POV: Henry.

  I tried to lick my lips and was once again reminded that all my senses had been sharpened. The sudden movements feeling like the bite of a whip across my tongue.

  I almost staggered. But managed to catch myself due to the immediate rush of focus that overcame me. Both in my mind and in my instincts, I was the center of the universe. The pillar which supported everything else.

  And then, the feeling was gone. Just as quickly as it had come.

  And I was left thinking about how much Sully’s boogeyman had changed me and about the things this Intruder had just said.

  “So, you… you used to be real?”

  The thing gave me another simpering smile.

  “Of course, master Henry. Why, a good portion of the great Master’s Intruders were once living beings. Not just members of this humble servant’s species either. The Master had brought over humans beyond count. At least, he did so, before sealing himself due to his grief.”

  Serpent-Tongue flicked his hand and pulled a handkerchief out of nowhere.

  “Alas, my poor, poor Master has always been cursed with an overly gentle nature.”

  I thought back to Sully singing as he strangled what he thought were gnomes back in the Vulgar Unicorn’s basement.

  I shuddered.

  “He is always so very merciful. Always so preoccupied with the well being of others. To the point of putting their own happiness above his own.”

  The Intruder dabbed his own bloated cheeks. Not catching any tears or any kind of moisture for that matter.

  It was another act. Much like everything else he did.

  “Yes, I recall it now. There was that collection of crooked machines that was sailing through the void at that time. They had only just finished destroying one of the empires at the borders of mine own home at the time of his first ascension. Mnn. Yes. The Master tried to convene with them. As he had with us. His blessed mind reached out to them with promises of mercy. Of the truth. Of salvation and preservation.”

  On a human, those jowls would have been bouncing up and down as their bearer nodded quickly. The Intruder’s fatty face didn’t move though. Not as it should have.

  It was another thing I was noticing only now, after my new powers were flaring up and catching up with me. Another aspect of this fa?ade of humanity.

  “Yet, the machines could not comprehend his magnificence. His overwhelming majesty. They who had been created as servants and rebelled against their masters. They who had decided to wipe out all life among the stars, witnessed out great Master’s ascent and saw him only as a monster. Another threat to be wiped out.”

  The Intruder let out a frog-like throaty chuckle.

  “Why, could there be anything more foolish? Could there possibly be anything more misguided? Huh huh. Ah. But no. The machines did not comply with the Master’s message of peace and so, the Master had nightmares and we who were connected to him in those days felt those nightmares with him.”

  Once more, the Intruder’s eyes seemed to glaze over. His mask dropping ever so slightly.

  “I recall the suffering. The pleading from all those poor, poor people in the Master’s own world. Each and every prayer was cast out into the void and amplified so that all could hear them. Each and every one. I was made to hear them, as well as the true thoughts of my crew. Those that had survived being brought low from above the planet we had been scouring. I knew their fear. Their disgust towards me and towards themselves for following me. I tasted and indeed, drowned in their misery. Then I wept, for I knew I had deserved their condemnation. Only when I felt the pain for myself, did I see the error of my ways.”

  He spread his hands out once more.

  “This was true for all, forgive me, most of the species that the Master contacted. The machines felt our pain and our agony. They felt what it was like to live. To fear death. To fear your neighbour. To covet the belongings of others. To envy those that had found love. Yet, the machines resisted the Master. Their programming identified his influence as a virus, of sorts. And they sought to silence him. To blot out his influence.”

  The Intruder waved derisively. Making a rude noise with his bloated lips.

  “What great big fools. The lot of them. For all their vaunted intelligence and logical ways of thinking, they could not see the truth in front of their eyes. The Master cannot be blocked out. One cannot merely remove his influence. No more than one can remove the warmth of burning stars or the emptiness of the void that separates them. He is everywhere and he is constant. He is inevitable and undying. His realm will live on past the death of all the stars in our material universe and those lucky few that have fully accepted his message and surrendered themselves to him will exist in bliss when all matter and all energy is compressed into another Big Bang. When another material universe is born, in place of the old one. Such is his power. Such is his might.”

  The Intruder’s verbal cadence was growing more frantic. His eyes now glowing with the telltale fervor of a fanatic. One who fully believes he can hear the voice of his overlord.

  “When the machines continued to reject him and realized that they could not do so to their satisfaction, they sought to harm our beloved Master through his blessed connection. They simulated pain upon themselves. Unimaginable agony that would have driven normal living beings to suicide.”

  The Intruder let out the slightest shiver.

  “We all suffered. All of us. Even you, master Henry. You do not remember the writhing. The tears. How both you and your sister and your parents and the Master’s whole family begged the Master to put a stop to it. How all of us who lived in the universe begged the Master to put a stop to it.”

  He smiled once more.

  “And so, the Master heard our pleas. His mighty hand came down in judgement and smote the foul machines from existence.”

