Back in the tower

It was around the time the tower came into view in the distance that we arrived at a clearing where the Forest's influence was weaker, around which were former office buildings, now overgrown with vine-snapped wires and rotting flesh. There were a number of people there, Samuel included, but before we could chat, strange green blurs began to move incredibly quickly around the area.

"Those blurs are Green Men," I said. "They're plant people- well, not people, they're anomalies manifested directly by the Forest- never mind, point is, they're gonna try to kill us all and the people here can't take them on."

"Got it!" Kareena said, then let out a "WHOOOOOO!" as the tank's treads rolled over one of the Green Men, producing a sound somewhere between crunching leaves and breaking bones.

"Well, at least somebody's enjoying the apocalypse," Jenn muttered.

"Everyone plug your fuckin' ears," Kareena said as she lowered the tank's cannon, waited for one of the blurs to move past her line of sight, and fired. I couldn't tell if it actually hit the Green Man, but it certainly made a sizable hole in one of the buildings.

Just after that, a bolt of lightning struck in the middle of the clearing, and Dr. Daniel Ferris appeared. I lost track of what happened after that. There was a lot going on- a lot of shouting, a lot of fighting, a lot of strange anomalous bullshit that hurt to look at. Suffice to say that we made it out.

I don't know how long it took- time didn't seem to work right in the Forest- but as the tank moved forward, something huge came into view, something of an impossible color shot through with patches of gray and silver and red. It smelled like woodland rain and rotting meat.

It was the tower.

We were finally here.

What had once been KRAKEN headquarters was covered in bone and flesh meeting as one with rusted metal, in flowers of hues nowhere to be found on the electromagnetic spectrum, in vines that reached out towards us like tentacles until Robin cut them away with her machete. Untold billions of cold, dead wires covered the ground, long since snapped by Forest vines.

We got out of the tank.

A lot of other people had just arrived there as well, by some bizarre coincidence, or by supernatural means, or... something. Either way, with that, the new group was made up of, well, basically everyone who had entered the Forest and not died.

I couldn't see Robin's face behind the gas mask, but I could tell from the way she carried herself as she led our small contingent of ex-ARC agents to the tower, hacking away more and more vines, that she had no interest in dealing with the Forest's bullshit. I didn't feel nearly as confident as she looked while I did the same, and where her determination would normally be reassuring, I instead found it unsettling.

The inside of the tower looked much the same as the outside, but with far more space for vines to stretch across; as outside, the floor was covered in layers upon layers of dead wires and cables.

As we waded through the detritus to a door whose sign would have read BASEMENT ACCESS if it weren't partially covered, I still saw that bitter, unnerving determination in Robin's walk.

I took her hand. "Robin."
"What is it?"
"Be safe. Please."
She turned to me, her shoulders relaxing. "Yeah. I will."
 

We stood there for a moment.

I heard a crunching sound from behind us and turned around. Pouring in from the hole was a flood of people who had clearly been in the Forest for far too long.

"Motherfucker," Jenn muttered as she got her pistol out. Practically everyone else seemed to have the same idea; people all around me were pulling out guns, knives, hell, the multiple swords I saw weren't even the most surprising weapons.

 

Leo and I followed Jenn's lead.

"Those of you who can't fight, come on," Robin said, beginning to hack away at the vines.

More and more of the infected swarmed in. One of them grabbed onto my leg, and with a degree of cool under pressure I didn't even know I had in me, I put my gun directly to its temple and pulled the trigger.

You really never get used to the sound of what happens when a bullet enters a human head at point blank.

Grimacing behind my mask, I kicked the body away. As I did, I caught something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Dr. Ferris talking to Robin.

"You need a hand?"
Robin turned to him. "Yeah, that'd be much appreciated, thanks."
"Cool. HELLFIRE, help her out for a second, don't be a dick about it."
"...Excuse me?"
"You ever host a Dying Man shard before?"
"No...? Wait, what?"
"First time for everything. Have fun with him, he's a charmer." He looked to me and said as he dissected one of the infected that had nearly reached me in a flurry of rose petals, "You should really pay more attention to the battlefield."

I felt a mixture of bewilderment, gratitude, and annoyance, but before I could figure out which one to listen to, a number of roots suddenly came down from the ceiling, one of them managing to curl around his arm and snap it. He cried out in pain and tossed the cane he'd been holding in our general direction, Robin grabbing it out of the air. 

"That's what's left of the Newborn," Dr. Ferris said. "Use it well."

 

As Dr. Ferris destroyed the roots and teleported away, and we continued to fight off more infected, I felt a presence enter the tower that I knew immediately wasn't one of them. I've never been able to detect auras or whatever other bullshit, I don't have any supernatural powers, but I knew on instinct that Hell itself was walking into that tower.
 

"Everyone, get through! Door's open!" Robin shouted.

I turned around, and I ran. I could feel the presence behind me, still walking at a steady gait yet keeping up with my sprint.

As all of us flooded down into the basement, the presence followed.

A hand grabbed my shoulder from behind, sharp claws digging into my flesh.

