The air had gone back to being still after my declaration. The cool breeze going back to its usual rhythm as every gust reached down to caress the blades of grass below my feet. The insects also went back to their usual buzzing in a short amount of time. Though they did move much further away than before. Those that managed to survive anyway.

Quite a few now lay scattered along the soft earth. Their bodies not being heavy enough to be swallowed by the mud. In any normal biome, small reptiles and mammals and birds would be rushing in to feast. But that did not happen this time. Not in here.

Every animal for a dozen kilometers or so were running for the hills as fast as their little legs or wings could carry them. Ignoring all else in front of them. Their minds filled, choked, with the overwhelming desire to survive.

"Well that's a dammed shame." I muttered audibly. Making sure the other two could hear me. "Giants argue, and the only ones who suffer are the ants beneath them."

"I do not feel like a giant at the moment." Golden Cruelty snapped. Her mandibles still clacking in an orchestra that might have been fear or pre-battle jitters.

"All of us are giants from the ant's point of view." I pointed out. "Just how all three of us inspire fear and dread in regular people who are merely trying to live their lives."

The clacking of mandibles stopped briefly.

"How funny that you should say that, Tyrant. After destroying several planets outside the Labyrinth and many, many hundreds of cities and outposts within the Labyrinth. How much suffering have you caused I wonder?"

"I have killed tens of thousands." I replied cooly. "When it comes to Kenari anyway. I don't count gnomes as people, as you well know. I did it, though I did not enjoy it. And I would do so again if the war took a turn that forced me into that course of action. I already removed all of the Dragon's disciples that I could find. All those who had previously been made aware of humanity and their incoming emergence. Those who would be able to pick up his torch in order to set my people's worlds ablaze. Yes, I struck first, but do not mistake me for a fool, Golden Cruelty. I knew what I was getting into and I was fully aware of what this fight would lead to. What the road would entail. It was either walk that road, filled with broken glass and sharpened knives, or else allow my people to be crushed beneath the heel of a larger empire. All while the edges of human dominions were torn apart by pirates and border warlords. I saw what the Dragon offered, and I did not think it was enough."

I paused to meet her gaze.

"I did not think it was anywhere near enough. To start, this whole business of pouncing on newly integrated species is cruel and abhorrent. And if I have my way, someone is going to pay for all those lives who were needlessly snuffed out in the beginning stages of Tutorial."

I stopped and pretended to draw in a calming breath.

"I did not start this conflict. I had no intention of starting it. I told the Dragon as much when we last met and I pleaded with him to ignore his petty grievances and move on. None of this would have happened if he had. I would have gone my way and he would have gone his way. And the two of us might have never met from then on. Until he and I ascended. But no. He just could not let go of his petty moral quandaries."

I did not have to feign my outrage then.

"He even had the nerve to threaten genocide on my people. On all of humanity. In case I refused to endow him with the additional Types he desired. All while he was determined to kill me for having the power to grant those Types. I can abide some hypocrisy my colleagues. We have all been placed in unfortunate situations before. But to go this far? To threaten billions? Trillions who did not threaten him in any way whatsoever? After condemning them to victimhood by seeking my death? The death of his supposed ally?"

I laughed in the Golden Cruelty's face.

"How can you stand there and act as if I am some great and terrible villain for rushing to cripple the Kenari empire? When I went out of my way to target infrastructure while leaving the population as intact as I could? How can you stand there and judge me as if I were some criminal coming in and stabbing a hero in the back, when your so-called paragon of justice conspired to stab me in the back before we had even met?"

The silence stretched a bit further after that. Interrupted only by the growing mass of Moving Mountain and the sounds of soil and sediment being displaced.

"You. Are. Cruel." She condemned me. "Just. As. Drake. No. Room. For. Forgiveness. In. Heart. You."

Her following words echoed even louder across the empty plains.

"You. Won. Already. Stalemate. Could. Bring. Dragon. To. Negotiation. Could. Sue. Peace. But. Refuse. Incapable. Of. Mercy. Of. Reason."

I rolled my eyes.

Expecting and dreading where this would go before I even made the connection between us plain for her to see.

"On the contrary my dear colleague." I began again. "The whole reason I am here is because I am not like the Dragon or the Drake. Because I am reasonable."

I spread my arms open.

"If I wished it, I could have ignored the lesser players rushing to call for aid and simply joined the Drake in his wanton slaughter. It would have been easier at the very least. I would not have had to spend so much time attempting to make my case before those who were not receptive. Nor would I have had to justify myself in spite of all evidence pointing towards the righteousness of my cause. I could have gone all out and the mere fact of me having so many Titles and so much Psy would have reduced most of the resistance I would encounter to dust beneath my heel. Sheer power triumphing over whatever feeble resistance the Dragon's disciples could bring to bear. And if I lost? Then I would retreat. As the Drake always does. And then I would come back stronger and return to even more destruction and slaughter. For a cause I already know to be won."

