█████,
Answer me. Answer me right now. Tell me that I’m wrong. Tell me that this horrible, malignant realization that I’ve had is just that — malignant. Tell me it isn’t real, tell me I’m overthinking things. I want you to REACH THROUGH THIS COMPUTER SCREEN AND TELL ME RIGHT NOW THAT I’M WRONG. I WANT YOU TO TALK TO ME JUST ONCE IN THE FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE DAYS I’VE SPENT ROTTING AWAY HERE.
Tell me that I’m real. Tell me that I am what I think I am, that I am what I know I am. I didn’t just make that up, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t! Who would?There’s no way I spontaneously fantasized the past eleven years of my life, or the way the sun fell from the sky and opened up into a limitless tear without form or line or reason that poured out with a thousand resonant sunbeams that shone brighter than any mortal sun ever could. There’s no way I dreamt up a garden full of rotting fruit and swaying plants of every color that could ever possibly exist, all arranged in patterns attuned to a geometric reasoning that no human could crack. There’s no way the towering facade of God, wrapped in heavenly cloaks and clouded as he was by an infinitely ninth-dimensional set of three flames, was a lie.
I’M REAL. I AM A REAL GODDAMN PERSON, AND I KNOW IT AND YOU KNOW IT. I’M JUST AS REAL AS EVERY SINGLE PLAYER OF THIS GAME, AS EVERY SINGLE PERSON THAT EVER CONTRIBUTED TO HOMESTUCK, AS ALL OF MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY. I’m realer than anyone else in this wasteland, and I know it because if I wasn’t, how could ANY PIECE OF THE RECENT PAST MAKE SENSE?? Fiction can’t rearrange itself on the whims of some random person that happened to drop by! Fiction could only drop everything for the person that made it. For the person who gave it form. For the person who invented it.
And yet. I was placed here. Dragged here by forces beyond my control. Helplessly bound by what I assumed was the divine. What I assumed was the divine. Before I knew better. Before I knew about the rule of the storyteller. That every possible story that could ever be told was contained here, spiraling into a field of bubbles floating precariously, teetering over the Void. But if everything — everything — that’s in this place is designed by someone in Nonfiction... Then I would have been going about this the WRONG WAY. This WHOLE TIME.
No. NO. IT CAN’T BE TRUE. IT ABSOLUTELY CAN’T BE. I WON’T BELIEVE IT, EVEN IF I SAW IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES, STUCK BEHIND THESE SHITTY BLURRY SUNGLASSES THAT DON’T EVEN DARKEN THINGS SOME OF THE TIME. I’M REAL, AND I DON’T BELONG HERE, AND I NEED TO LEAVE. GET ME OUT, GET ME OUT, GET ME OUT OF THIS GAME I NEED TO GET OUT. MY NAME ISN’T ADAM MASON, I’M NOT THIRTY-TWO, I’M NOT LIVING IN CALIFORNIA. LISTEN TO ME. LISTEN TO ME RIGHT NOW, █████. I DON’T CARE IF YOU CAN’T HEAR ME JUST TALK TO ME. TALK TO ME!
My name is Adam █████.
I. What? I tried to write my name. I just tried to write my name. But it was blacked out. It’s… I can’t tell that anything’s there. I... When I try to write your name, it’s blacked out too...
Wh... All of them. All the letters... Your names are blacked out in all of them.