"So, this is where the hunt ends."

And then I knew who it was.

"Turn around," she said, releasing her grip.

I complied.

Daisy Krenson towered over me, seemingly even more than she once had. There was an eyepatch over her scarred left eye; her filthy black hair was tied into a ponytail, and she wore a tattered gray overcoat over her torn suit. She was breathing heavily, the gashes in her clothing exposing toned, powerful, bloodied flesh. Her right eye glowed red, shining with malice.

Her lips curled back to bare her teeth (her lips were black, like a dog's; her ears, her teeth, her face, it was all far too sharp).

"I told you to turn around. I didn't tell you to look me in the eye." She slammed me against the wall by the chest, knocking the breath out of my lungs. "Don't you dare act as though we're equals, after all you've put me through. You abandoned all of us, and for what?"

Jenn walked slowly, quietly, towards Krenson, but in one fluid motion, Krenson released me, turned around, drew her pistol, and fired into Jenn's shoulder with frightening precision.

"That was a warning shot."
"This-" Jenn gasped in pain. "This isn't you."
"You don't know me."
Jenn involuntarily slumped against the wall. "You're… you're right. I don't know you, not the Daisy I'm looking at. But I know who you used to be."
"Listen to me," Krenson said, stepping forward and staring her down. "I don't care that your precious Robin killed the Newborn. Not really. To be perfectly honest, I have to respect the force of will that represents." She grabbed Jenn's wrist as she started to reach for her gun. "But you made a deal with a devil for her, and I won't let you traitors bring back the devil you killed." Suddenly, she twisted Jenn's arm with a stomach-churning crunch and took the gun from her limp hand before it could fall to the floor.
She turned to me, smiled, and raised it.
"You don't know how long I've waited for this."

I didn't hear the shot, didn't feel the bullet enter. I slipped in and out of consciousness, my hearing fading in slowly to the sounds of screaming and shouting and Leo and Robin saying my name over and over. I tried to tell them I was fine, but the words wouldn't come out.

What I'm about to recount is what I've been told afterwards.
 

As Leo and Robin stood over my unconscious body, Robin turned to Krenson and screamed, "You FUCKING PRICK," before charging at her with her machete in hand.

Robin's mouth moved on its own. "Language," said the Dying Man shard known as HELLFIRE. His flame spread across Robin's body, enveloping her machete.

Robin was too enraged to think clearly, and Krenson was fast. She growled like a dog as she dodged backwards, firing a shot into Robin's chest that she didn't even feel as HELLFIRE took over, trading fireballs and slashes from weapons formed of black mist with Krenson's shots until she ran out of ammo and threw the gun at Robin's forehead, which she, again, ignored as she/HELLFIRE forced an unarmed Krenson to slowly back away, unable to attack her directly or risk being badly burned. As Krenson backed up against the same wall that Jenn was slumped against, she suddenly felt a knife in her side.

"I'm so sorry, Daisy," Jenn said, drawing it back out, blood spurting from the wound. "It shouldn't have had to end like this."

Daisy fell forward without a sound, her body charred and mangled to hell and back. At around that time, I finally started to exit the shock I was in.

"Now," HELLFIRE said, "allow me to do what I've been asked to do."

With that, HELLFIRE led Jenn, Leo, and myself back to clearing away the vines, his fire making short work of the plants. It was… well, it was very strange seeing "Robin" act so distant, even though I knew it wasn't actually her in control.

We fled deeper into the basement. The tree at the heart of the tower, like a grotesque Yggdrasil, grew outwards from here. On the ground knelt a young man with long black hair, some sort of vambrace on his arm, and…

"The Dagger," I muttered to myself. "That's… that's the Dagger."

The kid, Kai, was holding it tightly, scrawling some sort of runes on the ground, barely seeming to notice anything around him, or maybe just too overwhelmed to react.

The cane containing the last remaining fragment of the Manufactured Newborn was in the hand of the one who had killed it, and the one who had performed the ritual to bring it through was performing a ritual to brick it back. It was only natural, maybe, that that was when it happened.

There was a low rumble before a tower of metal and cables erupted from the ground beneath the tree. The tower was so massive that Robin only barely dove out of the way in time to avoid being smashed against the basement ceiling, hitting the ground as the cane in Robin's hand was merged into the rising tide. As the tower rapidly expanded outwards in a nightmare of cables and wires, past and future fought once more.

Somehow, we managed to escape the crossfire, the two Fears balancing one another even as they fought. It was a long trek back out of the Forest, but it seemed that the Newborn's rebirth had made it possible to escape, the anomalous properties of the area becoming less potent through the counteracting influence of the Newborn. We emerged, finally.

I don't know how to feel about Krenson's death. She made her choice, I suppose. I mean, I barely knew her myself; I only really knew what she meant to Jenn. But it seemed like she meant a great deal to her. And now she's dead.

There won't be a funeral for Krenson, just like there weren't funerals for the others. Far too many have died for that to even make sense.

I don't know. Even to the bitter fucking end, I just don't know.