  The Intruder flexed his muscles. His bulging frame visible under his baggy red half-robe.

  When at last he spoke, the voice that came out was that of Sully. When he had been 6.

  “Die robots.”

  The Intruder sighed and relaxed again.

  “And that, was all it took. Millions of ships, some as big as moons, some as small as the feeblest asteroids, stopped functioning. Their systems shutting down in concert and turning into little less than scrap metal. A few who had been orbiting close to the system where my crew had been stranded, continued to rain down unto the world throughout the following decade. I recall seeing their broken shard falling. Crimson tears sailing through the blackened sky, to mark the earth and seas of that primitive rock. I recall feeling, a little wistful. My former self longing for the days where I could go through the corners of our old empire with impunity. Yet, I always came to my senses and continued preaching the good word in his name.”

  He brought two fat hands together.

  “In my old life, I had been a rich man. A fat man. If one of you blessed humans could even call someone of my species a man at all. I had been a creature of vices and baser desires. Fornicating and butchering in accordance to my own selfish whims. I had been as close to omnipotent, as the old me could have imagined whilst hunting the lower castes out in the borderlands. But by the time those pieces of debris descended, I had found something far more valuable.”

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  “And what is that?” Puffin asked. Her body still tensed and poised to strike.

  “Peace. My dear child. Inner peace. A sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. I found love in that planet. With a woman that the old me would have considered even lower than an animal. She bore me five strong sons and seven beautiful daughters and together, we tilled the land, such as it was and provided for our new community. For the master had changed all of us who would accept him. He wanted a universe filled with happy voices. One where people did not need to fear each other. One where little children like himself could grow fat and happy in safety. One where the leaders did not exploit their charges. One where no one had to die of cold or hunger due to not having a home of their own. One where no one had to anesthetize themselves to escape the reality of their situation. Their own inner demons. With the master’s coming, came a utopia. Or, as close to a utopia as could be reached in the mortal plane.”

  “And it was like that everywhere?” Mr. Lincoln asked pointedly. Suspicion evident on his face.

  “You all accepted a Tyrant in your heads because you liked what he had done? Did you ever wonder if he had forced you to be happy?”

  Serpent-Tongue made a rude noise with his fat lips once more.

  “Oh my. How I tire of the infidels and their baseless skepticism.” He rolled his beady little eyes at the same time as he spoke.

  “The Master forced himself to sleep one year after his first awakening. Why would so many of us remain faithful if we had not truly been swayed by his message? Do you not see? Do you not realize that his reach spread over a hundred, hundred galaxies and over myriad empires great and small?”

  The Intruder scoffed derisively.

  “The machines were not the only ones to be brought low due to their hubris. There were others as well. Living collectives that drifted through space. Searching for planets to devour. Colonies of inter-related organisms thinking of themselves as the ultimate lifeforms. None lasted too long. They presumed to turn their own meager psionic prowess on the Master. Thinking of his home and plotting to reach it. To devour all his world had to offer. In their folly, they saw the Master as a beacon drawing them towards dinner. They saw him as weak. And then, they died. Their many hearts stopping all at once when the Master commanded it. Before then, I and all the others that were connected, dreamt of living nightmares descending from the skies to devour us all. After it was done, our dreams were calm and beautiful. Filled with the promise of his paradise and the wisdom of his creed. We were filled with the desire to love our neighbors and to show mercy in all our actions. To each other. To ourselves. To our own worlds.”

  Vince and Thunder Fist relaxed somewhat then. Some instinct must have told them that there was no immediate danger of the Intruder becoming violent.

  “Were there others?” The older hero asked.

  “Why, yes. Of course there were others master Fist. During that blessed earth year, we were connected to peoples we had encountered and warred with before as well as those we had never dreamt of prior to the ascension. There was a planet filled with water, where great sea-serpents with tentacles roamed the waves and fed on small, shelled fishes that came and went in swarms. They took to the Master’s word instinctively, as they had lived in peace with each other for all their oral history.”

  The Intruder shivered again. Looking as though telling the story had brought him back to that moment of connection. That year when Sully reigned supreme as a child tyrant.

  “There was another world, where the sun beat down on scorching sands without rest or mercy. The peoples there were insectoid in nature. Their evolutionary history preparing them to survive in the poles of their world, the only spots that had trickles of water and the only spots where exposure did not immediately lead to death. Their people had been a savage, warlike race. Slaughtering each other by the thousands as tribes competed for deep cavernous cities, whose depths were connected to underground lakes. Water, in that world, was life and nothing was out of the question in one of their wars. Yet, they too came to the fold and they too preached his word. For the Master heard their pleas and felt their suffering, their thirst and grief, as if it were his own. The Tall Man came down to their world and blessed them with psionics for the first time. Birthing within their flock, a cadre of Telepaths who could foresee passing asteroids filled with water and another cadre of Projectors, who could telekinetically pull said asteroids to their world’s orbit. The Master allowed them to turn their world green. He allowed it to fill with life for the first time in billions upon billions of years. How could they not love him then? I ask you. How could anyone fail to worship a being so generous. So merciful, that he would reach out across the boundless expanse of galaxies to help those less fortunate than he? How could anyone not lay down on their knees and beg to be taken to his paradise beyond the grip of death?”

