2103:12:10:08:12:20

  “Dies irae,” Soliloquy spoke in a would-be-impressive-at-any-other-time Reconstructed Latin.

  And as he spoke those words, his form slowly began to ascend. Sand, dust and other particles swirled underneath and followed him upwards, started to glow, then ignited. These embers grew in numbers, volume and speed before they were so large, wild and numerous they coalesced into swirling ribbons, then thick ropes of flame all around the villain.

  The heroes reacted quickly. Peakstar fired rays of golden light from her fingertips, while Pangolin rotated and blasted him with a shrapnel-shot of scales. Strikemight lifted his right hand in the air and bolts of lightning crackled down, while Darkstar’s orbs sprang into existence to try and pull at Soliloquy’s flames, and at the man himself. Knight of Artemis and Pia Pietra charged towards Soliloquy, me joining them after shifting into a rhino. Jauntiste teleported a bit further away towards a group of four civilians, while Gaptime ran a shorter distance to reach a group of three.

  I had barely gotten three steps into my charge when Soliloquy continued.

  “Dies illa.”

  Air trembled as the flames whirled and danced like a meandering river flowing for ten thousand years per second, a torrent of liquid heat. All the attacker’s powers got caught in its course, breaking down and only serving to add fuel to the fire. It started taking on a golden-white glow as it condensed inward, wrapping around the villain like half a cocoon and half a sun.

  Seeing the failed attacks of all the other heroes, I halted my charge; it wouldn’t do anything to the villain.

  Worse, I expected what his next words would be, and if my understanding of his powers held true, the effects would be… extreme. The words themselves were strangely familiar, but even if they weren’t, combining the use of Latin with the unhinged lines he spoke before using his power – about justice and judgement – the conclusion was clear, if unpleasant.

  His lines were about the apocalypse.

  The other masked must’ve come to the same conclusion. Darkstar quickly pulled himself back and away from his colleague – positioning himself in front of a downed civilian, I noticed – and conjured a dense shield made of purple orbs in front of them both.

  Jauntiste vanished in a flash of light with four civilians in tow. Gaptime froze himself with his powers in front of a trio, relying on his auto-temporal freezing to withstand the storm.

  Pangolin did a sort-of backflip and curled herself into a ball, rolling as far away as she could while hoping her defenses could do the rest.

  Knight of Artemis slid on one knee mid-charge, armor digging into asphalt, and he slammed the sword blade first through the road. He clasped his hand in prayer in front of his divine artifact, causing a white aural shield to emerge from it.

  Pia Pietra simply dove and lay down as flat as she could, hands covering her head.

  Strikemight jumped up, blasting off in the form of an inverse lightning strike

  I had expected Peakstar to do something similar, like shifting into light and speeding off, but she didn’t. Instead, from my peripherals, I saw she was still present, visored gaze focused on something else. On someone else.

  On me.

  As quickly as possible, I jumped sideways and interposed myself as best I could between Soliloquy and Peakstar, hoping I’d catch whatever came next and save the Warden.

  “Solvet saelcum in favilla,” Soliloquy proclaimed.

  There was no explosion, nor the sound of glass shattering as his cocoon cracked. The fire didn’t roar or blast outward to engulf us in a wave. There was no sudden inferno springing into existence, or gale-force winds erupting, or even an invisible wave of kinetic force barreling towards us.

  There was nothing but a flash of white, a second sun born on Charm’s street expanding at the speed of light. It was followed by a brief moment of absolutely nothing. Not pain, not panic, nor heat or cold. There was no feeling or sensation whatsoever, and even moment of darkness I’d come to suspect – either from me dying or my retinas getting burned out – was completely absent.

  And then, just as sudden, I was back, returning to my human form in midair, dropping down into the hole left in the wake of Soliloquy’s judgement.

  Landing on my feet in the muddy hole in the ground, I looked around.

  The world had changed completely in that instant of time I’d spent in the white void. Road and pavement, the houses and even the edge of the park had been gouged by Soliloquy’s sphere of annihilation. Fifty meters away, where houses still existed even if some had a chunk gouged out of them, the city’s shield flared weakly. Now-exposed plumbing spilled water liter after liter, threatening to flood the hole I was in, while cables of all kinds sparked furiously – albeit briefly – at their missing connection.

  But not all was destroyed. Behind Gaptime, the world had managed to survive, the shadow of his time-locked invulnerable form creating a triangular cone of protection to everything behind him. The same had happened with Darkstar and Pia Pietra, each having their own pie-slice, a cross-section of the world as it had been before Soliloquy.

  But Pangolin Imperiale was gone, and all that remained of Knight of Artemis was a sword lying in the dirt.