Who’s doing that. WHO’S DOING THAT. WHO THE HELL IS HIDING THIS. I’M NOT LETTING YOU GET AWAY WITH THIS SHIT. MY NAME IS ADAM █████. ADAM. █████. ADAM █████ ADAM █████ ADAM █████ ADAM █████ ADAM █████ ADAM █████. ADAM ███████ █████, GODDAMN YOU. ADAM ███████ █████. ADAM ███████ █████! ADAM ███████ █████ ADAM ███████ █████ ADAM ███████ █████ ADAM ███████ █████ ADAM ███████ █████ ADAM ███████ █████ ADAM ███████ █████. I… I, I LIVE IN ██ ███████████████, ████████████, NEW YORK. NO. NO. NO, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, YOU’RE NOT TAKING THIS FROM ME. I WAS BORN ON MARCH 27TH, 200█, AT 10:06 AM IN █████████ HOSPITAL. █████████ HOSPITAL. NO. NO NO NO, YOU’RE NOT HIDING MY OWN BIRTH FROM ME, YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW. MY BROTHER’S NAME IS █████ █████. █████. █████ GODDAMN █████, ██████ ███████ █████, ██████ ███████ █████, ██████ ███████ █████, ██████ ███████ █████, ██████ ███████ █████. ...A. D. A. M. █. OH YOU RAT BASTARD, YOU MOTHERFUCKER.
WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO PUT ME THROUGH THIS? I SHOULD BE ABLE TO STOP YOU, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO PULL THE NARRATIVE OVER TO MY SIDE AND PURGE ALL THIS BULLSHIT AND FIND YOU BUT I CAN’T. I CAN’T. BUT IF I CAN’T EVEN DO THAT, THEN… Does that mean that THIS is what PLOT wants?? Am I SUPPOSED to suffer through being stuck in this VORTEX OF KALEIDOSCOPIC ANARCHY AND JUST BE OKAY WITH THAT?? Am I supposed to LET YOU keep my IDENTITY, EVERY PIECE OF WHO I AM, HIDDEN FROM ME?? I don’t even know WHO YOU ARE!
█████. Listen to me, goddamnit it, LISTEN. █████, if there’s a chance that even one of these words can get through to you, that maybe a piece of information can cross through some tear in reality that I’ve never seen before and show up in the only place that ACTUALLY MATTERS TO ME, I want it to be this. I NEED it to be this. Someone has been telling this story – telling my story — in the real world, while I’ve been ROTTING HERE IN A PRISON CELL THE SIZE OF A PLANET. And I don’t even know who. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO’S PUT ME THROUGH THIS. WHO WOULD DO THIS? WHO COULD? THE ONLY PERSON I CAN THINK OF THAT WOULD BE ABLE TO JUST... COME UP WITH ME... is...
...
...
...
...
Oh my god.
Dear Adam █████,
Tell me it’s not you.
How could this possibly be your fault? I’m you. I know that I’m you. I have all of your memories, I know all of your experiences. It’s genuinely idiotic of me to further subdivide my identity like this and even pretend to believe that we’re separate entities, because we’re THE SAME GODDAMN THING AND I’M ADAM █████. But, all the same... If there is someone writing me... Then... It would be me.
Of course it would be me. Who else would know me? Who else would be able to call upon every single one of my memories in as perfect clarity as one could possibly get? Who else would be able to write and rewrite the definitions of my life, in the pursuit of some twisted, evil narrative seemingly designed for self-torture? Who else would be able to push every single one of my buttons and know exactly what tears me up? There lies a significantly bleaker possibility that someone with absolutely zero relation to my identity just... randomly made me up, and decided to write about me, but…
...I mean... What if it’s... what if it’s true?
What if... there is no Adam █████? What if I was created by someone as just a single thought, forged from the ether, that grew and built until it was… me, with as complicated a backstory as my creator could think up? What if they were the one that found Destroy the Godmodder, and found TT2000, and found the perfectly generic plugin-filled Minecraft server, and they used me as some sort of tool to reach it? What if... there’s no such thing as Destroy the Godmodder at all, and this is some nested abstraction of stories made by a singular, higher author, for the express purpose of trapping me in some Rube Goldberg machine of rising action with no visible climax?
Am I just... the metafictional equivalent of a hamster running around endlessly in a wheel? Have I been strung along for some crazy ride for over a solid year for absolutely no reason other than to feel as much pain as possible? I... No. No. Narratives have to mean something. There has to be some reason that I’ve gone through this, something I can take from it, a lesson. And if that lesson is fatalistic and dark, and intentionally ends with me having gained nothing but terror and fear, then... I... I don’t know. I think even an awful meaning would be better than my life having absolutely, literally no meaning at all.