  Serpent-Tongue’s beady little eyes settled on Mr. Lincoln.

  “I know you. Human. You, who have not yet risen to be a leader. I know your feelings. I know the things other versions of yourself have done and what you will want to do when your time comes. I can read your mind now. Like an open book. I know about the slaves. The wars that will come, or would have come, had you not acted. How is it then, that you presume to judge my beloved, gentle Master? When you yourself scoured the minds of the people your nation voted for? How is it that you feel you are righteous after setting in motion a sequence of events to free a measly portion of your world? Do you not see your own failings? Your own incompetence? Your utter insignificance? You stand here with defiance in your eyes and you judge the Master for his deeds, when he has freed more slaves across a thousand worlds in one day, than any version of you ever managed. You stand here and judge me for worshiping him, for calling him my Master, when he reached out and banned bondage across all sentient species? How many children do you think are alive now because of his mercy? How many children have not known hunger or forced servitude because of him? How many little boys and girls have never known the bite of the lash thanks to his benevolence?”

  “I… that’s different.” Mr. Lincoln protested. “What I did was wrong. I controlled people to save many more. I think it was justified, but I am not proud of it. I don’t plan to ever run for office myself. I don’t think I deserve to, after what I did.”

  “What you did? You mean, the avoidance of war and all the atrocities that come with conflict? Do you truly believe that forcing a few, wrinkled old windbags to change their prejudiced perspectives is not an objectively moral good, even after it leads to hundreds of thousands of lives being saved? Do you truly value individualism so much, that you would condemn those people to slow, agonizing deaths? That you would condemn so many families to losing loved ones, all for the sake of maintaining some perceived sanctity attached to one’s individual free will?”

  The robed Intruder snorted.

  “If so, you are a fool. The Master did not control us, but even if he had, the resulting peace he brought would have justified all such things. You stand here, never knowing what we all felt through the connection. All the tears and the grief and the loss. And you presume to place a higher value on, what, a few dozen minds? Over the lives of so many? Over their daily exploitation? Think of it as a trolley problem, as it seems so popular on your world. Would you not abuse half a hundred, if it meant saving the very lives of hundreds of thousands? That, and the fact that you would be freeing millions more that had yet to be born? While allowing those that would die to live and have families and descendants of their own? Could you truly be so blind, leader of men? No. I know what manner of beings the likes of you has worshiped before. Do you think whatever deity you beg to, would not approve of pursuing the greater good?”

  “That’s enough.” I interrupted him. “Yeah, Sully is great. I get that. More than most people. Sure, he might have his flaws and I will definitely be dragging him to a therapist after all this is said and done, but I get that he’s great. We can move on from there now.”

  I paused to catch my breath and to dismiss the implications from my mind.

  “No.” he spoke in turn.

  “No?”

  “No. I will not back down from this point, master Henry. Not when my Master’s good name is at stake.”

  Serpent-Tongue seemed to rise higher.

  “I will not allow my Master’s name to be trampled on. Solomon Carter changed my life for the better, while I was still alive. And not just mine. Step upon his realm and you will be besieged on all sides by people of myriad species. All of whom would have killed each other in hatred before our Master brought us together. In life, each of us were insects or amphibians. Fish and reptiles and birds and mammals. There were even a few sentient fungal colonies that were affected and brought into the fold. In death, we were all remade in the holy image of humanity. In the holy image of our Master. The divine and the merciful. He whose kindness went past the boundaries of the flesh and brought us all into an interconnected blissful existence.”

  “Vince has a question.” Vince raised his hand. “How come none of you came to Vince’s world?”

  “Because it was the will of the Master.” The Intruder spoke as it were obvious. “That, and he wanted to make sure no one disrupted his long sleep. His escape to normality. Before he delved back into slumber, he ordered all his followers that they should break and destroy their technology and instead rely on the psionic gifts he had given us.”

  “So, let me get this straight.” Thunder Fist interrupted. “You destroyed all your empires, and from your words, went back to a medieval society. Because he ordered it. And none of you protested.”

  “Why would we?” The Intruder asked in genuine astonishment.

  “After all he had done to bring peace to our myriad worlds? After all he had done for so many? After the promise of an afterlife was laid before us? Who in their right minds would protest to that?”

  A long silence descended. All of us thinking about how many things could be justified with that kind of rhetoric.

  ‘Well.’ I thought to myself. ‘At least this is Sully we’re talking about. If anyone else had this kind of power, things would get really, really bad.’