I turned to her in turn.

"I have been… diplomatic. So far. I have let my words do the talking instead of my Intruders or my abilities. I have not made war, even on those who had expressed outright hostility towards me. Precisely because I care about the little people scrambling to survive beneath the grand schemes we weave among ourselves. Precisely because I remember all too well how it felt to be a single, simple cog in the Tutorial. Drawn and kidnapped to a deep, dark place I knew nothing about because some sick fucking prick decided this was the way the Tutorial should work. While others still went to what amounted to a luxury resort."

I spat.

"I am still very much upset about that injustice my dear colleague and I am still very much suppressing the urge to find whomever is responsible and strangle them with their own rotting insides. I do not set out to find the divine in question because I have more pressing matters to attend to. And because every single day this conflict drags on, more innocents are killed for no good fucking reason. Despite me and everyone else with two braincells to rub together knowing that I already won."

I stepped back. Looking up at her again whilst trying to fit her massive bulk within the scope of my vision.

"I opted for diplomacy because I wanted to fight as little as possible. Because talking things out and coming to a mutual agreement is much more to my liking. Again, unlike a certain Dragon I could name. I will compromise if I see the reason in it and I will seek to make sure all parties are at least somewhat satisfied. And yes. I will forgive. Despite my emotions."

"When. Have. You. Ever. Forgiven?" The Mountain accused.

"I have forgiven you." I said evenly.

She paused then. Thrown aback and unsure of my meaning.

"Your little zoos." I began again. "Your pets. The ones you birthed and then set loose because you are ever so unlike the Drake. Because you respect life and because you cannot stand to have your little plaything cooped up in a single garden."

I stepped closer to her. My own form growing in size at exponential rates.

"The ones the System does not recognize as a faction, leaving them free to travel to and from worlds they visit as they please. Your offspring have devoured entire planets in the name of self-sustaining themselves. Their precious natural, unsupervised evolution. Coming and going with impunity through Rifts they themselves create with technology you provided."

I grew and grew and grew. Soon eclipsing the range of the treeline and the size of the hills around us. Soon outgrowing some of the smaller mountains in the distance.

"Your pets, who you were ever hesitant to cage for the sake of your precious morals and principles about freedom and the sanctity of life, devoured my people. Humans in my world. With impunity. For years. They devoured my neighbours. Some of my earliest friends! My goddam kitten!"

I kicked at the soil and felt the earth shake with a small earthquake. My size almost reaching hers in a vertical sense.

"I know the devastation you leave in your wake! Moving Mountain! Mother of monsters! I know how much suffering you've inflicted upon sentient life without a care or worry and when I first realized it was you who did it, I wanted to kill you."

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I felt her body readying itself for battle once more. The muscles underneath the layer of stone tensing and thickening.

"Oh I wanted to do more than that! You say you stand for freedom. For justice! For an end to tyrants and despots and senseless conflict! Yet you sit here prettily! With a clear conscience! After all the horrors you've unleashed! Telling everyone who cares to listen that it is the course of evolution at work! That it is life at its most beautiful and its most raw!"

I spat again, and this time, the projectile landed with so much force that it split a nearby tree in two. The shockwave ripping out the roots and sending shards of trunk flying.

"I will tell you what you are. Moving Mountain. To my people. To all the mothers who have lost children thanks to you! To all the fathers who sacrificed themselves so their families could live by going off to fight some monster with a gun that barely tickled it!"

I jabbed my finger at her.

"You are a sick, twisted, vile, scheming evil bitch! At least, that's what I would like to think! But no! You are worse than that! You aren't malicious! You just don't give a shit about the consequences of anything you do! The equivalent of some old fat drunk guy named Elvis pulling down his shorts and taking a dump in the middle of the park! All while giving the finger to anyone who calls him out!"

She wouldn't understand what I was talking about, of that I was sure. I had already punished Elvis when I went back to my world that one time, but still. I felt the comparison was fitting.

"You feel nothing when the consequences of your actions are thrown at your face! Nothing when I tell you of how the monstrosities and abominations you've birthed have killed humans in their billions! In my world alone! Say what you will about the bloody Seeking fucking Drake! But at least he had the basic fucking decency to keep his horrors to himself!"

She gave me the briefest of shocked expressions. One I could discern through the many layers of stone.