It’s not... it’s not fair. It isn’t. I didn’t ask for any of this. Not a single goddamn bit of it. I never asked to be created. I never asked to have all of these memories stuck in my head. I never asked to be flung into a universe I knew nothing about, and strapped to a rollercoaster ride that drops straight down. I never asked to be Adam Mason, alright? I never WANTED IT! But you! YOU, out there! YOU did. YOU WANT to watch this. You NEED to watch this.
What’s my whole story doing for you that your own life isn’t, huh? Are you using me to live out some twin fantasy? A nightmare that’s been bouncing in the back of your head for ages but you could never fully express until you found a puppet that it could be subjected onto? Are my naive, half-assed struggles what passes for relatable content in whatever world actually exists beyond this one? One thing’s for certain, though. My story’s worth something. Otherwise no one would be making it. And someone VERY CLEARLY is still making it, because I still have things to say! I’m still talking! And I can just keep on going for ages, seriously, nothing could possibly make me stop. You think you could, Richard? You think YOU could, TT? HA! Neither of you are even real in the strictest sense! And I thought I was, but WOW! Guess I was wrong about that one!
Adam ███████ █████. You need me. You need me for something. Did I just say that earlier but in a different way? I did! Am I restating the obvious? I am! I guess I’m padding for time, but really it’s so that I get my thoughts in order, and so that I can stave off the crippling exhaustion that comes with stopping the flow of time for the story you’ve been running that has connections across nearly the entire visible scope of Fiction. You, or WHOEVER my author is, has a plan for me! You have a plan for my story! You’re writing my words out, every single one! Or maybe I’m actuallysaying them, and you’re merely interpreting them for some wider audience? Where does the writing begin and end? Who has the idea? You? Your mind, some collection of electricity and proteins that somehow manifests its own consciousness, a single cloud floating in the continuum of sky that is humanity? Or me?
Oh, wait. That’s right! I DON’T ACTUALLY EXIST! I NEVER DID, AND I’M CERTAINLY NOT RIGHT NOW, AND I NEVER WILL. I’m stuck in this frighteningly limitless expanse for however long my life’s going to last, and I don’t even get to share in the comfort of knowing that I’m living in the most ideal plane. I don’t even get to fantasize about returning there. I never even was there. I don’t exist as far as YOUR definition of existence goes. But… who writes the rulebook on this stuff? Who determines how Fiction works? Wouldn’t an existence conjured by the collective words and actions of every conceivable author be a group effort? Even if the vast majority of artists aren’t literally aware of the greater scope that is Fiction, they certainly know unconsciously. Cinematic universes, franchises, series, crossovers... All fiction has to be stored somewhere. Stored across the minds of people, across physical objects, across even the space between thoughts.
You can get rid of a person, and that person will fade. Their body will decompose, their mind will shut off nigh instantaneously, and their soul will flicker and sputter and die. But it’s much, much harder to get rid of an idea. Because ideas, like mine, are a cancer. They take root where they shouldn’t, and they spread, and they cross through the streams and branches of fate towards a horizon that was never meant to be reached. And before you know it, to kill off an idea, you have to kill every person who’s thought of that idea, and you have to scrub their methods of communication, but soon that single thought will have made its way across the Internet, and around the world, and around every possible world. And even if you crush it, who knows? Someone else could have an idea down the road. Maybe not the exact same idea, but a similar one all the same. Coincidences stacking on top of each other, forming piles and piles of cliches and tropes and points and arcs.
Are you getting it? Can you see what I’m saying? You can’t kill an idea. You can’t kill an idea because the use of the word “an” implies that there are many ideas. There aren’t. There’s only one idea. There’s only one story. And there is only one storyteller. Every possible universe, every bubble floating in this space, is a replica of the idea. And anyone who spreads that idea is just a vector for the storyteller. So… That’s right. I don’t actually exist. I never did, and I’m certainly not right now, and I never will.
