But Beijing annoyed her. The mortals were still fighting her and the sorcerers were helping them. All over the world, they refused to accept the fact that their silly little meaningless lives were over. It was insulting, if she were to be honest. They thought they still had a

99

chance with this, and one only.” Skulduggery grabbed Fletcher, pulled him to his feet, and pointed at Valkyrie and her parents. “Get Alice and get them the hell out of

100

here she was, destruction incarnate, and these mortals dared to hope that somehow, maybe, with the help of all these sorcerers, they could find a way to beat her.

It was aggravating.

She went away for a week, thought about her next move, and decided to just kill them all, absorb as much of their energy as she could, and move on. She had itchy feet. She wanted to explore the universe. To seek out new life and new civilisations. Then to kill them, too.

So she killed the world, burned it to a husk, and flew off into space.

She set foot on the moon. She teleported to Mars. The gases of Neptune made her eyes water. By the time she breached the galaxy, she didn’t need her body to travel any more. Her body became her mind, and she travelled at the speed of thought, and upon discovering life her physical form would take shape once again.

She appeared as a vast alien god to these otherworldly species. And she was not a nice god.

There were challenges that she had to overcome. Weapons she was unfamiliar with. Life cycles she was ignorant of. A constant pressure on her head, like a hand pressing down on her. But her biggest challenge was boredom. When she had had her fill of this universe, she returned to what remained of Earth. She began to long for something new. Something different.

Using everything she had learned from all those thousands of Remnants she had absorbed, she solved the mechanics of reality, and lifted off the ground and

101

rose high into the air. Fletcher watched, sure that she would snap out of it, fix her gaze on them, but she didn’t, she kept rising, a peculiar look on her face. She reached out with her hands and pulled

102

the empty space apart. Darquesse felt her fingers buzz. This was a new way of doing it, a new way of creating a portal, a doorway to a world with a

103

red sky, there was a red sky, and Fletcher’s heart thundered in his chest when he heard that noise, that awful, sickening

104

mourning call of the Faceless Ones, beautiful in its way, and Darquesse smiled at last. She hadn’t smiled since she’d killed Skulduggery Pleasant, all those years ago.

She stepped through the portal, leaving the lifeless universe of her home, and the portal closed behind her.

105

Fletcher blinked. “It worked?”