It is rare for the elder of elders to leave his abode, for his reach is such that he can carve the heavens from the safety of his celestial nexus. It is rarer for the master of the Cultivators to move within other universes without portents of calamity; yet it was possible, for nothing was impossible under Krü.

A celestial lighthouse pulses in the black sky, a pulsar whose rhythm was a flat second. Tick, tick, tick. Each rotation was a blast of radiation that could fry electronics and rip skin from bone. Yet this star was not lifeless, for it was host to a planet whose life was neither electronic nor biological. The grey dusty surface was host to great spires, coiled towers of twisting metal that undulated within the galactic breeze. The extreme gravity and electromagnetic interference from the host star slowly pulled the planet apart, great chunks of the world floating as islands whose fate was to slowly drift into oblivion. Creatures of geometric shape and unorthodox material drifted in the airless void, performing their dance of life antithetical to the flow of time in this universe.

A perfect staging ground.

Krü sat upon a smaller floating island, his body laying against the grey dust. There was no way to describe this being as human, for his anatomy was as alien as it comes: His torso was held like that of an ostrich, his striding legs capped with hooves akin to a deer. His neck was long and flexible, and his head was rectangular with the jaws of a spider. Four dull grey eyes peered forward, intricate purple runes carved into his irises that rotated with unending patterns. Krü was blind, yet he saw all.

His four arms held a great cloth, fingers driving a needle into the intricate pattern as new threads were forged — strands of time woven into the tapestry of fate. Each stitch furthered his conquest, forging plots and games whose subjects did not know they were playing.

The more the world changed, the more it stayed the same. The presence of extraterrestrial life and divine intervention did not stop the need for drugs and violence: In many ways it only grew the demand. The destruction of the far east, the forging of Neo Babylon, all of this might have shaken up the criminal underworld — but it could never destroy it. Power had merely changed hands, and it was high time for the lords of the old world to take on the new.

”You are sure?” Bone-thin fingers laced together, the clacking of jewellery barely audible underneath the thrum of Drill. A ghastly face gazed up, eyes little more than illuminated spheres puppeteering a corpse. The Lich of Rio. His undead face was impossible to read, but the cocking of his head showed… Caution. Unsurprising, really.

”We are.” The face of someone ill-suited to the favelas gazed back, someone too white. But still, this fellow held onto a suitcase filled with power The Lich could have only dreamed of: The power to take Neo Babylon.

”All you need to do is say ‘yes’.”

Power begets power.

It was such a fundamental concept, borderline obtuse in its execution at times, and yet it alone was responsible for keeping the multiverse from collapsing under the weight of its own nonstop growth. Power begets power. How else to explain the improbability of two beings infamous in their own circles for near omnipotence running into each other by mere happenstance in this vast supposedly infinite cosmos but three simple words. Power begets power. While the yeomen of the multiverse slept comfortable in their beds believing magic and gods to be the mere stuff of legend fate tugged at the strings to guarantee that those most likely to corrupt the balance found each other in isolated locations such as this, solving the problems they themselves created away from innocent eyes. Power begets power.

That rule was why they were here today, if not directly responsible then at least guilty by association. It had been a long time since Beramode had been subject to the whims of Fate. Many an age had passed since he had conquered her chosen champion and freed himself from her endless schemes, but like all spurned lovers she found indirect ways to interfere with his schemes from afar even now.

Enter Krü, with two pithy accent marks sitting atop the last lonely vowel in his name.

Krü who appeared to him not unlike like a bipedal shrimp one night cap away from looking like he was trying to lull Red Riding Hood into a false sense of security. Whose sharply alien appearance was a stark reminder that even though humanity had become the most populous species in existence, after Gaia shattered the original Earth into a trillion shards and scattered them across the greater finite curve, they were not the only species with ambitions on greatness.

Krü, whose agents had been running into his like errant pieces on a chessboard for thirty years now. Fighting. Bonding. Fucking. But mostly throwing a wrench in carefully laid plans until we once again return to the scene at hand, two beings of incalculable authority agreeing to meet on a dying world, as gentleman were won’t to do. All over one stupid city. Beramode stood at a serviceable six-two, tall without towering with long limbs and broad shoulders as he made his way out through the folds between dimensions. Appearing without fanfare where once he was not. Wearing a three-piece business suit of charcoal grays and blacks, trailed by curling smoke with every step, a black mask with no discernable markings cover his face and shoulder-length white hair swept along his scalp. He wore black gloves, black shoes, a black tie, and everywhere he went the light was swallowed up by the twisting fingers of shadow that cackled in his wake.

