The warden turned his hard gaze to Mila. "The demon dying to the beast would be no great loss, but your strength could fuel an even greater massacre."

Hector's Strigoi ally tilted her head as she regarded the man. "I know you are not so foolish as to believe what is held in my flesh can ever compare to the accumulated life energy of the Mother Tree. The only reason I can imagine for your objection is that you know the three of us present a real threat to Cataclysm and you hesitate to join the battle. Is the master of the wardens truly so craven? You have sworn off land and family to become humanity's protector, yet you will not fight? This is your moment, Finn of the Western Wood."

The man – Finn – glared at Mila. "Keep out of my mind, Strigoi."

"I'm only trying to restore your missing courage."

Finn looked down at the ground, tension mounting in his shoulders. "A Strigoi can fight up a single level at best. The Ogre has two on you. My immunity to the draining effect does not protect me from physical attacks. And the demon is only level five."

"He has no energy to steal and a body hard as metal."

After a drawn-out silence, Finn nodded. "Perhaps we can drive her off. Save the Mother Tree, if it can recover still. Send Cataclysm north-east towards the sea. She can torment the fish again."

The three of them hiked down into the valley after coming to an agreement whereby Mila promised to leave the area as soon as their business was finished and Finn agreed not to hunt her. Finn carried a stone maul strapped to his back and a flint knife hung from his belt. Neither Mila nor Hector brought any weapons.

"The Mother Tree," Finn began to speak out of nowhere as they walked, "is said by some to be like a mother to the first humans. She covered them from the sun and the rain with her boughs and fed them with her nourishing fruits. Others say that she is the literal mother of humanity. The first man and woman emerged as two halves of the first fruit she ever dropped."

Hector found himself listening intently. "Do many people believe those stories?"

"Of course," Finn said. "What do demons say of their origins?"

Stories of the biblical Eden sounded about as outlandish as being born from a tree, come to think of it. But was the story told to Volithur by the Yazata any better? "I have heard that there was once a great war in Heaven. This takes place long before humans existed. Tiamat, mother of monsters, slaughtered many."

Hector glanced over and found his audience fascinated to hear a demon creation myth. "There was also the Multitude Who Are One, also known as the Ophanim. The reason for the sobriquet is that the Ophanim existed in many bodies but they were all connected through resonance to make a single entity. The Ophanim and Tiamat fought a mighty battle that shook ultimate reality with its ferocity. They even transcended time as we know it, fighting in past and future.

"Eventually, Tiamat was slain. From her corpse came the dragons and the monsters. The surviving Ophanim went away and have never been seen since. The corpses of the Multitude who died became other things. There are the Garuda, enemies of the dragons. And five complete universes were born from them. Tian of the Xian. Terra of the Jinn. Maya of the Arahants. Aes of the Titans. And Eden of the Alfar."

Finn laughed. "It is a good story, demon."

"It might even be true," Hector said.

"That I doubt," the man responded.

Before them there were endless trees, all of the same variety, all bearing large fruit, and most of them desiccated in the familiar fashion as other victims of the Ogre. Hector looked about, trying to find one larger than all the rest. "Where is the Mother Tree?"

"All around you," Finn said. "Every trunk in this valley is part of a single life – a single tree."

"Ah. And where is Cataclysm?"

Finn pointed. "She is in that direction. The Mother Tree fights back, so Cataclysm must touch each individual trunk to drain its vitality. Over half of the Mother Tree is gone already."

"Let's kill Cataclysm before she finishes the job," Hector said.

"I am unable to contend with her at close range," Finn warned.

"Then I guess I'll have to tie her up for you." As he said the words, Hector wondered if it could really be so easy. Misfit Squad handled their second battle at Breadfruit Village quite well. Maybe a level ten Ogre wouldn't be much of a challenge.

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Before them, a stocky and misshapen form came into view. It was seizing a tree trunk like it was trying to crush the windpipe of a person and the world warped around the creature. Had Hector not heard the female pronouns used in regard to this thing, he would not know her to be a woman. Or a human, honestly. The Ogre looked like a mass of overlapping cancers arranged into a hideous, bipedal form.

When Hector used his mental sense, he witnessed the sight of energy flowing into Cataclysm like water down a drain. Where it went, he could not tell. It vanished from the world, seemingly forever. She was a black hole to life. The warping of reality felt even more obvious now.

"How is she bending the world like that?" The question bubbled up like a deep frustration. The Sage of Swords had done something similar, he recalled. The effect itched at his mind.

