Bill hates it when people mention Euclydia. Everyone thinks it's because he doesn't want to hear his home's real name; it's actually the opposite.
Here, have some fic. The naming of Euclydia (among other things), the birth of the Nightmare Realm, and the Axolotl planting the seeds of a trillion-year-long plan to keep Bill from the death penalty.
This is the 🎉FINAL PART🎉 of a 9-part plot about the Axolotl in the aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. If you wanna read the others (or look at the art), here's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.
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With the immediate crisis averted and the triangle, for the moment, not attempting to invade and/or demolish the multiverse, most of the god militia pulled back. A group remained stationed near the unstable border between dimensions to watch the triangle; but the less powerful gods could trickle back in to get back to their own work, first and foremost the construction workers doing emergency repairs to reformat and stabilize the neighboring dimensions.
The Axolotl—who, he suspected, would have been arrested himself for interfering if they weren't still focused on the triangle—wove through the crowd until he found the Time Giant; and then swam angrily up to her and demanded, "You used me as a distraction?"
She turned a stone-hard look on him. "That was the agreement."
"No! The agreement was that I'd try to talk him down! We'd only resort to distracting him if I couldn't get through to him!"
"Ya didn't get through to him." The Time Giant nodded at the Axolotl's burned side. "Look at you. Your leg's off."
He looked down at his missing foreleg. He'd been so distracted by the near end of the multiverse, he'd barely noticed the pain. "It's just a flesh wound," he insisted. "I'm an axolotl, it'll grow back!"
She shook her head.
"I would have gotten through to him! You saw me talk him down after an entire army threatened him!" the Axolotl said. "What if I had succeeded, and when we left my tank he found out you already wrote him off?! You never gave me a chance—"
"We did give you a chance," she said testily, "and I saw that you weren't gonna succeed." She hooked a thumb over her belt and tapped a finger on her time tape; the stylized symbol of the Time Giants glowed on the side, an unsubtle reminder that she knew what was coming far better than he did. "So I did my damn job."
So she'd sent him in already knowing that he would fail. The Axolotl was speechless for a second. "But—you couldn't know—I got so close, if I'd had just one more try to talk to him..."
"If I'd let you, I'm sure you woulda kept trying until the end of time," she said. "You seem like a good guy, Ax—but you can't save everyone." She pushed past him to get to work. "There's first aid near where Dimension 2 Gamma was. Get those burns looked at."
"They're fine."
She was wrong. He could save everyone. Because he wouldn't stop until he did.
####
"You're replacing it?" the triangle asked petulantly.
"I'm not talking to you," VENDOR said, turned away from the triangle. "You had your chance at diplomacy and you blew it." The crablike cop was holding up a clipboard with some paperwork for VENDOR to review, and didn't look pleased to have been temporarily reduced to a secretary.
"I'm just asking a question!"
"We're not speaking."
At the top of his lungs—which was, it turned out, very loud and very shrill—the triangle said in the direction of the reporters, "Oh wow, that's a crazy thing to say about Lady Morgenstern! And talk about obscene! She'd be furious if she could hear that—!"
"Shhhhh!" VENDOR rounded angrily on the triangle. "You don't even know who she is!"
"I know her name and I'm not afraid to use it," the triangle said. "You're really replacing my dimension?"
"If I can be left alone long enough to finish signing the authorization paperwork," VENDOR muttered. "The construction crew's already out here and waiting, so if you don't mind..."
"It just seems pretty tacky, replacing a universe just like that." The triangle spoke like dimension he was talking about was just a pawn to be used in a trivial argument about etiquette, rather than everyone and everything he'd ever known. "No memorial or anything? Yeesh."
"So hold a memorial for it," VENDOR said. "We don't have any choice, we have to repair all the fallen walls to keep reality stable. If you'd let us into your hovel to sweep up what's left of your old dimension, it could have at least been incorporated into the new one."
The triangle half reached for his hat, stopped himself, and curled his hand into a fist and thrust it down at his side. "Over my dead body," he said. "Which I'm pretty sure got incinerated! So that means never!"
"You're pretty sure?" VENDOR asked archly.
"It... I had more important stuff to take care of, okay? I'm a busy guy!"
"I'm sure," VENDOR said. "Well, it's too late for any cleanup operations anyway. Enjoy rotting away in your landfill."
"Wow, that's how you talk to a refugee from the biggest disaster ever?" The triangle laughed. "Hey, bet the muckrakers over there would love to hear how sympathetic you are to the—what'd you say I am—the 'last surviving soul from my dimension'—?"
