The tree’s branches continued to move, creating a stairway leading to the base of the tree. The Slender Man slowly walked to the ground, like a king exiting his carriage. Everything about its form spoke of perfection. Its head was completely smooth and white, without a single hint of human features. Its dusty black suit and tie lacked any wrinkle, and looked perfectly tailored for its tall, slim body. It stood with absolutely straight posture, towering over Nyarlathotep with its height. Even without any expression, it still gave off feelings of incredible arrogance and pride. Even the color around it seemed to bend to its will, as the ground and air slowly seemed drained of brightness, creating a monochrome land that matched its attire.

Opposite this monster of order, Nyarlathotep stood eagerly awaiting the coming battle. She too wore a black suit, but it was the blackness of the void of space, nearly indistinguishable from the shadows that were growing around her. Her trench coat billowed out behind her, even without any wind. The green tie she wore shone with a sickly light that casted an eerie glow on her face. Her black hair twisted around her like tendrils, moving as if with a life of their own. Her lips were turned in a smirk, but her red eyes contained nothing but hatred. She was hunched slightly, like an animal preparing to pounce on its prey, and her sword of fire grew ever brighter in her hand.

For an hour, the two stood without moving, only silently watching each other. And then without warning, Nyarlathotep screamed and jumped forward. The Slender Man raised its hands, and branches grew out at incredible speed. When Nyarlathotep’s sword clashed with those branches, it unleashed a force unlike anything the Earth had ever seen. The ground beneath hem was torn open with a crack that went all the way to the planet’s core. Molten earth roared up to the sky. But the two gods were not affected by the heat or the burning debris that rained around them. The sword and branches clashed again, cracking the Earth a second time. More pillars of lava rose up around the two as everything was turned to ash. Nyarlathotep spun and cut through the branches, barely dodging each attack, until she had reached the Slender Man. She swung her sword at its face, but it caught the fiery blade in its hand.
 The power of the sword meeting the Slender Man’s hand was too much for the planet to withstand. The crust cracked, and the entire Earth was torn apart. But even being thrown into the emptiness of space did not hinder the combatants. Nyarlathotep flew between the pieces of the Earth, dodging the thousands of branches lashing toward her. When she saw an opening, she went for the Slender Man. But every time, more branches would appear to stop her. Direct attacks wouldn’t work; she needed an alternate strategy. Nyarlathotep pointed at one of the huge pieces of debris, and willed it to move. It rocketed toward the Slender Man, whose branches tore it into pieces before it could hit. But another piece soon followed, and then more, until Nyarlathotep was throwing every remaining fragment of the Earth at the Slender Man. When there was nothing left to throw at it, it had become completely shrouded by a cloud of dust. She looked intently into the dust, hoping that would be enough to finish it. But when the dust blew away, and the Slender Man was still there, she wasn’t really surprised. Just had to find something bigger to throw at it….

The Slender Man seemed to have the same idea. It stood still, one arm pointing toward a red light off in space. So, the Slender Man thought it could win just by tossing Mars at her? Such a paltry attack was nothing to Nyarlathotep. She readied her sword, waiting for the planet to come so she could destroy it.

She waited, but nothing seemed to be happening. The light didn’t seem to be moving any closer. What was going on….

She felt it before she saw anything. The laws of physics being completely disregarded and rewritten, all to throw a planet at faster than light speeds. Faster than even her human eyes could see. It would hit her in seconds, and she wouldn’t even be able to see it coming. In desperation, she unleashed the fires from her sword. Thousands of miles of space were covered by a wall of chaos. When Mars hit the fire, the entire planet was erased from existence. The fire returned to Nyarlathotep’s sword, and she started to sigh with relief. That breath was cut off as a black branch impaled her throat. More branches followed, stabbing through her chest and stomach. The Slender Man moved closer, stabbing more branches through her as it approached. Nyarlathotep swung her sword at it, but its branches wrapped around her arm, stopping her. The branches wrapped around her body, slowly crushing her. Yet through all this, Nyarlathotep began to laugh. The Slender Man stopped, and tilted its head as if confused. Nyarlathotep’s free arm was pointing off into space. And then it became clear why she was laughing once the Slender Man looked towards what she was pointing at: the Sun.

The Slender Man released Nyarlathotep as it prepared for this new attack. It held out its hands, and released thousands more branches from its back to try and catch the oncoming star. It wasn’t enough. In moments, the Slender Man was consumed by the Sun.