Mila's attention, formerly riveted to the Ogre like it was a venomous snake, snapped to Hector. "You have an insight."

Finn reacted to the words by dancing sideways to put some distance between them. "A demon with an insight? Are you sure?"

"He senses Cataclysm's pressure. He either had a glimpse of ultimate reality or he is secretly your equal in level." Mila turned back to watch the creature devouring the life of a tree.

Finn looked between the Ogre and Hector as if unsure which one was the true threat. "What is your insight, demon? Tell me true."

"I can tame primordial chaos." He left it vague.

"Does that aid you in battle?"

"Not at all. Would you like to focus on the Ogre now? I'm your damn ally." Hector grimaced as the warden hesitated. To get things started in the right direction, he formed a cable of force and whipped it towards Cataclysm.

The cable came in hot, cracking just before it connected. And the tip evaporated where it made contact with the Ogre. Cataclysm jumped like she'd been hit with a cattle prod and spun to face them. Her face was round and lumpy. The eyes were barely visible within the mess, but Hector knew they were fixated on him. His next cable melted further out, not even getting close enough for the spray of cosmic energy to do any good.

She was immune to his domain. That was going to complicate all of this.

Well, there was nothing else to do at this point than get in close. Hector flew forward in a blink and swung a fist hard enough to shatter a brick wall. He made contact with the head and felt flesh splatter. Then two arms seized him and Hector found himself smashed head-first into a trunk of the Mother Tree.

Once, twice, three times she rammed him forward like he was a battering ram.

The force was considerable. Hector felt like his skull might split, but the tree cracked and toppled first. As he was covering his head with his arms on reflex, Cataclysm suddenly screamed like a woman seeing her child murdered. Hector found himself dropped and kicked further away.

As he sailed through the air, he witnessed Mila jumping up and swinging on the high branch of a neighboring trunk to get some distance. Cataclysm flexed on a conceptual level and environmental energy streamed towards her.

In that moment, Hector caught a vague glimpse of something. It was a mishmash. An inexorable pull like that of gravity. Ownership. Dominion. And a hint of transformation that reminded him vaguely of his chaotic emergence. Cataclysm had an insight not completely dissimilar to his own, he realized. There was a shared core around energetic state changes. But the rest of it… it was the kind of spiteful greed possessed by billionaires who locked kids up in sweatshops. Only this beast drained literal life energy from her victims.

Mila almost escaped when Cataclysm's arm extended unnaturally to seize an ankle. The beautiful Strigoi was yanked free of the tree to roll across the ground, still connected to the Ogre by an arm stretched out like rubber. Mila screamed. The Ogre cackled.

Then Finn was there, swinging his stone maul. The weapon came down, not on the Ogre's arm, but the leg of Mila. He made five rapid swings, shattering the lower leg thoroughly, then whipped out the flint knife and severed the remaining flesh with expert swipes. The warden lifted Mila in a bridal carry and sprinted back out of range.

Hector had not been idle. By the time the rapid events concluded, he was throwing jabs and crosses in crisp salvos. The Ogre stumbled, spun, and backhanded Hector through the air. He was back up in an instant. Running forward, he suddenly found himself thrown back by a kick under the chin. The damn Ogre was faster and stronger than him. On top of that, his cables didn't work against her. What did that leave him?

Being able to zip around the multiverse in a transit sphere was great, but there were times Hector would give anything to have the power of a chaos bolt at his command. He could guarantee Cataclysm wouldn't shrug that off. He would just have to innovate a different solution.

His eyes passed over the trunk his head had been used to topple. Yes. That would do nicely. r Hector wrapped a cable around the trunk and then swung it down on the Ogre like an immense hammer. The whistle of air testified to the speed of his improvised weapon.

Unfortunately, the trunk crumbled into mulch as it came near Cataclysm.

Hector narrowed his eyes. How did she do that one? Her power was based in life energy, so could it be because he'd struck her with something that used to be alive? If that was the case…. Hector located a nearby stone and hurled it at the Ogre. Her head exploded. It reformed a second later, but the important thing was that inorganic matter could cause damage.

As Hector sought out a larger rock in their vicinity, Cataclysm began to flee.

"No you don't," he growled as he shot the original projectile at her back where shoulder blades would be if she wasn't a cancerous blob. The Ogre collapsed to the ground and Hector sprinted forward. He saw a rock in the distance that was twice the size of his head and pulled it towards himself with a cable.

Cataclysm had just regained her feet when the rock smashed her back down to the ground.

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