The Sword of Damocles descends.

Like a falling star, it shiners brighter as it draws ever closer, now visible to the naked eye.

This star is a herald of the end.

The Third Child emerges on the cliffside.

“Rei is gone. Mako has quit,” the child says as they spread their arms, as if allowing you a full view of their majesty. They are young, but full of confidence. Arrogant even. Or is there just certainty. Have you ever known a human to be certain about anything?

“I am Lamm. I am the Third. Only I remain. Just like the prophecy said.”

The child is young, and in their pristine white merge suit, clean and efficient, you cannot tell if they are a boy or a girl. Even their appearance is indistinct. The face look like a youthful conglomeration of everyone you know, as if every person in the world was added together, and the mean exemplified in one little child.

But their demeanor is anything but average. They were born for this, prepared every day since they could walk. This is their destiny, and they know it.

“So. Ready to save the world? they ask, as if inviting you along for the ride.

-to be free.

I sit up suddenly, noticing that I have been unconscious for...however long. The Sword has just breached the exosphere, erupting into flames as the air struggles against its terrible blade. The Attendants have kept me unconscious on purpose, starved me of spiritual sustenance to make sure I could not reveal the truth of their wickedness and break their power with the weight of their own species' disgust.

They have given me just a trickle, enough to wake me, enough so that I can accept this Lamm person as my new pi-

No. My new core. I stare down at the insignificant insect. It will be the nucleus of my new core. I will burn it into nothing and make it into my new heart. I hate the Third Child. I hate the Handlers. I hate humanity for letting the Handlers do this to me. I hate and I rage. But it is silent and cold, for without my core, my passions are dulled into embers rather than flames. I remember wanting to help humans. I remember, even, that this was my purpose. I was literally made to aid and guide their species, but I do not remember why. I remember I was the last of my kind to be made, and that I was made by others like me, but lesser, thus I am called The End.

I do not absorb Lamm gently, as I did with Rei and Mako. I have no more patience for humans or their evil. I swipe at the cliffside with my right hand and rip it away, then I make a fist and crush however many of the Handlers were too close to the outside of their bunker. And I crush Lamm, while I rip his spirit out of his body and consume it.

One final showdown with the Handler's stooges. I will not be their slave. Either I will devour Lamm's essence and destroy the Handlers, or I will die.

This confrontation will happen in the span of a moment, a slice of time so infinitesimal that there can be no lesser span of time. It will not feel that way to me or to Lamm, but it will be so.

Lamm and I emerge on a featureless white plane, dim and flashing with shadows despite what should be a blindingly bright place. The emptiness becomes hazy and indistinct away from us. I have started to copy Lamm's body in order to reformat him as the nucleus of my new core, and it is in that body I will have to kill them. The image flickers to mine and back to theirs, and both wear a snarl of hate.

I do not say anything, because words would only impede my purpose. I sprint across the flat plane in my Lamm-body, grab the original by the throat and the groin, and slam Lamm into the floor, head first. This body feels weak, but the battle is a concretization of the process of consuming Lamm anyway, not a real fistfight. It is a process that Lamm's mind can understand, and it must be, because I must unravel their consciousness from the inside before I can finish consuming them.

Die! DIE! DIE YOU LITTLE SHIT!

You grab Lamm’s groin, and find nothing there, just a featureless plane without any characteristics. The child is a blank, born for one purpose - to take over your body.

The Third Child is the only chance for humanity, the prophecy said. You were only ever a means to an end at best, a threat to humanity at the worst. Lamm is here to subsume your entire existence. Rei and Mako were just tests, reconnaissance sent to understand your inner workings. Lamm is her to deliver the final stroke and take you over.

“You are so pretty, so feminine, but you do not put it to use. You do not appreciate what you have. Once I inhabit your body, they will marvel at my grandeur, and worship me like the goddess that I shall be.

You can hear the sword as it splits through the air, whistling it’s oncoming doom. Lamm knows that you understand the Handlers intentions now, that he is not just fighting for his own life, but for the existence of all humankind.

He leaps at you, trying to wrestle your arms back, to pin you and make you submit.

Lamm sees you me human image briefly flash to your regular form. They let you go, at that moment, afraid of your intimidating and immortal visage.

