EUe nodded. "Even before I was imprisoned here, I could tell a new kind of Vyxit culture was hatching." He reached out and gave V an affectionate rub. "The Vyx had become essential parts of our lives. They watched over us and kept us safe, and we returned the favor. They are our home, our family, and the libraries of our memories. The Vyx recorded everything any of us could remember about the worlds we've lost. At first, it was just a matter of pragmatism, but, over time, it became a tradition. We are the survivors; it's up to us to share our stories, and what memories we still have. The worlds we lost won't truly be gone so long as they live on in the stories we tell each other." He nodded again. "If you could find a way to share &alon's stories with the Vyxit… I don't know if it will be enough to broker peace, but it would certainly give a lot of Vyxit a reason to think twice. They'd definitely have second thoughts about destroying wyrms if they knew what was destroyed along with them. Of course, once we're safely out of the Darkness' reach, it doesn't really matter. If the worst comes to worst, we can activate the Lodestars and put a stop to &alon for good."

I didn't know how to feel about that last part. I mean, he wasn't wrong. Given how frightened &alon was of the Lodestars, I didn't doubt that they had the ability to deal her a lethal blow, if not destroy her outright. But still…

"Even if it means all the souls she's holding hostage are lost?" I said.

"I'd rather not sacrifice anyone," EUe said. "And yet… if the choice had to be made…" He looked me in the eyes. "You're living on borrowed time, Genneth. You have been, since the moment you were infected."

Amen to that. Yet, still…

I shook my head again. "I don't know if I can do that, EUe. I don't know if I can kill her."

Puzzled, the twEfE cocked his head at an angle. "At the risk of sounding heartless, why not? Beyond self-preservation, this is a matter of choosing between those who have already been lost, and everyone else in the universe—multiverse?—who &alon might destroy next. She's an insane child who devours worlds in the hope of finding something to make her feel better about herself. She's a menace to all."

I held myself in crossed arms. "I wish I didn't know her." My voice cracked. "Sword stab me, I wish I'd never met her. But… I did meet her. I know her for who she is, warts and all. As evil as she may be, EUe, she's still just a child. She doesn't understand why she's in the wrong, and I don't think she ever will, just like I don't think I'll ever stop wanting her to understand. But still… she's just a child. You were a father, EUe. Tell me: if you lost a child, and found another, and they came to love you and you to love them, would it really be that easy for you to slit their throat? Would you really feel nothing? No guilt? No remorse?"

I wished I had lips to bite and the teeth needed to bite them.

"It's like &alon somehow knows exactly what to say and do to break me to pieces," I added. "When you're asking me to kill her, not only are you asking me to kill a child who looks up to me, you're asking me to kill myself, and everyone else that &alon was too cowardly to finish off herself. Even if we're living on borrowed time, and even if that life is hellish and tormented, I don't have the right to just take it away from them. &alon never gave us a chance; I refuse to make that same mistake."

"No one ever said this would be easy," V chimed.

Ain't that the truth.

I groaned. "Fudge, I could really use a pep talk right about now."

There was a pause. Behind us, warm water burbled down from the pool's central spout. Drainage channels ran along the base of the inner side of the wall.

"Genneth," V asked, "why are you so adamant that &alon can't be your daughter?"

I stormed, stomping a foot on the pool wall. "Because then it would be my fault!"

"What?" EUe asked, keeping an even keel—unlike me.

"What kind of parent doesn't feel responsible for their child's wrongdoing?" I shook. "Angel, that's why she can't be my 'daughter', because then that would mean that I'm to blame for her existence, and then this is all on my shoulders, and… and…" I fluttered my wings. "Thankfully, I don't need to worry about that, because there's no way she could be my child. That's just totally nuts."

"Even if it was true," V said, "that wouldn't make it your fault."

I stomped my foot. "I just told you why it—"

V shook from side to side. "—It would only be your fault if you didn't try to do something about it," he said. "I want to be free of this place so that I can help fix the damage my offspring have caused. It's my responsibility to set things right."

And then, EUe said something that shook me to my core: "I know you say you can't be &alon's father, but… I have to say, from what you've told us, she does sound an awful lot like you."

Me! Me!?

My feathers went so stiff, you'd have thought they were made of plastic. As Heggy might say, those were fightin' words.

I screeched. "How in the world can you compare me to that monster!?"

EUe maintained an almost steely calm. He wasn't going to let my outburst deter him.

"The similarities are there, if you look for them," he said. He counted them off with his fingers. "Off the top of my head… both of you fixate on saving people. It's your shared obsession. You just have to save everyone. It's how you stay ahead of your harriers. You also both have deep desires to be with your families. You want to be reunited, and hate the thought of being alone, without any loved ones. Both of you dislike violence, and avoid dealing the first blow, though you will defend yourselves if attacked, doubly so when it involves protecting the ones you love."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I clenched my fists. "That's just a coincidence!"

At this rate, EUe was going to crack my skull open.

"There's more, though," he said.

I stuck out my wings. "More?"

"That instrument you play," EUe said. "Could you describe it for me one more time?"

"What does my clarinet have to do with anything?" I asked.

"Just humor me for a moment. Haven't I earned at least that much of your trust?"

I groaned and nodded. I wove up patches of colored light and shaped them into an image of a clarinet. As far as holograms went, it didn't have the highest resolution, but it was better than nothing. "It's long, dark, and slender, and you blow air through this end, here," I said, pointing at the reed, "which comes out here," I pointed at its bell. "By opening and closing the holes along the instrument's length, you can change the pitch of the sound it makes."