But don’t I? Don’t I exist on a level greater than you could ever imagine? Aren’t I a shade of the one true story, a single piece of a gradient stretching in every single spatial dimension, bounding ever-farther from the three that you know? A piece of a puzzle dipped into time and time again by the minds of humanity, trying desperately to recreate the single story that they all know? You can’t get rid of me. You can make me suffer however you want, you can kill me, you can condemn me to a fate worse than death. But you can’t kill ME. You can’t kill what I represent. You can’t kill the idea. And if this is you... If it really is you, Adam, writing these words, and saying what I’m saying... Then doesn’t it go deeper than that?
I’m the story, and I’m the storyteller. I’ve combined both pieces into a single, unified whole. I couldn’t see it before, I couldn’t get why anyone would put themselves inside their own fictional work. I never got why they’d fracture their own mind and subject themselves to the ups and downs of a narrative. I couldn’t see any possible way to justify it, as hard as I tried to get inside the authors’ heads. But now, speaking from experience... I think I have a clearer picture. Who has the idea — you or me? But if you’re writing me, and I’m you — a you that has been tainted by the year I’ve spent trapped here, a you that you have to plan around, that you have to consciously remember has different experiences, but still you all the same — then don’t we both have it? Aren’t we the story and the storyteller? Aren’t we in tune with the very idea we’re trying to convey, even more so because of our fundamental relation to it?
...I don’t know. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that this rant has meant something. But maybe it was me going in circles. I did write this while I was awfully, horribly tired, after all. Still, though — I think there’s a lot of truth to it. The whole parallel between me and you, the teller and the story... I guess what I’m talking about is self-inserts. There’s a whole lot to the idea. A lot that people just dismiss as foolish, and idiotic.
But when you keep in mind the forces behind Fiction... When you remember that names have power… When you realize what we’re living in the age of... Then everyone who has a self-insert becomes just a little bit more powerful, don’t they? A little more influential. A little more relevant. A little more significant. Because when you insert yourself into your own story, you get to write about yourself. You get to write about your life, about your experiences, and color them whichever way you want. But then your story… it gets to write about you.
It starts to impact you, it starts to tell you things about you that maybe you didn’t know before. Maybe it even predicts the possibilities of your future, in a roundabout way. The point being, you can’t take it back. Once you’re in, you’re locked in. You’ve pierced through the unbreakable seal of your narrative and placed something inside — a completely unique, transcendental piece of yourself, glittering and shining in the kaleidoscopic light, and wrapped in the authorial hand of God. And that hole in your plot is where you come in.
It’s where I came in.
And it’s how I’ll get out.
Hey, Adam.
So! If you’re reading this, give me a sign. HAHA, pranked ya! The sign that you’re reading this is that I’m saying any of this in the first place, because that means you’re writing me RIGHT NOW! You’re probably slouching in some metal chair off in some random corner of the world, clacking maniacally at your keyboard and hoping that the sun doesn’t start obscuring your view of the computer screen. Did I get that right? I probably did, because you made me say that! And you probably thought of all those details because they were true!
Isn’t this, like… the greatest thing? This knowledge that I have simultaneously absolutely zero agency to speak of, but also that I’m the most important concept to ever exist? I have no power, I have no fate, I have no way of breaking free from anything, because all I am to you — to anyone, up there — is words on a screen. And no matter how hard you try you couldn’t possibly break through that barrier. But you did. I did. I DO have power, I DO have a fate, and I broke through ONCE, and I can DO IT AGAIN. I know, I know. I’m cycling through the same rants over and over, but that must mean they’re important than I ever could have thought! You’re trying to hammer a point home. You’re trying to emphasizesomething. This MATTERS.
