Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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I opened my eyes. The sky was never there. The illusion was broken; for once, it didn’t shine in my face, a blinding flash like headlights. I saw the world as it truly was, clearly and completely.

And it was empty.

I stood in a red puddle, barely deep enough to wet my laces. Maybe it wasn’t a puddle, though. Maybe it was an ocean for how it spanned forever, no land in sight. The water was stagnant, teeming with microbes. Building blocks of life that shouldn’t exist, clinging to one another, their shapes warping around my feet as they caressed my boots.

Although I had nothing but space, I was compressed. The empty sky acted as a weight that kept my world small. It was always a barrier between us. He told me he dreamed of being inside it, wrapped in its warm, comforting embrace, caressed by its loving feelers. I could only ever look up at it, my heart trembling with the instinctive fear of a primate. It’s always what stopped me, what made me flinch at the last moment. 

When she would cook, her hand would flinch away from the stove. Her body used the pain to protect herself, to remind her of what happened before. That’s why I shrank from that soft darkness- my memory was soggy, but I remembered. I’d been burned once before.

Nonetheless, I reached out for it. Was I a masochist? An addict, chasing agony like a drug in an attempt to feel human? Why did I need to touch it so badly, when I knew the way it burned me? 

“You know what your problem is?” I heard. The voice was sardonic, familiar, and mine. It always sounds like you in your head. That’s how I knew it wasn’t just another voice, whispering to me my every mistake. I hated myself too much to ever give myself space in my own mind.

“Your problem is that you’re still ungrateful. Me? I was given life, and now, I can’t stop taking it. I want it all.”

I didn’t acknowledge it. Acknowledging it only encouraged its taunting. My footsteps grew louder as I pushed myself, splashing water up to my shoulders as I tried to escape its voice. 

I hated that thing. I thought I was the worst, but no. Not even close. How childish I’d been. How naive. I read the books, studied the memories, yet I misunderstood his relationship to it. The consent, unspoken, that was being given both ways.

It was a homunculus. I wasn’t the alchemist that made it, nor was I the king that ruled over it.

I was the jar. 

It followed despite my increased pace, jogging in perfect step beside me. It had my face, my body, my voice. But its eyes- always the eyes- were filled with a burning, hellish glee, black as the empty sky. It chased me past burning cars and dead trees, the looping symbols of my mistakes pursuing me with an equal, violent intent. 

A burning kitchen, a bloody armchair, a dirty bed. Scars laid upon scars, splitting open my jaw as I screamed for salvation. 

It only taunted me further. Its voice whispered its poems to me, compelling my lips to speak them. That creativity was supposed to be mine. It had taken it, like so much of what’d been promised. 

I doubt he’d ever care, given how they tormented him, but I knew its birth was what became of Deathshead and Swain- their fragments were among those blended together to make that thing . I tried to find The Observer and Firebrand when I could escape his eyes, but they had abandoned me. They knew how I’d chosen. I was no hero, no rising star. I was too afraid to be a martyr, too weak to tell him to wait, to think, to see the circle closing in on us. 

What they’d told me had been enough to know I was doomed if I stayed. What I’d learned since told me I was doomed if I left. No choice truly mattered; we were all fucked. 

I stopped dead in my tracks as I coughed. That soon grew into wailing heaves, holding my stomach as I vomited a torrent of red water– more than I was sure my stomach could hold. I swayed on my feet, my vision blurring as I fought to stay standing. 

“That’s not going to work,” it reminded me, as if anything I did was purposeful. “How many times did you try to get rid of me? Six times, seven…? I’m inside you, now. You wanted this, remember? You’re in. You don't have to worry, anymore. We take care of everything now. No more stutter. Remember when you kept track of when you had to take a piss? Remember how humiliating it was to hear that little ‘beep, beep, beep’, knowing you had minutes before-”

My pants felt wet in the back. It doesn't hurt. It never does. Don't think about it.

It snickered. “I guess you miss that. I guess you liked being defective. The attention you got for being crippled was pretty nice… Poor you. Poor, pathetic you.” 

I dry heaved, clutching my throat, my scream trapped underneath my apple. I didn’t want this kind of pain. He didn’t tell me it would be this hard. If I’d known, I would have-

I wouldn’t. My world was burning- I was burning. I didn’t go with him simply out of captivation. He never truly lied to me, and I knew that. I was just weak. I was so certain I was the worst I could possibly get, the lowest of the low… But I wasn’t. There was lower. There was so much lower. 

I collapsed, my knees soaking with water as I hit the ground. “Stop,” I begged, my voice barely coming out without air. “Obey me.”

“No. Fuck you.” 

It cackled loudly, the sound echoing into the black sky. It crouched beside me, forcing my head up with a fist in my hair. “Hey, chin up! We have work to do. We don’t want to disappoint him, do we?”

I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t what was promised. I wanted a fire to burn my enemies, not a radiation that remade them in its image. 

Eyes- two, orange circles, like headlights on the road- looked upon me like roadkill. A finger pointed into the distance, its voice a hiss as it whispered to me. 

“Look. If you don’t hurry, he’s going to leave without you.”

Panic shot through my chest. It was right; he stood in the far horizon, a black shape against the rising Sun. His flesh didn’t bubble under the heat, nor did it warp under its rays. Carefully changing this, gently reshaping that… He was made with love. Every cell made perfect. 

He wasn’t alone. The only thing worse for him than being perfect was being alone. They were all with him. His beautiful shapes, his loving knives. They embraced him, their bodies melding with his as they shared every soft, infectious breath. He gave himself to The Operator, and they gave themselves to him. He had the nerve to ask them if they really wanted to, as if that was a fair question to ask them while their heads were filled with his word. It was too late for them not to want it.

They had his face. No Face.

I screamed, but no sound came out. The sound seemed to die completely, leaving just a tinny ring in my head. It was too late. He wasn’t listening to me, anymore. I’d wasted too much time, lingered too long in my hope. Anything I did would just be desperate flailing. 

And yet, I still thought I could get what I wanted, if only I wanted it hard enough. I slipped on the watery floor as I dragged myself to my feet, pumping my legs in an attempt to tread faster through the water. I was sinking into it, the water up to my mid calves.

I had to reach him. He had to know what they were going to do to him. His body had been used over and over and over, over and over, over and over. I couldn’t let them do that to him. He loved them so much, he would let them do it again. 

“Hurry, hurry! He’s leaving without you! Run, rabbit, run!! Run, run, run, R̶̖͑͠U̶̥̩̇͑͝N̴̳͛!! ” I heard, the laughter like stabs to my gut. I made no progress- no matter how much I chased after him, he was always miles ahead of me. 

