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  “That’s…” Love hums again, “that’s very gracious of you.”

  “You’re weird, Poppi, but you know best,” Scout Minion says with a shrug.

  Chaos grins as he readies for movement. “So with that,” he turns, speaking toward one of the houses, “I shall ask you to come out and surrender, officer of the dead.”

  Neither Love or Aoline had noticed, but the sight of Chaos and his minions picked up a single individual above ground, waiting in one of the homes. It steps out, a shambling, tacked-together horror of metal, sinew, plant and flesh. This necromancer is not hooded like those at Liefland; it has nothing to hide. Its horse-like body sports arms and eyes, teeth and claws at godless, truly horrible places without any clear thought or purpose. If Oa’s designs are immense and iconic, this officer’s are abstract and chaotic, like a creeping horror of failure after failure, culminating in a living coat of stolen bodies and things that are, alone, simple, but together, of a horrible complexity to a degree that it truly bares no purpose in describing. Rather than slink away, it approaches them plainly and clears its throat, the ring of vocal chords making it clear that this is one of the more-affluent necromancers in Oa’s domain; having a voice is considered the mark of a truly exceptional necromancer among their ranks.

  “This is as far as you go, ether-scum. You and your minions shall leave this place back to the wood, or die.” The necromancer’s voice is that of a young man, though rotted through with years of lax preservation of the organs.

  Chaos gives a charming grin, the sort one would usually reserve for a trusted friend. “Oh? You truly believe you could stop me?”

  “You’re surrounded beyond your farthest reckoning, overlord. Turn away.”

  The overlord laughs, a sound synonymous with death for any who have heard it before. “You poor, misguided fool. Come forward with everything you have, so then you might see how you are not fighting an individual, but the laws of nature itself. How will a boy like you kill an ocean with a stick, or a little bird halt the winds with its beak?”

  “Hefty words for something so forgetful.”

  “The fact that you are even speaking is an insult, and I offered my forgiveness. Do you truly wish to fight me?”

  There’s a pause. “Necromancers do not stray from the right path. We will bring life into this world permanently, and you cannot stop us. We are millions in number.”

  Chaos draws in with an excited pause. “I can swing my sword that many times, dirt-mancer,” he states matter-of-factly just as the ground below them begins to upset seemingly on its own.

  “We are the earth beneath your feet, the air you breathe, the sky you pray toward. You will not pass through without traveling through the very depths of-”

  “And that is the last I’ll hear of it. Surrender!”

  “Die!” The officer shouts charging forward on its four hooves.

  With a flick of the antennae, Chaos sends forth Dark Arts Minion, who bounds gracefully with one of her arcane, witch-like instruments in hand. In a flash, the ground around the group upheaves entirely— each patch of grass, every spot available, suddenly taken up by the eyes and teeth and blades of necromancers. The underground formation spans for nearly half a kilometer, measuring their numbers in the tens of thousands.

  As Dark Arts Minion deconstructs the officer in but a second with magic, torrents of edge-wielding undead storm at them, grasping from the dirt, rushing on limbs, and leaping from the rooftops.

  Chaos sighs, a storm of knives flying their way, only to be nullified and blades dropping to the dirt the second they near his tight formation of minions. “I suppose lower creatures are not really the sort to talk things through.”

  “Regrettably no,” Love says calmly, charging an arrow shot.

  The group spans out into the force of necromancers, Chaos keeping a close eye on everyone, as he keeps a close eye on everything around him, with perfect attention and care. He does not even bother to draw the Kingdom Slayer, let alone any weapon from his ethereal gut, and instead lays waste to the dead-kind with his fists alone— each strike from his solid, blacker-than-pitch body practically disintegrating his victims due to the massive, unquestionable force he applies to them.

  Love fires sweeping, star-bright arrows of mana that pierce through the formations, each stroke of the bow obliterating hundreds of their bodies and flinging a hundred more through the air.

