Chương 137: 136: It's No Use

Butter remained there for a long moment, her head bowed over his body, her white hair hiding her face from the world. Her fingers slowly released his hand, and she stared at the blood covering her palms. Her Gloom remained at zero percent. She had nothing. So she would have to make something. Butter stood. Her body trembled as she took one step away from Nathan, then another, before suddenly throwing herself forward and leaping across the devastated landscape toward an empty stretch of ground.

She landed, adjusted her stance, and screamed.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" The Crescendo cheat activated. Pain exploded through her nervous system. Every nerve felt as though it had been soaked in gasoline and set alight, and Butter screamed harder as her body convulsed beneath the strain. She forced Gloom to accumulate where none remained, wrenching energy from a system that had already been exhausted beyond its limits. It felt like tearing open a wound that had only just begun to close. Again. And again. And again. Blood began running from her nose. She kept screaming.

"Sway…" Her voice cracked. She could feel it. Somewhere far away, Sway was still fighting Custard, surviving on nothing more than the last miserable remnants of her reserves. Butter needed it. She needed something capable of confronting Sylvia. Sway was not built for killing. Butter's knees nearly buckled, but she forced herself upright.

"Come on…" Another surge ripped through her.

"Come on!" Her Gloom climbed. One percent. A faint distortion appeared around her. Two percent. Her white hair lifted beneath the unnatural pressure. Three percent. Blood dripped from her nose onto the snow. Five percent. Butter screamed until her throat burned, and the mountains answered with distant echoes. Ten percent. Waves of Gloom began pouring from her body.

Snow melted beneath her feet, the ground cracked, and loose stones lifted into the air as the atmosphere warped around her, as though reality itself were struggling to accommodate what she was forcing back into existence. She kept going. She could still feel Sway. Still fighting. Still surviving. Butter's eyes burned through her tears.

"I need you." Another surge tore through her.

"Please…" Her voice broke.

"I need you here." — Far above the devastated landscape, Sylvia stopped. Her head turned slightly. Something in her expression changed. She felt it. A familiar energy signature. Gloom. Butter's Gloom. Sylvia's senses expanded across the mountains. She searched through thousands of minds, millions of dreams, the ruins, the survivors, the dead. Nothing. Until she found it. A growing disturbance somewhere far across the landscape, a tiny point of resistance becoming brighter with every passing second.

Sylvia's blindfold fluttered in the wind.

"… Sugarbear." Below her, Butter screamed again, forcing another surge of Gloom through a body that had already been pushed beyond its limits. The clouds twisted above her, the mountains trembled, and Sylvia finally smiled. She descended through the cold Patagonian air until her bare feet touched the crimson-stained snow. The fins behind her fluttered gently, while the dreamcatchers at her hips swayed without making a sound.

Cobalt geometric markings pulsed faintly across her pale body, keeping rhythm with the strange new heart beating within her chest. Butter stood before her, white hair matted with tears and blood, her hands stained red and her entire body trembling. Sylvia tilted her head, regarding her with the same serene affection she had shown before the world became a graveyard.

"Why are you crying, Sugarbear?" There was no mockery in her voice. She genuinely did not understand.

"Look around you. This is what they deserved."

"They were innocent."

"No one is innocent." Butter froze. Something was wrong. Sylvia's lips had not moved. Butter stared at her mouth, waiting for the words to come again, but Sylvia's expression remained perfectly still. The voice had not come from her throat at all. It had emerged from somewhere lower within the altered body, carried through the strange anatomy Sylvia had fashioned around herself. Butter recoiled a step.

"What did you do to yourself?" Sylvia looked down at her own body as though she had only just remembered what she looked like. Her many limbs shifted slightly, cobalt markings pulsing beneath her skin while the unnatural organs woven into her new form continued their quiet work.

"This?" She regarded herself with mild curiosity.

"It is temporary." Butter's face tightened with unease.

"Temporary?"

"When this is over, I will make another body." Sylvia looked back at her.

"One you would find more familiar." Her expression softened.

"This form is merely efficient. The power passes through it more easily this way, and I have rather a lot of power to move through it." Butter stared at her in disbelief.

"You rebuilt yourself just to hold more power?" Sylvia smiled faintly.

"I rebuilt myself because I needed to." She stepped closer.

"And because I knew you would still recognize me." Butter's breathing became shallow.

"I don't know you anymore." Sylvia's smile faded.

"Yes, you do." Her voice emerged from that impossible body once more, calm and intimate despite the horror of what she had become.