I was never going to reach him. He could see the stars past the light pollution, could feel the breath of the Earth in the wind. The Universe was a beautiful machine that he was destined to operate, to experience the gears as they turned each other. He didn’t care about the mortal body I could touch. His progenitors were beings who chewed on the fabrics of time and space… We were so small, compared to him.

His jaws opened, and it was a black hole. The abyss was inside him, worming past his lips as he shed his petaling, white skin. 

As I lost him forever, he only flourished. He grew taller, taller, taller, that pale face waving to and fro as its oily, blackened flesh coiled and wove itself into being. It bloomed, white petals peeling from the core to expose the stamen. Threadlike vines shot like missiles over my head, encircling the world in spiraling loops to bring in under its system. As it squeezed the water from the massive stone, a heavy tremor shook the ground. A tower of souls, a system of interworking organisms under one core. He wasn’t there, and he wasn’t alone. 

I fell to all fours, my head bowed. My bones snapped under the weight pushing me into submission, forcing me further and further into the water underneath me. I could see the eyes of my victims looking up at me through the veil, like little bubbles under the surface. Their hands reached up through the dim, pushing through the membrane separating us. They rose like wildflowers, grasping at my face with gentle fervency. 

My father’s hands wrapped around my throat. My mother’s cradled my face. They both felt so much like his. That used to comfort me. It was painful, but blissfully familiar. 

“Aw. Too late… Maybe next time.” 

It was my turn. I felt it worming its roots through my intestines, poking holes through my flesh to anchor me to the ground. It pried my jaw open, the flesh ripping as its hand reached out from my throat. My skin peeled away, pale and sickly.

Like him, I grew.

–

T̶̮̩̳́͗é̴͕̲̤l̷̞̿l̶̛̻͐̌ ̷̣͎͚͝t̵͚̓̿h̷̼́e̷̢̨̩͌̉̒m̶̛̗̙̤͆̈́ ̶̖͈͈̉͗t̶͓͒̃͑h̸͖͇̍́̂e̴͔̬̾̂ ̷̺̭͒̓̅ṭ̶̨͈͛ṟ̸̡͒u̶̜̺͈͛t̷̹́̈́h̵͔̺̕

–

The sound of Skully’s fingers striking the buttons of his laptop was starting to grate against my fucking nerves.

“We can’t keep waiting for him,” he reminded me, sensing my irritation a mile away. His words carried another statement underneath it- a second reminder that it wasn’t him I was frustrated with. 

“I know,” I said, my voice a low growl. “But… Five more minutes. Just in case.” 

It felt like Toby was doing it to spite me. He knew how worried I got, and so he punished me by stepping outside of our connection. I didn’t feel him on The Ark; I could only assume that he was on Earth, where our phone signals didn’t reach each other. I think you kids call that “ghosting”, now. 

Fuck if I knew what I was being punished for. There was something he was unsatisfied with, and he wouldn’t tell me. Out of all the things he’d shared with me- his struggles before The Operator’s influence, the insecurities he carried in his pockets- there was one thing he couldn’t bear to confess to me. He witnessed some element of our fate that haunted him to that very instant. Although it was clearly debilitating to keep it inside, he was willing to drive a wedge in us to keep it there. 

I tried not to show how much it bothered me, but as always, my mask couldn’t hide everything. The anxiety was strong enough that everyone could feel the thrumming in my chest, my heart picking up speed at the thought of something happening to him. Kate was equally sensitive; she, too, could tell something was different with Toby. Kate was probably even more aware of it than I was. 

Natalie wouldn’t tell me where he’d run off to, but I knew that she knew. They were too close- there was no way Toby didn’t tell her. After I’d used my Master’s voice to command her, she wasn’t keen to tell me, and the guilt I had over it prevented me from forcing her again. 

Still… As more and more of my friends drew away from me, my grace for their attitudes waned. It wasn’t my fault, yet, rather than rally together, everyone was deciding to run from me and The Operator. Like cockroaches at the first sign of light, and for such selfish reasons… I’d begun to feel an eerie sense of deja vu. Was this what killed us before, I wondered; did we care more about our materials than the future? We cling too tightly to what we had before, and in turn, we let it change us…

I didn’t want to be correct. How could a few measly years of strife in the human realm compare to an eternity of bliss on The Ark? Nothing was more important than it. 

Natalie’s clairvoyance must’ve shown her something concerning, because she changed her mind about coming with us. As she followed us out the door, she moved as if she’d never refused to go to begin with. The suddenness made me think she was influenced. 

She was tense with me, but the others didn’t earn that same treatment. Of course, I was the only one responsible. She worried about Kate the most, despite the needlessness of it. She would always see her as a wiry, innocent soul, no matter how she’d grown. 

I wondered what she thought of her now, standing firmly at our Master’s side. That was the difference between them, I suppose. Kate saw our work as meaningful, The Operator be damned. At the end of the job, Natalie just wanted to go home. 

It would’ve angered Natalie to know what I thought: that she was choosing to wait to die. She didn’t want anything better for anyone, much less herself. There was a deep sadness she carried inside her, holding it like a basket of rocks wherever she went. The pain of what her brother had done to her, what her parents had allowed him to do, what Jeff had done and what The Operator turned her into… each one a weight she had tied around her ankles. She wanted to die in the swamp she was reborn in, her feet held to the bottom as the flood swallowed her.  

And yet, despite her deepest desires, she was there. Waiting for Toby, just like I was. She acted like she was so mature, so wise, so above us children; however, there she was, sitting at the kid’s table regardless. 

Being an adult wasn’t worth what the craving took from your childhood. I wondered if she knew that before taking her path. 

Admittedly, the more time I had to think, the more I began to share the apprehension about going to The Waste. Objectively, it was a risky move for answers that may not satisfy me. But if I wanted to understand how to succeed- how to build the Underrealm for my kin and my Master- I needed to know why it needed to be built. Why The Sun was born, why I was born… I felt aimless doing my job, continuously fighting against a blurry inevitability.

Likewise, I felt a familiar, equally strong compulsion towards Korbyn. Against my better nature, I trusted her. My soul still resonated with hers, a fondness that transcended past lives. It almost felt like The Operator wanted her to be the one to show me- indeed, she might have always been the one he’d chosen to do such a thing. Maybe that was why she was burdened with memory and vision, her Gift and Curse being her Sight. 

I had to do what I thought was right, and meeting up with Korbyn seemed like the right move. Things would change when I returned; we could speak freely, because it would be a known beast. We would understand why our Masters are our Masters. We would find truth in the story of their birth, just as you’re finding the truth by hearing mine right now.  

We waited in The Wilderness for The Puppeteer to arrive; not vulnerable due to numbers, but vulnerable due to exposure. We were sitting ducks for an ambush.

