“Can a mundane human reach Manchester?” I asked.

  “No they cannot.” Revolution said. “A human must wield a Fractal Engine tied to their soul to reach Manchester. That’s the rule. The Fractal Engine creates a connection to Manchester as it grows in power.”

  “I see,” I nodded. "What is it exactly that System Wizards like me do in Manchester?"

  "System wizards make narrative ideas into reality," Wizard Revolution answered. "With their Fractal Engine.”

  "Who's narrative?" I asked.

  "Their own," Revolution said. "Plus that of the Eurekan Users, if they wish to get paid."

  "Paid what?"

  "Eurekan Credits."

  "What, in Manchester?" I asked.

  "Yes," Revolution nodded. "Things cost money."

  "What things?" I demanded. "Why can't I print my own money into existence as a System Wizard or better yet manifest whatever I want? Why is there even a need for money?"

  "Sure," Revolution nodded. "You could magic yourself something finite quite easily. Here's the thing - all of your friends are going to die sooner or later. You don't want this, right?"

  I nodded.

  "On your own, with your own SINGULAR Fractal Engine, you won't be able to save all of your human or human-adjacent friends against all-devouring breath of the Dead Zone, won't be able to fight the all-wrapping infinite mesh of doomed worlds that will inevitably infest and devour your original Earth. What you're going to be facing is an infinite number of broken, effed up things with eldritch powers that are going to tear up everyone and everything you love into little, corrupted, unrecoverable bits. Everything you love will turn to ashes. It takes many capable Wizards to fight back entropy."

  "Right," I nodded. "I know. I worked for you as Archmage Zarya. We saved..."

  "You didn't save that much," Revolution said. “Don’t pat yourself on the back yet.”

  I frowned.

  "You saved some people in the USSRA, Zary, but I saved the USSRA itself from conceptual destabilization," Revolution explained. "It's my work in Manchester, my collaboration with other System Wizards and the Numbers that holds back the Dead Zone tide from devouring Zariya's original Earth where I was born. I have to keep working for the System, have to tolerate and cooperate with everyone in Manchester because if I don't, USSRA will be overcome by, become engulfed by eldritch abominations. I constantly lean on borrowed power, lease a multitude of Fractal Engines of Manchester, funnel power into Warship Roraima to protect my people and my nation whenever something particularly horrid tries to take a big bite out of it."

  "So you're forced into serving the others because you need their support?"

  "Yes," Revolution answered. "I don't like it, but I have to do it. I have to work for Eurekan Users to get Eurekan credits which convert into reality-rewriting power. You can't keep fighting everyone and everything as a lonely System Wizard. You'll need to lean on the power of other System Wizards. It's the only way."

  "What is this train exactly?" I asked.

  "This train is a concept representing the Fractal Engines of Manchester connecting to your Fractal Engine," Revolution explained. "A line between them and you. All of you."

  "All of me?"

  "All sorts of possibilities of you," Revolution nodded. "This train is you. A multitude of you reaching out towards Manchester. An infinite number of passenger-yous."

  "Me-s?"

  "Your soul duplicates across the manufactured Omniverse," Revolution nodded. “Ones that managed to attain some degree of reality-bending power.”

  "What happens when this train reaches its destination?" I asked.

  Revolution clapped her hands.

  "The chaff will be cut away," she said. "The real you, the one with the most power, will make it to the city of System Wizards. The others will be devoured as payment for the connection."

  "What the hell?! I didn't agree to these terms," I said.

  "I didn't agree to be created as the concept of Revolution in 1917 by a bunch of Bolshevik mages or to be forcibly bound to the line of Soviet leaders as their eternal companion," Revolution shrugged. "And yet here we are."

  I glanced at Three who was still intently staring at me.

  No. I wasn't going to play by their rules.

  I wasn't just a single soul, a single person. I was a multitude of Yulias already. I was an Astral Phantom. I was more and perhaps I could do something entirely unexpected, something that Three and Revolution could not prevent.

  I left a small fraction of myself inside of Infi’s body that I was inhabiting and leapt out of myself, dove into the Astral Ocean, flew out of the wall of my compartment into the next one.

  Another me sat there, looking like a girl made from moss and branches. Revolution was right, the root-me was already dissolving away, gradually melting into the train as it sped across unreality towards Manchester. I wasn't going to let her die, wasn’t going to let her power be spent on a stupid connection.

  A thousand Endy blades flashed around me as I devoured her soul, adding her to my multitude.

