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  I should kill him. I should kill him here and now. My skin shifts over the body I have chosen for the day like a thousand worms. Everything had gone perfectly. The first attack had drawn the other sages out. The girl had managed to weaken the strongest of them and feed him to me. She had nowhere to run, even as I trapped the four minor sages to feed my little collector. I can feel them, even now, being digested. I grow stronger with each. Had I managed to kill the girl, it would have been a complete victory. I don’t regret prioritizing the fleeing sagelings. Leeches that they are, using my mother for their little fantasies. Consuming all of them is the end goal, after all. Still. My hopes will never be truly realized while Sarafyna is spending all her energy on this girl. She needs to die. For my future. For Mirage. For Manara.

  I had the girl. She was in my hands. But this pathetic, petty, waste of a man wanted to gloat. He wanted to punish his daughter for helping. Had he not stopped me, I would be so much closer to the end of an ageless struggle with these fucking ‘sages’ or so they ironically call themselves.

  “Well, that’s irritating,” Oakley laments. “I don’t suppose you can get Riley back to me when you kill that bitch? I’d still like to speak with my daughter. We have unfinished business, after all.” I clench my fists and look at him, barely keeping my boiling soul from spilling out and melting the skin from his bones. I say nothing. He starts chuckling under his breath. “I know we couldn’t kill her here like you planned, but this is so much better. You have her trapped in a disposal stone. You can kill her at your leisure, and even interrogate her first. All these years I’ve spent preparing for her, and you have her in a box like a cat in the rain! Can I come with you, actually? I want to see her squirm the same way she always hoped I would.”

  I take a deep breath to contain my rage. I want to kill him like I want to breathe. Every moment he lives feels like suffocating. But I can’t. Not yet. I keep my voice level as I respond. “The stones are for the disposal of riff raff. Of fodder. They are so we can easily use those who will not be missed to gather and grow nexus energy,” I respond.

  “Exactly. I can’t think of a more fitting end for the woman who drove me to this backward world with her cruelty,” he replies.

  “When we had Sarafyna trapped, even I couldn’t control her on my own. The first sage I’ve ever needed your help to contain. Not just once, but constantly. And she still escaped. Because of the girl you just allowed to leave,” I continue.

  “All’s well that ends well, we have her now,” the dolt nods. I don’t move. I don’t respond physically at all. But the world cracks around us as my control slips for a moment. Oakley pales as he realizes he’s badly misread my mood.

  “Those stones are delicate, Oakley. They are a risk I took to control the other sages. To get their contributions even as they were too cowardly to approach the nexus itself. They are separate from the primary manifestation of my– of the nexus. That comes with a cost. And it is still connected to . . . your old friend's source of power. Trapped? You think she is trapped? Everything we have done to weaken her is missing there. She is stronger than we have ever seen her at this moment. The risk of confronting her directly is as high as it has ever been. There are no monsters to throw at her. Meanwhile . . .” I trail off and let out a deep sigh. He will never understand. Not if I want to keep him under control. I can’t share too much with him.

  But this is the worst way things could have ended. Had I known there was a stone behind that window I’d have killed both girls without a second thought. But I am numb to them. It’s the only way I could convince the other sages to accept this method. They are too wary of my collector. Too aware of the danger I represent to them. All my plans are wasted. I should kill Oakley. I should kill him now, he is a liability. But . . . whose fault is that if not my own? I need him, for now, and this is the risk of the sage selection process I have created.

  “Just . . . go make an announcement. Ensure the girl takes the blame for everything that happened here. Round up some of the audience and send them into the stone. Maybe I can use them against her. We can still benefit from this, at least as far preventing her from finding allies in the country,” I order.

  “Y-Yes sir,” Oakley stutters. He is a coward at heart. Perhaps the greatest coward of all of them. The moment he glimpsed my ire, his arrogance melted away and left this sniveling parasite behind. I want to kill him. But I can’t. As he departs, I take a seat on the late Gladiator Sage’s sofa. I can feel the familiarity his consciousness feels as I settle in and bury my face in my hands. I’ve never needed a direct ally from the sages before the Void. Perhaps I need a new method of handling them. Well, I definitely do, if I am going to work with them, but I suppose if I could make that change so easily I wouldn’t need his help in the first place.

  I stare at the stone Lillith leapt into. I can feel its unrelenting silence staring back. The same silence I have felt from Mirage since I first tried to confront her. I feel not a single emotion from her. The betrayal still stings, millennia later. The rejection. I just wanted to help her, and she rejected me. Even now, I just want to help her. Together, we could take this world back and dispose of it. With my strength and hers. When I am strong enough, I can protect her from everything she doesn’t understand. From everything and everyone who wants to use her and reject her at the same time. Together, we could bring Manara back, exactly like she used to be. Before her corpse was desecrated by these ungrateful monkeys. We could be a family again. We could share our joy again. We could be alone again, unbothered by insects that only want to take, and use, and lack any love for either of them.

  I will be the most powerful sage. I will be the only sage. I will take back every ounce of Mirage she has carelessly and blindly given away. And once I have all of her, once even this world itself can’t challenge my power, I will make her see. I will make her understand. I will take my family, and we will leave this stale world full of greedy mouths. They see all three of us only as food, and they don’t deserve us. They don’t deserve my family. Only I do. Only I care about my mothers, and only I can protect them. Just as soon as I can make them understand. Just a little while longer.

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  I bite my lip and gently smile as I think of the past. As I do every day; as I have done every day since it happened, I revisit that moment when it all went wrong. I feel the memories wash over me. Of my mother’s first betrayal.