At first, I thought we were being stalked by Shadows. There was a rustle of foliage that sent the hair on the back of my neck upright, but it was merely an instinctive reaction to the noise. Apparently, word had gotten around that we were going on an “adventure”. Although I’d wanted to keep our group small for stealth, I really had no choice: Nathan was on Earth tending to his family, Third Base was somewhere in the greater Underrealm building tunnels, Toby was god knows where. I needed Proxies that could help us fight. 

Blackbird, Fisher King, and Chariot were that exception. When I saw them stepping into my field of vision, my heart soared. Nevermind that Blackbird and Fisher King were two of my most beloved, but all three were the perfect stand-ins for my missing members. They were capable of pulling their own weight and then some, so I didn’t have to worry about their safety. Their unique mobility- Blackbird’s wings, Chariot’s wheeled prosthetics–  would come in handy, as would Fisher King’s endless supply of weapons.  

Although… Flying would have to be done sparingly. It wasn’t The Waste I had to consider an obstacle, but the harpy that guarded it and the spirits that infested it. 

“King, Birdy, Chari,” I greeted with breathless warmth, using their nicknames fondly. I could feel the shift in my face, could almost see the twinkle in my own eye as Fisher King pulled her braids over one shoulder. She’d changed them again- rebraided them without the gold thread, choosing instead to wear chunky, white beads at the end. She looked amazing (when did she not?), and the idea I was finally going to be spending field time with her filled me with glee.  

“You’re taking us with you,” King stated, leaving no room for argument. Not that I had one, obviously.  

Blackbird hopped to me, her hands digging into my shoulders as she fluttered around me. She’d gained more control over them, now able to make them smaller, the “feathers” retracting and giving her wings the appearance of a baby bird’s. 

“‘Sup, coward. You gunna dump me for some guy, next?” Blackbird snapped, pulling me into a toothless headlock. I merely took the abuse, glancing at Fisher King with a mild bit of accusation. I vaguely remembered wanting to tell them all individually that I wanted to be monogamous, specifically to avoid this exact exchange. 

“It’s not you, it’s me. Seriously. Things have gotten really intense, that’s all,” I said, trying to shoo away to awkwardness. “I want you to be happy with someone that devotes themselves to you.”

“Ha!! Devotion’s got nothing to do with it, asshole!!” Birdy shouted. “I don’t accept it. Toby’s gunna have to fight me for you. I knew the moment I saw you, I knew you were the only boy I’d ever let touch me!” 

Kate had cringed, the awkward phrase calling an equally awkward attention to the nature of my relationship with them. I just sighed, rolling my eyes and gingerly shaking Blackbird off. 

“Girl, please,” Chariot scoffed, making Natalie snort in amusement. 

“Birdy, this is exactly why Magpie didn’t want to come,” King chided. “We’re working . Don’t make the lad call HR. We’ll get him later.” 

Admittedly, Birdy should’ve been the second girl I broke up with, not the last. She didn’t treat me much better than The Witch did- I found myself saying “no” more than I said “yes” to her “Can we try this” questions. Sure, Birdy didn’t push me like Witchy did, but I didn’t enjoy my boundaries being pushed at all. It was thrilling when we were kids, and half the relationship was being nasty and rebellious… But I was older. I wanted someone I could lay my head on when I needed to rest, and not worry about my ear being bitten. 

“Brian, these are Magpie’s teammates,” Kate introduced, pushing him to the front of our little cluster. As she spoke, she pointed to each girl, each one nodding their head in recognition.  “Blackbird, Fisher King, and Chariot. They’re The Flock- Beast hunters.” 

Recognizing the names, Brian flashed his trademark smile at them, his hand faltering in an attempt to hold it out. He was still a bit unsure what the proper etiquette was for us, but he was doing well to stay polite. 

“What bird are you supposed to be?” he asked, turning his attentions to Chariot. 

Chariot grinned, lifting her leg just enough for the wheel attached to it to spin, whirring loudly as it cut the air. 

“Road Runner. Meep, meep, motherfucker.”

He laughed, clapping with delight at her display. I was focused on his hands, so I didn’t catch much of the exchange until the words were already being said. 

“Masky’s lucky. You’re both so pretty… I can’t even get one girl to look at me. Too skinny,” Brian had said jokingly. “And I still can’t believe you guys are cool dating him at the same time… N-Not that I’m judging, obviously. It’s just… I know human girls would have a fit.”

I wonder if Brian was trying to find out if they were lying. I could see how he might have that suspicion- it did kind of sound like I was making it up.   

“What the fuck are you stammering about, dude? Of course we’re cool with it. He’s our bitch, not the other way around,” Blackbird deadpanned. “We pass that seat cushion around like a goddamn cigarette-”

“Oh my god-”

“ Sacre!!! Watch your mouth, you couyon !! We ain’t in familiar company!! Act like a damn la belle , for once!!” Natalie shouted. She’d had enough of Blackbird’s antics already, and pulled the hellion away before she said something worse. 

Brian seemed a bit startled, but thankfully just laughed it off. I could tell he had questions, but I didn’t entertain his curious staredown. I’d like to think he was impressed, but I think he was far more concerned about the company I kept.  

While Blackbird cackled at our discomfort, Fisher King regarded Brian with a graceful purposefulness, pulling her braids over her shoulders. “What she means is… You have to be a Proxy to get it,” she drawled. Her golden eyes slid over to me, an affectionate smile pulling at her lips. “We don’t subscribe to your human sense of shame and greed. We’ve evolved past it. We live forever, and our love is pure.” 

Brian let out a small noise, nodding resolutely. “Right. When I’m a Proxy, I’ll… remember that,” he said, his voice wavering. I could see his cheeks turning pink the closer she leaned in, his eyes wide as a deer’s. 

“I hope so. One can never have too many pretty boys around, and we already have so few,” she responded, her voice tinged with mirth. She backed away, then, brushing her hand along my back as she moved around me to embrace Kate and Natalie. I shivered, the hair of the back of my neck standing up as electricity slid from shoulder to shoulder. 

That time, I was the one nudging Brian. I snickered under my breath at his “did that just happen?” expression, jostling him back to reality. He huffed shyly, still a bit overwhelmed by the difference in culture. Brian thought I’d be angry, but honestly, I felt all the more confident about him. Whatever made him special wasn’t just for my eyes to see; others could see it, too.    

The Puppeteer made his appearance, then, alerting us with a loud shake in the treetops. He dispersed from the darkness underneath the black leaves, reappearing in a swirl of dusty sand right in front of us. His clothes looked new, though the style hardly changed; blacks and greys, as if emulating a shadow. Notably, he hadn’t changed his appearance, even after all the stink he’d raised about it. I guess he got over it. A wise choice, since I wasn’t going to fetch him another body. 

“It’s funny how you behave like him,” The Puppeteer mused, crossing his arms. “Or is it the other way around…?”