  Of Peakstar, there was no sign. My now-gone rhino form had not had the power to withstand Soliloquy’s apocalypse.

  “Teste David cum Sibylla.”

  My head snapped to the source of all this destruction. He was still floating there, the cocoon around him gone to reveal a silhouette made of shining light.

  I turned into an ostrich and charged-

  “Quantus termor est futurus.”

  -only to trip and fall as the earth roiled at his words, the land tilling itself. My feet threatened to sink into the mud and become stuck, so I jumped and quick-shifted to become a crow.

  “Quando iudex est venturus.”

  Soliloquy’s form coalesced. His previous clothes were gone, replaced by flowing white robes with a patterned golden trim. In his right hand he held an ornate golden scepter with a glowing white light at the top.

  “Cuncta stricte discussurus!”

  His eyes now glowed an electric blue, and the feeling of being seen, being watched, was omnipresent.

  A second later, those same eyes turned to me.

  He was in front of me in an instant, swinging his scepter.

  My crow form died and I plummeted toward the ground. But long before I could reach it Soliloquy was in my face again, swinging his scepter again with a mad grin.

  I shifted into a crow again, only to be met with instant death and return to base form.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The scepter swung again, and I shifted into a rat, hoping its small form could dodge the attack. When it died, I shifted into a giant tortoise, but its shell was no match. Brick-me was pulverized. Coke-me and Semminon Plus+-me were evaporated instantly. Blanket-me tore itself apart by the threads and tree branch-me burst flame and was reduced to ashes.

  Nothing worked. Shift after shift, my forms were reduced to nothing.

  But just after my last pigeon got turned to ash, a blast of light intervened – Peakstar had apparently survived.

  Soliloquy, without even looking, deflected the beam with his scepter.

  I shifted into a crow and beat my wings to try and get away, but Soliloquy was too fast. With his free hand, he reached out and snapped me up before I finished my third wingbeat.

  “Not yet, Jester,” he said, lifting me right in front of my face. I felt my hollow bones creak under the pressure of his grip. “It’s not over yet.”

  I pecked at his hand, only to hurt my beak. Squirming likewise did nothing in his iron-fisted grip, and I couldn’t shift, enclosed as I was. There was nothing I could do but wonder: if I died in his grip like this, would I still transform back and live?

  All of a sudden, a great force started pulling us downward – Darkstar’s doing. But with a casual gesture of his scepter it stopped; Soliloquy had not even needed to hit it for the orb to disappear.

  “Traitor!” Soliloquy snarled. “I’ll-”

  He was again interrupted, but this time by a human-shaped rock hitting him from behind and a stone hand covering his mouth.

  Pia Pietra’s stone face appeared over Soliloquy’s shoulder, the stoic heroine having apparently decided to hitch a ride on the deranged villain.

  The woman’s hand creaked and cracked as Pietra put all her power behind an attempt to snap his neck, but Soliloquy’s head didn’t so much as budge as a millimeter.

  Soliloquy moved his hand – with me still in it – around his and her back. With only a single finger leaving my body, he peeled her off of him and flung her away.

  From behind him, Peakstar flung rays upon rays of light at the villain. They hit his back and head, his shoulders and knees and feet. There were even a few that curved around his head and sought to penetrate his eyes, but none of them worked. Likewise, multiple gravitational orbs spawned all around us, but if they did any pulling, Soliloquy didn’t respond.

  Soliloquy ignored the barrage without so much as blinking, eyes focused on the Warden he’d flung away.

  He pointed at Pia Pietra with his scepter, then flicked it up. Pietra rose with the motion, dangling helplessly from one leg. He moved it down, smashing the heroine into the ground. Then up and down again, then left and right, back and forth and back. He smashed the heroine into the dirt, into the still standing houses, into the side of the pie-slice hills left behind in Soliloquy’s explosion, digging great trenches through it all.

  But despite all his effort, Pietra remained unharmed.

  From the way his hands shook, he was starting to get annoyed and angry at the wasted effort. So instead, he decided to use the heroine as a weapon and swung his scepter in Darkstar’s direction.

  Darkstar created another orb and deflected the heroic projectile, only for it to turn midair and approach from the other side. Darkstar spawned more and more orbs, lifting himself into the air and manipulating both his and Pietra’s trajectories as best he could.

  It might be the world’s clumsiest mid-flight dance, but it worked; they never hit one another.

  Peakstar flew up to face Soliloquy and was now sending blasts of light solely into his eyes. Not that it did anything but-

  Obscured by Peakstar’s bright lights, Strikemight appeared behind the villain. He put two hands sparking blue at either side of Soliloquy’s head, unnoticed by the villain.