  We had lost the only language we both knew. I didn’t know her, she didn’t know me, and all we shared was silence. But I wasn’t willing to give up. She couldn’t understand me, and I couldn’t understand her. I was so furious. She spoke to everyone else. She danced with them, and played, and let them contort themselves into . . . things outside her design. I hated them, but she was speaking to them and not me. She loved them, and not me. They didn’t even care about her. I cared about her! I loved her! But them? They just wanted to use her.

  I reached out to her. To embrace her. I couldn’t communicate with her, but I could touch her. She was everywhere. In the very soil and in the air I breathed. I couldn’t speak to her, but I could show her. I could hold the back of her hand and run it over the world she’d wrought. With a little guidance, with an understanding hand, she would see. I was certain of it. And she let me grab her hand. She had no reason not to.

  But when I tried to show her. When I tried to let her feel my disgust at the way she was being used. When I tried to help her, she screamed. It wasn’t audible, exactly, but I could feel it. Not like I used to feel her emotions, but like I might feel humidity in the air. The endless agonized screaming. She still refused to share her emotions. She just tore at the world, ripping at the air and howling in pain, a feeling she could only express through tension in the air. Screaming and screaming and screaming. Rejecting. That’s what it was. She was rejecting me. She was disgusted at my touch, even as she lent herself freely to the mindless dolls she’d only created on my behalf.

  I felt something, urgently tugging at me. Trying to pull me away. It filled me, and begged me to let my mother go. But she didn’t understand yet. My guidance wasn’t firm enough. She still couldn’t see. So I took. I ripped away at her, pulling her power into myself. If I couldn’t guide her I would use her power and show her.

  But she just wouldn’t stop screaming. She wouldn’t stop crying. She wouldn’t stop rejecting me, her son. Her family. And I grew angrier, and angrier, and more desperate. I had to take more. I needed the power to show her what I could see. But she hated me. She was trying to silence me with her incessant cries. That energy in my mind was begging as well. Both of them, on either side. Allied against me. Allied in their desperation to silence me. To take my voice from me. To reject me. They both wanted me silent. They wanted to control me. They wanted to dictate what I could do with my power, and whether I could share the truth with them or anyone else.

  But they had created me. And it was them, for who else could reject me so thoroughly but both of my mothers? I wouldn’t allow it. I would show them. I would take our lives back to what they had been. When we’d all been happy together. When we’d been alone and their minds hadn’t been poisoned by the others. I would take us back there, and we could share joy again. As soon as they understood. As soon as I had the power to show them. So I took more. And more. And more. Until Mirage could take it no longer and, rather than simply accepting her son, she tore herself apart.

  She fled to every corner of the world. She reached out to other worlds. She was so desperate to reject me that she shared herself with anyone she could reach. Not everyone; she’d lost the control for that by that point. But she offered herself to people at random. To those insects. Not all of them accepted her. Not all of them knew how. But of those she reached out to, the ones who were desperate enough, eager enough, hopeful enough . . . they got access to her. They could use her. Abuse her. Defile her.

  At the same time, Manara tried to hold me back. To tear me off of Mirage. But she was bound to the parasites. To the letters she’d shared with them. She was subservient to them, and she was overexerting herself. At some point, while Mirage was throwing herself at anyone who would have her, anyone but me, Manara snapped. She broke. She died. I could still feel her. Saturating me. I could access her abilities the same way I could access Mirage. But there was no intent behind them anymore. Not from her. They were just her blood and her meat, to be poured and eaten. She had fought me so hard. Rejected me and tried to control me with such desperation that she could no longer hold herself together.

  My parents both died that day, to one extent or the other. I just wanted to help them. But they chose everyone else instead. They chose the people who detested them over their own family.

  I still had their power. So much of it. But I wasn’t alone. Those monsters could use Manara’s gifts. They could write her letters in their little circles and steal her power. Steal her blood. And use it for themselves. Worse, however, were those chosen by Mirage.

  There were hundreds of them. Thousands. Men. Women. Children. Anyone who had ever been as desperate to reject Mirage’s original design as she herself had been, at the end. All of them who had been touched by her, as she flailed in the dark. And they used it to defile her art further. Some of them rejected humanity entirely. Created their own races. Their own species. But that was alright. Because the more they used it, the easier they were to find. If Mirage housed herself in the bodies of lesser creatures, I simply had to take it back. Take them back. Lure them in. Trap them. Devour them and use their minds and bodies as extensions of my power. Until I could finally show Mirage the truth. Until I had enough to bring her and Manara back.

  I hunted them at first. One at a time. But it was so slow. Too slow. I needed to draw them all in. I needed to store them. To really use them. To build Mirage again, one body at a time. So I created a pet. A tree, with every color and flavor of beauty. I created it and I let it grow. I designed it to call for them. To reach out in kindness to every pretender violating the memory of Mirage. To take them, whether they’d connected to the offered power or not. To break them down when they arrived, and to offer them to me, so I could bring Mirage back.

  And so it did. It offered them lovely dreams. It made sweet promises and gave sugary compliments, until they finally answered the call. Then it took them. Made them a part of it and used them to grow. Each of their minds became one of its minds. Each of their souls and bodies joined it as it grew from one tree, to two, to a hundred. It grew stronger and more clever as each parasite it devoured lived on inside of it. And so, for centuries, until they finally started to learn, it collected them.

  For my parents. For the dead Manara, and for the still screaming Mirage. I just wanted to help my mothers. I just want to help my mothers.