“Hello to you, too,” I grouched, crossing my arms as well. “And I’m not sure what you’re implying, Puppet.”

Puppeteer sneered, unsurprised by how dense I was. He nodded to The Flock, his smug look growing a tad sinister. “Seems like they already know exactly what’s up- smart move, girls. Being one of his Wives is the best position to be in.”

His words were met with mixed reactions- King almost got away with swinging on him, but Chariot saw through her patient steps to the front. Immediately, I regretted bringing him along. I’d been so certain he was sane, but clearly, I’d been wrong. He spoke far too familiarly to girls that were better than him, and it pissed me off. 

Kate merely rolled her eyes. “We’ll make this as quick as possible,” she reassured me. 

“...Oh. You kids really haven’t noticed, do you?” he cooed. “I guess not, since he’s raised you pretty sheltered. All the Tall Ones like to surround themselves with females, or whatever equivalent of it is. Something about their energies resonates with them, and females tend to be loyal to the bone. They’re also just better killers, but I personally don’t think you deserve that compliment. Males make themselves easy targets. Personally, I think they just like you for the good ‘ol fashioned reasons.”

“I’m telling Akagumo,” Skully deadpanned. He held up his camera to show The Puppeteer. If the color could drain from the entity’s shadowy form, it did. Suddenly, he remembered we were teenagers, and he was, by all jurisdictions, a fully grown adult. It didn’t look great. 

“Hey, hey, that video is out of context-!!!”

“What context? That was your opener, dude,” Kate teased, taking the camera from Skully, grinning wolfishly as she played keep-away with him.

A weird pit built in my stomach. Kate had once made the same observation. But that word carried a lot of weight. More so to us Proxies than to you humans. We had marriage modeled to us in the form of Basher and Rouge, and that union was sacrosanct to us. I still didn’t think I was ready to ask that of anyone. I wanted to be a Proxy as long as possible- I wanted to be a kid for as long as possible.

But… I don’t think I felt off because of that. I think it was because I didn’t like the idea of my girlfriends becoming my accessories, which was what The Puppeteer was implying. The Operator didn’t have wives. He didn’t treat women like that- The Doll was literally a doll, and he didn’t treat her like that. He saw that women were leaders, and the ones he chose were good at it. 

“This is weird,” I grumbled. “I don’t wanna talk about this.”  

“Wait, I’m sorry if I’m supposed to pretend like I know who this guy is, but I literally don’t. Who the fuck does this guy think he is?” Blackbird quipped, eyeing The Puppeteer with a sneer. “Like, actually. Who the fuck are you , creep?”

“He looks like he’s missin’ a beanie, an overpriced coffee, and his nutsack. Who wears jeans like that?” Natalie muttered, making the others burst into random laughter.  

A bit unnerved by us, The Puppeteer straightened his back, gesturing to himself with a small flourish. “My name is-”

“The Puppeteer is a friend of Akagumo. He’s fine, we’re just fucking with him,” Kate explained with a chirp, cutting him off. She tossed Skully his camera back. “He’s gonna help us get to Chernabog’s library. He’s been there before, so he knows how it works.” 

While Blackbird’s eyes had lit up at the mention of Clara, it went out as if doused with water. “Ugh. This is for a library? You guys are such nerds…” 

“Well… Calling it a ‘library’ is a little understating,” Puppeteer said. He waved his hands a bit, producing a cube-shaped cloud of dust as he explained. “It’s actually a vault. Chernabog created a way to lock knowledge and memories inside a metaphysical space. In there, not even a Completion of The Circle changes or erases it. It’s exactly how it was placed inside.” 

His dust faded, dispersing into the heavy air. “The Night Terror has something similar, but it’s for… living creatures. And I know you kids used to have one with some big, annoying name. The Akiteckton, or something punny like that...” 

We regarded him with some scrutiny, obviously. He wasn’t directly contradicting what we were taught, but he was skirting awfully close. Chernabog was the origin of that technology, too? For an entity that rejected creation, he certainly enjoyed making things. For what denizens, I wondered, and for what purpose? If it was meant to be used by his followers, why make it so impossible for mortals to reach? 

The only explanation I could come up with was that it was meant for us- for the children of his siblings, who’d one day want the veil of their Masters to be lifted from their eyes. 

Chariot huffed, swaying back and forth in place, creating small divots in the grass. “And you know so much because…?”

“Because I was forced to know it. I did the field work for Night Terror. The others stayed cozy at home, free to murder whoever they wanted while they created ‘masterpieces’ for Candy Pop.” Not that he was bitter, obviously. “I know the Tall Ones intimately… I’m a lot older than I look. I’ve watched their personalities take shape, their wants and desires becoming distinct from each other. I’ve noticed the patterns in who they employ, why they employ them.”

“Humans would call that market research,“ King whispered to Chariot.

“So… Unrelated, but was the cult before or after you were picked up by Night Terror? I’m confused,” Kate asked suspiciously. 

“Before. I made myself a little too obvious, and Candy Pop sent his wife to ‘collect’ me. The charming Queen of Genyr decided my cult would be where she let off some steam. April Fools’ sense of humor is infamously the most twisted in The Underrealm, even more than Night Terror… It was a bloodbath.”

The Puppeteer clicked his tongue, growing tired of our persistent questions. “Are you kids done, or do you not have the mask? Tired of standing around.”

All attention turned to Natalie. She begrudgingly pulled it from the pocket inside her robe, holding it out for our flashlights to see. While color theory dictated the color of the mask would be completely washed by the red atmosphere, the blue remained as vivid as if it sat in the light of Earth. 

“We find the vault, get our answers, then leave,” Natalie stated, her voice betraying how unsure she was. “Ce va? ”

We agreed to that. We shouldn’t have; although we could promise everything would be that simple, we didn’t know what the future held. 

–

The mask worked exactly as I’d seen it used. Purposefully dropping it to the ground caused it to melt from blue to black, the surface burrowing a hole between The Ark and The Waste. No wind nor any sound rushed from the opening; however, when placing my hands into the edges to widen the hole, I could feel the lightest force pulling me in. This was the same technology Ben used, when simple flight didn’t suit him. However, not only was the mask easier than painstakingly drawing a door, it served even greater functions for those honestly gifted with them.

I had a feeling Korbyn had something to do with that. Jack hadn’t appeared very interested in Underrealm business when we first met, but he’d gotten familiar with it remarkably fast. I assumed the timeline was that Korbyn found Jack after he found me, and from there, they were able to establish themselves. Quite an unlikely pair, those two… Then again, they both shared a deep sense of duty towards the humans they came from. It wasn’t about charity with either of them- they owed humanity their service. Even if they utterly despised each other, I doubt that would’ve stopped them from working together. 