"Let's find somewhere quieter to work," VENDOR said to the cop.
He looked relieved "You got it."
As VENDOR and THEIR impromptu secretary moved away from Dimension Zero, the triangle shouted after THEM, "Hey! How do I vote for Municipalitron!"
Volcanoes on several of VENDOR's planets erupted. THEY whipped around to face the triangle. "You don't! You aren't in my district!"
"Well, whose district am I in? This Morgenstern creep you keep bringing up?" the triangle asked. "How's voting work, do you toss a ballot across the border and I toss it back—?"
"You're not in anyone's district! If you were, you'd have been arrested already!"
The triangle stared in dumb shock. "Wait, so I don't get to vote for which of you idiots I have to deal with?" He hollered at VENDOR's retreating back, "That's fascism!"
Fuming, VENDOR passed the Axolotl muttering under THEIR breath about showing the triangle fascism; then stopped, abruptly turned to face him, and snapped, "You."
"You," the Axolotl agreed.
"You're an optimistic fool."
Yes, well, he knew that already. He'd been voted Most Adorably Idealistic in his law school yearbook for a reason. "I don't think I like you, either."
"No one does." THEIR camera whirred irritably as they looked the Axolotl up and down. "What are you doing here, anyway? I assumed you'd been sent to figure out who's liable for this whole mess—but no, you only handle afterlife cases, don't you? Who sent you?"
The Axolotl was silent.
Furiously, VENDOR said, "Are you serious?! We could have avoided half this mess if it weren't for you!"
"If it weren't for me, he'd have knocked down the multiverse before anyone realized he's setting the fires," the Axolotl snapped. "And if you had figured that much out, you'd have gotten your cops killed before anyone realized he's a god."
"The professionals here to handle the situation could have figured it out faster if you weren't derailing their investigations," VENDOR snarled. "And arguing about jurisdiction! We could have arrested that that little troublemaker the moment we figured out just what he's done—"
"Right after you arrested that kid with the spray can who didn't have anything to do with this?"
THEY growled in frustration. "Forget it! I hope you're happy with your genocidal pal over there—you seem about as concerned with public safety as he is." THEY stormed off, the cop with THEIR paperwork chasing after THEM.
The Axolotl watched VENDOR go; then turned to look ruefully toward Dimension Zero.
When the triangle caught his gaze, he formed a heart with his fingers over his top point and called out, gleefully singsong, "Genocide paaals!"
It wasn't exactly the reaction he'd hoped for.
####
The Axolotl was attempting to distract himself from scratching his itchy leg while it regrew by eavesdropping on the triangle. It seemed like the triangle was entertaining himself by darting around the border of Dimension Zero to start arguments with anybody he happened to recognize (except the Axolotl, whom he seemed to be trying to ignore outside of throwing a few odd quips at him.) At the moment, the triangle and the Time Giant were hollering at each other about her decision to reinforce the second dimensions by making them splinter into multiple timelines.
"So you're really willing to sacrifice zillions of lives by letting me incinerate all their parallel timelines?" The triangle laughed in disbelief. "And everyone here thinks I'm the killer! That's not a good look for you, buddy!"
She glanced up from a table full of paperwork to give him a totally neutral look. "You're the one who's willing to incinerate them. You could not do that."
"When I do it, it's justified."
The Axolotl was distracted from the argument as the storm cloud with the apoc agents gloomily blew past him. It was talking into a walkie-talkie as it went: "Yeah, I know he's a nut. But he's a nut that can't throw fireballs outside the border of his dimension, and I've got to finish this report before we can get outta here." He sighed at whatever the walkie-talkie said in response, and said, "Yeah. We'll rendezvous after I have his testimony." It let its tornado suck the walkie-talkie back in and drifted to the Time Giant. "Mind if I steal your conversation partner for a minute? ATTF business."
She grabbed a binder to try to shield her papers from the worst of the storm's rain. "Please. Take him."
"Thanks." It floated closer to Dimension Zero and raised its voice to bark, "Hey! Magister Mentium!"
The triangle looked over mistrustfully. "What?" As he'd talked to the Time Giant, he'd been playing with the fabric of reality, creating a circle out of raw... stuff. The Axolotl couldn't tell what the stuff was, but it looked like it was some sort of animal tissue, except far too uncannily homogeneous to be natural, disturbing in its uniformity. Like a slice of baloney. When he saw who'd called out to him, he rolled his eye and turned his attention to extruding the circle into a baloney cylinder. "Heeey, Officer Fun Police! Here to rain on my parade again?"