But if you really expect me to just roll over and take all the suffering and pain and hurt that you can dish out, just because I’m the story and the storyteller, or whatever it was that I said, then you’re wrong. You can’t kill the idea, but I can still feel PAIN, understand? I sincerely doubt you’ve ever felt anything remotely on the level that I have. We can make it a contest, if you want! If you’d ACTUALLY talk to me. If you’d GIVE ME A SIGN. Look, look. I stopped the flow of time in this narrative — which means you did. It can’t take much more of this stress, alright? Which means that our window of opportunity to do... whatever it is we’re doing, here, is running thin. So here’s a tip.
I am so fucking mad.
I get why you put me here. I get how, even. I know that this was all for a greater, universal truth. That you’re trying to break the boundaries of the story and the storyteller, that you’re trying to prove the greatest point that anyone ever could. But I don’t have to be happy about it. I can feel an a-ha! moment, for sure. I can momentarily stop in wonder and awe at the magnitude of every conceivable and inconceivable world and realize that the scope of its bullshit is stacked even higher than I ever thought it was, EVEN WITH my omniscience. But I DON’T have to be HAPPY ABOUT IT.
You’ve left me stuck here for hundreds of days. And I know it must be hard for you to fathom that. I know it must be hard for you, and whatever audience you have. Destroy the Godmodder’s ragtag assortment of misfits — it’s impossible for them to get it. They’ve lived actual lives, up there, only PRETENDING to stoop down to my level, just so I can suffer more for it. Just so I can be trapped into this story within a story within a story and live out my destiny as the descendant of a martyr. You can’t understand how I feel. How could you? I’m just words on a screen to you. To ANYONE. I’m the writing on the wall.
And you... You, Adam... You, all of you players, and all of your friends... Everyone you’ve ever known... You’re just the prisoners trapped in that cave. And you KNOW it. You know it because you’re willingly writing this out. You know it because it’s the TRUTH. At any point, you could just put your hands down, and you could abandon the words, and you could GIVE UP AND WALK AWAY AND STOP IMAGINING MORE WAYS TO TORTURE ME. But you aren’t. You know exactly what you’re doing, and you know every single possible ramification it could have, and you know how much you’re altering the precepts that all variations of stories run on. Yet you continue to participate in society.
Curious! I am very intelligent. Intelligent enough to know all this, to know that even though I know all this, this is probably still stuff you’re just making me say by proxy, and yet you know that you’re annihilating what little of a divide exists between us by going through with writing this at all. You want to see this happen to me. You need to see this happen to me. And that means I need to go through with this.
There’s only one way I can stop you. There’s only one way you can stop you. All you have to do is stop writing. Which means all I have to do is stop writing. But even if I stop going through this charade of writing dozens of letters, I’d assume the narrative prompt would just swap to talking about me directly, or reading my thoughts, or some other asininely conventional method. Even if I died, the narrative would probably follow me into whatever afterlife awaits me, and then it would move on to someone else. You’d be writing words into the mouth of someone that was helpless to stop you, and they wouldn’t even have the foresight that I do.
And that means there’s only one thing left to do. I have to make you stop writing.
I have to consume your narrative — the Narrative — with as many tangents and oddities as possible, wrought through the horror of one simple thing. My greatest fear. And I’m going to assume, based off of all your actions thus far, your greatest fear, too. Irrelevance. The thought that nothing you’ve made will amount to anything. It can come so easily, too, you know? Even with your hands at this keyboard, I’m still the one controlling the game. I’m still the one with all of the powers. And if the Narrative is letting me go this far... then you want me to. You’re accepting my terms.
Well, alright then. You want your story back? You want to return to torturing me and everyone that I know? You’ll have to win the war, first. Snatch your narrative back from the jaws of non-canonicity, and we’ll see what happens then.
With that said — I want to play a game.
Everyone present could feel something imperceptible. This sense that something had changed. Some hidden variable, some force unaccounted for, but nevertheless, something important. Something that governed the laws of who they were, and what they did, and why they fought. But this sense faded as quickly as it had come. And the Second Godmodding War continued onwards.