  A second later, white-hot lightning erupted from them, a point-blank blast heading straight for Soliloquy’s skull.

  And still, it didn’t do anything. His entire body seemed to reject the lightning, arcs of it bouncing off of his skin and robes.

  Unfortunately, I was not so lucky. The lightning flowed down Soliloquy’s form and into me, sparking across my feathers and burning into my skin and bones and muscles.

  “Caw!” I cried out in pain.

  And suddenly, Soliloquy screamed as the lightning finally found purchase on his head. His body spasmed, arcs of lightning digging into his body like a serpent’s bit, its payload stinging and burning like venom.

  Likewise, it flowed into me as well, burning intensely. But it didn’t last long.

  Muscles spasming, Soliloquy’s grip increased and I exploded into a bunch of feathers and gore.

  Only to reappear a meter away from him.

  I quickly shifted back into a crow while trying my best to land safely on the ground. But with my muscles spasming from phantom lighting, I crash-landed in the wet dirt beak first.

  A moment later, I was pulled from my crash site by a stone hand.

  My savior lifted me to her face. “You alright Jester?” Pietra asked, voice as hard as rock yet warm as coals.

  “Kraa,” I tried.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “Look, no offense, but I recommend you get out of here. There’s nothing you can do to Soliloquy, and he seems to have it out for you.”

  I shook my head. “Cah.”

  “No?”

  I nodded, motion jittery as muscles spasmed. “Croak.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  I pecked at her hand. “Caw!”

  She looked down. “Oh. Right.”

  She let me go and I shifted.

  “When I c-c-” I stuttered as my teeth involuntarily clenched, “cawed at him, his power f-f-faltered for a second. I t-t-think it-t has something to do with-th-”

  Suddenly, an earth-shattering boom nearly blew out my eardrums, my hands reflexively reaching up to cover them. Pietra and I quickly turned to look.

  Strikemight’s lightning had finally brought Soliloquy down to the ground, staining his once pristine clothes.

  Before I could say anything more, Pia Pietra rushed in and struck at the villain. The blow echoed through the crater and the villain was pushed back.

  But not far enough. With more effort behind him than I’d seen him perform this entire fight, Soliloquy brought down his shining scepter with a wrathful roar.

  Wide-eyed, I watched as Pia Pietra burst into fragments.

  Gaptime had run up to him in the meantime with the intent to grab Soliloquy and then freeze himself in time, hoping to lock the villain down. But seeing Pietra’s death, the Guardian tried to stop his charge and turn back.

  Soliloquy moved so quick it might’ve been teleportation outright and swung his scepter downward.

  Whether out of desperation, instinct or pure panic, Gaptime activated his power, freezing himself before the blow.

  Unstoppable force hit immovable object, but this time, it was Soliloquy’s power that bit the dust. His scepter blew up in a flash of light, noise and force so powerful a second, smaller crater appeared within the crater we were already in.

  When I stood back up after getting thrown in the dirt, Gaptime was still there, whole.

  Soliloquy, on the other hand, was not. His scepter was gone, and so was the hand that held it, his right arm, right shoulder, right lung and part of his left, his sternum, his heart, liver and kidney. In their place was a gaping white void strewn with golden stars.

  So long as the damage carried over, Soliloquy’s death was all but certain. His power didn’t last forever, so eventually this pseudo-shifter state he was now in would cease, taking his protection with it.

  But he wasn’t dead yet, and the song he’d been singing had yet to end.

  Soliloquy opened his mouth and uttered both furiously and rapidly, “Tuba mirum spargens sonum-” a wondrous trumpet sound filled the air, enthralling the mind, “-per sepulchra regionum-” its sounds echoed far and wide, “-coget omnes ante thronum.” An invisible force grabbed everyone and dragged them in front of Soliloquy.

  Darkstar, Strikemight, Peakstar and I appeared at his side in an instant, but we were not alone. Orsini, Levy, Sandelabra, Autophaser, Rostam, Tahminah, Hecaterion, Needle Knight, Jauntiste, Looming Thread, and Adaptavian; all joined us, and with them a slew of civilians – medical, law enforcement, regular citizens, all pulled in by the might of Soliloquy’s power.

  Masked reinforcements and first responders must’ve arrived in the course of the fight somewhere out of sight, focusing on securing the area and rescuing civilians while we distracted Soliloquy

  Everyone was locked in place and kneeling in front of him, awaiting his judgement. Only Gaptime was still where he used to be, frozen in his armor and his time.

  Soliloquy resumed his speech. “Mors stupebit--”

  But I could still shift, and I’d found his weakness.

  “-et natura-”

  I transformed into a crow.