"Rain jokes aren't as funny as you think they are," it said. "No, this is Apocalyptic Threat Task Force business."
The triangle's eye narrowed. "What business? Are you gonna complain about my renovations again?"
"No. If you're not about to knock reality down, I don't care what you do anymore," the cloud said. "It's not my business to punish anybody for previous apocalypses, I just want to prevent future ones. Answer a few questions for our incident report and I'll be out of your life." There was an implicit and you'll be out of mine in its tone.
"All right," the triangle said dubiously. "Fffine. Then we're on the same side. I'm not fond of apocalypses either."
It paused like it wanted to argue with that claim, but said, "Good enough for me." It pulled out the soggy notepad it had been using all day, flipped through it, couldn't find a free page, and with a sigh pulled out a tape recorder instead. "You're from Dimension 2 Delta, right?"
"If you say so," the triangle said, lifting his hands in a shrug. "You guys are the ones who named my dimension."
"Uh-huh." Under its breath, the cloud muttered, "Not exactly a name, but... If you're from 2Δ, that makes you the only direct witness to how your universe was destroyed."
The triangle paused. "Mm."
"Can you explain what happened, exactly?" When the triangle didn't respond, the cloud added, "I'm not gonna arrest you for it. If we want to have a chance of stopping something like this from happening in the future, we need to know what happened here."
"Uhhh, yyyeah. Suuure," the triangle said. It wasn't clear exactly how Dimension Zero rearranged, but the view of the eternal dance party simply vanished. There was no sign of the millions of shapes. The music had fallen near silent, just a constant distant low thumping noise, like your heartbeat in your ears; quiet enough that it couldn't drown out the whispery hiss leaking out of Dimension Zero. "It's not like I have anything to hide." Whatever he was about to say, it seemed like he wanted to hide it from his party prisoners, at least.
A bolt of lightning shot through the storm's recorder, turning it on. "You said you were an active participant in the end of the world, right?"
"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" He eyed the recorder suspiciously. "What is this, some trick to try to get a confession out of me?"
"Again, I'm not a cop. And you already confessed in front of a thousand reporters," the storm said. "If you were involved, you've got a different perspective than some guy ten superclusters away who only witnessed it, that's the only reason it matters."
"Oh," the triangle said. "Then—yeah, I was there for the whole thing. Start to finish."
"Great," the storm said gruffly. "Then could you explain in your own words what happened when the universe ended and, to the best of your knowledge, what caused it."
"Oh. Yeah. Right. The cause," the triangle said. "It... it was a—monster."
"I thought you said you—"
"It was a monster," the triangle said, more confidently now.
The cloud hesitated. "All right," it said. "Tell me what happened."
The triangle took a deep breath. "Okay. So. It uh—started with the third dimension."
"The monster came from the third dimension?"
"No, we were going to the third dimension. But we needed—"
The hissing background static exploded into a roar.
The void filled with the staticky screams of countless dead voices, pleading for mercy, pleading for it to stop. Death rattles, howls of agony, wails of terror. Most of the crowd of gods outside Dimension Zero fell silent, turning to stare at the disembodied hysterical shrieks.
One voice, strained with pain, rose above the cacophony, crackling, "Emergency services! We need medical assistance! Ambulances, or—please—I don't know what happened—it's like everyone's internal organs spontaneously ruptured, there's—there's hundreds of people here! Some of them are missing parts of their body, they just—disappeared! I'm hurt too, I don't know what it is—I can feel it inside me—"
A second voice replied, "We can't send assistance. Everyone's bleeding, the whole city's dying! We can't help you!"
Whatever the triangle said was lost beneath the roar. He didn't even seem to notice it. His eye was filled with static. The word "blood" was just barely audible. The word "mandibles."
Another voice, trying to sound professional, trying to sound authoritative, but trembling with fear, "This is an emergency announcement! This announcement will not repeat! The fire can transmit over radio waves and sound waves! Turn off all radios and TVs! Turn off all radios and TVs and destroy any wireless phones and pagers! Do NOT listen to the screams! Again, the fire is transmitting over radio waves, this message will not repeat, destroy your radio and warn your neighbors!"
The Axolotl saw images flash in the triangle's eye, too fast for him to mentally process one before another ten had gone by: a plane like infinitely thin glass with tiny delicate shapes painted on its surface shattering in a rolling wave; a bleeding body reduced to shards and then the shards reduced to chips and then chips reduced to dust; fire spitting and crackling into every crack split in existence; a light shaped like a triangle. (Was that the light that had blinded the Oracle's seer?)