"You simply wish you didn't." Sylvia spoke with the gentle certainty of someone explaining something obvious to someone she loved.

"They prayed for God to punish evil. They begged for an answer to suffering, asked why cruelty was allowed to flourish while their prayers went unanswered. So I answered them, Sugarbear. I gave them exactly what they asked for. They simply never imagined that some of them would be included." Butter stared at her.

"You killed them."

"I judged them."

"You killed millions."

"I removed millions." Sylvia's voice remained soft.

"Please don't look at me like that. I know it frightens you."

"Children, Sylvia." Sylvia's expression softened.

"I know. I saw them too. I saw their dreams, their fears, their little hopes for tomorrow. I did not condemn them merely because they were born into a cruel world. I spared those whose dreams showed me there was still something worth preserving." Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"You expect that to make this better?"

"No, my love. I expect you to understand that I never did this because I hated them." She stepped closer, her voice becoming almost a whisper.

"Hatred would have made it so much easier. I did it because I believed someone had to decide what could be saved." Butter's eyes hardened.

"You see corpses."

"I see a correction."

"You see nothing." Sylvia smiled faintly.

"I see everything." Her gaze remained fixed on Butter with unsettling tenderness.

"I see what people hide behind their smiles, the desires they bury, the cruelties they excuse, the suffering they watch and decide is someone else's problem. I see what they become when they believe nobody is watching." She reached toward Butter, almost as though she wanted to wipe the tears from her face.

"You were taught to judge people by what they show the world, Sugarbear. I was given the ability to see what they truly are." Her hand stopped just short of Butter's cheek.

"And once you can see everything…" Sylvia's smile deepened.

"…how could you possibly pretend you didn't?" Butter shook her head.

"You don't get to decide who deserves to live."

"Someone always decides. Governments, kings, soldiers, parents. People make judgments every day and simply disguise them as circumstance. I possess the honesty to acknowledge mine."

"That isn't honesty."

"No?"

"That is murder." Sylvia was silent for a moment.

"Perhaps that is what you must call it. I simply refuse to call it evil because it frightens you." Butter's voice broke.

"You killed people who were afraid. People who were only trying to survive."

"I know, Sugarbear." Butter's breathing became uneven.

"How can you stand there and say they deserved it?"

"Because deserving is not the same as suffering." Sylvia's gaze drifted toward the ruined horizon.

"Some suffered because they were cruel. Others suffered because cruelty surrounded them and they refused to become cruel themselves. Those people I spared. I am not destroying the world because I despise it. I am destroying what prevents it from becoming worthy of preservation."

"And you think that makes you good?"

"No." Sylvia answered immediately.

"I think it makes me responsible." Butter fell silent. Sylvia stepped closer.

"I remember what you told me in the chamber. About the giant and the flea, about God becoming small enough to understand the suffering of something beneath Him." A faint smile touched her lips.

"I understand now. I have become the giant." Her voice softened.

"And if I possess the strength to end suffering, I cannot justify refusing to use it merely because the method is unpleasant."

"You're not ending suffering."

"I am."

"You're creating more."

"For a time." Butter stared at her.

"For a time?"

"Yes. Pain is temporary. A world without the machinery that produces it is not." Her gaze settled upon Butter.

"I am doing this so that one day there will be nothing left to hurt us. No one capable of taking you from me." Butter's face twisted with anguish.

"Us?"

"Yes." Sylvia's voice became almost affectionate.

"You and me." Butter gave a small, broken laugh.

"You still think we're going to be together?"

"I know we will."

"No." The word came immediately. Butter wiped at her face with a bloodstained hand, smearing red across her cheek.

"I don't want to be with you anymore." Sylvia's head tilted.

"Butter…"

"Don't say my name like that." Sylvia fell silent. Butter swallowed.

"I wasn't even gay before you."

"I am not gay either." Butter stared at her.

"I don't understand."

"I have never desired anyone else. I only know that when I look at you, something inside me changes. When you are hurt, I feel an absence I cannot tolerate. When you cry, I want whatever caused your tears removed from existence."

"That isn't love."

"It may not resemble the love you understand." Sylvia took another step.

"But it is mine." Butter backed away.

"You barely know me."

"I know enough."

"You don't know me."

"Then let me."

"I barely know you."

"Then we have something in common." Sylvia extended one hand.

"We can learn. We have time now." Butter stared at the offered hand, then looked beyond her toward the ruined mountains and the blood covering the snow.

"You think there's still time after what you've done?"

"Yes."

