Of all the times I'd gotten chucked out of a mental realm and back into my body, this one had to be the starkest. When I'd entered the Vyx Network, I'd done so by throwing myself onto the infected remains of a dying mecha-dragon aegis. But now?

Mr. Himichi was the first of my spirits to greet me. "Genneth!"

Fort Marteneiss' wyrms flocked to me with a mix of excitement and worry.

As for myself…

Good grief, I was massive. It was hard not to gawk.

My body had absorbed the dragon aegis down to the last, nearly doubling in size as a result. I lay coiled on the dirt, tightly clutching to the Sword, whose energies flared in my hand just as big and bright and as they had been before.

I'd learned well from the mistake that took Pel's life. I'd made sure to leave secondary consciousness active in my body, to keep the Sword's magic operational while I was sojourning through the Network. Its combined anti-magic ward psychokinetic forcefield was still up and running. Without &alon's connection to restore the power I'd spent maintaining it, I felt somewhat drained, but, thanks to my massive meal, it was nothing I couldn't shrug off.

The other wyrms' pataphysics was still wrapped around the Sword's. Threads of blue and gold power were woven in banners and awnings that linked the warp to the wyrms around. It was like the ceiling of a great circus tent. The golden glow of the fires burning at Fort Marteneiss played along our midnight-dark scales. Everywhere I looked, I saw wyrms and their spirits making the Bondsign, and getting down on their knees and praying.

The battle was still going on all around us, though &alon had successfully driven back the Vyxit forces, primarily by surrounding us with three of those giant, many-legged walking landscapes her fungus had drawn up from the rock and soil. Looking through the cavernous gap between the behemoths' underbellies and the ground, I could see &alon's forces engage the Vyxit.

I looked up. The land behemoths' flanks were living canyons that towered above us. Silver-eyed wyrms and fungal sky-creatures shot to and fro across the opening between them. &alon's armies traded blasts of spores and psychokinesis with the Vyxit's death rays and the legions of magic, weapons, and magical weapons wielded by the aliens' brave aerial warriors.

The ground around the behemoths was littered in Vyxit soldiers' silver-wrapped corpses and the wreckage of countless combat mechs and battle vehicles, illuminated by fungal blooms.

The situation inside my mind wasn't much better, either.

Yuta was despondent. I could hear his screams from the other side of his afterlife. Ichigo's demise had devastated him.

Much to my frustration, everything back there had happened so quickly that I genuinely didn't know if Ichigo was really gone or if the remnants of his soul I still sensed within me would be enough to reconstruct him.

I called out to Yuta's daughter.

Hoshi, your father needs you.

I sent doppelgängers to help them, on the double. I would have done it with my main consciousness, had I not had higher priorities to deal with—the highest darn priority of them all.

Brigadier General Watterson slithered up to me with her arms opened wide. "Thank the Angel, you're back!"

Suffering' succotash, compared to what I'd become, the wyrm brigade's wyrms seemed like children—exhausted children. They lay low to the ground, the flesh around their snout and heads sucked inward, as if drained of internal moisture. Their fear was plain in the way they bombarded me with questions the instant they'd realized I'd returned.

Unfortunately, their concerns would have to wait.

I was our only hope.

Mr. Himichi's spirit rose to the forefront of my consciousness. "Genneth, what's that sound?"

But then, I heard it for myself, and stopped cold in my tracks. It took me a moment to process it, to correct for the distortions caused by its wyrmsong translation.

"Break the Tablets…" I muttered.

The silver-eyed wyrms were singing. It was a chorus of millions, and what they sang shook me to my very foundation.

Watterson looked at me in worry. "Genneth, what's wrong?"

I looked up at the sky.

"H-How long?" I said.

"What?"

I sliced the Sword through the air in anger. "How long have the wyrms been singing?"

"They—they started after you went AWOL into the dragon," Lt. Dueright said.

I shook my head and belted out a lament. My whole body shuddered.

EUe, you bastard, I thought, tightening my grip on the Sword.

He'd been right about &alon. There was no denying it any longer. She was my music, and, to the extent that my music was one of my children—my brainchild—so was she.

I looked up at the wyrms in the distance. They sang as they fought.

I wished Pel was here.

"Please, Dr. Howle," the Brigadier General said, "what's going on?"

I let my arms go limp at my sides. "It's my music."

"You already sang us the details," she replied.

I shook my head. "No, you don't understand!" I pointed at the sky. "I haven't written this part yet!"

Several wyrms sputtered in astonishment. Many ghosts did, too.