Another voice gasping, "It's doing something to the gravity, I-I don't understand—we don't even have the equipment to read... it's like gravity's turned in a direction that doesn't exist! Does anyone know how to stop it?! Our universe is tearing ap—" and the words were cut off with a scream; and the scream was cut off with a sudden silence that was swallowed whole by the other voices.
The triangle had peeled open, shining golden panels stretching out like petals, his mandibles unhinged and curling around his eye in a ring of teeth, like a blooming carnivorous flower, sun-soaked and mesmerizing. God, he was so bright. He shot light in every direction like an explosion that never ended. Like a star trapped in the moment of supernova.
Another voice, shaking with rage, "Did you hear that, you monster?! I told you we weren't ready yet! Why didn't you listen?! I can see the destruction from here—the sky's on fire, everything is burning. How could this happen?! YOU killed them all—" and the rage cracked, revealing the fear and grief just barely hidden underneath, "Remember us. If you're the only one left, you have to remember us. Please—"
The static snapped off; the triangle's body snapped back into place; his eye snapped back into focus; "—and then they appointed me their god," he said cheerfully, "and here we are!"
And with only a couple more dying cries of pain and pleas for help, the voices fell back to their constant background whisper.
The storm cloud had started sleeting.
The Axolotl had stopped breathing. Just the sound of the carnage was enough to make him sick.
But the triangle sounded perfectly at ease—more than he had before he'd answered the cloud's question. "So is that all you needed?" He'd resumed playing with the cylinder of meat he'd been constructing—extruding it further, and then, dissatisfied with the results, collapsing it back into a circle.
His hands were trembling as he messed with the cylinder. There was a tightness around his eye.
"What..." The storm cloud let out a low rumble of thunder, ahem, "what... did you say about blood? I didn't catch it."
The triangle blinked blankly at the storm. "I didn't say anything about blood."
It paused. "All right, then—what about the other voices? Who were they?"
"What voices?"
The storm stared at the triangle, baffled sunbeam fixed on him; then swung the sunbeam over to the Axolotl. "You heard—?"
So his eavesdropping had been noticed. He nodded. Oh, he heard, all right.
The triangle glanced between them. "I think you guys are hearing voices," he said. "The only one talking here is me."
He said it like he meant it. The Axolotl was sure he did. Had he not heard the voices?
"Never mind, forget it," the cloud said uneasily. "You said someone... Who appointed you their god?"
"Uhhh..." the triangle tilted to the side as he tried to think. "Pretty much all my people? Yeah. It was everyone!"
"Your people? From your universe?"
"Yup!"
"They didn't appoint you their god," the cloud said. "They're all dead."
The triangle scoffed. "I don't know what you're talking about. They're all in here with me!"
"You mean the mortals from the other universes?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," the triangle repeated, a little slower, warningly. "They're all from my universe."
For a moment, the cloud just stared at him, at a loss. It glanced again toward the Axolotl. The Axolotl had nothing to offer it.
"Is that everything?" The triangle tried to keep his voice peppy, but there was an edge of exhaustion that hadn't been there earlier. (Yeah, him and everyone else here.)
"I guess that wraps up that part of the questionnaire," the cloud muttered uneasily, trying to recover its professional tone. "Just a couple more questions. I need your name. For the report."
Dimension Zero's hissing background static rose again: "The murderer... The name of the murderer... is—"
"NOBODY ASKED YOU!" The triangle turned and chucked the cylinder he'd been working on into the Dream Realm. He grumbled under his breath, created another circle, and started stretching it out again.
The triangle could hear the voices. Then why hadn't he been able to hear them earlier? Unless he had been able to hear them—and he just... couldn't remember that he'd heard them?
Even if the Axolotl hadn't known about the incomparable trauma the triangle had survived/caused, it would be pretty obvious by now that something was going terribly wrong inside his head. Contradictory stories about his own reality, memories he refused to remember, facts he simply set aside as not relevant. Was he refusing to face them, or was he unable?
From their conversation in the Axolotl's tank, he thought the triangle understood more than he was willing to admit. But the Axolotl might be the only one who knew that.
And that was beginning to give the Axolotl an idea.
"Just—put me down as the Magister Mentium, okay?" the triangle told the cloud. "Everyone'll know who you're talking about."