Nyarlathotep had flown a safe distance away to heal her wounds and the results of her attack. When the Slender Man vanished into the sun, she raised her middle finger and shouted, “How d’ya like that, you mother-” The sun suddenly dissolved. There was no explosion or dramatic finish; one moment, the sun was burning bright, and the next, all the energy in it was gone, leaving only dust. And amongst that dust was the Slender Man, still looking the same as it had since the start of the fight.

“Well if that’s how we’re going to play….” Nyarlathotep snarled. And once again, she charged forward.

The battle between Nyarlathotep and the Slender Man could be followed by watching the stars vanish across the Milky Way. For what would have been centuries on Earth, the two battled without pause. Neither could gain an advantage over the other. They fought until the entire Milky Way galaxy had been torn apart, and then they continued to fight in the empty void between galaxies.

Patience had never been one of Nyarlathotep’s virtues, and this stalemate was testing her greatly. She intended to destroy the Slender Man, no matter what it took. With a terrible roar, she pointed as a distant galaxy and willed it to fly at her foe. “I will not lose to you!” She screamed, directing another galaxy at the Slender Man. “I am Nyarlathotep! Last of the Outer Gods! You destroyed all of them, save me! You could never destroy me! And now I have become the most powerful being in all reality!” More galaxies were thrown towards the Slender Man. “I have suffered more than anyone else, and I have lost more than a monster like you could ever understand! And I will not allow those sacrifices to be for nothing! You cannot stop me! Nothing can stop me! The multiverse is mine to rule!” Her gestures grew more erratic, grabbing several galaxies at once and throwing them at faster speeds. Finally, she raised both her hands up and then flung them forward. Every galaxy, every rock, even every tiny piece of dust in the entire universe flew at the Slender Man. Its usual composer fell apart, as it spun around trying to look for an escape. But there was no escape. Stars and planets came at it from every direction, at several times the speed of light. When that uncountable number of stars collided, it created a massive explosion that spread through the entire universe.

That should be enough, Nyarlathotep. This was finally her victory. She laughed, a hoarse cackling sound that went on until she was too tired to keep going. Then she whispered to herself, “It’s finally over….”

That claim had been made too soon. Rather than continue expanding outward, the explosion turned in and started to collapse on itself. At the center of the implosion, the Slender Man calmly stood with a small black hole floating above its hand. Light, dust, and fire were streaming into the black hole, feeding it and making it grow larger. Soon the black hole grew too large for the Slender Man’s hand, and so it stepped away, floating in front of the expanding darkness with its arms held out as if taunting Nyarlathotep.

The pull of the black hole began to tug on Nyarlathotep. She attempted to rewrite physics to ignore the force, but something else was changing the rules back faster than she could. Nyarlathotep glared at the Slender Man, who simply remained in place, calmly watching her. The hole continued to grow larger, and Nyarlathotep began to accelerate toward it. She stabbed her sword into reality, anchoring it there, and then tried to hold on against the pull. Even with both hands holding the hilt, she was barely able to maintain her grip. And through it all, the Slender Man remained completely unaffected and still.

That stillness could be an opportunity, Nyarlathotep thought. It was a small opportunity. One that would probably end in her horrible death. But if it worked….

She pulled her sword out of the tear she’d made. Instantly, she began falling towards the black hole. But this time, it was a controlled fall. She flew at the Slender Man, sword pulled back. And the moment she was upon it, she swung.

The Slender Man vanished the just as her sword was about to hit it, and then reappeared several feet to her left, out of reach. It was too late for her to change direction to reach it. And so Nyarlathotep tumbled into the darkness of the black hole.

It is hard to tell what the Slender Man thought then, if it even does think in terms comprehensible to humans. But it clearly believed it had won. That Nyarlathotep was crushed in the depths of the supermassive black hole, never to return. And so it turned away, preparing for whatever the next step of its plans would be.

Perhaps it would have been wiser for it to observe the black hole a little longer. Because then it would have seen the flame coming out of the black hole, shooting toward it. Nyarlathotep had not been caught inside the black hole. Rather, she was flying out, wreathed in flames of chaos. The Slender Man finally did notice her, but it was too late, just as the fire reformed into a sword and she cut through its chest.

The Slender Man looked down at the colorless gash across its body, as if in surprise. Cracks of nothingness began to spread out from it, across the Slender Man’s body. Branches grew across its suit to try and fix the damage. But with all of its focus on healing itself, the Slender Man was unable to continue its fight against Nyarlathotep. All it could do was dodge as she swung her sword, destroying huge swaths of the universe with each attack. Bit by bit, what remained of the universe was being chipped away and dissolved into emptiness. The space which the Slender Man had to dodge in continued to grow smaller as Nyarlathotep’s fires spread across the entire universe. Until, finally, all that was left of the universe was the size of a small marble, with the Slender Man caught inside.