And though he stood on an island some fifty feet from Krü’s own, wearing a mask with no mouth, Beramode’s voice carried perfectly over the distance.

“So, I suppose this is the part where we start throwing galaxies at each other.” Beramode drolled. Snapping his wrist and summoning a deck of cards from some hidden place upside his sleeve. “Sounds like a fun time, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve got things to do and they don’t involve dying. However improbably that might be. And you seem like the kind of guy whose fun to keep around. How’s about we mix things up for once. Tell me, Krü, do they have card games where you’re from?”



For nearly thirty years the world had buckled under the weight of one name, empires had crumbled, but the South Americas had remained untouched. A shining jewel hidden amongst the rubble. Hector Cabrera had gotten his start as a minor drug lord, selling through the mayor of Neo Babylon, using his global connections to spread into the great yawning emptiness left behind when the Russian Mafias and Chinese Triads faded. Little more than an attack dog for the New-Age Gilgamesh. But that was before he had found it, hidden in the Titan’s Range, an artifact of some distant age that had never come to pass in this version of the universe sunk improbably into the deep stone. It told him the truth of this timeline and all the lies that had peddled to him by his patron, and then it had promised to make things right…

The man who had once been Hector Cabrera had been reborn, a neon blue skeleton in a glass case, his every thought a flicker of electronics across the surface of his containment unit and another lash of electricity against its prison. When he spoke his voice was hollow and digital. Naked jawbone only moving to exhale another pall of steam across the space in front of him and his face never shrinking, blinking, nor showing any emotion before the gaudy alien thing before him.

“Very we—”

Light flooded the favella from above along with the distant crackle of reactive camo coming undone. Casting all those things that would rather remained hidden into view. Crooks, goons, and cronies. Not a one of whom had not been modified in some way by his experiments, twisted mutants, tumorous growths covered by the moldy green plant life from which The Narco lich gleaned his name. Each one of them quick to reach for their weapons only to find drop them to the ground with a hiss and a thud as an invisible wave passed over their position, but not over him, above and around him.

But never over him.

“Hector Cabrera, Mano de la Muerte, Lich of Rio. Put your hands in the air.” It was a familiar voice that greeted him, pronouncing his name and title with an exaggerated flare, before returning to the familiar comfort of the English language. It was accompanied by the all too familiar sounds of rifles being trained on him and bodies shuffling into position moments before he appeared, tall and strong, larger than any man had a right to be with black coattails trailing him. “You know as well as I do that trade with unregistered aliens is forbidden by the League of Nations. You’ve fucked up big this time. I’ve been itching to send one of Solmon’s lap dogs to Tartarus on a stretcher, just give me an excuse.”

“Still pretending to be something other than a glorified scavenger, Rodrigo? I’ve been waiting to do this for a very long and I’m glad you could be the first one I say this to…” If he’d lips, he’d spit. If he’d eyes, he’d glare. Somehow even with the perfect monotone of his electronic voice the anger filtered its way through the cracks in the static until the whole neighborhood buzzed with static. Ignoring the firefight that started as soon as he turned, the sound of bodies that belonged exclusively to his men hitting the floor and the occasional crack of thunder as another high velocity shell buzzed off his defensive barrier, he scribbled his name on that piece of paper. Enunciating each word with another outpouring of hate from the wrinkled neon blue folds of his perfectly preserved brain, “Fuck you, Rodrigo. Fuck the Black Dog Mafia, fuck Solomon King, but most of all… Fuck Neo Babylon.”

Homos. Homo Sapiens Sapiens to be exact — bipedal tetrapods with a curved spine and a bulbous head. Often they came with accoutrements: Large ears, tails, wings. Sometimes their faces were elongated, resembling those of other animals within their phylum. Sometimes they came in the form of great quadrupedal reptiles, a veritable rainbow of colours and accoutrements. They could act and pretend that they were not human, but ultimately they were; they all thought in the same way, died in the same way: With whatever passes for blood spluttering from their mouths, and with terror in their eyes.

The pycnofibers upon Krü’s body rose first, bristling in response to motions ahead. Plans within plans within plans were forged, prepared, poised to be unleashed the moment Beramode made a wrong move. It was only the casual raising of a tri-fingered hand that halted them, dismissing them with the minute motion of his wrist.

“Indeed,” Krü replied. He held good confidence that victory would be his — should they come to blows — but this branch would invariably be undone with such a conflict. His plans needed this branch intact to proceed, and though Krü was infamous for his wrath and his hatred, he stayed his hand.

Patience pays.