"That's the part you still don't understand." Butter looked back at her.

"You destroyed the future and you're standing there asking me to spend it with you." Sylvia's expression softened.

"I can fix this. I can fix everything. We can be happy."

"I don't think you know what happiness is anymore." Sylvia opened her mouth, but stopped. She felt it again. The dreams were still pouring into her. The minds of the dying continued feeding her fear, confusion, regret, memories, final thoughts, and desperate fragments of lives that had ended before they were finished. Every death brought another pulse of energy, and the energy no longer merely accumulated. It compounded, each increase feeding the next until the growth itself became difficult to measure.

Sylvia closed her eyes. She had reached a point where the energy within her could sustain the entire universe for a single day. For one brief moment, she wondered whether she had finally gone too far. She had not. Not yet. Butter noticed the change in her expression.

"What's happening?" Sylvia opened her eyes.

"I'm growing."

"You're killing more."

"I'm becoming more." She said it without pride or shame.

"The dreams of the damned continue to feed me. Their deaths increase the energy within me, and that energy is beginning to compound faster than I can measure."

"You're getting stronger because people are dying."

"Yes."

"And you're okay with that?"

"I am not celebrating their deaths. I am acknowledging what they have made possible." Sylvia's voice remained calm.

"I am approaching a point where I could end everything." Butter's breathing became shallow.

"You're going to kill everyone."

"I am going to save everyone."

"By killing them?"

"By ending the conditions that make suffering possible. It is the only salvation I can still guarantee."

"That isn't how this works."

"It is how it works now." Sylvia stepped closer, her bare feet sinking into the bloodstained snow.

"I am removing the world that hurt you, the cruelty that shaped you, the people and systems that made you suffer." Butter's voice fell to a whisper.

"You're not the same person."

"I am exactly the same person."

"No." Butter shook her head.

"The person I kissed was scared. She was confused. She was trying to understand herself, and she knew she didn't have all the answers. Now you think you have every answer. Humanity, suffering, God, justice, love. Everything." Her eyes met Sylvia's blindfold.

"That scares me more than anything you could ever do to me." Sylvia said nothing. For several seconds, only the wind moved between them.

"I can fix this," Sylvia finally said.

"Can you?"

"Yes. I can fix everything."

"I don't want you to fix me."

"I never said I wanted to fix you."

"You're trying to fix the world for me."

"I am trying to remove the things that hurt you."

"And what if I don't want the world you're making?" Sylvia fell silent.

"What if I want the world to stay imperfect?" Butter asked.

"What if I want people to have the chance to become better instead of being killed because you decided they never would?"

"Some people refuse that chance."

"Some do." Butter wiped her face.

"But that doesn't give you the right to decide that everyone deserves to die."

"You misunderstand me."

"Then make me understand." Sylvia's voice became almost unbearably gentle.

"I cannot bear to lose you again." Butter's expression broke.

"I have spent too long knowing what it means to have everything taken away. I will not allow it to happen to you. If destroying the world is the price of guaranteeing your safety, then I consider the price acceptable."

"That isn't love."

"It is mine." Butter looked away.

"You need to remember who you were." Sylvia's blindfold rippled in the wind.

"I remember."

"Then act like it." Sylvia looked at her for a long moment. She remembered the chamber, the popcorn, the dress she had drawn for herself, the way Butter had laughed when she sang terribly, the warmth of being held, and the strange, almost frightening realization that she was no longer alone. She remembered the promise. She remembered everything. And still, the dreams continued pouring into her. The damned continued feeding her. The power continued growing. Beneath it all, something else remained. A voice.

It had been waiting for her, perhaps since the Nonagon first awakened within her, buried beneath memories, instincts, hunger, and fragments of something far older than either of them.

"Sugarbear…" Butter's voice cracked around the name. Sylvia tilted her head.

"You called me that." Butter's face crumpled.

"I know."

"Please."

"Please?"

"Please come back." Sylvia said nothing. She remembered the frightened girl Butter had first found, the lonely one who had wanted nothing more than to understand why she existed. Sylvia looked at her.

"I never left." Butter closed her eyes as tears slipped silently down her cheeks.

"No," she whispered.

"You just became someone I don't recognize." Sylvia studied her for a long moment, her expression almost tender. Butter continued.

"You should be more forgiving. I know you can reverse things. You could correct the world, save them instead of killing them. They deserve salvation."

"They don't deserve anything." Sylvia slowly opened both hands between them.

"And salvation…" Her fingers spread.