  Ranger Minion fires wildly at perfect head-height, his rifle firing ruinous bursts of lead into the crowds, which tear and skew into one another with every shot. All throughout, he does not move from his kneeling position, his particular stance allowing an easy aim in his designated sector of fire.

  Aoline thrusts her blade into an enemy for the first time. She’s never been in a real fight, but from Chaos’ multitude of enchantments, it feels more than natural— it feels innate. It’s as fluid as a dance to her, waltzing through the hordes with complete ease. In only seconds she feels it’s her greatest talent and joy, like it was the one piece missing from her life she always needed.

  Amidst the insanity of legion after legion falling on to the group, Aoline catches sight of Scout Minion, just standing about in the middle of their formation.

  “Aren’t you going to-” she cuts through one like butter, “fight?” she finishes.

  Scout Minion scoffs at the idea. “Heck no. I’m conserving my energy!”

  “Wh-” Aoline’s disgust halts for a second for her to cut through a squad of them. “What do you mean conserving?! We’re fighting right now!”

  Scout Minion tosses out a little black limb as if to shoo her off. “Pffft, yeah, noted. Pretty sure you guys got this.”

  She can understand if Scout Minion is the weakest among them, but she can’t help but be a little pissed that she’d so flippantly have their ruler fight before they do. “Whatever,” Aoline mutters, certain Scout Minion wouldn’t be that much help in the first place.

  The battle rages on as the group piles their weaponry through any manner of demonic construction. From a shark on all fours to a giant man constructed entirely from bears, the lines between fantasy and reality are steadily degraded as the group is introduced to newer and weirder horrors with every wave of necromancers that dare raise a hand to the one and only pan-dimensional slayer of billions.

  The crowds compress to combat the critical mass of necromancers now closing in, out come the spells. Dark Arts Minion sings complex, eerie incantations that cause their dark arts to fall undone, deconstructing them en masse— bodily origami unfolding pathetically at her feet. Love speaks curt, almost cute phrases that arc her arrows, more than tripling the casualties with each massive bolt of magic. Chaos, that mystical nightmare, only needs to breathe. Aoline doesn’t hear a word from him, and yet white bolts of crawling lightning channel through the crowd, hundreds at a time being brought to their knees at the hand of their honored opponent.

  With only a rough ten percent of the necromancers remaining, they turn tide and run. Not even with all their compounded effort could they venture a scratch on Aoline’s cheek, or Chaos’ fortressine exterior. After a few seconds of peace, listening to the burning bodies, Chaos relaxes his athletic stance and begins to look through the crowd. “We have a few still alive, it seems.”

  Ranger Minion reloads in a flash. “On your mark, sir.”

  “No need to chase them around, I was actually talking about the ones on the ground.”

  Sure enough, a few of the necromancers had only been split through around their vitals, missing those all-important faculties for life. This is to be expected when dealing with garbage-wrought creatures like necromancers, as they take pride in containing multiple vital systems, usually all stolen from victims.

  There’s one necromancer that catches Chaos’ eye. It’s not simply writhing for a weapon to crawl back to them with, but it’s convulsing.

  Love focuses in on it as well. “How very… oh my,” her near-smile dies out instantly. “It chose to have a… nervou
s system.”

  Chaos looks down on the struggling necromancer, its lower torso entirely hewn off from one of Ranger Minion’s shots. Aoline almost gasps seeing him kneel next to it, as it rapidly connects its blade to Chaos’ body. Of course the necromancer’s unenchanted, mortal blade cannot damage the Overlord Destroyer On High, but it doesn’t seem to be letting up. Chaos peers down at the struggling, pathetic creature made from deer parts into the form of a human, and he almost looks sad. Chaos fishes into his dimensional gullet and pulls forth a human vocal chord.

  “Wh-… is that..” Aoline bleats weakly.

  “In his rad early days Poppi ate everything he found. Amassed a serious collection of… well, anything he could get his hands on,” Scout Minion explains.

  “That is a bit of a stretch, my dear Scout Minion,” Chaos says as he opens up the necromancer and makes precise, weaving strokes of magic to correctly install the chord. “I simply wanted to be ready in case I ever met someone missing their intestines, that is all,” he adds as the necromancer finally stops attacking and simply vibrates in agony.