"Add fungus and spores, and it sounds like you've just described a wyrm," EUe said. "I've seen wyrms with holes on their backs. Spores come out from them, like air through a blowhole. The creatures make music, Genneth, just like your clarinet. I admit, correlation is not causation, but these parallels are a bit too close for comfort, don't you think?."

My beak was agape. "This can't be happening. It's… impossible." I sank to my knees.

"Think carefully," EUe said. "There might be other connections you haven't noticed."

And just like that, my thoughts were in freefall. I felt like one of those cork-board-toting conspiracy theorists, tied up in so many records, guesses, and red yarn.

"The silver eyes…" I muttered, as if in a trance.

They were exactly the same color as the metal fixtures on my clarinet. They even glowed the way the fixtures did.

More connections fit into place.

I was a die-hard sweet tooth. The fungus reeked with a sickly sweet odor.

"Beast and Queen," I whispered, "she knew about Catamander Brave's Time Wyrms. I never mentioned them to her." I stared EUe in the eyes. "IN fact, that was the first thing we ever connected on. She wanted to know if Cat ever made it home, just like I did."

All those letters I sent Mr. Himichi as a kid…

You know what my biggest, number-one-most-oftenly-asked question was?

Will Cat ever make it home?

Just like what &alon asked me.

Before, I might have been able to dismiss it as mere coincidence. But now?

Even on my knees, I felt unsteady and lightheaded.

She was endlessly curious about anything and everything. She wanted to know the world, and all the stories it offered.

"Just like me…" I mumbled.

And, of course, she knew my sonata, the music of my soul.

"Could it be…?" I said.

I would have covered my mouth with my hand, but there happened to be a beak in the way.

"It's like she's the child I never had…" Again, I shook my head, my gorget feathers fluffing up. "I can't even have one simple thing that isn't convoluted like crazy, can I? No no no, everything I learn forces me to reassemble my brain just to make sense of it."

I was at a loss for words. What more could be said?

EUe was exactly right. There were too many connections for this to be a coincidence. Could I have had a hand in &alon's creation, however unwittingly that might have been? Well, somewhere out there in the ether, there's a kaiju that existed only because of Mr. Himichi—well, only because of another Mr. Himichi. But, if that was possible, then, surely, little old me could be responsible for a destroyer of worlds?

Maybe this would explain why, among the wyrms of &alon, I, alone, was capable of interacting with her from the very get-go. For the first time, I had a possible explanation for that: she was already familiar with me, because I was, somehow, her 'father'.

"Fudging fudgington," I muttered. I shook my head and turned to EUe and V. "What the heck am I supposed to do with this?" I was totally at a loss. "Angel," my heart raced, "this means it really is my fault! Everything &alon has done, it's—"

EUe got down on one knee and put his hand on my shoulder. The contact made me realize I was trembling.

"—It's okay to make mistakes," he said, "especially if they're ones you were never aware you'd made."

I sang a song of loss and pain.

"All my life, I wanted to be optimistic," I said, fluffing up with emotion. "It's why I wore my bowtie and put a smile on my face for all my patients. Before, I'd always wondered if it really made a difference or not. Had I really been making the world a better place by putting on the mask of Mr. Sunshine? Or was I just doing it to mollify my own misery?"

I squeaked, and then leaned forward and embraced EUe in a hug, squeezing tightly. It was very nice.

I shivered. I was afraid. Terribly afraid.

I wasn't in the doctor's office anymore. My actions were tied up in stakes and complexity that truly frightened me.

Well, I could say one thing for certain: being happy was a lot harder than it looked.

I sighed.

Doubts were like cockroaches; both were exceedingly difficult to kill.

"Let it go, Genneth," EUe said, gently prying me off. "You can be angry if you want, but what matters is that you keep pressing forward and try to do whatever good you can."

V settled down atop my head. He was surprisingly warm to the touch. "You're a good person, Dr. Howle. Just keep trying to be one. It might not guarantee that things turn out well, but I can't imagine good outcomes happening any other way."

I shuddered, flexing my fingers and wings.

"If I really am what she's been searching for all this time," I said, "maybe that will be enough to get her to stop." The words were as much for me as they were for EUe and V.

V hovered in front of me and turned to face me.

"I have to try," I said. "But…" I glanced away from them, "…letting it go isn't something I think I can do."

"What good will it do to be angry with her if she can't understand what she's done wrong?" V asked.

"Because she's selfish," I said. "She refuses to put others' needs before her own," I sighed, "just like I did. I won't be happy about it, but… I have to try."

All of a sudden, V floated toward the plaza and then turned back in alarm.

"Guys," he said, "something's coming."

EUe hopped to his feet—lights of magic swirling about his hands—just as a section of the air began to quiver.

"Not this again," he said.

I stood up. "This happened before?"

He glanced at me, and motioned for me to keep my distance. "It happened right before you arrived."

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the quivering vanished, leaving three confused-looking twEfE standing in the plaza, dressed up in haori.

Two of the twEfE gawked at us, while the third just stared at their hands like they'd smoked a bad batch of mushrooms.

"Hummingbirds?" one of them said.

I immediately recognized his voice.

"Where is Dr. Howle?" said the second, fretfully glancing this way and that.

EUe shot an anxious glare my way as I darted past him and grabbed the two twEfE by the hand.

"Yuta!" I cried. "Ichigo! Dzrtk!"

The three betwEfE'd spirits stared at me with beaks agape and wings aflutter.

"Dr. Howle?"

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.