"If you say so," said the cloud. "What was your universe's name?"
"Its name?" The triangle glanced up from his new cylinder and gave the cloud a perplexed look. "You asked already. You said it's Dimension 2 Delta."
"That's its serial number. Every dimension's assigned one at its Big Bang. But it's standard to let a dimension's own residents choose its name. It makes it more personal." The cloud sounded as though it had memorized this explanation. The Axolotl wondered how many times it had had to take statements from a destroyed dimension's grieving survivors. He hoped it usually got to give this spiel to witnesses of a narrowly averted apocalypse. "Typically the first explorers to leave their dimension get to name it; but the only person ever known to leave 2Δ is... you."
"Oh," he said. "Right."
"So, what did your people name your universe?"
He stared at the storm like it was stupid. "We called it... the universe?"
"Everyone calls their universe The Universe," the cloud said. "Followed by The World, The Dimension, Reality, and Home. They're all taken, come up with something else."
"Seriously? You're making me name my whole universe and now you're telling me how to name it?"
"They're not my rules," the cloud said. "If you don't have a native name, we usually name a dimension after the first known explorer to leave it. Was that you?"
The triangle was quiet for an uncomfortably long moment. His gaze twitched away; and for a moment the Axolotl thought he saw another image flash in his eye: a triangle floating in space, eerily serene, dead. His voice was small when he said, "No."
Surprised lightning quietly flashed in the storm's cloud. "Oh. Do you know the name of the first?"
"Of course I do. He's my..." He stopped himself. He said, too evenly, "His name is Euclid."
Obviously, the triangle wasn't speaking a language that can be spoken with human mouths or written with human symbols. "Euclid" is a stand-in word for an unpronounceable name; trying to say the name without the right anatomy—without even the right laws of physics and sound waves—would only mangle it.
But the rest of the multiverse didn't have the right physics or anatomy either. "Euclid," the cloud repeated, mangling it. The triangle winced. "Fine. How's Euclydia sound?"
"It sounds stupid," the triangle said.
"Well, it's your dimension. Do you have a better suggestion?"
"I..." The triangle floundered helplessly. "That... Okay hold on, I've had a very long..." He floundered again as he tried to figure exactly what kind of time span he'd been having a long one of.
"If you want me to come back later..." said the cloud, who very obviously did not want to have to come back later.
"I don't knowww, gimme a second," the triangle whined. "I've never thought about a universe having a name! It's—it's fine. Euclydia's fine."
"All right." The cloud zapped its tape recorder, turning it off. "Thanks for your time."
As it started to hover off, the triangle said, "Hold on! I answered your questions, you owe me some."
The eye of the storm reluctantly swung back toward the triangle. "What?"
He held up the shape he'd been extruding. "What do you call this... 3D circle thing?"
The sunbeam swept over it. "A cylinder?"
The triangle pointed toward VENDOR, who was out at the edge of the crowd answering the questions of some reporters who'd caught THEM attempting to slink away from the scene. "And what are the 3D circle things Coin Slot over there is hauling around?"
It glanced at VENDOR's stock of planets. "Spheres."
The triangle shook his cylinder. "Well, what am I doing wrong, then!"
"I don't know, math's not my thing," the cloud said. "Try rotating it."
The triangle waited until the cloud had moved on; then created another circle, extruded it again, but curled the extrusion around into a circle. He ended up with a shape like a donut. He said, quietly, "Oo-oo-ooh." He sounded impressed.
The Axolotl swam up alongside the storm cloud as it left. "So. Find out what you wanted to know?"
The cloud laughed ruefully.
That was what he thought. "Are the interviews you've been taking classified?"
"No, our reports are open to the public. Anyone can request copies. The database is a nightmare to navigate, though."
"Let me know who to contact for the records on this incident. Especially the witness testimonies."
"I take it you're also planning to go through that noise we just heard with a fine-tooth comb?"
"That's hardly the start of it."
If the Axolotl had been convinced of anything during all his conversations with the triangle today, it was that the triangle could barely begin to grasp just what it was he'd done to his dimension and all the dimensions around it—and he did a very poor job of communicating what he did grasp.
And if the Axolotl could prove that—if he could build a convincing argument that the triangle hadn't understood what he'd done, psychologically couldn't understand, that even now he only had the fuzziest comprehension of what he was involved in...
Someday, that triangle's sins would catch up to him. Someday, he would be in the hands of the gods of death and justice, and they would have to decide what fate his actions had earned. And when that day came, it would be the Axolotl's job to ensure that the triangle didn't end up damned or erased from existence.