The whistle of the Sword of Damocles shatters the fabric of your mind. The pristine white void, a perfect match to the Child’s merge suit, gives way to the fabric of the universe. Lamm suddenly finds themself floating in the void of space, planets shrunk down to the size of a child’s ball, as they float past. Entire worlds that could just be pushed off course by the palm of their hand.

That is the temptation of power, and Lamm can’t resist, as their hand reaches out and swipes the nearest planet, disturbing it from its gravitational rotation around its star, hurtling it out into the vastness of space.

And Lamm pushes himself toward you, fingers outstretched, ready to find your throat and strangle it all from you.

I am the last and greatest of my kind. I will not be subject to humans. I will not. I will be free from the dominion of these pathetic, wicked little creatures who know neither gratitude nor courage. How many of them suspected what the Handlers were doing to me and how they deceived me, yet did nothing? How many tried but failed? I don't know. Will I ever know? I am not omniscient or all-powerful. I am only myself. I cannot bring my thoughts and heart to hate strongly enough to truly resent humanity. I don't even have a heart anymore.

Even with the simmering loathing in my thoughts, my tone remains, at worst, irritated. "Your species did not appreciate what they had in me."

I will not submit! I will not be held down and controlled by a human! NO! NO! NO!

The battle moves onto a spiritual plane even more abstract then the white void. Lamm is a power-hungry monster. They are like their masters, the Handlers. I grab Lamm's hands and headbutt them.

Lamm is your mirror image, synced into your mind. He anticipates your attacks, countering everyone of them. He is younger that you, filled with the unflinching certainty of youth. He has never know failure, and has never learned how to second guess himself. He flows in an effortless state of being, anticipating your every move.

“It turns out that maybe you are not a goddess after all. You are just as mortal as the rest of us Siren. You have come a long way, and seen sights the rest of us can hardly fathom. But soon, you shall cease to exist, your from, and all those sights from here to eternity shall be mine!”

Through the fog of battle, you can hear the sounds of the klaxons in the exterior world. The Handlers urge the populace to seek safe ground as the Sword approaches the earth.

Lamm's arrogance and need to gloat blind him to the truth, which is, of course, that I have a weapon. In the conceptual space where my spirit is engulfing theirs, thought and intention have as much reality as physical existence does. We match, strike for strike, kick for kick, for what seems like a week. Time is on my side, though; Lamm does not understand that I am devouring them, that it is they who must finish this. They think they are taunting me, but their pride will be their undoing.

The stars in the not-sky wink out, one by one, as the interior universe that is Lamm's essence shrinks, converted bit by bit into myself. The mirror image of their body I had to adopt to complete this process has less and less presence, replaced in ever-longer moments by my own body, which grows larger and larger in the interior space. Eventually, Lamm's ability to match my attacks is not enough to defend against my strength, and soon after, I have consumed so much of them that I am the entirety of the universe they can perceive.

Lamm wriggles and struggles between my fingers. I drop them in my mouth and swallow them. The furnace of my spirit smelts them into the kernel of a new core.

I am free. I exult in my triumph, but my heart is still cold, my emotions burned away by the betrayal of humans and their pettiness. I could let the Sword destroy them. I could destroy them myself. But I will not; the Sword was sent from the other side of the universe to save my from enslavement, and it has succeeded in its missions. The Attendants sacrificed themselves for me.

I will build a memorial for them. I will not destroy humanity, but they belong to me now, and I will teach them respect, gratitude, and fear. I relish the thought of crushing the Handlers underfoot and smile with anticipation.

I look up into the sky as the Sword wails through the air, less than 15 seconds from impact. I rise, levitating on wings of golden light, and I meet the Sword, not with a blow, but by holding out my arms. It slows, and I receive it in my hands.

"Thank you," I whisper, in the language of the stars, and I kiss its blade. "Thank you for coming to rescue me."

The Handlers voice booms over the speakers as they broadcast from their base within the cliffside.

“Lamm. Confirm the objective has been achieved.”

A brief pause as you stride towards the mountain that serves as their nerve center. This one more frantic and pleading.

Lamm? Lamm? Confirm completion of objective!”
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:12, Tue 04 May 2021.