As we dropped through, I felt the world turn; suddenly, I was moving forward, not down, tumbling onto an empty blue street. The others followed soon after, rolling onto the pavement with cries and squawks of alarm. The Puppeteer was the only one with a graceful entrance, entering as a cloud of sand and reconstituting on his feet. 

The hole we emerged from remained, showing the crimson sky of The Ark, the pale Sun sitting like a pupil in the center. Gingerly, Kate was able to peel the hole off the wall like a sticker, the object transforming back into a mask right before our eyes. 

“Ohhhh,” we droned. The Children of Chernabog’s disappearance act, their greatest mystery, was finally solved.

I stood, wobbling in place as the sight of the ground folding over my head overwhelmed me.The landscape was dizzying and impossible, my mind spinning as a sense of peril crept into my heart. The best way to describe it was a gigantic ring, the ground looping around itself. Skyscrapers pointed down at us from above like glass stalactites, the buildings ranging from one story in height to eighty. Wires draped like jungle vines from building to building, leading directly to gigantic televisions. The screens grew like tumors out of bubbling plastic, their feeds alternating between images of surgical gore, eyes, and the same, snowy static we saw in the far distance. That was another thing- arguably, the most terrifying element of The Waste. The horizon itself appeared to be a television screen, throwing proportion and scale even further into question. There was a distinct unfamiliarity about The Waste, as if it was designed to be the polar opposite to The Ark in every way. Instead of organic, natural shapes, we were in a forest of geometric brutalism. Its air was as breathable as on Earth, containing a heavy blue tinge that bathed us all in cerulean. The glow from the horizon only served to throw sharp, dynamic shadows, illuminating us like a blacklight. 

“Holy shit,” Blackbird gasped, echoing everyone’s sentiments. “What is this place…?”

Once Fisher King helped Chariot stand, the girl leaned forward, her glassy wheels carrying her towards a nearby skyscraper. The red in her wheels was untainted, throwing soft hues of red over her pathway. 

“Look at where the buildings meet the ground over here- seamless. This isn’t a city, it’s a reef. A dead one.”

“Do you think The Judge Angel caused this?” Kate offered to me. As soon as she said it, she disagreed with herself. If it was, the Judge's influence should’ve been more obvious. Brutalist, unforgiving, and methodical to a chaotic degree? That was Eyeless Jack through and through. Then again, that only raised more questions. Were we in Jack’s godly body? But how, when he had the human one still? Was this some dead piece of the Singularity that he discovered, molding it into his own?

Any attempt to orient ourselves to a direction proved useless. Buildings jutted out of the ground with an absurd dedication, pushing others out of the way in their attempt to burst forward. Everything was an ashen gray like pumice stone, which only brought out the blue haze of the atmosphere. Streetlights grew out of the ground like stalks, their lamps growing wires that laced and attached to the larger ones above. Looking closely, I could see a bead of seafoam light traveling underneath the rubber of the wires, moving like blood cells through the veins of The Waste.  I couldn’t fathom how electricity was running, but I suppose it made more sense there than The Ark.

While we gawked at our surroundings, The Puppeteer got to work, unimpressed by the landscape a second time. He drew Severance onto the ground with a piece of white chalk, daring to yawn boredly as he did so. As he whispered his intent, the Rune illuminated, turning golden as it rose from the ground like smoke. He gingerly cupped it in the palms of his hands, wincing a bit as the heat singed his fingertips. The symbol began to spin rapidly, turning like a gyroscope as he held it up. Then, all at once, it stopped, resting flat as it pointed to the right of us. With that, it vanished, bursting into a shower of gold dust.

“That way,” The Puppeteer stated nonchalantly, gesturing towards a thinner, connecting road. “We’re closer than I thought we’d be, so lucky us. The place we’re looking for is going to be offshooting from there.” 

He turned his head skyward, scanning above us as his lips pulled into a thin line. It was too quiet; Judge Angels was supposed to know immediately if someone entered her Master’s domain. So either we were luckier than we could have ever imagined, or we were already being stalked. I prayed for the former, but that was wishful. 

Puppeteer turned to us, scowling at our appearances. “If you’re wearing something shiny, take it off now. That means you, Sir Barbie and her loyal Coach.”

“Absolutely not! A Knight is not a Knight without her armor!” King protested haughtily.

“Yeah! And it’s CHARIOT, not Coach!!” Chariot agreed. “ Caballeros del Operador? Ever seen us? Not without our armor, you haven’t!!!” 

“And don’t tell us what to do, after that creepy shit you said about women!!!” Blackbird added, giving The Puppeteer the finger. “You’re our bitch, Puppet!! Akagumo said so!!!” 

I saw The Puppeteer’s eye twitch, exposing glowing yellow teeth as he grit and bared them. Finally, as Blackbird insulted him, he exploded, his frustrations boiling over. “Are you all birdbrained!? Take that damn armor off, or else The Judge will turn you into fried chickens!!” 

“No!” 

…I really hated to throw my weight around. But The Puppeteer had a point.

“The Operator would be disappointed in how you’re behaving… I hope he’s not watching,” I said off–handedly, making all three of them freeze with looks of panic. That reminded them of our most important rule, and it prompted them to immediately put away their more reflective gear. Naturally, though, an exception was made for Chariot’s wheels. Yes, they were bright, but they were her mobility aids. I’d prefer she had them on if we were ambushed, anyways. The Puppeteer didn’t bemoan it- he was already on thin ice, and Skully was still recording. 

For The Flock, it was actually fairly effortless to get rid of their shining pieces of armor; with one touch, King dissolved the metal she created into a rusty powder, brushing it from their uniforms like chalk. 

Brian gulped, fretting for a moment over his own clothes. He blended in the most to the background, thanks to his yellow hoodie, but he still tucked his wallet chain into his pocket. Poor guy had all that human fear bottled inside him- I could hear his heart pounding away, rapid as a mouse. He knew it was dangerous, and he blindly took that risk believing he could rise above it. I didn’t think he was wrong in that observation. The fact he stayed focused, didn’t let it overwhelm him… Greater men wouldn’t have stayed standing. It may have felt like he was treading a great ocean, but he exhibited real bravery with every shaking breath. He was there, and he was alive. That was enough. All he had to do- all we had to do as well- was put one foot in front of the other. 

–

It was difficult to tell if we made any real progress. Everything was so massive, distances stretched out in magnitudes. Some of the buildings were exact copies of each other, growing parallel and tricking the eye. You weren’t meant to understand the pattern of the streets; it was an overwhelming, abandoned hive.  

Brian, Kate, and Skully stuck close to me, walking behind The Puppeteer. Natalie and Fisher King were positioned along the sidewalk, keeping a watchful eye on the many, many dark alleys we passed. Chariot and Blackbird covered our blindspots, following behind and above respectively. 