“We did.” Krü spoke, and his voice boomed with alien sounds, an alien language. “Games with cards, games with pieces carved from matter of earth and life. Games whose price earned them the nickname ‘plastic crack’.” Without so much as a gesture, Krü’s body rose into the air, swivelling to face Beramode while all six limbs hung beneath him. The Tapestry of Fate rose in kind, unfurling part of its unending length to bridge the gap between the two. A twitch of a finger later and the great cloth sunk, the scintillating fabric forming an arena within its depths.

Krü clutched his deck. His body lowered to rest upon the fabric formation, his head rising to look down at the metaphorical arena, the reflection of a moment where their pawns came together in coincidence, pieces already upon this board of war. His hands weaved the cards within themselves, shuffling his deck before he placed it face-down within the allotted grove.

Krü drew five cards.

“Your move.”

The figure — Agent 21745-2-Bravo-168, David — gave an impassive stare as the lights flashed forth and the firefight began. He was only there to attain the asset, and if they fell then another would take their place. But Hector did not fall, and Hector’s hand scribbled the name upon the paper.

David smiled.

“I am glad you agree,” he told Hector. Swift fingers unlocked the suitcase with a rapid series of clicks, opening up to present an item thrumming with power. He tosses it to the infamous Narco Lich, who can catch it and immediately feel its immense presence, an alien presence.

“Welcome to The Cultivators, Brother. We will sort out your initiation in earnest after dealing with—” David looks up to Rodrigo. “— this.”

A gesture from David’s hands, and the men who had fallen began to rise once again. Energy coursed through their lifeless bodies, puppets re-animated to bring their guns to bear and open fire upon Rodrigo and his goons. It was their turn to feel the heat, as the reanimated fired suppressive round after suppressive round.

It gave the time the two needed.

“We work best in shadow,” Hector enunciated with his electronic monotone. David gazed up, looking to the source of the light. His right hand formed a two-finger gun, aiming towards the lights themselves — unleashing a bolt of magenta to shatter the glass and plunge the entire area into darkness once again.

Beramode could not help the invisible smirk that passed over his face when Krü revealed that he was not only prepared to duel but had been hiding his very own game mat in plain sight this entire time. Unlike Krü, the King of the Night had ascended beyond hatred long ago, had quite literally torn it from his chest and cast it out into the stars where it had evolved over the course of thousands of years to become its own lifeform.

What the people of Neo Babylon now called The Dragon.

With a snap of his wrist one of the shadows hiding up his sleeve shot straight out and then back, forming what by outward appearances was the blade of a scythe stretching back along the outside of his forearm. A modification of, one might even say edgier version, the infamous duel disk. When Beramode placed his deck against the bulky pivot point connecting the blade to his wrist it sank into the shadows, melding with them, disappearing from sight completely before depositing five into his waiting hands. “Excellent,” Was his only reply. Whether he meant the game or his hand unknown. “Tell me about yourself, Krü, I do not mean to brag but I am at least somewhat infamous on this side of the central finite curve while you have managed to elude my senses until this very moment.”

Beramode placed two cards face down on the bottom rung another face up.

“I play Pack of Dogs in defense mode, as you can see, they will open fire on any monsters you play. Suppressing Fire, I believe they call it, the overall effect will lower their attack and defense for the next turn if you don’t do anything about it and leave you open to my next ploy.”

Just as he spoke, one of the floating metalloids picked up on the divine exchange between them, it splits into five different bodies like a peeling fruit and each took the form of a Black Dog soldier. Crouching on Beramode’s side of the field, guns aimed in Krü’s direction, they too wanted to play.



[We’ve lost visual on the target.] [Switching to ether vision.] [Retreating to a safe altitude.]

The Black Dog’s comms were a buzz with chatter about the newest development but if the troops felt anything akin to fear or intimidation, it did not show in the hollow static of their voices, that alone pleased Rodrigo who did naught but raise his right hand to flag down his second-in-command.

“Maintain suppressive fire, I’m going in.”

With Ether Vision the world was a glow, the flow of potential energy laid bare for his men to see, Rodrigo did not need goggles when he had already upgraded his eyes to see the nascent dreams of the world. Stronger in living entities than in inanimate objects. Webbing itself through the fetid flesh of newly made corpses exposing the lich’s cursed magic for it really was, parasitism, he weaved around the nearest weed zombie with criminal ease moments before it exploded a second time from incoming suppressing fire and made his way towards the center.