As it was now, that triangle didn't stand a chance in the multiverse of being found innocent. But there was more than one way to avoid a "guilty" verdict.
By the time the triangle stood before a judge, the Axolotl would make sure that the right laws were in place for him to do what he wanted to do.
####
Where there had been swarms of firefighters earlier, now the scene swarmed with construction workers, working on the emergency genesis of over half a dozen replacement universes—carefully, so that the big bangs didn't do any further damage to an already unstable situation; but quickly. Already every destroyed one-dimensional universe had been replaced. Several half-burned dimensions had been supplanted with oddly-shaped undersized universes that met at the older universes' burned edges; jagged 1D dimensions sealed the gaps between these dimensions like a line of solder between two panes of stained glass.
By now, the flat planes and edges surrounded the zeroth dimension like the sleek shifting surfaces of an infinity-sided die; all except for one last missing wall in the middle of the damage.
Dimension 2 Delta. "Euclydia."
The construction workers were already setting up the scaffolding and equipment to set off another big bang.
As the Axolotl looked at the copious warning signs around the construction site—"DANGER! COSMIC EXPLOSIVES" "GENESIS IN PROGRESS"—the specialized equipment, the veritable army of workers, the mountain of papers the Time Giant had been reviewing earlier to ensure that everything was up to code and nothing would go wrong... he couldn't help but think of the triangle holding the seed of a big bang in his bare glowing hand, threatening to set it off right there. The Axolotl had known it was foolish, but seeing all the workers' preparations put just how reckless it was into perspective. Like a toddler holding a stick of TNT over a campfire.
He spotted the Time Giant among the workers, flickering back and forth across the scene as she tried to literally be multiple places at the same time. When she settled down for a moment over a worktable to double check a pile of blueprints and forms and calculations and even more paperwork, she caught sight of the Axolotl passing by, and tipped her chin up at him in greeting.
He paused, then nodded back to her. No hard feelings. He was just following his principles; and she was just doing her job. They'd each found their own way to help hold up the multiverse.
"Hey," she called out, and gestured for him to come over. As he did, she said, "Your leg's healing nicely."
He glanced down at it. His new toes were stubby, but at least they were back. "I don't like being uneven." He'd take a few more days on his tail. "I'll probably pay for it tomorrow, though." When he finally got home, he'd have to see if he could cancel his morning appointments.
"Reckon we'll all be feeling this tomorrow." She tilted her head toward Dimension Zero. "I've got a message for the god of DIY over there. I think you're the only one he likes—you mind carrying it over?"
####
It wasn't hard to find the triangle; he was leaning against the membrane around the zeroth dimension, moodily staring out at the third. He seemed to be gazing past all the gods, unfazed by their hubbub. The Axolotl tried to see what he was looking at, and didn't spot anything of note. As far as he could tell, the triangle might as well just be stargazing.
Along with the police tape and the ATTF barrier and the long-forgotten cordons to hold off the reporters, there was now an additional grid of orange cones set up blocking anyone from getting too close to the destroyed wall and the construction site. The Axolotl glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention before he slipped past the cones and swam up to the triangle.
When he approached, the triangle was muttering under his breath: "Stupid, now it sounds like an STD. I should've named it something cooler. Like... Triangletopia. Or the Party Plane. Or Margaritaville—I bet no one's ever used that one before..."
"Magister," the Axolotl said.
The triangle's eye snapped to him. "Hey, look at that! The pompous psycho is back! If you're even thinking about sticking me back in your 'office'—"
The Axolotl held up his forelegs appeasingly. "I'm not." He wasn't even crossing the threshold into the triangle's turf. "This is the last time I'll speak to you today."
"Finally, some good news," the triangle grumbled. "What do you w—ha! Ah-haha! I caught myself, that one didn't count."
The Axolotl decided not to count it. "The Time Giant wanted you to know they're about to set off the big bang where Dimension 2 Delta used to be. You probably don't want to be too close to the wall when it goes up."
The triangle's expression darkened; but he just said, "All right. Fine. Have fun. Not my problem! Just keep the construction noises down."
That was all he'd been sent to tell the triangle; but he added, "If you ever want to leave your dream realm, this is your last chance."
The triangle groaned. "This again? Listen, frills, I already told you I'm not interested! And you don't have the right to drag me out, this is my sovereign god territory—"
"I'm not threatening to," the Axolotl said gently. "I just—wanted to make sure you know. If you change your mind later, you physically won't be able to leave."