  More.

  I flashed through another compartment and devoured another me.

  Then another me.

  Then another.

  Faster. Stronger. Bigger. More.

  Compartment after compartment. Ever accelerating, ever growing, like an ocean of me.

  Slice, separate, devour, save, integrate.

  On and on.

  I wasn't sure how much time had passed between the then and now, but I was now filled with souls to the brim. I stared at myself. My Astral Phantom form burned with a billion eyes was formed out of a billion souls.

  I needed a name. A new fancy name for myself. A new… narrative.

  I scanned the train once again. A fourteen year old girl-me sat in a compartment. She was alone. I recognized her.

  She was me.

  Alexa Terror Nova, a girl from a subscribed world, the Earth of superheroes. How the hell has she gotten in here?

  As I scanned her, I noted that she had a Fractal Engine on her too. A digital, weak, small one, one hilariously enough made of a chopped up version of Three.

  She was already part of me in a way, connected to me via the infinite mirror. She didn't need to be devoured, she wasn't melting into the train to empower it.

  She would need to be involved... would act as my physical finger as Revolution was busy watching my Infi body in that one compartment.

  I would need to give her an absolute, unstoppable weapon, one that shifted according to her desires.

  I leaned on the knowledge of Archmage Zariya and weaved a basic duplicate mirror also known as a doppel, based on a dangerous entropic creature Zariya once encountered in the Australian Dead Zone outside of USSRA walls.

  The doppel stared at my body forged from a bazillion of me-s with wide, hollow eyes.

  “Follow,” I ordered.

  It did.

  Passing by one of the open compartments, the doppel seemed to devour a stray thought from its inhabitant - another me, an extra-Syntropic version of me if my Infoscope scan was to be believed. I didn’t devour the Syntropic-me, as she was already one of my infinite mirrors.

  Together the doppel and I walked into Alexa's compartment.

  Alexa-me asked.

  "I am Sasha One Googolplex, an Academy Instructor applicant." I answered, arriving at a fittingly amusing narrative and an absurd name for my new bloated Astral-Phantom self. Then, I gestured to the dopple creature behind me. "This is Charles."

  Charles had a black and white shirt and black pants now, striking blue eyes and messy black hair. He glanced around the compartment nervously, seeming unsure of what to make of the situation.

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  "Hi," he mumbled, giving Alexa a small wave.

  Alexa looked between us.

  “A pleasuuuuuuurrre to meetcha,” Alexa’s mouth hammered out. “I’m Alexa Terror Nova, supervillain extraordinaire and a most dastardly murderer of transit terminals.”

  I knew. I was her after all. Somewhat removed version of her, filled with an endless number of us.

  Alexa tapped her [Murderer] tag proudly.

  “You’ve already managed to murder something of value to the System Wizards?” I asked with a smile made from smiles. “Consider me… most impressed.”

  We chatted for a bit as I considered what to do about the current situation.

  . . .

  The compartment door slid open once again, revealing a being wrapped in a long black and blue-tinted coat. Black, leather boots were visible from beneath the coat. Black, leather gloves pulled the door open wide, revealing a neck wrapped in what looked like black pants turned into a ragged scarf.

  A black, somewhat corroded plastic mask stared at Alexa with beady violet lenses from beneath a wide-rimmed officer’s cap that had a red stripe on it. The cap, mask and the goggles were covered in black duct tape that barely held them together. The mask appeared to bend the light in such a face that it featured a fake smile.

  Ah, the extra-Syntropic decided to join us. Did I do that? Or did it choose to do that based on its Syntropic narrative?

  “Zere you are, young lady!” The extra-Syntropic-me declared. “Took me a while to find you, but I’m here to put you on the path to righteousne…”

  The lenses of the mask of the Syntropic-me struck the Astral-Phantom-me and the doppel and the German-French accented voice fell silent.

  “Who are you?” Alexa demanded of the overdressed newcomer.

  “Me? I am Zee Captain!” the gas masked me turned back to the supervillain girl, the voice booming loudly enough to make the window frames rattle. “Anointed sovereign, emissary of humanity, prescient governor and lady of all things in Captania, the great and powerful System Wizard!"

  Having that much Syntropy and Dead Zone in her made her into an insane-sounding, half-baked System Wizard.

  . . .

  We word-boxed for a while, the conversation feeling just sliiiightly weird because I was technically speaking to myself with myself. Technically, each one was a distinctive person but also each one was also a puppet of my greater self, guided by invisible strings.

