John felt that something was off from the moment he entered. The first thing he noticed was that the centre of the large room was claimed by two chairs, with a large distance between them. The second thing he noticed was that Wendy was missing again while Jeff, who was present this time around, was wearing a blindfold. The third thing he noticed was that the cameras were missing. Finally, he noticed that Moira was shifting uncomfortably in her lonely chair.

Vita prowled in circles around the two chairs, smiling her mischievous smile, and causing goose bumps all over John’s arms. ‘Something terrible is going to be the challenge today,’ he thought and closed on in further, double checking that there were no cameras. “So, what is happening today?” he asked.

Carefully, Jeff grabbed his blindfold and spied outwards. Following a sigh of relief, he lifted it entirely. “HELLO!” he screamed and jumped onto the table, holding a deactivated microphone. Even without an audience, he was every bit as hyped as ever. “John Newman, today you… have my full condolences for what is about to happen to you.”

‘That does bode poorly,’ John thought, only for Aclysia to step in front of him, Eclys already in hand.

“You will not cause my John pain again!” she declared, pointing the tip of her blade at the dark-haired pariah whose circular path currently had her step past them.

“If he wishes to avoid pain, he can concede,” Vita told them and continued on, opening her silver-marked back to the blade without any worry.

Aclysia’s body tensed, legs getting into the position to start an assault, until John put a hand on her shoulder and she turned her head to look at him. “Relax,” the Gamer told his first maid. “It’ll be fine.”

“She hurt you before!” Aclysia complained, still not lowering her weapon. “Just two days ago, they made you experience something hellish!” The katana followed Vita’s movements. “Her smugness makes me want to gut her like your next meal.”

“We’re having fish today?” John asked. Between trying to calm her down and genuine curiosity, he thought the question was appropriate.

“I acquired some fresh barracuda a while back and it has been waiting in my inventory for consumption,” Aclysia answered. “As per the nutrition plans, today would be a good day for additional protein and selenium.”

“You know, I struggle to think of a day where you AREN’T feeding me protein.”

“You have a lot of muscle activity every day, Master. Your body needs to be well maintained. Your performance in the bedroom must be boosted and maintained however I can.” She lowered her blade to raise one hand to her mouth and do a well-mannered clearing of her throat. “My personal desires dictate so.”

“Alright, alright.” John smiled, slowly making progress in relaxing her. Now placing both of his hands on her shoulders, he gently massaged them. “I know that she hurt me before, Aclysia, but being hurt is a risk I take whenever I do anything aiming to change the world. I don’t get to create such large ripples in history without taking those chances. At least I get to have the choice here, so take it easy, okay? Can you do that for me?”

The weaponized maid pressed her lips together. “…Perhaps we should just live in a cabin somewhere, safe from the world,” she suggested. “Just you, me, the Mistress and the rest of your harem. Women should know well enough to come to you, if they want to find true appreciation and satisfaction.”

“That would be a safe and probably satisfied life,” John admitted, “but it’s not what I want. I want to leave my mark on the world, for pride and for goodness’ sake.”

Aclysia opened her hand, Eclys vanishing into the Adaptive Bladery before it could drop to the floor. “For you, Master,” she conceded and stepped aside.

“Alright then.” John stood as tall as he could and stared at Jeff, since Vita was obviously aiming at being a cheeky pain today. “What horrible thing, exactly, would you have me do today?”

“As per today’s challenge, you’re to stare for one minute at the Nevr’est that Vita will call,” Jeff exclaimed and gulped so loudly that John could hear it across the room, even without the microphone working. “I swear, they go out of their way to make sure that I don’t get to see Wendy naked, but for this they call me!”

“Nobody wanted or wants to see you masturbate in the background while that hunk over there went to pound town with our cooking redhead,” Vita responded.

“I could have at least commentated!”

“Ah, yes, how silly of me,” the blank’s responses stayed absolutely dry, “that’s exactly what everyone wanted instead: a man, loudly shouting in their face, while they watch a porno.” There were several seconds of pause and then she added, “Are you into cuckolding, Jeff?”

“Can’t say I am.”