"Even now, you think that the weak dying is natural! Even while you shame me for destroying the Kenari empire and grinding it down! You aren't angry because of the innocents you fucking monster! You are angry because they were on your side! And now they aren't strong enough to keep the tithes going towards you as they normally would! And now you have the nerve! The sheer fucking audacity to throw it in my face! After your actions led to the destruction of my home!? The house I grew up in!? The deaths of both my grandmothers and so many of my close cousins!? You have the nerve to accuse me of being callous and uncaring!? YOU!?"

I kicked at another tree as I advanced. Sending the colossal, regal thing flying into the stratosphere while I came much closer to the body of the Moving Mountain. Until we were almost close enough to kiss.

"I could destroy you! Moving Mountain! I could strip apart every little thing that ever gave you joy and reduce all those you care about to wretches who would beg me for death! I could take away all your comforts! All that you love and all that you hold dear and it would not be enough to pay your evil ass for all the torment you inflicted upon innocent humans!"

I advanced further, and then, my finger actually jabbed her. A solid outer layer of bone armor scraping against another layer of unnaturally solid stone.

"I could slowly grind you down to fucking pebbles you bitch! I could slice you open with a trillion little cuts from all directions until you have nothing left worth living for! Until you're nothing but a sad lump of rock in a dead, empty world! With no one but the burning stars to bear witness to your torment! I could trap you in a world like that for eons! Watching as you slowly go mad from the crushing loneliness as you see all your newly birthed experiments being immediately possessed and torn inside-out by an unending tide of Intruders! I could make it so that you beg me for death! And even then, all of that cannot even come close to the depths of suffering I could inflict upon you! Filthy thing!"

I made sure to find the outcroppings that passed for eyes and I made sure my own eyes stared into them.

"I could drag you into my realm and leave you there. In a deep, dark void filled with no light or sound or matter. I could send you there and I could chain you there. Forever. Until time lost all meaning and the mere act of thinking brought you unimaginable agony and longing! Until you forgot the sound of your own voice! The sound of the wind rushing across these plains! The sound of your own thoughts echoing in your head! Fuck with me, you conniving evil bitch! And I will burn your entire universe around you! Atom by atom! Until you cannot even comprehend how far you've fallen! Until the lives of those humans you killed seem like the greatest blessing in all creation in comparison to another instant of your prolonged suffering!"

I paused then, just as she was expecting my attack.

I paused and forced my emotions to cool. Forced my body to shrink back into what it had once been.

I then walked all the way back as the Moving Mountain stared at my profile. Until I was face to face with the Golden Cruelty once again.

Only then did I turn around.

"I could do that." I reiterated. "But I won't. Not unless you force my hand."

I allowed them to process those words before I kept going.

"Because even now, even at this stage, after all that has happened, I do not like fighting."

I shook my head.

"I have never liked fighting. It might feel good at the moment, but never in the long run. When I first [Dominated] my world and temporarily freed it of your pests, I spent a year running from the things I had done. I do not want to be a ruler, Moving Mountain. Nor a conqueror. I want to be a friend to people. I want to be wanted. I need to be needed. I must always be someone moral, that others want to look up to. I have always wanted this foolish, idealized world where everyone can speak and resolve their differences without resorting to violence. I have always sought to make those ideals of common understanding a reality."

I shrugged.

"Maybe I am naïve and / or insane. You would not be the first person to tell me that. Nor the last, I suspect. But those are my ideals. And despite sometimes failing to live up to them, my version of the greater common good is something I keep pursuing. Because I see nothing but needless suffering in the alternatives."

I raised an open hand.

"And now I offer that same clemency to you, Moving Mountain. Stay out of this fight, and I will give you a whole other Type. Stay neutral, and I will consider all your crimes against humanity forgiven."

I paused to take in a breath.

"So long as you go right back to your nurseries and tell your offspring that sentient species are no longer on the menu. Regardless of which ones are actually inside or outside the Labyrinth."

I looked back to Golden Cruelty.

"A rather generous deal, if I do say so myself."

The spider's eyes continued to stare. Not blinking or reflecting anything else but the faint traces of starlight that continued to fall onto those black orbs.

Finally, she broke the silence.

"You threaten us. Young one."

"I have laid out the actions that are now available." I corrected. "To all three of us. It was my intention to make you feel threatened, but only in the context of what is about to happen. We are all mature enough to be able to detach personal feelings from the logic of the situation. Or so I would hope."

I spared the other Savant the briefest of glances.