  I argued with myself about the nature of Entropy, Syntropy and our potential future if we were to reach our final destination.

  The more time passed, the more I became aware of the fact that the train was connecting more and more to something greater, something horrid ahead of us. The hub of System Wizards, Manchester.

  It was reaching out to my Fractal Engine train with a billion tentacles of its own Fractal Engines, like a squid colony aiming to devour my squid-self, to bind me to itself and its Rules forevermore.

  Alexa had a proper ticket to Manchester given to her by Revolution, but it didn't matter to me in the slightest. I wasn't going to end up in Manchester on their effed-up terms, wasn't going to become one of them, wasn't going to bow to Three, wasn't going to be boxed by them into their rules.

  . . .

  A little tracker bug spell I left in Roraima showed me that one of Revolution's avatars was speaking to a Eurekan User.

  A user that was about to create another corpse world, abandon his wish, end his game with everyone dying horribly.

  Death. All these fuckers did was create dead worlds, wished for life into existence and then obliterated, burned it when they got bored.

  This was the last straw. This was unacceptable! I couldn't take it anymore.

  I pushed the conversation between User and System Wizard into Alexa's mind. My little tentacle-girl became extremely frustrated by this. I sent her forward across the train, activated every single one of my bodies around, looking for the head of the train, the control mechanism, the auto-pilot that guided it to Manchester.

  I found it.

  Alexa created a mundane-looking railgun weapon with the doppel and fired through the door of the front of the train.

  The extra-Syntropic-me didn't want the train to stop, didn't want us to be derailed away from the narrative of reaching Manchester.

  I punched her in the face. It felt... good, amusing. Like punching an annoying version of myself.

  As I fought myself, I watched with a billion eyes as Alexa reached the control room.

  She grabbed onto the doppel and produced a fractalizer, a concept nullifier, an Endy-gun and pointed it at the machinist inhabiting the controls.

  "Turn this train around," Alexa-me snarled, leveling the railgun at the train-control-me.

  The control-me was another Syntropic being. She resisted, flapped around, clicked her gears. Alexa-me pressed, threatened, counted down.

  The Syntropic-machinist-me gave in, she pulled the narrative-stopping lever, her personal narrative derailed.

  The Fractal Engine train folded into itself, lurched into itself, flipping direction 180 degrees.

  It headed back towards the Earth. Which Earth?

  All of them. All of the Earths, at the same time. All of the paths back to where it had grabbed the me-s it had picked up from.

  Alexa's Earth, my Earth where I looked up at the sky with Pavel holding my hand, Zee Captain's Dead Zone Earth where the Syntropic-me was eternally trying to save Charles Snippy from his inevitable death.

  The tentacles of Manchester let go of us.

  "What?!" Revolution jumped up, triangular eyes wide. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

  "Writing a new narrative," I said, opening the eyes of Infi-me. "Undoing your bullshit.”

  "You... you can't! Go back to Manchester!" Revolution grabbed the Infi-me, shaking her.

  "Too late," I grinned. "Far too late."

  Three's hand snapped up, pointing a nullifier at the Infi-me.

  "Go ahead," I laughed. "Nullify me. I'm not afraid of you. I'm infinity itself. I'm a network of human souls. Take out one avatar and millions remain on this train."

  Three frowned, lowering his weapon.

  "You can't stop me," I grinned at him.

  "This is foolishness," Three said. "What is your plan, Wizardling?"

  "I'm going to give everyone on Earth Fractal Engines," I said, a wide, manic grin spreading across the face of Infi-me. Happiness for everyone, for free, so that nobody can leave unsatisfied!"

  I echoed the words I had spoken when I first touched the Elephant Foot so long ago in Chernobyl.

  "It won't work," Revolution said, squinting at me, Omnicode flashing in her eyes. "You might infect a small portion of humanity with Wizard-ness at best."

  "A few at first," I said. "But they will thrive and multiply, spread across the Earth. Build cities. A nation, figure out how to cross from world to world using gates. They will fall in love with people. Love will win in the end."

  "Love?" Three laughed. "Really, now? Users are finite, flawed."

  "You were right, Rev, using Endy-blades was foolish. Instead... I'm going to create something new!"

  "You're not ready." Revolution yelled. "If you crash your Fractal Engine train into the Earth, you're going to smear yourself across reality trying to write this insane narrative. It won't work. You'll turn into a monster, a concept incompatible with physical reality!"