It was an amusing sight, Nyarlathotep thought. The god who had ruled over the entire multiverse, trapped in a universe so small she could crush it between her fingers. She grabbed the universe with her index finger and thumb, and thought about that. Just one tiny squeeze. That was all it would take. The slightest effort on her part, and the universe would be gone. Every remnant of the Slender Man’s multiverse, all trace of the reality it had created, would be destroyed. Such an easy task, she had to laugh at it. Everything destroyed! All of it, gone at last! She could finally create her new reality! A multiverse of chaos, bound by no laws! Her fires would stretch across an infinite number of universes, filled with beasts stranger than even Azathoth could dream of! An ever shifting creation of destruction and darkness, which she would rule supreme over!

And then a single thought passed through Nyarlathotep’s mind that clashed with all the others. Just two words. Very simple words. But enough to halt the internal monologue.

“Wait… why?”

Nyarlathotep hesitated. She closed her eyes for a moment. And when they opened again, for the first time in what had seemed like ages, her eyes were blue.

I-330 examined the marble of a universe between her fingers. A multiverse of chaos? Was that the reason she had been doing this? No, it was… it was something else. Why had she been fighting again? It felt like so long ago… so hard to remember…. She had been trying to… fix everything, hadn’t she. Fix all the damage that had been done. Then why was she here, preparing to destroy everything?

That hesitation was all the time the Slender Man needed. The wounds inflicted on it were healed, and it could act again. And now, an entire universe had been compressed into a single point. All that point needed was a little push to get things started again….

The universe in I-330’s hand exploded outward, flinging her aside. A new Big Bang, fueled by the Slender Man, was reforming the universe. Except this time, the Slender Man was at the absolute center of all creation. I-330 could feel its branches spreading out as the universe expanded. They were in every atom, every molecule. This universe was not just a creation of the Slender Man: it was the Slender Man. And it did not intend to make the mistakes it had with its last multiverse. There would be no humans here. No life at all. Nothing disorderly, nothing left to chance. Nothing but the perfectly mathematical spin of atoms and the exact physical forces acting on them. A universe of cold, empty planets making perfect circular orbits around evenly distributed stars.

All the confusion I-330 had been feeling was overridden by an absolute disgust at this new universe. This was wrong. Worse than even the reality of chaos she had almost made. Above all else, she had to stop it. She had made so many mistakes before, but now she knew this was what she had to do. With a scream, more of desperation than the rage filled battle cries of before, she flew toward the center of this new universe.

Any sign of the Slender Man’s suit was lost amongst the mass of branches it had turned into. Amongst the tree limbs, I-330 saw the Slender Man’s pale face. She flew straight at it, ignoring all the branches in her way. Those branches attacked her as she flew by, slashing and stabbing at her, but she paid no heed to all her injuries. Even after a branch cut off the arm holding her sword, she kept flying. Another tore off her legs, then crushed her jaw, and yet another stabbed through her eye. None of it stopped her. She went through it all until she reached the Slender Man’s face. Then she pulled back her remaining arm, and punched its white head.

The Slender Man flew backwards, and I-330 followed it, punching at its head again and again. Its branches were ripped out of the atoms they had spread inside. Space twisted around them as the Slender Man lost more connections to the universe, until the space around them shattered, and they both fell into the Quiet.

As I-330 pulled back to punch again, the Slender Man shoved her aside and reached for the hole they had fallen through. It had begun to close itself, so the Slender Man spread its branches, trying to get through before it was too late. It didn’t make it. The hole closed a moment before the branches reached it, leaving nothing.

A shrill shriek unlike anything I-330 had heard before came from the Slender Man. It began to wildly swing its branches around; not at any target, just thrashing through the emptiness. I-330 watched it, fascinated by the strange behavior. It reminded her of something, but she was having a hard time putting her finger on what. When she did realize what its behavior reminded her of, she smiled. It was throwing a tantrum, like a child who hadn’t gotten the toy they wanted. That would have made her laugh, but laughing felt too hard now. Everything felt too hard. She was so tired…. She knew that she would have to heal her wounds, and do something about this emptiness she’d just trapped herself in, but… that would wait. All she wanted to do now was sleep. And so, I-330 closed her eyes….