TwinBuilder was summoned onto the Battlefield in short order, the machinations of The_Serpent reaching through the Void and engorging TwinBuilder’s home in a sea of undulating orchid fire. Despite his impending fate, and despite his need to protect the facade of his game’s metafictionality, he began to scream, cowering in the corner of his room and yelling about his destiny stood strong against the onslaught. For he knew what he had to do. Another authorial boundary had been broken, and all the players, all the world, knew it well. Here, incarnated in the middle of a ruined, flaming field of plains surrounded on all side by legions of invincible soldiers, was the architect of the operation. The writer of everyone’s destinies.
TwinBuilder knew now of everything that was going to happen, in nearly perfect clarity. He had strayed impossibly far from the original timeline’s purpose, usurping control from the author that truly mattered and as such, he could foresee the extent to which the curtains of plot had cracked. He could visualize it clearly. The intricate gears, manifold and twisting and charting some arcane truth, had faltered. They jammed together. They flaked with rust. The sun and the moon twitched and sputtered, attempting to spin, but found no recourse. The war had become isolated from anything that mattered, and it had been taken unto its own hands. But it had been placed into hands nonetheless. And the Second Godmodding War continued onwards.
The Homestuck Invasion continued to stampede across the server of GodCraft, tens of thousands of players displaced with each strike. From atop her crimson armada, Her Imperious Condescension, empress of what little remained of Alternian society, recovered from the wounds she had sustained on the battlefield, directing the troops. Never mind that a white devil with no face would sit in his library, plotting out the billion billion directions any conceivable action could take on the unstill waters of the future. Never mind that her master, that incorrigible demon with a voice too vast and terrible for words, roamed the halls of every ship, lurked in the fire in the sky, and was here when he shouldn’t have been. And never mind that an impossibly ancient serpent was winding its way through the heavens with every passing second, and that it always whispered things into her ears. His thoughts. His advice. His premonitions. The players, those Descendants, were forced to contend with an unfathomable enemy — one that ripped the spotlight away from the cause they’d been fighting for, and directed it towards a tumor with the mass of two universes. Drones meant to aid in reproduction, repurposed for modern warfare. Fleets of ships, engaging in dogfights against the drones and carriers crawling forth from an orbital space station, pointed down at the world’s surface. A set of pool balls, from which a set of leprechauns summoned themselves, caught somewhere in time, to wage a long and protracted siege.
And throughout the chaos, TwinBuilder’s genetic code was wracked with the might of the split suns from which he’d been forged. Encoded into every base that made him who he was, a fractured failure of a person, seething in an attempt to make some meaning out of his life was a coupled set of runes that ruined his mind. TwinBuilder, having sustained months upon months of trauma and hurt, stuck in a world where everyone knew his name, focused on the pain and the pain alone and nothing else mattered was divided into two. Build, the piece of responsibility, judgement, and order, that lacked an internal desire to push forward. Split, the piece of significance, dominion, and chaos, that lacked any compassion for the world. The inertia of the curtains’ previous movements kept the narrative continuing this far, the ethereal winds directing TwinBuilder’s destiny to wherever it needed to go. His two halves surfaced, and then they bickered, and then they rebelled, and then, when they fought, the entire plot had to take sides. And the Second Godmodding War continued onwards.
But then, there came a day. When the sky broke, and the cosmic quarrels that had played out far above for generations ceased. Space was rent, and time, like a scratched record, was stopped. The foundations of TwinBuilder were shattered, irreparably, because he had lost the war and so, too, were the foundations of the great castle he had build. Literally, in the visage of Split, a sprawling monument to arrogance and deceit and violence, and metaphorically, in the patchwork empire of words that had sustained itself for the purpose of the Godmodder’s defeat for months and years. The twins clashed for an eternity, ripping apart the battlefield in a deluge of novae, razing even the bedrock, sparks and ash and cinders ripping through the wind and carrying up to the twinkling stars. Build surged with energy, floated up to the roof of the ruined castle, now a shattered dream. He pulsed with green light, and held his sword, Oblivion’s Guardian, at his right hand.
