Inferno swung his fist at Frey again, who barely managed to teleport behind him before impact. The entire Ark lurched in shock. Taking advantage of being behind the Destroyer, Frey drew as much power from Imagination as he could and created a single knife.
He had created it with only one goal in mind: to destroy whatever it touched, no matter how solid it was or what plane of existence it had. Frey sliced Inferno's now greenish body with it and left a gaping wound, dripping with the same black slime as before.
'It works', he thought with a point of relief.
And then he stuck the knife directly into the wound, pushing it as deep as possible, until all he could see was the handle sticking out. He then moved aside to avoid a possible response and observe the state of the destroyer. He saw that Inferno seemed to be in terrible pain, rolling on the ground in pain.
"Aaaah, aah! I am suffering ! You damn little bastard, it hurts so bad! Aarrgh!"
Inferno began to disintegrate before Frey's eyes, who looked at it, feeling a stronger pang of relief rise within him.
"Ugh, I… I…"
The knife disappeared into Inferno's back, who instantly recovered from the wound.
"I'm just kidding" he chuckled under Frey's stunned gaze. "Well what, did you seriously expect a guy who can cut a hole in an interdimensional sea to die from a knife? You may have become better at using Imagination but intelligence-wise, that's still not it"
Frey had run out of options, only being able to listen to Inferno's monologues.
"Me on the other hand, even if I don't look like a light, I'm really good at physics" Inferno said. "You don't believe me, do you?" he asked, seeing a skeptical look cross Frey's face.
He looked up slightly and a small black sphere began to form in the sky. Frey looked at it ,distraught, but he couldn't do anything.
"Heh, I understand you, I wouldn't have believed someone like me either" he said. "Believe it or not, I used to be a scientist. In my history, I was one of those who made major scientific discoveries: the Earth which revolves around the Sun, the fact that we are in a Galaxy which is itself in a Universe, or even... how a star can become a black hole if it collapses in on itself, does that remind you of anything?"
He was clearly referring to the trap Citura had set for him on Inversia.
"More or less" Frey replied.
The latter had no idea in mind, so he did his best to save time by maintaining the discussion.
"Yeah, impressed, huh? In the Primary World, I heard that people made these discoveries over several centuries and people already thought that those who made them were geniuses. We did it in just two or three years" Inferno boasted. "But you want to know what's funniest? In my world, rather than cheering us on, we were just called heretics and our own country's agents proceeded to slaughter us. More than half of the people I worked with died in a Fuking. Single. Week"
Strangely, some of the hatred Frey felt in the destroyer's voice seemed directed towards him, but he pushed that feeling aside to focus on this information.
"Let me guess, it made you crazy and you killed them all, you went out of history and became Inferno, the big bad who terrorizes the Platonic Sea?" Frey asked. "For someone who has come out of his story, you still sound really cliché"
"And you sound really impatient, not even letting me finish my story" Inferno retorted. "I didn't kill those guys, I forgave them"
Frey wondered if he had heard correctly. Had this deranged, malicious, violent guy ever been capable of enough generosity to forgive people like that?
"For real?" Frey asked.
"Yep, for real" Inferno replied. "After all, it was we who committed a sin by questioning the 'great word of God'. If everyone agreed that it was deserved, then it must be true. So I just gave up my search and settled down with my wife. But, but, but, turns out others weren't as nice as me. The other survivors of the massacre and the families of the dead had no desire to turn the page. They rushed at the agents and massacred them all"
"And then, did you manage to turn the page?" Frey asked, becoming curious despite his efforts to stay focused. "Or did the conflict just continue until it turned into war?"
Inferno was silent for a moment, shaking a little. Frey realized he was holding back laughter:
"PFWAHAHAHA!" laughed Inferno, who could no longer contain his amusement. "Phew, are you really that naive? I don't even know if Ihave to laugh about it or cry about it, he said. Turn the page? A war? They were just poor guys tired of being mistreated, that's all. The state didn't even intervene itself, it just hired a group of mercenaries to do the dirty work. And within a week, poof, they were all dead, including my wife and my children who had just gone to console a friend at the same time"
Frey was already horrified as could be, but Inferno did not stop.
"But the funny thing is what happened next. These guys were recognized as heroes by everyone for stopping, as they called it, 'a bunch of vile and dangerous heretics'. These guys were the heroes of my story, funny right?" Inferno asked.
