M'lady?

Ianite gave me a wry grin and asked, "Do you think I killed Ianite?" Her voice was as I remembered it, but it had a distorted quality like everything else.

"Yourself?" I blinked several times and furrowed my brow. Yep, this isn't real. Since when does Ianite refer to herself in third person?

She didn't seem to hear me. Odd, Ianite had always been able to hear my thoughts, since I was her champion. She shook her head, and I watched as her purple locks bounced with the movement. "No, I have you to thank for that," She said condescendingly. She then turned more thoughtful. "I owe a large portion of my profits in this dimension to you, in fact. Your business decisions have been on point the past few months. Given time, I would have considered taking you on as a partner, but that's more of a Dianite thing, now isn't it?" She chuckled and looked off into space before waving her hand dismissively. "I really have to stop living in that boy's shadow. Besides, I don't have partners anymore, not after what happened with Sauron and Death."

I tilted my head at Ianite and frowned in confusion. "You're just a vision. You're not real..." I reminded myself out loud as I tried to figure out what on Ruxomar she was talking about. None of this made sense.

Ianite turned a face on me that was somewhere between confused and angered. It relaxed into smug realization after a moment. "Ah, that's why I can't hear you. Be still," She said. Her eyes glowed briefly, and I found myself paralyzed where I sat. I could still breathe, but not very deeply. My head spun in panic as she said something else. Suddenly, the world came back into focus, and I realized my eyes weren't burning anymore. My headache was gone too. I looked back to M'lady to thank her, but found she had been replaced by World Historian.

I panicked internally and mentally shouted some expletives, but I was still unable to move or speak. Wait, is this what happened to Wag?

World Historian—who I now knew had been talking to me this whole time—continued as if nothing had happened, "Anyways, your thoughts have proven lucrative. Thanks." What? Why was he thanking me? I saw him toying with the hilt of a sword hanging at the belt around his tattered grey and black robes. I nearly had a heart attack when I realized he could kill me right now, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Given what had happened with Ianite, I suspected that if this guy killed me, it would be permanent. "Your quintessence is so good, but I'll wait."

Okay, maybe he wasn't going to kill me right this second. Maybe I could get him to tell me something useful. We still knew so little about who this guy was or what he even wanted. You're darude, I thought his way. You're never getting your hands on my quintessence.

World Historian smirked at me under his hood, but I couldn't see his eyes. Even with all the light in my pocket dimension, none of it reached the upper half of his slate grey face. "Ah, but you've already given me so much."

For some reason the taint statue blowing up, Ianite disintegrating, the Ianitas dying, and Mianite teleporting BroRobes away came to mind. As disturbing as those thoughts were, another demanded my attention. Wait, I thought quintessence was strictly a god thing.

The dark figure shook his head and said matter-of-factly, "It's a life thing." He gave me one last look that made me shiver before turning away. When his gaze left me, I was able to move and breath freely again. "Well, keep doing your best. I'm counting on you," He said mockingly as he examined the item frames on the wall.

As I sat there, the parts of our conversation where I was slightly insane started to fully register. He was blaming me for Ianite's death. I clenched my hands into fists. This was the guy who nearly killed my friend and messed with our heads in Amniosis. This was the guy who was destroying the world by draining its quintessence. Ianite had discorporated because she lost too much of hers. Like hell he wasn't responsible. Why would I let him put that blame on me? Why wouldn't I? I already blame myself, The more honest part of me pointed out. Maybe I shouldn't be blaming myself so much. I realized he was manipulating me, just like in Amniosis. "You'll never win," I said as I stood and gripped my scythe.

"I don't have to. You've beaten yourself," He said confidently without so much as turning to face me.

"Don't count us out yet. We've still got a few tricks up our sleeves," I said before diving for his exposed back. I swept Memorium in a deadly arc aimed to cut down through his neck and chest. He vanished before the attack could connect, and my scythe bit deep into the table beneath the item frames.

"Tricks won't make up for the choices you've made," His voice echoed before fading.

I pulled my scythe free and hung it back on its holster. I appeared to be alone again. Suddenly, my spectre dimension didn't feel so safe. I decided to go see if any of the others were awake over at Mainite's place. I wasn't tired anymore.