"What?"

I cried openly. "I've never been able to make up my mind! I've spent years and years searching for the right melody for the slow movement, for my son, but…" I pointed the Sword at the sky, "she—&alon has it!"

You have to understand. Have you ever woken from a dream, believing that something you dreamed had to be real, only to stumble about in confusion as you realized it was nothing but an illusion? Now, imagine one day you woke, and what you dreamed was right there, sitting beside you, exactly as you envisioned it. That's what I felt.

My head hung, heavy. "But… it's not just the music I've written. It's the music I've always wanted to write. I just… I just never managed to figure out how."

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Part of me wanted to gouge out my own eyes, but I knew it would be no use. They'd just grow back all over again.

There was no denying it any longer. This last piece of evidence had come along and demolished all of my remaining rationalizations.

I'd never been able to finish the Sonata's third movement: the adagio. Because I'd dedicated it to Rale's memory, I couldn't accept anything less than perfection. My elegy for the son I'd lost deserved that kind of care and due diligence. It wasn't just what I wanted to do, it's what it needed to be. Justice itself commanded it.

I had to show the elegy the level of consideration that I hadn't given to my son's opinions about having the surgery. He hadn't needed it to live; I was the one who wanted it for him.

I couldn't let myself repeat that same mistake with the adagio, hence the reason why it remained trapped between being and imagination.

I'd known for years how the music ought to feel: serene, yet passionate, and tender, consoling, like a rainbow's glory, and wrapped in the heartbreaking nostalgia of deepest love gone away.

&alon's chorus was that feeling made real. I'd lived the better part of the past decade with that music on the tip of my tongue, only I'd never been able to reach it. Yet she had.

For all the trouble that my indecisiveness brought me, it came with one silver lining: if and when I ever made up my mind, my choice was set in stone. I felt that same, earthlocked certainty in the music of the wyrms of &alon's soul, and now that I heard it, I knew there was nothing else that it could ever be. &alon's song was my own. More than that, it was my music's completion; its ideal.

That wasn't the kind of thing you could fake. Chance had no power to explain it.

In some impossible, ineffable way, &alon was my music, and I couldn't explain that away. I couldn't even deny it, because to deny it would be to deny myself.

It was too much for me. I couldn't understand it. Honestly, I wanted it to end.

But that would have been terribly irresponsible of me.

By whatever strange twist of fate, my deepest feelings were intertwined with the DNA of &alon's soul. The number of potential explanations for it were limited only by my imagination. Time travel? Other worlds? At this point, anything was possible.

And yet… in the grand scheme of things, the explanation didn't matter, because it didn't change what I had to do, here and now. I was uniquely positioned to make a difference, that was what mattered; not in whose name or why.

Future generations could quibble over those details.

I spent one last millisecond steeling myself, and then raised my head to the sky and sang the name of paradox and pain.

"&alon!" I roared. "&alon, face me! You want your father?" I tightened my grip on the Sword. "Well… here I am!"

My vision flashed, and then, once again, I found myself in that great white void—the not-here-place—&alon floating before me in all her glory. Tears ran down her cheeks as she wrapped her cerulean wings around us both in a broad, fiery embrace.

Even here, she was still just a child.

I was my human self again, and—curiously enough—the Sword was with me, warm in my grip. Its fateful curves turned in slow, endless revolution.

"D-Daddy Genneth?" &alon stammered, clasping her hands at her chest. She burbled."Why are you angry, Daddy?" Her eyes twinkled like her starlight gown. "Why do you want to leave me?"

Admonishment was at the tip of my tongue, but, withholding it, I sighed and let my arm unfurl, lowering the Sword till its tip pointed at the ground.

It was time for me to take one for the team. For her sake, I tried to sound less eroded and jaded than actually was.

"Congratulations, &alon. You wanted to find your family? Well… you found me." I made a weak pass at lifting my arms.

She pouted at me. "Is… is this some kind of trick?" She hovered closer to me, nose crumpled. She scrutinized me the way Rayph looked for any trace of leftover crust whenever I made him a PB&J.

I had nothing left to lose. Everyone was gone. My children were dying.

I shook my head. "No, &alon, there's no trick, only a request."

That took her aback, a little.

"Wha?"

"I've been thinking it over, talking to people about it." I shook my head again. "I won't pretend I understand it—maybe someday, I will—but… that has no bearing on what I need to do at this moment." I tried not to cry, and failed. "I… I don't care what you do to me; it won't make a difference; I've already lost the love of my life, and I'm confident that whatever guilt I'll drown myself in will be ten thousand times worse than pretty much anything you can do to me. But… no," I shook my head yet again, barely more than a vibration, "this isn't about me. It's about you."