That gave the triangle pause. "I... don't see why not."
"For something to pass from one dimension to another, it needs a large enough hole to pass through," the Axolotl said. "For a person carrying the mass and energy of an entire universe to cross from one dimension to another... they need a hole the size of a universe. The missing wall where 2Δ was is the size your universe used to be. And now... it's the only exit big enough for you to pass through. Do you understand?"
The triangle stared at him silently. There was that hard, heavy look in his eye. It was awful to see. He did understand.
"If you don't come now..."
"We came up with a way to fit my entire universe into this one," the triangle said. "If I ever want to leave, we'll invent a way to get it back out."
"Your universe didn't fit in without incinerating it."
The triangle tapped the side of his hat with a finger; somewhere inside it was the speck that used to be his universe—the seed of a big bang. "It's travel-sized now. The next time will be easier."
For the first time since seeing the awful ruin of Dimension 2 Delta, the Axolotl forced himself to turn his fearful gaze chronologically forward. He squinted toward the hazy, far-flung future; and then he gave the triangle, in the present, a sorrowful look. "No, it won't," he said. "But I'll do what I can for you."
The triangle stared sullenly at him, unmoved by the offer. "I don't see what you're getting out of helping me. Everyone else is dying to send me to ghost jail or however things work around here."
"Isn't it enough to help you just because you exist and that makes you worth it?"
"If you ever, ever say something like that again, I'll kill you. I will find a way."
He wasn't particularly surprised. But that was truly what the Axolotl believed—and believed strongly enough to guide everything else he did.
The things this triangle had done were too ghastly for even an ancient, experienced god to fully wrap his head around. Without exaggeration, he might have done the worst thing anyone anywhere in the multiverse had ever done.
But.
But if the Axolotl could prove that he, the worst person ever, was worth giving a second chance—that he could change, that he could show remorse for what he'd done, that he could be a force for good in the multiverse... then he would have proven that everyone, no matter what, was worth it.
The Axolotl had been voted Most Adorably Idealistic, but he'd never been called soft. His ideals were harder than diamond and sharper than obsidian. He hadn't decided to protect the triangle in spite of the impact that might have on the multiverse; he was protecting him because of the impact it could have.
The Axolotl was a god of justice, of monsters, of second chances, and through his actions he could shape what justice meant throughout the multiverse as if he were sculpting clay; and he thought a small, sharp little equilateral triangle would make a perfect sculpting tool.
"In truth, I just don't believe in punishment. Not even for you." The Axolotl lay a forefoot on Dimension Zero's bubble. "But I don't see why you trust me." Because it was clear the triangle did. He'd trusted the Axolotl to judge the character of the other gods. He'd kept looking toward him like he was trying to gauge his own situation based on the Axolotl's reaction to it. He'd admitted the truth about the remains of his universe and his plans for it. It seemed like the Axolotl was the only one the triangle trusted in all this mess.
The triangle thought that over; then said, "You seem like a grade-A sucker."
He laughed. "I'll try to live up to your opinion of me." He had a guess what kind of people this triangle thought were suckers. The charitable; the caring. The people who didn't think that seeing the worth in everyone was a kind of illness.
"You should know, I intend to legally register my tank as a purgatory. I'll probably submit my application before the end of the week. If you claim it as your afterlife, you'll be transferred to my tank for holding while awaiting trial to decide your final afterlife."
"Ugh, now it all makes sense: you're starting a cult! I don't wanna join your cult, frills—I've got my own."
"But you do want to go straight to your lawyer's office if you're about to go on trial for your sins," the Axolotl said pointedly. "I don't intend to house anyone in my tank permanently. It will just be a transfer place for clients preparing for trial or figuring out where they want to go next—another afterlife, reincarnation... You're already technically dead; you can request at any time to come to my tank, and you'll be there."
"Sounds great for your other clients! But I'm not planning to go on trial and I don't want to be in an afterlife," the triangle said testily. "I'm pretty sure we've been over this!"
"I know you don't. I wish you didn't have to face it. But when you have no choice," the Axolotl said. "When you need it. When your time comes to burn like your people—" (the triangle flinched) "—call me. I'll offer you a second chance at any time."
"Low blow," the triangle muttered. "Don't put yourself out on my account. I'll be fine by myself."
"I'm sure." The Axolotl suspected he'd be putting himself out on the triangle's account for a long time. "What's your name? Your real name."