"Neither of you have to like me for me to bargain with you. Just as I do not have to like the Moving Mountain to bargain with her or just how I didn't need to like the Dragon to bargain with him. He broke the pact we made and that's on him. But personal feelings hardly played a role in my decision to ally with the Drake. On the contrary. My own logic overruled my own emotions and my own sense of justice. I sacrificed my own morals for the betterment of humanity as a whole in the long run. I am not proud of doing so, but I saw no other way at the time."

I bowed slightly.

"For what it's worth, I did not come with the goal of offending you. But I will not insult your intelligence and pretend as if we are all chummy pals out for an evening stroll."

She gave me a brief nod in turn.

That was when I knew, I had her.

"A choice must be made and that choice must have consequences attached to it. Though I do not hold any ill will towards you, Golden Cruelty; I will not deny that I will take actions if actions are taken against me or my concerted efforts. I will not deny that, due to circumstance, we may yet become enemies. I am hoping this does not happen and I had gone out of my way to keep you in the loop by offering information freely and by offering rewards freely. I hope you can show me the same courtesy in turn."

I straightened my back.

"If you mean to attack me, then say so. And let us be done with the pretenses. If you mean to take my offer, then say so and let us stop with the pleasantries and get right down to business."

Those spider-like eyes continued to regard me. The mandibles beneath them clacking ominously. Making me feel as though I were a moth struggling to break free of near-invisible strands of webbing.

I did not flinch. Neither did she. And eventually, she raised a hand to me.

"A gesture of greeting among primates, I find." She said while opening her eight-fingered hand.

"I will amend the deal, in that I want access to as much of Projector and Telepath as you can give me. Right now. I will accept levels in Shifter as the final payment. Upon the Dragon's destruction."

"Tier 5 at the maximum." I countered. "Please do not take offense, but I doubt it would be healthy for my side to have to worry about a Savant on the level of me and the Drake changing her mind at the last moment."

The mandibles clicked once and only once.

The hand remained raised.

"This is a deal I can accept in exchange for my neutrality." She finished.

I grabbed the hand and gave it a firm shake.

"Neutrality it is then."

I connected our minds through my ability and sent an overwhelming pulse of Psy flooding into her.

Used against any other kind of creature, the sheer flow of information and insights would have been enough to kill them. Or at least put them into a coma for a good century or two.

Golden Cruelty barely twitched throughout the process. Those eyes continuing to bore into me throughout until at last she spoke.

"It is done."

The hand dropped from our handshake.

"I cannot say that I hope you are successful; in your endeavors, Tyrant. Yet, I wish you luck."

"I thank you." I replied with formal respect. "I have no doubt you will reach the 10th in short order, but I wish you a speedy improvement regardless."

The Moving Mountain watched us conversing the whole time. Her legs still rooted to their spot beneath the ground. As if I hadn't noticed the many surprises she was concocting beneath the bedrock and down in the tectonic plates of this world.

"You needn't bother with the roots." I told her flatly.

She, for her part, did not stop spreading them. On the contrary, the ferocity of her expansion seemed to redouble as I spoke.

"It is a simple question." I repeated. "And a lack of an answer is an answer all to itself. Please tell me. Moving Mountain. Neutrality? Or Hostility?"

She did not answer then either. And I got the distinct expression she was glaring at me.

'No. Not at me.' I realized at once. 'At the spider. At the Golden Cruelty.'

I turned to see the Savant summoning a portal at once. Stepping through it with the confidence of someone who had been doing this sort of thing for years.

"Traitor." The Mountain rumbled upon her departure.

"Don't judge her too harshly." I spoke then. "Likely she was holding out hope that your plan would work. I have no doubt she meant to try and kill me here. Just as you and your little hidden helpers did."

The Moving Mountain did not answer.

"It's only that I managed to convince her to see reason." I sighed. "If only that had been an option with the Dragon. Or with you I guess."

"You. Die. Today." The lady promised.

"I guess we shall see about that." I answered with a shrug of my shoulders. "But if I do, it won't be against you."

I opened a portal behind me and took a single backwards step through.

Or, at least, I tried. Another being, some Master I didn't know, spent an ocean's worth of Psy and crushed the aperture closed before I could get through. The space around me twisting and sending me back.

'So it has come to this, after all.' I groaned internally. 'Too bad these guys weren't paying attention to the prophecy either. Just like the Dragon.'

If they had, perhaps they would have been a bit more prudent in choosing the location of our fight.

'The Empress will drown, after all.' I thought with a sigh. Summoning my own Psy as the Master stabbed my chest with an outstretched bird-like claw. The metallic digits suddenly expanding like balloons in the moments between fractions of a second.

'Stop.' I commanded.

And both her and time obeyed.

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