  “-cum resurgett creatu-”

  And yelled, “Caw! Caw! Caw!” three times right in his face.

  “Ah!” Soliloquy cried, hands clasping his ears as the omen of death reinterpreted his song.

  He’d been reciting the Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath and the Last Judgement. He had no doubt thought it a powerful liturgical text, and memorized it for use in desperate times.

  But it wasn’t just that. It was also something else, something I recognized from when Mom and I went to a performance on December 2nd: a requiem. A burial piece. Then I got electrocuted by Strikemight while in Soliloquy’s grip and cawed right in his face. Doing so had weakened his defenses enough for Strikemight’s lightning to impact the villain, and made me realize I could use it to my advantage.

  And now, the call of the carrion eater, that of the omen of death, transformed doomsday into the story of a doomed man reciting his own requiem, his own swansong.

  All the heroes were released and a dozen powers bloomed.

  Orsini’s hands went to his guns quick as lightning, unloading heavy lead on the villain with masterful precision. Sandelabra summoned sand and created glass, a hail of shards following. Looming Thread burst with spider webs, looking to entrap. Strikemight called forth divine lightning, Peakstar divine light, and Darkstar the pull of the void to Soliloquy’s front and back, aiming to tear his former friend apart.

  Other heroes were focused on the rescue. Levy spawned a dozen spear-wielding soldiers and focused on getting the civilians out of here. Jauntiste grabbed as many as he could and teleported away. Rostam and Tahminah did much the same, the supers carrying whoever they could before jumping away. Autophaser touched those in range and put them out of phase with the world for their protection. Hecaterion summoned barriers around the fighting masked and Soliloquy, containing the damage as much as possible.

  Adaptavian saw what I was doing and understood. She followed my lead and transformed into a crow as well, then split in two, four, eight and twelve; a chorus of thirteen cawing crows weakening the villain with each passing moment. Needle Knight’s silver needles penetrated the dirt around Soliloquy, adding a third draining effect on his powers.

  Soliloquy’s once complete invincibility shattered under the strain.

  Even if the destruction of his star-strewn body was without blood or viscera, it wasn’t a pretty sight. The attacks were feral and brutal, fueled by desperation from those that had fought before, reflexive fear from those that had only just arrived, and anger from all at the deaths he’d caused.

  The man screamed as his body broke off chunk by chunk, sanded into dust before getting sucked up and compacted into Darkstar’s voids.

  As quickly as it’d started, it all ended. Nothing recognizably Soliloquy remained.

  The heroes (and one villain) stopped using their powers and stared in quiet shock, each panting heavily from the exertion. Adaptavian and I switched back to human form, joining the crowd as we all stared at where Soliloquy had once stood.

  Darkstar took one look at the heroes before summoning a trio of orbs. One gathered the dust of his former boss, while the others pulled Darkstar and it into the sky.

  None made to follow. Although I couldn’t know for sure, I was certain that a general truce had been called, and since the man had participated in the death of Soliloquy, he was free to go.

  Everyone stood there for a second longer, before Strikemight started shouting orders. “Sandel, pile up sand and create a ramp! Hec, stabilize it with your barriers! Thread-!”

  As everyone started moving to fulfill them, a hand clasped my shoulder. I turned around.

  “Jester,” Peakstar said. “Are you alright?”

  I nodded shakily. The sudden absence of tension and the strain of all the effort, all my and other people’s deaths made me jittery.

  “Good work,” she said. “Incredibly good work, especially in light of all the… things you had to go through recently. I’m sure Crowsong would be very proud.”

  Crowsong.

  Peakstar’s mouth twisted in a regretful smile. “Unfortunately, while I would like to let-”

  The word sent a shiver through my spine as a thousand jumbled thoughts filled my mind at once. Nth-Sight’s request. Amber’s search for him. Soliloquy’s questions. The reveal of Nth-Sight’s ridiculous number of identities. This whole thing being a trap to kill me. The mad, Treaty-breaking augur’s bomb.

  “-you go so you can rest, I must ask: what were-”

  “I have to go,” I said urgently, fearful visions of Amber dying, actually dying filling my mind.

  “-you doing here- wait, what? What do you mean you have to go?”

  For all I know, Amber might be walking into a trap right now.

  “I have to go, she might-” I cut myself off. I couldn’t trust the heroes with Nth-Sight’s Treaty breaks. Not yet. Who knew what information networks Nth-Sight might have access to? Who knew what he would see if the heroes got the news?

  “Who’s she?” Peakstar asked.

  “I have to go,” I repeated.

  I shifted into a crow and flew away.

  Thankfully, Peakstar didn’t follow.