Juanito Deleto had been Hector’s right-hand for quite a while, his nickname though silly had been well-earned, many of the drug lords enemies political or otherwise had disappeared from this life so to see him twitching back into being with fetid mold springing out of the gaping bullet wounds brought no small joy to Rodrigo. His body took to the mutagenic agents with frightening alacrity, growing stronger than before where already he’d been a massive man in every sense of the word, but even the crustacean claw that ripped out of the fragile flesh of his right arm was not enough to catch Rodrigo with its first sweeping snip.

“You’ve always been an arrogant prick, Rodrigo.” He said with blood bubbling in his throat. “Always bragging about how tough you are but all you ever do is dodg—”

With but a single tap of his knuckles the conversation came to a close. It seemed no faster than a pat on the shoulder but the ripples that flowed throughout Juanito’s belly pulverized what remained of his skeleton like crashing waves before all at once, he exploded backwards, broad shouldered back bursting open to shoot chunks of bone and smoldering gore in the direction of Hector and his friend. There was a lot of killing ground left between him and his quart. Plenty of time for them to bring a new trick to bear, but with the helicarrier drawing back into position and the scouts taking their bead, it wasn’t like Rodrigo planed to let his quarry rest easy while he stalked towards them.

“Is this what you signed your life away, Hector? All I’m seeing are the same old tricks.”

“How unexpectedly childish,” Beramode’s mask did not have any discernible facial features and yet still managed to capture his disappointment perfectly in the abstract dance of shadows across its smooth black surface, then he draw one card and placed a second face down in the spell/trap zone. “Very well then, I shall squeeze the information from you once I’m done demolishing your deck, until then I play the Black Dog Justicar in attack mode. Like all Black Dog Mercenaries he gains a bonus for every member of the corporation on the playing field. The Pack of Dogs then lowers your Zombie Knights defense points with suppressing fire leaving him woefully exposed to my Justicar’s attack.”

As he spoke, another metalloid appeared amid the crowd, it took the form of a bolder mercenary. Like all the others its power armor still had that faintly canine aesthetic, especially the helmet, but this one carried a large electrified blade which it proudly stabbed through the largest of the ghosts whilst it was busy being peppered with little metal flechettes and seemingly banished the wailing spirit to oblivion merely for existing.

“And that will be all for this turn.”

Beramode had two cards in hand, two monsters on the field—one in attack and the other on defense, and two face-down spells. Momentum was seemingly in his favor but Kur had control of the field. Things could take a nasty turn next round but then that was the fun of this sort of thing was it not…?



All around the perimeter choice members of the assembled Black Dogs drew electrified long swords, each one snarling with ether and carving deep burning gouges in those zomboids unlucky enough to make it past the hail of gunfire. Burns that did not heal via magic. For the time being it seemed as though their kill box was well-maintained with Rodrigo himself being the only one bold enough to penetrate it and that from the outside.

“Am I supposed to be impressed, Hector? You had the chance to rebuild the world from the ashes. You could have been a king, a hero, a god. Instead you choose to be a petty drug lord always nipping at the heels of men greater then you…” Rodrigo drew his own enlarged version of the longswords the other Black Dogs were wielding, in his hands it was a standard length weapon, but he was also an eight foot tall cyber mutant and the sword he carried was easily longer than this Cavalerio was tall. “Together we could have taken down Solomon, if only you’d had the foresight to see past your nose. Now you will die standing side-by-side with this gringo.”

The fight did not seem a fair one, Rodrigo was toying with it, parrying each blow with criminal ease. Even sending the hunk of junk stumbling with a well-placed kick that nearly tore it in half. But That honor was reserved for the final sweep of his blade—the snarl of electricity as it passed through the amalgamated sheet metal armor and the explosion that followed a solid cover for his next command.

[I have him distracted, take the shot.]

Rodrigo knew Hector’s tricks well enough, nothing short of obliteration would kill the Narco Lich… His friend though? David seemed to be a regular guy by all accounts and if he was a regular guy then he would die an extraordinary death as one of the Black Dog Scouts on a roof hundreds of meters away pulled the trigger, firing a single Ether Piercing Round, it punched through Hector’s barrier leaving a smoldering hole in the mystic barrier on its mission for a one-way meeting with David’s temple—his brain—and then the other side if all things worked as planned.

“You ought to take better care of your associates, Hector. Knowing you is liable to shorten lifespans.”

Beramode did not need to understand Kru’s unusual biology to feel the smug aura oozing off of him. Gods were like exaggerated reflections of the people who worshipped them in his experience and those who liked to think of themselves as beyond that simple principle were oft most enslaved by it. And so Beramode listened in silence as the wretched souls serving as Kru’s minions this evening tore into the space-faring metalloids who’d only wanted to play an innocent game…

Until it was his time to speak.