Frey was speechless. Surely Inferno could have finished him off at that moment but he didn't, for the simple reason that he wanted to see the despair on Frey's face first.
"So you killed them?" Frey asked, completely confused. "Is that why you hate heroes?"
"Yup, at this point I was short of sympathy credit for the heroes, now they are on my blacklist, like this Ei for whom everyone does everything and anything without asking questions, taking him for God"
"And just because you hate Ei and the heroes, you want to destroy the entire Platonic Sea?"
"Hey, is that what you think? Unfortunately, I don't give a damn about you, you can all die or not and I'll live just fine. My target is Ei, this bastard who causes all the problems in the world and annoys me with the prayers that everyone makes to them, always, all the time"
Frey was an atheist, but he was still pretty sure that what the destroyer had just said was beyond blasphemy. Inferno continued:
"The only reason I bother destroying all these stories is because of this horrible Fate thing" he said.
"Fate? What are you talking about?" Frey asked.
Inferno looked quite surprised, although it was difficult to confirm with his current appearance.
"Huh, you don't even know that? The fairy must know though, since she would rather stay on the Ark than settle into a story, he said before stopping speaking for a few seconds to think. Wait, don't tell me she didn't tell you anything"
"She... she wasn't ready to talk about it" Frey replied.
Inferno's laughter rings out, even more strident than all the previous times:
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Inferno couldn't stop laughing, louder and louder. Frey knew he should have taken the opportunity to do something, like try to run away or attack, but he was paralyzed by that awful sound, and anyway even if he forced himself to move, Inferno would probably atomize it in a fraction of a second.
"Ahahaha, ha... holy shit I can't believe it, how can anyone even be such a pawn" Inferno mocked. "No wonder you're so upset about this story I destroyed if you don't even know Fate. Okay, in memory of my good old years as a scientist, I'm going to give you a little lesson, what do you think?"
He of course didn't wait for Frey's response before starting to speak again:
"So you see, your little stories, they're all based on a story that was imagined by a human from the Primary World, right? What do you think happens when the story ends?" Inferno asked.
"I don't know, I haven't thought about it too much" Frey replied. "I thought they were just going to move on with their lives depending on how the ending turned out, but I guess that's not the right answer?"
"Wow, it shows that you are an actor, all in the muscles and the appearance and nothing in the head" Inferno nagged. "Well, it's clear that it's a bit of a bullshit given how useless you've been so far"
But Frey was so curious to learn what happened next that he didn't even flinch at the insult.
"Anyway, I will finally reveal to you the secret behind the stories, being what Fate is. Hey, it's time for the big villain reveals, isn't it exciting?"
Frey barely nodded.
"Didn't you think it was weird to arrive in the middle of a story that was probably created several years ago? Don't you think that's a bit too big of a stroke of luck? Well here's the thing, this wasn't the first time the story played out: when a story comes to the end, everything stops" Inferno revealed. "Then everything restarts until it returns to the beginning of the story, and it all goes on and on, forever, without any of the characters being aware of it. Condemned to relive the same story for eternity without even knowing it..."
He gritted his teeth:
"In the end, it's just damn dolls that will dance forever. That's why, apart from a few lucky people like me, who managed to survive outside their history and became travelers or destroyers, the others disappear: they are just like lines of code which cannot exist outside of a computer. Even if someone from the outside changed the events, in the end as long as the story exists, the story ends up adapting to still arrive at the original ending, sooner or later, with no way to stop that: that's what Fate is"
Frey staggered, stunned. So Paulia, Damien and Jase, these people he had loved and mourned, were just puppets who just did the same movements over and over again?
"Do you see the thing? If your fairy girlfriend isn't attached to anyone, it's because she just didn't want to have to watch them do their little act over and over again, every time. That's why I'm trying so hard to get rid of all these stories: I'm just tired of them playing the same old broken music disk again. I'm tired of Fate, I'm sick of Ei, I can't stand heroes anymore and above all I can't stand you anymore, you dirty rats from the Primary World who continue to create these damn stories over and over again" Inferno said
Then he added:
"Now let's get this over with, and for real this time"
Frey felt a massive shadow above him, looked up, and was overcome by a nameless terror.