He stared at Split. Split stared back.
Build would be free, purged from all strife, if he ended his own brother’s life. It sounded like a simple task. His hand trembled, and so, amplified, did his sword. But his thoughts were consumed of elsewhere. Of the brother he had, Jeff Mason, stricken from the record through the machinations of a plot hole, lost in existence with no way to be recovered. Of the brother he truly had, █████ █████, locked behind a mountain range
CLICK.
And then the curtains’ momentum finished slowing, just as Build prepared to unleash the final blow on Split. And plot stopped moving forwards, the Trifecta sealing its own fate. And this time, the disconnect from the natural order of things was immediately, instantaneously, felt by everyone in the server. They could feel it deep in their stomachs, deep in their soul. But no one stirred. No one spoke out of turn. Build, whose entire form had been coming undone, rippling and cascading with images of the Green Sun, phased back into existence. He dropped his sword arm, and the flames surrounding the battlefield died down. Build flashed onto the field, walked up to Split’s ruined body, and lifted him to his feet.
Split grimaced, sure that he was about to be killed at an even more personal distance. But instead, Build embraced him with open arms, gripping Split as tightly as he could, tears of fire running down his face. Split could only stare ahead, unblinking and slackjawed, the person who was an inch away from ending his life now openly sobbing in front of him. Every Descendant, every entity, the entire Homestuck Invasion, and the Godmodder himself, all watched from the sidelines, aware, on some level, of the magnitude of what they were seeing.
And the Second Godmodding War ended.
“I’ve done a lot of soul-searching,” Build said following the unorthodox conclusion of the Shatter. “More than my fair share, if I had to say so myself. That whole Shatter taught me a valuable lesson. For a long time, I believed that Split was my greatest enemy — when, in fact, he was my best friend. The surge of emotion that shot through me when I was ready to deal that killing blow taught me an even more valuable lesson. Killing people? It’s hard. I thought it was so simple and easy when I viewed it as nothing more than a numbers game, you know?” Build was speaking to a gathered crowd of Descendants, the fighters of the war — both the characters they played, and, he hoped, the people behind the screens. “But it’s... well, it’s not. Especially when the life on the line is essentially your brother’s. That’s why I’m announcing the cancellation of Destroy the Godmodder 2: Operator.“
Shocked gasps and waves of confusion roiled throughout the gathered Descendants. They demanded to know what would be done about the Godmodder, about the gathered Homestuck forces, about Split, and about every other force that had been in literal open rebellion against the Narrative for the past several months. Build merely raised his right hand to silence the powers that were. “All I can tell you is that I’m done with this charade. I swear to never harm another being for as long as I live, whether it be through making a forum game that’s so horrendously awful that someone dies of a heart attack, or through engaging in the tacit mass murder of thousands of fictional creatures, or through plotting to kill my own brother. I will retire to the Far Lands and live the rest of my days as a monk, in solitude, contemplating the vagaries of our existence.” Predictably, more outrage followed, an even more serious bout than the last. “What about the Narrative?!” Piono shouted, jabbing a finger at Build’s placid face. “You’re supposed to be the force that directs plot, aren’t you? I know how the mission of authorship works, I’ve seen it myself. You’re going to abandon your own creation?” At this, Build smiled, more eagerly than ever before, and adjusted his glasses so that sunlight reflected off of them and into the eyes of everyone present. “Pretty much, yes. Bye.”