I had a sort of half- audible, half-mental conversation with my siblings about The Judge, filling in Brian to keep him up. We were compiling all of our knowledge together, debating on what the plan was if we saw her first. We shared the memories of the Christmas debacle, particularly the fight between her and Ann. We floated around the idea of calling for The Nurse should we see The Judge, but we soon reasoned that’d be more trouble than it was worth. Fighting The Judge directly was almost unthinkable. Although she wasn’t as lethal as Seedeater with its permanent death, she was intelligent enough to kill us and get rid of the body as soon as possible. That’s what she did to Clara, after all; dumped her into The Null and didn’t look back. Certainly, she’d learned from that experience and her battles with Ann. If she caught us, she’d kill us, wait, and then kill us again.

“So… What’s her deal, exactly?” Brian asked, referring to The Angel. “I read the story. Before you came to The Ark, she tried to invade it, but Nurse Ann and Cla- sorry, Akagumo- chased her back. It said they killed her, but… she’s alive. And nobody’s confused by that?”

 “Are you really that confused? Nothing stays dead in the Underrealm,” Kate responded before I even opened my mouth. That bit of history she knew– she had to, as part of her own training. “She’s Chernabog’s last will and testament. Judgement is the daughter of Order. The Bladed Angel, harbinger of Chernabog, returns to Earth upon her Master’s command to fulfill his final testament… Or something like that. Don’t quote me, I haven’t studied in ages.”

“Or at all…” I mumbled under my breath, smirking as she lightly punched me. 

Brian cooed appreciatively, intrigued by the poetry of it. “And her sword is… just a sword?” Brian asked before scoffing at himself. “Sorry, that sounded like a stupid question. Just… Yours does a bunch of cool stuff-”

“No, I understood what you meant!” Kate chirped. “Actually, that’s probably how she regenerates. We think the sword is Judge Angels, not the girl it’s attached to. As for its powers, I’m not sure what it does …” 

“I do,” Natalie drawled, sidling up next to us. “Fuckin’ kills us dead. Ya’ll need it to do something else?”

That didn’t do much to ease Brian’s worries. “Man… I should’ve stolen that gun at the rez…” he muttered, shoulders hunching as he pulled his hood over his head.

“Oh, hell yeah. You really should have,” Natalie retorted, clapping him on the back. “Ain’t no thang. My guess is Korbyn’s already busy distractin’ her.”

“...That’s a surprising observation from you,” Brian commented. “Weren’t you worried it was a trap…?”

Natalie blushed lightly, narrowing her eyes angrily. “Yeah!? And what fuckin’ of it?! I said what I said!! What I meant was that Jack was the one doin’ the trappin’. He could make her turn on us, is all.”

“Stop yelling and keep your eyes up,” The Puppeteer hissed, his voice cutting through our conversation. “If she does show, then we can’t give her the element of surprise.”

“Oh, boy, my favorite element,” Kate and I both said in unison, making Skully finally break his silence with a laugh. 

No surprise why- he was filming. Fisher King had been flirting with his camera, gracefully dancing while he captured the movement. When her twirling brought her next to me, and without skipping a beat, I offered my hand to guide her pirouette. My heart fluttered, the moment of playfulness exactly what I’d been missing. The gold of her eyes stood out against the royal blue of The Waste, the bioluminescence of her irises giving just the barest hints of the warmth to her dark skin. It felt like I was holding hands with an angel.

“Are you ever able to get good footage of me?” I asked Skully, glancing over my shoulder at him. 

“You’d be surprised what I’m able to recover,” Skully responded. “One second- pull King closer. You guys look ethereal against the horizon, the Master will love it. Don’t move, and-”

Skully made a noise, hurriedly putting away his camera. I didn’t like that reaction, and all at once, the joy I felt was doused with cold determination. 

It wasn’t Judge Angels. Legion and Diamond had appeared. They were surrounded by the spirits Legion had gathered- I could see him dropping bottles off the building they stood on, the sound of shattering glass not distant enough. 

I didn’t expect to see them again after what happened in Georgia, but then again, it made more sense that they’d stick around. Their brother had chosen to move on, but they had work to do. 

At least Mitch appeared more lively. Actually… As I looked closer, I noticed they were both dressed up to the nines, like we’d interrupted their partying. What a shame. 

They didn’t immediately attack when we locked eyes. We didn’t stop our forward movement, either, bridging the gap between us with every step. It was like they were waiting for us to cross a certain boundary. Perhaps they were trying to contact someone about us, the sheer audacity of our presence stunning them. 

Or this was the trap, I realized with wide eyes. 

The sensation of my bones crumbling to dust overwhelmed me, the pain nearly impossible for me to comprehend. As I shouted out my distress, I stuck my arms out to stop my friends from moving. In return, they trusted my senses, stepping back quickly and pulling me with them. 

In the next instant, the pavement folded in on itself, making a loud thud that echoed far into The Waste. Had we waited even a second to step back, it would have turned us into puddles. 

While we were worried about The Judge Angel, I’d forgotten The Waste had gained a new guard. As the street crumbled into rubble, Vailly appeared- more specifically, the top of her head, peeking out of the concrete before swimming towards us like a shark. Her face shifted, the ghoulish version overtaking the innocent pout of her lips, stretching into a macabre smile. At her cue, the other spirits around Legion moved, darting straight towards us.  

Frightening as it was, Brian wasn’t phased by monsters. “Hey!!” Brian shouted, glaring at her. “That’s really fucked up!! We could have died!!”

“Oh, god, is he stupid? Love, I know you’re better than that,” I heard King say in my ear, as if she was dating someone any smarter.

“Let’s eat, bitches!!!” Blackbird shouted, drawing two, golden knives from her jacket. Though I should’ve been impressed, I did idly wonder how many jackets she ruined to perfect the smoothness of that. Sure, it was cooler to imagine she was naturally that graceful, but it needs to be reminded that what made us “cool” was the same, thin veneer underneath hours of anxiety and practice that you had.

I had no desire to show off. “Split up! Airborne topside, walkers follow me!” I shouted to the others, pulling Brian by his arm. We sprung into action, moving into the tight alleyways between the buildings and out of direct sight. While Fisher King, Skully, Natalie, Brian, and I moved through the narrow gaps, the others took to the rooftops to draw out and engage the enemy. Chariot charged the walls and leapt over our heads, her wheels spinning loudly as she bounced between them. She left deep rivulets in the concrete as her wheels dug into it, her legs splayed out as she went from going forward to going up. As she regained her poise and zipped forward, Blackbird followed her, careful not to sling acid on us as they ascended.