“Then stop complaining as if you are. What kind of man complains he wasn’t in the room to watch another man fuck an attractive woman?”

John, personally rather thankful that Jeff hadn’t been around no matter what the justification had been, stayed out of the conversation in favour of turning to his entourage. “You should leave the room.”

“Affirmative,” Beatrice said and turned to leave immediately, only stopping after one step to look over her shoulder. “Inquiry: what are you waiting for?”

“Why should we leave?” asked Rave, and Aclysia made an unwilling grimace. It went so far that her face went from gorgeous to just pretty.

While the weaponized maid was at least distantly aware of what Beatrice had seen during the battle for Washington, Rave had no real idea what awaited her if she stayed in the room. All she got were stories.

“Look, last time I just tried to REMEMBER what a Nevr’est looked like, I got a nosebleed,” he told her. “And totally-not-Alice over there is probably going to summon the Cheshire Cat and I’m just going to guess that’s the original Nevr’est, or something crazy like that.” Vita turned her head. Silver veins crawled symmetrically over her face, centred around her lips and her ever-wider growing grin. Looking away, mostly because of the intense pariah aura she exuded, John continued, “I have a particularly strong reaction to such things because of Gamer’s Body, but it still won’t be pleasant.”

“Okay, but unlike those two over there,” Rave pointed to the maids, “I can’t be erased by that, so I’ll stay.”

“Jane, I…”

“Ya don’t want me to suffer, I know,” she waved off and kissed him on the cheek. “We’re in this together, tiger, and I won’t let you be alone in this.”

The tone in her voice made it clear that her decision was already made, so John just sighed. “I really don’t deserve you.”

“No need to say the obvious.” She grinned and they kissed again properly. Shortly thereafter, Aclysia and Beatrice left the room. John made sure even the elementals left, just in case their incorporeal states could be affected. “What about ya, Moira?” Rave shouted over to the redhead, clearly uncomfortable, but still staying in place.

“I hardened my resolve before coming here,” the Shield Warden said, her leg bouncing steadily. “Lorelei saw what would happen today and wisely stayed behind. It would temporarily blind her to look at such a creature.”

“Okay, but why would YOU put yourself through that?” John wanted to know.

“I can’t simply cease my pledge of observing you because there will be discomfort associated with it,” Moira answered, her tone confused. For her, sitting through this was the most obvious thing in the world. “That aside, it will serve as training for facing a blank in combat.”

“You have never seen a Nevr’rest before?”

“I didn’t have the displeasure so far… but I have heard Lorelei’s description already. I trust it to be accurate.”

“Well, if you insist.” John shrugged and then looked to Jeff, who was opening his mouth. “Fusion will not supply Florida with mandatory prune cakes, that is my bet for today.”

His chances for winning this were ridiculously slim. He would still try, for pride’s sake, but this way he wouldn’t feel too awful if he lost. The condition as presented by Florida didn’t even say how often ‘regular’ was supposed to be. If he wanted to stretch it beyond reason, he could say that once every one million years was regular.

“The bet is acknowledged!” Jeff shouted and pointed at the large screen, where the usual table appeared.

John and his girlfriend stepped up to the chair and held hands, both of them standing resolute as Vita got seated on the other one a few metres ahead.

“You can sit if you want to,” she offered, genuine niceness in her voice. “There is no need to make this harder on you than it needs to be.”

“I’m perfect where I am,” he told her, pulling his shoulders back and interlocking his finger’s with Rave’s. “Let’s get this over with.”

“As you wish,” the pariah said. Her blue eyes suddenly rose from the background, as if highlighted. A moment later, the same happened to her hair. John only realized what was actually happening when her surroundings started to fade away. She was emanating her null energies, draining colour and then depth out of the things around her.

The area in space she dwelled in was temporarily erased. Only thin, black outlines of objects remained. The chair, the table on which Jeff sat, they were reduced to something that looked like it came out of a skilled artist’s sketchbook. Only the pariah’s eyes, hair and silver-markings were spared this treatment.