  "I choose to believe otherwise," I said, staring ahead of myself with infinite eyes towards the approaching little blue planet. Blue planets. Green planets. Planets of all colors and shapes. "I choose to sacrifice my current self so that humanity can persist, beat back your System. Yeah, I might wash like a tide across the Earth, but I will not die. I will someday wake up. As myself and not myself. As the best version of me, one that's not going to stop, one who will wield humans armed with Fractal-Engine hearts, armed with love."

  “What.” Revolution frowned. Three stared at me with his unnerving, inhuman smile.

  "And then I'm going to come for you," I told Three. "I'm going to come for all of you with all of my friends and then Manchester will burn. I will unmake, kill all of you, break all of your Numbered Rules, this I swear."

  "Sure wizardling," Three said, unimpressed with my declarations.

  "You will either be erased by Three or be caught by System Wizards and imprisoned," Revolution warned. “You’re just going to reach this moment and board this train again and…”

  "If they can find me," I grinned. "I won't be a lonely System Wizard this time around."

  "What?!" Revolution blinked.

  "I'll be a human," I said. "Just a harmless, invisible human. One amidst an infinite number of others.”

  "Humans can't reshape reality with a thought..." Revolution said.

  "Humans can do a lot," I said. "Not alone, but with those they love.”

  “You're making a mistake,” Revolution said. “You won’t succeed.”

  “That's where you're wrong, System Wizard. You're a living idea created by people."

  Revolution crossed her arms, flickering with a thousand red, blue and white paint dots.

  "I know where we went wrong, made a fatal mistake when we created you," I said. "You're a wish, a living idea projected by Fractal Engines into reality, but you don't love people. That's the problem. You never loved us, never cared for Lenin or Stalin or Khrushchev. You're the concept of Revolution, disconnected from human feelings, standing above us. Acting in our interests, but also doing fuck all to change the overall situation. I'm going to do things differently this time, make sure that an engine of Love is in the foundation of my new narrative. I'm going to make a weapon out of Love and none of you will be able to stop me. Have a Good Tomorrow, you cheeky fuck."

  I flipped a bird to Three.

  The Fractal Engine train smashed into the moon, shattering it, crystallizing bits and pieces of it. Across the infinite divide a thousand, then a million, then one hundred billion moons shattered, exploded.

  A wave of entropy rushed across everywhere from my exploding Fractal Engine.

  Revolution and Three flashed away, their singular, local avatar instances burned by the all-obliterating explosion, implosion, cascade of the crashing Fractal Engine.

  I spread my arms wide, laughing with all of me, unreality around me burning and twisting.

  The Fractal Engine train smashed into the Earth and spilled across it like a tidal wave, stopping and not stopping. Earths. Every Earth where a copy of my soul existed shattered, reality overwritten from within.

  I exploded and didn't explode, died and lived, stopped existing and didn't.

  I streaked across the infinite boundary of Eureka like a comet. Forever and ever. Crashing and not crashing.

  Destroying all, poisoning the rules, killing them slowly. A star. The Wormwood Star, a contamination in the physical that could not be overwritten, could not be cleansed away with logic. Absolute entropy.

  And between the cracks produced by the entropic shear I made, there bloomed something new.

  An idea.

  A new concept.

  An Impact.

  A crater.

  A flower of new life that constantly radiated magic.

  A weapon-me, waiting, living and not living, existing and not existing. Waiting and moving. Moving and standing still. Destroying and creating. Propagating life and extinguishing it.

  A leviathan and a girl.

  Timeless. Eternal. Invincible. Syntropy and Entropy entwined in an endless dance.

  A network of connections spreading across everywhere, like infinite lines between infinite stars of duplicated human souls.

  A wish. A wish-granting wellspring of power. Immortality from my blood. Possibility from my breath.

  Waiting to be found by Yulia, by Pavel, by Charles, by Martin, by Cassie, by Vladislav Kerenski, by an infinite number of others. By me and by not me. By my friends and my enemies. By every human and also not human that would be born from the shear I became, changed by it, infected with Fractal Engine hearts.

  Waiting to be understood, to be used, to be loved, to be embraced.

  Forever and ever.

  The concept of Love that bridged the gap between Fractal-Engine wielding living god-concepts and mundane humans.

  Until one day, in ten, or a thousand, or one hundred million years, I would wake up as a mere magic-less mundane, find my best friends and

  The End.

  Thank you for reading The Armorer and the Infinite Dungeon!

  Somebody Stop Him!