To be fair, it absolutely was about me. In some strange, twisted, impossible way, &alon was of me. My music. My psyche. My essence.

My soul.

Knowing that, and knowing that she'd brought ruin to countless worlds, searching for me…

How could I not feel responsible?

But that was my own Sword to bear. Right now, my job was to make something useful out of it.

I cleared my throat.

"Just to be clear, &alon… you want me to treat you like I did before you remembered everything, right? That's your heart's desire?"

She wept as she nodded.

I did, too, and then inhaled sharply.

"So… here's the deal." I looked her in the eyes. "I'll be your father. I'll keep you company till the end of time. I can't promise it will be exactly the way it was… before… but I'll try. I mean it."

She gasped, mouth opening. Her voice cracked. "Daddy…?" I could almost hear the corners of her mouth doing the same as they rose into a smile.

I raised my left index finger. "However, there's a condition. You've got to promise me something."

Blinking, she tilted her head. "Promise? Promise what?" Her lips trembled as she stared at me.

Beast and Queen, the weight of that gaze…

"When it comes to the wyrms, and to 'saving' people, and to you and the fungus and everything… you're going to do what I tell you. I'm going to make some rules, and you're going to follow them to the letter." I nodded. "It's gonna be our covenant. And as long as you obey me, I swear, I will never leave you."

"Never ever?"

I nodded. "Never ever ever."

"O-Okay…" she said. "What are the rules?"

I took a deep breath. "I'm glad you asked."

"Rule number one," I said, "and this is the most important rule of all… stop this, &alon. Everything you're doing? Stop it. Stop it right now. No more 'saving' anyone, &alon. That ends now."

She pulled her wings back, eyes widening in alarm. She sank to the ground, standing on her own, trembling feet. "But, the Darkness, it—"

I shook my head gravely and then crossed my arms. "—No, &alon. I know the Darkness is a threat, and I know you're trying to help. But you're helping in the wrong way. Two wrongs don't make a right, especially when they're done without restitution and a reckoning."

"Restawhatsy?"

"Restitution. It's the reason people can forgive each other and move forward: they admit that what they did was wrong, they feel bad that they did wrong, and they promise each other to be better, and try their very hardest to keep that promise. I won't deny that the Darkness is evil, but what you have done isn't much better. Beast's teeth, I wish you understood that, &alon, I wish you did. I want to believe that love and kindness—loving kindness—means something, and can make a difference even against the greatest darkness. But you're a counterexample to it. You just don't get it, and, honestly, I no longer have enough fight left in me to bother trying. So… you don't need to worry anymore. You win."

Inhaling deeply, I squatted down until I was at &alon's eye level, resting my left arm on my thigh and bracing myself by pressing the Sword's tip onto the ground.

"&alon, everything you've done to find me—the plague, the monsters, the wyrms… there's no reason for you to do it anymore, is there? You don't need to hurt and be lonely anymore. You did it, you found me."

"Daddy…" she wept.

"Will you do it?" I asked.

She nodded.

Angel, the significance of that little gesture… it defied words.

Now, for the big one.

"Rule Two," I said. "If it's possible, stop what you're doing to my kids, my friends, my countrymen, my species… my world… to all worlds."

"But—"

Shuddering, I shook my head. "No, &alon. You have to let them go."

She stared at me for a long time, making no sounds other than the occasional sniffle or hard swallow.

And then she nodded.

"O-Okay."

Tightening my grip on the Sword, I leaned forward, pushing my weight onto the weapon. True, it was disrespectful to the point of sacrilege, but it was either that, or I'd topple over onto my back.

Also, it wasn't like Azon was still alive.

"But… do you promise?" &alon asked me. The fear was plain in her eyes. "You promise you won't go away?"

I nodded. "You have my word, &alon, as long as I have yours."

"Okay." She nodded again, more decisively than before. "I promise."

I nodded back at her. "I promise, too."

Then I closed my eyes and pictured the physical world, and willed its presence into being. When I opened my eyes, I was back in my wyrm body, time frozen all around me, my thoughts pushed to the limit. &alon appeared on the ground beside me.

She threw herself onto my coil and embraced me. Her blue flame wings plastered over me like hands. She trembled and she wept. The movements quivered through her wings.

"Daddy! Daddy!!"

But she wept from joy. And she was warm.

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