Hastily, the commentator put his blindfold back on. A decision John could understand all too well. His own were already hurting from this little and he felt like someone was dragging rusty nails over a chalkboard, just without the sound. It didn’t let up, only intensified with every passing second.

Inside the erased spot in reality moved something. Layers of light grey joined with the incomprehensible white, all of it together pulling into a shape. John felt his knees weaken as the Nevr’est fully manifested. The memory of how the last one had looked had erased itself with time, had become an empty spot in his recollections of that day. Now that he saw another one, one he instinctively knew was larger and more powerful, he was sure he never wanted that memory back.

Like warts of polished glass, glistening orbs were half-sunken into its face, some of them fused together, slit pupils inside them shifting, until they all focused on John. It could have been as tall as a skyscraper or a tree, John couldn’t find any true reference, he just knew that it was taller than he was, even lying on its side. One of its four legs, shaped unsteadily and changing in length as it shifted, supported its head. A rounded triangle, John would have described the shape, but failed to properly make sense of it to be sure.

Inhaling sharply, he resisted the urge to look away. Instead, he raised one hand to his face, more to help keep his chin raised than anything else. He felt something wet on his palm and the smell of iron tingled his nose.

The head of the Nevr’est was not only grotesque because of the bulbous eyes. Horns and stalks sprouted between the irregularly placed eyes. Two particularly large protrusions may have been its ears, but John couldn’t be sure of that. Its maw, a large cleft that was formed into a permanent, mad grin, parted and revealed sharp, liquid teeth. Their tips were connected and stretched, like rubber, but they had edges, John simply knew.

“If you’re gonna make it to the top, get a grip on yourself,” the Nevr’est vocalized. The words somehow formed in the overlap of toad and crow noises, underlined with the meow of a cat and the sound of tearing paper and ripping bark.

In response to the words, John felt his knees give in, and he hit the floor. Still strong, he felt Rave’s hand try to pull him to his feet, but his body felt sapped on every level.

“We’re all victims in-waiting. What would the Great Empty One think of you? Taking one of his favourite maidens and having her in love with you.” The creature rose to its feet. As if to give his fracturing understanding a break, the legs grew to the same length. Against the wishes of his instincts, John looked after the Nevr’est as it prowled around him.

Its body seemed elongated in one second and stout the next. It was striped and the stripes changed and swirled, like hypnotic patterns. For a few moments, the Nevr’est was without fur, then it was like a white tiger, then it was like its hairs were insect legs or algae or feathers matted with heavy oil. Those few times were when John’s mind attempted to make sense of what he saw. The majority of the time, the creature was just a shape, flat and unfathomably deep at the same time, gnawing away at the magic inside him.

“Nothing, probably,” the Nevr’est laughed. “Such a forgetful fellow, an idiot with reverse omnipotence. Then again, limited by Gaia. Imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality, you see? Can you figure out whether we are the reality or the imagination?” The creature’s tail coiled around the two of them. A touch that he couldn’t feel with any proper senses, he couldn’t even see the tail, he just knew it was there and it made his organs shriek and feel like they wanted to escape out of his mouth.

Just barely, John swallowed the stomach acid, and the tail’s presence vanished. It should have been easier after that, but with that pressure removed, the Gamer felt his consciousness waning. He fought to stay awake, but the voice of the nirvana-born creature scratched at the inside of his thoughts.

“Are we perhaps post-real? The nothing born from the imagination of the nothing Gaia dwells in? Or are you the nothing and we the imagination? All I know is that I’m not from any sort of nothing around the dream.” The Nevr’est was suddenly in front of John and bowed down. Its grinning lips moved with impossible fluidity and expressiveness, following the example of a true cartoon character without any of the childish joy. “Can you answer, little blessed light?”

John did his best to grin, his mouth filled with the taste of blood and vomit. “Spare the philosophy for the children’s books, Cheshire.”

The Nevr’est opened his maw wide. The liquid teeth snapped, each hardening into a pair of canine that surrounded the endless tunnel between its jaws. Segmented by completely identical jaws, those insides closed and opened in rapid successions as the cat laughed. His eyes were forced to understand the infinite, sapient nothing or fail at their task.