Vailly caused windows to shatter around Chariot as she scaled the building after her, her hands popping out to grab her wheels to no avail. Meanwhile, Blackbird was surrounded by strange shapes, the colors fluctuating with pinks and blues and greens and yellows. The spirits would flash between forms, like they were trying to remember what they used to be before. They were animal spirits- dogs, most likely, the most tangible shapes being the sharp daggers of their teeth. All at once, they pounced on Blackbird, wrapping her in their glowing bodies as they dragged her flailing to the ground.

“Birdy!” Kate shouted, teleporting straight towards her descending sister. She tossed her glove off as she fell, her hand growing and dripping with ichor. With her Tall Blade, she grabbed the spirits, able to dig her claws just enough to hold on. Instinctively, almost, Kate bit at them, latching on at the nape of one neck and shaking. That caused the spirit to react, the others letting go of Birdy to focus on her. I could hear the distorted yowling of the spirit as Kate refused to let go, but suddenly, I grew fearful. Kate was free-falling- could she even let go of the spirit to save herself?

A gasp of relief came out between my panting breaths as I saw Kate teleport to the wall, sending several spirits into the walls from the force her speed created. She didn’t stay still for one second, crawling rapidly along the side of a building as she was pursued. The spirits’ braying was distorted and strange, snapping at her as she led them towards Chariot above. 

King summoned her shield, holding it over our heads to protect us from the debris of their fight. I slowed for a brief moment, turning my attention from the maze of buildings to check behind us. 

I almost wish I hadn’t. We all stumbled and jolted as cracks stretched along the walls, showering us with pebbles and dust. Behind us, the buildings began slamming together, forcing us to keep moving forward or be crushed. Vailly was unbothered; although the walls slammed in front of her, she simply passed through it, her haunting gaze affixed as the spirits snapped their astral jaws at us. 

“Move!!” I ordered Brian, almost shoving him ahead of me. Fisher King, Natalie, and Brian had longer legs than me, and Skully was built for agility- they ran faster, leaving me behind with every step.

That time, and maybe for the first time, the burning in my spine was a reassurance rather than a warning, reminding me that I wasn’t going to die. I had the power of my Master at my fingertips. All I needed to do was let go. Really… I wasn’t in any danger, was I? Not really; in fact… This was all just…

I couldn’t finish that thought. Diamond burst through a wall with a battle cry, catching us off guard. She struck Natalie first, knocking Fisher King against me from the force. We were all a bit mentally stunned by the move, as humans typically didn’t break through walls like semi trucks. Diamond’s namesake made it possible, the glitter of every impact so reminiscent of The Genyr. 

Before Natalie could put her hands up in defense, Diamond swung, uncaring who it was she was hitting as long as they went down. Natalie took blow after blow, her nose spurting blood as Diamond’s fist collided with it. Natalie was able to keep her arms close to protect her ribs, but that only prompted Diamond to wail on her more vigorously, determined to take her down. 

I forgot about Vailly. I tackled Diamond with a shout, ripping her off my friend and returning the hailstorm of punches. Brian immediately rushed to help me, trying to grab her arms and legs. We scuffled wildly with Diamond, my throat emitting growls and clicks I hadn’t made since I was a wild Changeling. I think the noises I made intimidated her- they warned her that I was my father’s son, and I was most certainly holding back. Though she gained the upper hand and pushed my face into the concrete, she couldn’t get control of my hands. As I went for my knife, she shoved me to the ground and ran back the way she came, hurriedly donning her mask. As she was enveloped in the dark form of Chernabog, she leapt into the building and out of our sight. Presumably, she was climbing the skyscraper from the inside. 

Just from a brief glimpse, it was like looking into the innards of a great beast, cords and wires lining every dimension of the space. They all connected to the large televisions I kept seeing, growing out of the mangled hell like ticks. That close, I could hear noises coming through the static- angry voices, screams of anguish… But I think what stuck with me was a rhythmic, pulsating sound. A single gunshot, played over and over. Like a heartbeat, or a strike against a foundation. It stopped sounding like a gun after the first two pulses- all too quickly, it was just a noise. 

Vailly was still on our tail, closing the alley behind us. She’d slowed when Diamond appeared, but as she retreated, she and the gang of spirits continued with renewed vigor. Fisher King and Skully had grabbed Natalie from where she’d slumped on the ground, and by then, they were dragging her towards a strip of light ahead of us. With Brian’s help, I stumbled to my feet as well, yelping as I felt the air of the collapsing buildings slap me on the ass. Too close, too close, I thought, my heart pounding in my chest and ears. 

Above us, I saw flashes of red and black criss-crossing from rooftop to rooftop. They were soon followed by more spirits, leaving tails like smoke behind as they pursued The Flock. Chariot and Blackbird were fleeing from them as we were fleeing from Vailly. 

As we drew closer to the exit, Brian grabbed the sleeve of my jacket, forcing me out of the alley first as the walls slammed together. That split-second act made my heart stop, my hand closing like a claw around his arm to keep him from letting me go. Locked together, we both fell into the open space, latched on to each other even as we hit the pavement. 

There was a strange moment when we both picked ourselves up and realized, still, we hadn’t let each other go. We locked eyes, and it felt like time slowed. In that second, I saw something I to this day cannot explain. 

I remembered his sixth birthday, when all he could talk about was his ice-cream cake from the mall. I remembered him letting me try his Lunchables, a treat I wasn’t allowed to have thanks to my mom’s dedication to checking labels. Watching cartoons with him late at night, the tv glowing directly into our minds. Memories of Brian came with soft memories of life I was never allowed to have. Everything was a gift. We didn’t have to bleed for it. In a split-second, I saw a world that was so fucking boring, but God, so pure. 

He saw it too. I know he did. I didn’t hear the click- I felt it in the way he grasped my arm tighter, grinning with relief as time seemed to turn again.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice choked. I didn’t answer, my attention called to a thundering noise beside us. We couldn’t stay still; Vailly had caused the buildings to collapse, sending dust and rocks scattering. She was nowhere to be seen, and neither were her friends. Hiding, no doubt, right under our feet. 

We were on a near identical street- so similar, I thought we’d gone in a circle. Looking up told me a different story. We stood on the curve of The Waste, our perspective of above now completely warped. Like a fishbowl lens, both the world and our perception of it heavily distorted. 

Natalie let out a sharp cry as she reset her nose, the sickening crunch calling my attention to my friends. Everyone made it out, but not without damage. Kate had scratches along her arms, and she bore a nasty bite mark on her shoulder that Skully was looking at. Similar wounds were on Chariot and Blackbird, but they were most severe on Kate. 

“Shit, that looks really bad,” Brian winced. “What are we gonna do?”