“I find that people are more interested in talking about themselves than you give them credit for, Pepe the Prawn, all you have to do is make them comfortable.” Was that what had happened here? Had Beramode feigned frustration in order to appeal to Kru’s ego or had the weaver of fate merely allowed himself to become tangled in his own web, whichever made him angrier was surely truer, and being unable to tell difference would surely eat away at his opponent for the duration of their match. “You needn’t resist the compulsion, it’s standard fare for rivals to engage in banter during a climatic battle. Speaking of…” Post-mauling the space between them had filled with liquid metal giblets but rather than be swept off the board by the next stellar breeze peeling off from the dying star beside them they remained, burbling en masse until all at once twenty-five of the largest clumps exploded into new bodies that very much resembled their old ones. “I activate Quantum Kindergarten, whenever a monster with the keyword Dog dies on my side of the field they are immediately replaced by five quantum clones of themselves to continue the fight. Then I activate Scorched Earth which immediately dispels all field effects and replaces them with a field of smoldering fire.”

Just like that a wave of heat swept across the space between them until it filled with a distorted haze.

“After that, I sacrifice one Pack of Dogs to upgrade my Black Dog Justicar to a Black Dog Archon.” Heat so hot that the bubbling form of the Justicar lit on fire with a brilliant black-purple plasma before it lurched into the mass of deformed spirits that had taken the shape of Kru’s Zombie Horde with a mighty sweep of its blade, then another, then another, then another. Shearing off another damned soul each time until it became difficult to ignore that real lives were being sacrificed for a petty game. “With four different instances of Suppressing Fire lowering their attack points and Scorched Earth boosting my Archon’s attack power the difference between the two is staggering and the remainder will be removed directly from your life points. After that I play one more card face down in the Spell Zone and I end my turn, you ought to be careful Kru, keep playing at this pace and you’ll run out of cards before we get to the fun stuff.”

Beramode had only one card in his hand, the Archon seemingly drawn from his deck—or his sleeve, but four Pack of Dogs and one Archon supported by the ongoing effects of his Quantum Kindergarten and Scorched Earth.



“We’re surrounded.” “We’re being overwhelmed.” “Requesting evacuation.”

All around him, him being Rodrigo in this case, the favela exploded with activity. Zombies that had once no doubt been the occupants of this dumpy little shanty town burst from every available door, window, chimney, grate and other assorted opening they could find and when there were none available they made their own. The Black Dogs were immediately overwhelmed. There was no universe were any of their number would fall to a single zombie but the sheer weight of that tidal wave dragged them to the ground, and yet, when the first one fell a strange thing happened as if the universe itself were having a seizure before five more appeared in his or her place drawn from extant quantum possibilities where the trooper in question had not died.

This did not save the original trooper, who still died and still turned into a zombie, but rather replaced them and allowed their numbers to grow exponentially until the favela was an overflowing melee of living and dead made all the more chaotic by Rodrigo’s next order.

[Burn them all.]

FWOOSH!!!

Napalm swept across the whole favela from above as the dropships overhead dropped their camouflage and payloads in the same breath, uncaring of whether there were any survivors left or not and expecting the beleaguered Black Dog Clones to weather the storm with their power armor or be replaced by yet more copies wrenched from the cosmic cutting floor.

“Your friend has some interesting tricks, Hector, but I see what you’re trying to do.” Rodrigo marched forward through the sweeping flames seemingly ignorant of the headless gaunt that had once been David galloping a sharp semi-circle through the perimeter, crushing zombie and human underfoot, howling through the flames that every crevice of its twisted grey body on a mission to collide with the Black Dog Commander from behind. ‘The fool,’ Before becoming a techno savant Rodrigo had trained his body into a weapon such that he could physically feel any threat upon his person regardless of where he might perceive it, in other words, he knew the gaunt was coming at him from behind and just when it seemed ready to tackle him from behind he hopped into the air. Not much. Just enough that he was able to vault off the thing’s face before it passed under him with a pair of kicks so powerful they sent a shockwave rippling through the favela. Of David’s corpse there was naught but a messy splatter of blood spread out across a twenty-foot runway, steaming from contact with the jets at Rodrigo’s heels, carrying him past the fleeing Hector. Carving a burning trench through the muddy streets as he wheeled in the man’s direction and extended a single burly forearm to collide with his opponent mid-retreat and potentially decapitate that overgrown thaumatic bong the Narco Lich called a body. “I’ll figure out what he’s up to after I’m done with you!”