Amidst the fused and shifting ruins of the world, the monsters battle: This is how it ends. The champion come to save the Earth lies face down in the dirt. His flag is ripped and dyed with rusted blood. Breathing, but barely.
The asylum god transmogrifies into a metal cloud. The cloud becomes a harp of molten glass. The glass grows feathers, sprouts teeth, extends luminous claws and tries to kill the thing that cannot die. The spectators gape or hide their faces. Stone becomes wood, becomes gas, becomes butterflies. This place becomes that place. This is how it ends.
Switch.
The Fury and Jaspers are on the moon. The Fury extends roots deep into the grey dust, to act as gravity anchors. The blister on its chest bursts, spewing out liquid nitrogen.
Switch.
The ocean bed. The Fury increases the pressure within its body to match that outside. It grows an extra nervous system to cope with the data-load. Quills rip its flesh. It absorbs them.
Switch.
The surface of the sun. If it hadn’t recently assimilated a large computer it would perhaps be dead by now. The Fury reflects this as it adjusts its molecular structure.
Switch.
A river of tar in a landscape of chromium.
The Fury reasons. The “Jaspers-thing” can alter reality at whim. What if there were no reality to alter? It has passed through such a non-place recently. On the way to this world from its world of origin. Un-space…
Switch.
A plane of fused and cryptic flesh.
The Jaspers-thing becomes a moth-fish with wings like razors. But the Fury does no relax its grip. It primes its own warp circuits. A muscle contracts. A program commences.
Switch.
Un-space. Where there is nothing. Nothing at all. The sculptor of reality has run out of clay.
With casual slowness the Fury grasps Jaspers’ head between huge malformed hands… and then it grows a slender filament connecting its right index finger to its left index finger, passing through the cranium of the Jaspers-thing.
And then it incinerates his brain.
This is how it ends.
The Fury transports itself and dead Jaspers back to Earth, where it tosses the corpse aside. Exhausted it sinks to its knees. ‘Orf wif its ‘ead!’ the Crazy Gang’s Queen of Hearts orders and the Executioner raises his axe to comply. The Fury sends eight hundred volts through the axe, almost the last of its stored power reserves. The Crazy Gang run away. It will pursue and destroy them later, when it has rested…
It begins to draw minerals from the Earth around it. It needs replenishment. It needs time.
Suddenly, Captain Britain grabs its shoulder. It turns around, towards him and Captain Britain punches his fist through its intestines. Then he claws its eye with his left hand. He follows this up with a kick to the pelvis and then tears off the Fury’s left arm to pummel it with it. He evades the Fury’s clumsy blow and hits its torso with his elbow.
Some distance away, Saturnyne and Captain U.K. are watching. Almost disbelieving, Saturnyne announces that she thinks he’s going to kill it. She hopes he’s going to kill it, because if he doesn’t, if he can’t kill it, it’s up to Linda.
Suddenly, a spike with a wire attached is loosened from the Fury’s eye and hits Captain Britain in the chest. The Fury begins to gain the upper hand. Linda watches and remembers how the monster killed her husband. She begins to cry and her face contorts with anger and with a cry of rage she flies towards the Fury and begins to tear it apart. And she screams and she rips and she gouges and screams. And the black stuff, the fear, the poison hatred, it all comes screeching up out of her throat at once… She is crying. She is howling. Every foul word, every curse she can remember… Steel fingers sinking through rancid purple flesh, she grasps its spine and begins to pull.
The Fury starts to shriek and for the first time in its existence understands the concept of annihilation … and gives up.
Captain U.K. keeps on tearing until Captain Britain puts a hand on her shoulder. Linda… it’s dead, Linda. It’s been dead for ten minutes. You killed it. She seeks comfort in his arms, as both of them cry.
Nearby, Saturnyne smirks and turns her attention towards the dead Jaspers. She kneels down, scrapes off some skin cells and stores them in a vial.
On Otherworld, Roma gathers the chess pieces representing Captain Britain, Captain U.K and Saturnyne to her.
On Earth, Captain Britain announces that something is happening. It can’t be, Saturnyne bursts out. Everything is finished. Her plan… A moment later, they are on Otherworld next to Merlyn’s coffin.