  Aoline isn’t sure what to think about it, just like Love the first time she found out Chaos possesses millions of tons of random, magically-preserved things throughout the years—but now that the shock has worn off, she can only admire how much diligence it must have taken to collect things every single day, even if it’s for something as small as giving a necromancer a voice.

  “There you are,” Chaos says with a final pinch as he closes up the necromancer’s neck. “Speak.”

  The necromancer is silent.

  Chaos looms over the amalgamation of metal, wood, and deer. “Your resistance means nothing to me, necromancer. You are a speck in the wind in comparison to me. Give me the pleasure of hearing your voice.”

  Finally, the necromancer relents. The voice Chaos gave it sounds like an older man, just reaching his winter years. “Why? It is an insult to my brothers that I have a voice.”

  “And it is an insult to me that you dare not address me when I say. Now tell me, necromancer, why do you choose to feel pain?”

  There’s a pause as the deer head looks over the group. “Pain is something you can’t steal, overlord. Unlike a heart, or eyes, it is real, and reminds me I was… human.”

  Love, Worldloss in tow, presses her finger gently into her chin in thought. “Do you hate what you are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why do you continue to live?”

  “It is not a choice I made lightly. I must do this. I need my son back.”

  Love hums. “Don’t you think… well, maybe he’s waiting for you?”

  “No. There is nothing after death but imprisonment. He is held against his will and I must take his soul back from that place.”

  Aoline looks to Chaos; it’s worth a shot. “My… my lord?” She asks, still not entirely used to calling the being she once reviled her lord.

  Chaos glances over. “Knightess?”

  “Do you know where his son went off to? Where his soul ended up.”

  There’s a pause, and Chaos answers. “Young lady, just who do you take me for?”

  “…Sir?”

  “Who but the agents of Breathlend could know such a thing with certainty?”

  “Breathlend?” Aoline mutters.

  Meeo pats Aoline for her attention. “It’s first realmer stuff. Deals with everyone’s souls and such.”

  Aoline instantly tunes out of Chaos’ conversation with the necromancer with a quick, “thank you sir.” She immediately looks to Love. “Wait, so there’s a place that… deals with souls? How do you know?”

  Love smiles sweetly. “Realmancy is the collection of objects that have once, will never, or eventually will exist, yes?

  Aoline raises a brow. “…Right.”

  “Sometimes, you gain an object that does exist from another plane of existence, but not in this plane of existence.”

  Aoline, enchanted to the teeth and capable of punching through a grown man, still can’t help but drop her jaw in dumbfoundment. “So what does this mean, exactly? In context of the necromancer and his son, I mean.”

  “It means I’ve accidentally learned quite a whole gosh lot about how The Omniverse works, and right now, we have to focus, and get Oa.”

  “Get as in kill, right? I’m super confu—” Love pokes Aoline, stopping her.

  With an element of slyness she’s never seen in Love, she looks over to see if Chaos and his minions are still distracted. She knows they can hear everything around them, but they can only see what they’re looking at, after all. Love aptly pulls a leaf of paper from her kitty stationary and scribbles out two sparse, curling phrases:

  “No matter who tries to stop us. Even if Chaos changes his mind, Oa must die.” Is what’s on the note she shows to Aoline for only a moment before flicking it alight in a magic flame.

  Aoline draws back. She readily understands the true test of her loyalties will begin soon; she can feel it coming like a storm on the horizon. She chooses to nod, which regains Love’s smile, but only now does she realize just how little she knows about Love.

  At that, they both return their presence to the group. Chaos has slung the necromancer around his back, its boney arms holding on securely.

  “O-oh! What’s this?” Love asks.

  “Wonderful news, my dear Friendion!” Chaos exclaims. “I have a new minion!”

  There’s a short applause from the minions, even Ranger Minion, as they celebrate their new member of their exceedingly creepy family.