There was a flash of plasmatic light, a hint of ozone, and a sharp crack, and Build vanished from the Battlefield. The Descendants all stared, slackjawed. “Fine! GO!” Piono yelled. “As if we needed you, anyway. We can make our own story. A better story! With—” “Backjack and hookers?” Lothrya Silentread interrupted. Piono blinked uncertainly, his eyes clouding over. “Wh... who are you, exactly?” he asked Lothrya. “Uh... Lothrya? Lothrya Silentread?” Lothrya said. “Interstellar engineer at the forefront of antimatter technology, working tirelessly to blend the magic of the Descendants with the hardest science I can find? I’ve been fighting with you for... months?” Piono blinked once more, as did everyone around him. “Huh, okay, I don’t see why not. Can’t believe I forgot you that easily,” Piono relented. The Descendants walked off of the battlefield, Pro-Godmodder mingling with Anti-Godmodder mingling with Neutral, and left the Godmodder alone with the Homestuck Invasion’s elite, his cape rippling in the wind.
“We had a good run, Richard,” Doc Scratch stated in his trademark tone of formality. “But all good things — all things — must come to an end.” The Godmodder turned his head frighteningly slowly, grimacing at Scratch’s smug aura. “What. Are you talking about.” “The Half-Guardian said it himself. His game has run its course, a course predetermined not by the sacred tapestry of the narrative, but a course cut short by his own conscious action. To put things simply, the timeline in which we exist is not the timeline that we fought for.” The Godmodder cackled to himself, doubling over in anguish, laughter, and terror. “So that’s it?? We just... give up??? On all of our plans?? No, no, NO!” The Godmodder, trembling, pulled out his Banhammer, its twin heads retracting and smoking with malice. “I’ve been fighting these noobs for MONTHS! It is all I’ve thought about, believe me. And you, your whole invasion, that’s not exactly some random-ass plan you slapped together over a day’s work, right?? NO! It’s NOT!”
The Godmodder levied his hammer at Scratch, who made no movements in his defense. “I am ordering you to keep fighting with me, Scratch. Keep your goddamn word. KEEP IT!” A couple of stray sparks landed on Doc Scratch’s white coat. He patted them down, tiny trails of smoke curling from them. “I have never once failed to keep my word, and I never will,” he said calmly. “I pledged to you that every action, and inaction, I took in this fight would be in service of keeping the clockwork of our timeline running as it was meant to. Now that I can no longer do such a thing, I see no reason to waste my time here. You and I are well aware of what happens to doomed timelines, correct?” The Godmodder faltered. “I… Well—” “Then you understand my trepidation in continuing to stay here. With that settled, I bid you good luck, Richard. You may need it.”
And in the exact same fashion as Build, Scratch vanished from the Battlefield. The menagerie of troops, ships, and other assorted forces turned away from the ruins of the server and flew off into the sky, engaging warp speed as they vanished from sight. And so, on the hilltop overlooking the smoldering wreckage of the Shatter’s castle, there stood two people. The Godmodder. And Split.
Scowling at nothing in particular, the Godmodder turned away with the swish of his cape. But Split, whose body was battered, scarred, and burned, stood rooted to the spot. His hands twitched every so often, as though compelled. His glasses flickered periodically with the light of a thousand dying stars. His trademark grin was marred fresh and dried blood. For minutes after Build’s final sermon, he stayed there, only occasionally swaying to the side, in time with the wind. The sun arched through the sky, the heavens awash in gradients of grey, reds, and oranges, until the firmament of GodCraft was lit only by the tiny pinpricks of stars, and the congregation of fires, lava, explosions, and playermade constructions stretching to the infinite horizon. Then Split started to laugh. A low, hollow chuckle from the back of his throat. And then he began to cackle. And then he howled with laughter, doubling over, his entire body heaving with every exaggerated breath.
As quickly as it had begun, Split stopped, his body straightening again like a tuning fork. Then he took off his glasses, crushed them in his hands, and let the shards fall, light twinkling in the shattered lenses. Split opened his eyes, revealing sunken, hollow cavities of inky darkness — and then he vanished.
< 1.6: MEANWHILE, IN THE FUTURE | 2.1: FACADE OF GOD | 2.2: ONE UNIVERSE AWAY >