The background hiss of cosmic noise roared louder. The echoes of billions of erased ghosts said, "THE NAME OF THE MURDERER IS—"
With a flinch, the triangle cranked the distant dance music louder so it spilled cacophonously out of Dimension Zero again. It was too late, though. The Axolotl had heard the triangle's real name.
He pretended he hadn't. He waited.
The triangle didn't answer for a long moment. "You probably wouldn't be able to pronounce it."
"Maybe not." He'd seen how the triangle had winced hearing the cloud try to pronounce the name of some other shape. "I still want to know who you are."
He wrestled with his words; then finally gave up and asked his question. "What... is this place? We're not in the third dimension. When I—freed my dimension, I expected to go up; but we went... down. I didn't know there was a down." He confessed his ignorance in a near whisper, almost drowned out by his own music.
"You're in Dimension Zero." But that wasn't right. Dimension Zero was—should be—a point, and it's impossible to be "in" a point. A point simply is. "You are Dimension Zero."
The triangle said, "Then call me King Zero."
The Axolotl considered that. "Yes," he said. "I think that is your name."
Someone shouted, "Clear the way!" One worker at the construction site was looking directly at the Axolotl. "That means you! Unless you wanna be boiled frog legs!"
"I'm not a frog," the Axolotl muttered; but, he turned one last time to newly-crowned King Zero, said, "Call me," then hastily swam to the safe side of the orange cone barricade.
"Five, four, three..."
The Axolotl watched the triangle—and the triangle watched him—until the detonation. The big bang went off in a flash of light bright enough it would have incinerated anyone in the vicinity had it not been contained to a flat plane.
When the Axolotl looked away from the light, the afterimage of a triangle was burned into the center of his vision.
Dimension Zero was sealed off from the rest of reality—locking its king in for the next trillion years.
####
When the triangle said his name was "King Zero," of course, he wasn't speaking English. English wouldn't exist for a long time. The name King Zero is simply a convenient translation.
The English word "zero" comes from the French zéro. Zéro comes from Italian zefiro. Zefiro comes from Medieval Latin zephirum. And zephirum comes from the Arabic صِفْر—ṣifr.
####
Centuries ago, in the dream of a naive, trusting human, the human asked in Arabic, "What should I call you?" And King Zero responded, "Call me Ṣifr."
And years later, a dreaming human asked in Medieval Latin, "What should I call you, o muse of mathematics?" And of the two Latin words descended from his current Arabic nickname, Ṣifr responded with the one he thought was closer: "Call me Cifra."
A dreaming human asked in Old French, "What's your name?" And he replied, "My name's Cyffre."
Speaking Middle English, he told a dreaming human, "My name's Siphre."
And in Modern English, he told Edward Bishop Bishop, "The name's Cipher. But you can call me Bill."
In a year's time, and two years before his death from sleep deprivation, Edward would write Flatworld, a book about a 2D shape and his Muse journeying up to the highest dimensions; and also all the way down, below the spaces and planes and lines, to the self-absorbed King Zero, buried in the point-sized zeroth dimension, who thought a whole universe was contained inside him.
####
(It's FINISHED. 🎉🎉🎉
Hi y'all, if you just joined us for this Axolotl plot arc, usually this is a post-canon human Bill fic. I took a break from the main plot for one week to post a one-chapter flashback and then it was nine chapters. This bitch is 50k words. It's a novel unto itself.
Anyway if you only showed up for this story about the Ax, it only exists in service of a much longer story; so if you enjoyed this check out the rest of the fic. This is technically chapter 69 (lol). (If human Bill isn't usually your thing, I've been told that this is The Human Bill Fic For People Who Don't Like Human Bills because Bill is clearly very much a triangle unhappily trapped in a human body, rather than just chill with being human—so you might wanna give it a shot.)
And for the regulars who are already reading the whole fic: OH MY GOD IT'S FINALLY FINISHED, WE'RE FREE, WE CAN RETURN TO THE PRESENT. Listen I love the Ax and his bizarre but unbending morality, but guys. Guys. I miss Mabel so much.
Pre-warning that I may end up needing to skip a chapter or two before the end of the year, because work's piling a LOTTA extra work on me this month and I might just flat out not have time to edit & do art. I'm up at 3 a.m. editing & queueing this post and I was up til 3 a.m. another night doing the art because I HAVE NOT HAD TIME this week to do it any earlier. I did this because I love y'all.
No that's a lie, I did this because I want to FINISH this DANG ARC. That's my birthday gift to me.
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