"Look at my palms, Sugarbear." Butter hesitated before looking.

"Do you see nail holes?" Butter's gaze remained fixed on her hands.

"No." Sylvia's fingers curled slightly.

"All you can see are eyes." Tiny eyes opened across her palms, blinking independently, their pupils tracking Butter's gaze.

"I am not the Messiah, Butter. I will not die upon a cross so that people who squandered their lives can call themselves saved." Her voice remained gentle, almost affectionate.

"I see them for what they are." The eyes in her palms blinked.

"And I give them the punishment they deserve." She closed her hands.

"Salvation is mercy." Her smile was faint.

"I have never claimed to be merciful." Butter stepped backward and reached for the Aria. The sketchbook appeared in her trembling hand, its blue cover stained with blood as its pages fluttered violently in the distorted air. She was going to fight. She did not believe she could win, and she no longer expected Sylvia to forgive her. She fought because she had promised herself that she would never abandon someone she loved simply because saving them had become difficult. Even if Sylvia could no longer be saved.

Even if Butter had to stand against the person she had once held in her arms. Even if the thing wearing Sylvia's face was stronger than anything she had ever faced. Sylvia watched her.

"What are you doing?" Butter looked up. Her eyes were swollen from crying, but beneath the grief was something stubborn and unbreakable.

"Fighting."

"For what?" Butter tightened her grip around the Aria.

"For you." Sylvia's blindfold fluttered.

"To whom did you make that promise?" Butter's expression hardened.

"To everyone you killed." The pages of the Aria began to turn. And the battle began. The colours bled together, ink running across the paper as though the Aria itself were bleeding. What emerged was not a wish. It was a judgment. Oblivion's Maw. The creature unfolded from the pages, a colossal wyvern made from the darkness between stars. Its wings stretched across the sky like membranes of living void, while its enormous jaws opened around a darkness deeper than the surrounding night.

Its belly was a bottomless pit, an impossible cavity capable of containing entire universes without ever becoming full. It was an eater of space. Where it moved, distance ceased to behave normally. Mountains seemed farther away one moment and impossibly close the next, while the space between objects appeared to collapse beneath its presence. Sylvia stared at it. Her tentacles became rigid.

"Sugarbear…" Butter stood behind the creature, clutching the Aria against her chest. Sylvia's voice trembled.

"You're betraying our love." Butter said nothing.

"You drew this against me?"

"I drew it because you wouldn't listen." Something inside Sylvia snapped.

"YOU'RE BETRAYING OUR LOVE!" Her scream rolled across Patagonia. Oblivion's Maw opened its jaws. A torrent of oblivion erupted from within it, so violent that the sky seemed to buckle around the blast. Sylvia answered with a barrage of cobalt beams. The two forces collided. VRAAAAAAAAAAAM! The Maw's inverted-light torrents chewed through the beams, consuming their light and continuing forward. Sylvia was forced backward through the air, her body twisting as she fought against the impact. Her tentacles elongated.

They plunged into the mountains below. KRAAAAAAAK! Entire mountains were uprooted. Sylvia seized them with her cobalt tentacles and hurled them toward the Maw like spears. The wyvern opened its wings. The mountains disappeared into its shadow. Sylvia's expression hardened. She understood the danger now. She could not allow it to reach her. Oblivion's Maw did not simply possess greater destructive power. Its very nature was wrong for her.

Its belly was an absence that could consume space itself, and if it swallowed her, she could not be certain that even her immense power would be capable of escaping whatever existed inside it. She raised both hands. Her palms opened. Eyes appeared across them. One after another, irises unfolded across her hands until every palm was covered in staring eyes. Sylvia looked at the Maw. Six eyes on six palms focused upon it.

"Ellipsis." One palm opened. The space between Sylvia and the Maw disappeared.

"Oxymoron." Another palm opened. Contradictory forces manifested simultaneously, allowing destruction and preservation to occupy the same phenomenon as they collided against the creature.

"Irony." Another palm opened. The Maw's own destructive force twisted against itself, its attack turning inward as though the narrative had decided that its greatest strength should become its greatest weakness.

"Hyperbole." The fourth palm opened. Sylvia's attack exceeded its established limits, becoming absurdly greater than the force that had existed moments before.

"Metaphor." The fifth palm opened. The world itself became symbolic. Mountains became spears. Light became blades. Distance became a weapon.

"Paradox." The sixth palm opened. For a fraction of a second, cause and effect ceased agreeing with one another. Six literary concepts manifested simultaneously. The battlefield became incomprehensible.