I loved the Adventure Time finale, to me it was perfect, but I also have a perspective of the characters not shared by many. Same goes for the world, and the business related to the Lich. That's why I wrote this, to not only practice writing a completely unique perspective but give a narrative shape to this view of the Lich and his story, and why it was critical to the finale playing out as it did.

Enjoy

The Last Scholar's Question

TheOneAndOnly1993

"Aren't you cold... Finn?"

As I recall those words, uttered an age ago, the heavens' impenetrable shield drags across the west. As slow and inevitable as the rot consuming the world below: death. My vessel glances across the vast dusty expanse he considers Ooo, but I know better.

As I recall those words, uttered unwittingly to the One, I should have known better. To have beaten me so effortlessly, my hubris blinded me to the reality that such a lowly cretin could be my spiritual equal. I should have known better, but the Enchiridion - textbook to the multiverse - taught me everything about everything.

About the Comet, first embodiment of the One, and the ignition spark of chaos it carried; the First Scholar of GOLB began this wretched Catalyst Cycle, preceding the purifying death of the Second, and the One who tried to stop it: a mutated dinosaur who dreamed of becoming something greater, as all self-aware life does.

With every Comet came a battle. Not always a grand engagement like the End of Ooo, but a battle of wills. Of morals, and rightness. Good and Evil, Life and Death. Arbitrary, mortal labels granted form and power by ants who cannot contend with their own chaos.

With GOLB: inevitable and eternal. Mortals may consider him a God of Life and of Death. I know he is just a fact: the reality of the world and its ever-changing state, given form and a master. GOLB himself is arbitrary, seemingly random and uncaring. Some consider him a malevolent, cosmic entity on the level of a being more ancient than either of us: Orgalorg.

But there is a beginning to everything.

And before there was time, before there was anything, there was nothing at all. And before there was nothing, reality was naught but monsters: writhing, screaming into the void, gnashing their teeth big as human skyscrapers, planet-sized eyes staring into nothing.

This was Chaos, and GOLB deemed it unfit to exist as it does: without change. And so he rose up among them, and scattered them across the void. To ensure they never contacted one another again, invisible borders were erected, thus creating the Multiverse.

And so life as we know it began as a glorified zoo.

Millennia since then, GOLB has sent Scholar after Scholar - known to mortals as an Agent of Change - maintained the purity of the Multiverse. Philosophers have pondered GOLB's motivations in this, but from what I've seen, it's quite simple. It's simple because I've seen it embodied in the last One. Finn. The Human Boy who survived impossible odds to ensure I did not win.

This was the Cosmic Owl's will, enacted through him by GOLB.

I realized all of this with the Enchiridion and my preexisting knowledge in hand. Therefore, if fate guided my hand to possess the key to the multiverse, then it's clear that my purpose is to be the Last Scholar of GOLB. The Death of the Multiverse. Conclusions my alternate self had made. Despite everybody's narrow efforts, Finn and the Lich of Multiverse "Farmworld" both succeeded. Finn escaped with his life, and Farmworld restored, while everywhere else suffered a cruel, cosmic joke.

Multiverses operate very simply in regards to their relations with one another. There are Variables, and there are Constants. I, for one, am a Constant - the Last Scholar of GOLB, the Lich King, or a form of him - a ceaselessly turning wheel vying to grind all life beneath his boot. But a Variable is whether or not he would win; ostensibly, Finn's success.

I should have known better than to wish of the false God, Prismo. My own multiverse, Finn's, would not have died as I intended. Merely my being would render itself in a new universe in which that occurred. A perfect mirror of it, but not the same thing.

Realizing this, mine alternate self of Farmworld, through the knowledge etched into the Enchridion, arrived at a simple conclusion: 'How can I fulfill my cosmic purpose if Finn has the potential to beat me?' And so, he sought to change the end result of this "battle for change," from a Variable to a Constant. Instead of one or the other winning, now, it was just the other. The Lich. The Last Scholar of GOLB, doubled in every universe.

"I wish for the extinction of all life."

As I stare into the dying world before me, knowing the heavens are quiet above, I realize now that Prismo couldn't deny my wish if he wanted to. After all, in the end, Finn the Human got his wish, and wished for a world where a Constant like me was now a Variable.

How contradictory: the death of all life had become an absolute in all Universes but the one Finn had wished for. The unintentional cleverness of Life and its contrived means of survival amuses me.

Wishes are a messy business, clearly. I find myself trapped in a vessel of my own making, perpetually held back by the willpower of a strong heart. As a result of my efforts to succeed, at that. In doing so, I'm forced to watch forever as the world before us dies. Before long, give or take a millennia, the Sun will explode, killing everything effectively. But until then, I can consider myself GOLB's greatest failure.

In Finn and I's contradictory efforts we birthed a paradox, one so great GOLB brought himself into the physical realm and tried forcing the great change. Contradictory once again. Master, I often wonder what it is that you wanted, why you wished to cease your ceaseless cycle of life and death. Perhaps the years upon years of repetition wore on his mind, filled it with dirt and dust until he was only acting here subconsciously, akin to my death-dealing drive.

My next incarnation was going to be glorious. I remember seeing it tramp the Candy Kingdom to the ground: an amalgamation of death, unstoppable and horrific, spreading to everything it touched.

But through GOLB's will, all of that came to a final end. The Catalyst has ceased, and slowly but surely the world we've all lived and died on rots away. The End is coming, as it does for all. But I'm patient, because an ending is inevitable, however far away.

I wonder, sometimes, what a mortal would feel if I told them all of this. What Sweet Pig Trunks would say if I could somehow communicate the reality of his feeble efforts.

If I could, well, there is not much I could do with that ability but revel in his fear, his terror and his mortality. The realization that, in the end, I won and was always going to win.

"Aren't you cold?"

That is what I would ask.

So the evidence is all there if you have a basic understanding of the multiverse theory and symbolism. I found it amazing that Adventure Time was able to weave this complex, airtight cosmic-destiny plot beneath the zaniness and splendor of Adventure Time.

What an amazing show. It will always be my #1.

Peace