  “Thank you, thank you, everyone.” The necromancer says with a joyous tone. “You’re right. I’ve been blind all this time to the realities of true, real life. My son may miss me, and I miss him, but that was over a hundred years ago. I should be grateful for the life I was given, and from now on I’ll live the way my son would’ve wanted me to. I’m going to be free under your charge, and live out my last days meaningfully!”

  Aoline’s astonished yet again as Love gives mock congratulations—a far cry from the person Aoline assumes her to be. The young knight has no clue what Chaos said to the necromancer, but apparently the overlord isn’t half bad at persuading people when he tries.

  “I would imagine that you know a good deal about deer anatomy, do you not?”

  The necromancer draws back. “That’s oddly specific, but yes. It’s an easy frame to work with, that possesses a strong set of organs and muscles.”

  “Wonderful, then I dub thee, Deer Anatomy Minion!” Chaos says with an official celebrating tone.

  There’s another round of applause amidst the minions and Love, who is smirking just a little too much for it to look sincere. “That’s… wonderful!” Love says, totally being honest with herself and others.

  As cheesy as the situation seems to Aoline, there’s a weirdly comforting, genuine feeling coming from Chaos who, just moments go was laughing while smashing through crowds of these… these people with his fists. The moment one appeared truly human to him, he took pity.

  These thoughts and more swirl through the young lady’s head as Chaos flicks his antennae a certain, very purposeful way. He then lays the necromancer upon the ground, and with the help of Dark Arts Minion, constructs a translocation circle around it.

  “What are you doing?” Aoline asks.

  Chaos’ ever-present smile grows a moment. “Sending him back to one of the towers for rehabilitation. I am setting up a receiver with the help of Communications Minion as we speak.”

  Aoline inhales wanting to ask another question, but this really is a bit much for her in one hour. Apparently he can communicate across dimensions, she wonders. She just nods. “So you’re sending him back with the circle?”

  Love chimes in again, always willing to provide some helpful context. “It’s a sending circle. Most people only know about the actual summoning circle.”

  “Wait, so mage market does that for everything they send?” She asks with awe, referring to the Western Kingdom’s m
ost famous shopping catalog’s method of delivering products with delirious speed using summoning magic.

  Love shakes her head with a yet-again steadily-dying out smile. “It’s not needed usually if the distance doesn’t cross dimensions. This on the other hand would be impossible for most mages, most Kanvane council members, even.”

  “Wow.”

  Love nods with raised brows, having seen it all before. “Yup. Suggestion, Aoline.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I understand this is all quite amazing for you, but we definitely have a schedule that just can’t be denied.”

  “Uh, yeah but…” Aoline figures out Love’s meaning. “Gotcha, I’ll keep the questions at a minimum.”

  Love nods her head. “Thank you.”

  With a few choice words, the circle alights and the necromancer merges into the shining blue hues of the circle. “And off it goes,” Chaos says with a satisfied grin.

  “You’re so generous, Poppi,” Scout Minion says.

  “Yes, master,” Dark Arts Minion notes a bit sluggishly. “Always quite the benefactor.”

  Chaos shoos off the compliments with his hand. “As I said with the O.E.L. folk, it is the right thing to do for a superior creature to mold the world to be better for lesser beings…. My, what a pleasure it is to give a life meaning again after being steadily corrupted by the lies of existence. Now then, let’s see if we cannot find some more willing partici-”

  Love clears her throat. “Oa, my lord.”

  Chaos’ gaze ignites in loose, crazy, violent excitement. “Of course, that cur! We’ve spent too much time here. These crawling worms be voided into their own filth! Onward to the mountain!”

  “Onward!” Scout Minion exclaims, hopping forward with excitement.

  “Wonderful plan, my lord!” Love says meekly.

  The other three follow along— Aoline in particular, is shocked by how quickly, and easily, Love seemed to change Chaos’ mind. The six rush on through the now-ruined town, trusting Chaos’ sharp, if easily dissuaded, senses as they make tracks to Oa’s prime phylactery.