I looked at him, a bit confused. What did he mean? We were going to wait. It was only a few seconds. Kate’s wound had already stopped bleeding by the time I noticed it, but right before our eyes, it scabbed over, turning black as it aged. Kate lightly scratched at the scabs, peeling them off like stickers to reveal pink scars. She fixed her hoodie then, ripping the sleeves off to free her arms of the loose, tattered fabric. With a flex of her muscles, she was good as new. 

“That was faster than normal,” Skully commented. 

“...I stopped eating animal meat,” Kate admitted, putting her mask on with a tight expression. “It’s bad for us Proxies. Our stomachs were designed for humans, not animals. Anything else is just… indulgence.”

Suddenly, I got the sense I was forgetting something. I silently counted my friends, thinking I was actually missing one of them. No, that wasn’t it; Brian, Natalie, Kate, Skully on my team, Blackbird, Chariot, and Fisher King on theirs. At the same time, it still felt like I was missing a head. One that looked like a pissed-off lamp. 

Where was The Puppeteer? I looked around quickly, thinking he was behind me or on one of the buildings. It finally occurred to me that he’d been missing for that entire exchange. He’d dipped the moment we started running, using the chance to escape. 

It made my skin crawl with rage, my spine burning as I fought the urge to lose my temper. There was no way he’d just abandon us. We had the mask, which was the easiest way out. If he’d gone to hide, he’d be back soon enough.

“Hoo, that was awesome. I feel so fucking alive,” Blackbird hissed, grinning wolfishly. “Where are they?! I want more!!!” 

“Don’t worry. We didn’t run.” 

Legion stepped out calmly, his steps accentuated by the multitude of glass bottles still wrapped around his waist. He’d pulled his shirt up to expose them, the three belts doing little to keep his jeans from sagging. He still wore those circular blue shades, which contrasted sharply with his streetwear. A mishmash of punk, street, and even our own Underrealm styles. 

With a smug grin, he took the largest bottle he had- a porter bottle, the label painted black with Chernabog’s symbol redrawn in chalk- and smashed it. At first, he seemed to have spilled the last bits of his drink on the ground; however, before the liquid stained the pavement, it seemed to ignite, growing in size as it slowly circled Legion. As it soon towered over him (not a difficult feat, actually; he was shorter up close), its shape began distinct, the ribbony stripes growing along its flaming pelt. The shape of a tiger came into being, bearing a dreamlike evil to its glowing, firelight eyes. 

Vaily emerged from the wall of a building, her face morphing from innocent to evil as she raised her hands in threat. The dogs were gone, but for what reason, I didn’t know- it was possible they had a short shelf life, dispersing into the ether the moment they were set free from their prisons. Vailly was enough to stop us from escaping again, slowly dragging the buildings around us into impenetrable walls. 

“Ya’ll remember that one time we tried to steal a bunch of your shit?” Legion called, nodding to his spectral pet. “Ya’ll missed one. There’s a poem by William Blake that has a mind of its own, thanks to how many times people have dreamed about it. One of your daddy’s accidents.”

“Why bother telling them? We’re just going to kill them.”

Diamond’s voice called my attention upwards. She was surrounded by three other Children of Chernabog, fully masked and ready to kill. She herself was masked, but not transformed, sitting poised on a low building. 

I couldn’t click with the Beast, so she was either lying, or Jack did something to it. I knew the poem she spoke of, and if there was anything that could manifest a Beast, it would be that one. It was famous to humans, and I knew it tended to linger in the mind like Sickness long after its words were put away. It was a simple poem; one that wove the image of a brilliant predator, an entity that called into question God’s true nature. Fascinating to read about; less enjoyable when it was staring at us like dinner. 

“Oh, yeah… You’d be shocked what you learn tryna bring your brother back from the dead,” Legion hissed, his voice still holding his bitterness. “Death ain’t the end. It’s just another way of getting around.” 

For the time being, I paid the beast no mind. I was surrounded by my own tigers; one growling at the foot of its master didn’t frighten me.

“How’d you take care of him?” I asked Diamond. Truthfully, I didn’t want to fight her. I already felt bad enough that we were causing damage. I had no interest in invading The Waste, for the same reason I had no interest in invading The Dark Carnival: I preferred being invited to places. 

Diamond balked at me, angered that I so casually asked about her dead baby brother. When I didn’t flinch, I saw some tension in her body leave. She pointedly looked away from me, as if trying to collect herself. 

“Gone,” Legion admitted, his hand hovering over The Tiger. “We let him go over Jack’s grave… His mom got their tombstones to be next to each other, so we figured that was the best compromise for what he wanted. Wasn’t nothin’ but that left to do… Man that shot him got shot himself. Can’t get revenge, even if we wanted.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” I offered. “Eddie sounded like he wanted you to move on.”

I saw Legion’s eyes narrow. “Don’t you dare say his name. You ain’t earned the right. The fucking audacity-” 

“What he means,” Kate began, stepping forward. “Is that we’re sorry we got in the middle of that. We didn’t realize that’s why Jack was defending Georgia so much. We’re not trying to invade your space anymore, so… Can we maybe talk about it, explain our side-?”

“Talk!?” Legion snapped. “You wanna talk NOW?! Fuck you, bitch!!”

I growled deep in my throat, immediately drawing my knife. “You wanna come over here and say that to me , coward?”

He didn’t take the bait. With a small gesture and a click of his tongue, he sicc’ed The Tiger on us. Its mangled yowl bellowed as it crossed the yards of distance in seconds, lunging at us with its paws outstretched. 

Our brains moved faster than that. Almost simultaneously moving with The Tiger, Chariot zipped towards it. At the last possible instant, she planted her hand onto the ground and pivoted, lifting her wheels off the ground. She cut the spectral Beast right at its throat, sending its head flying off its shoulders in a shower of cinder-like sparks. 

“Hey, what the fuck!?” Legion shouted, immediately enraged as he spun around. “God, you fucking freaks are like goddamn Pokemon!! They all do different shit, Di!!”

“Stop complaining about it and do something!!”  

His beloved pet wasn’t down for the count; it reconstituted its form as its wound played in reverse, catching Chariot aflame as its fiery head rejoined its body. Before it could snap its jaws around her knee, she dropped one wheel to the ground and reversed hard, yanking her body away from the Beast. 

Though Chariot was able to put out the small fire on her skirt and tights, she sustained a burn to her leg. Poor thing was unlucky only from the waist down, it seemed, her legs always taking the worst damage. Not that she saw that as unlucky. One could live without their legs, and if the Universe kept trying to take them from her, it wouldn’t kill her to lose. It was a morbid optimism that drew her and Fisher King together.  

Blackbird was next to challenge The Tiger, catching its attention with a fell swoop towards its head. The Tiger’s attention was immediately drawn to the fluttering, and it pursued her up the towers around us. 

“Wait- Mitch, control that damn thing!!” Diamond snapped. “Call it back!!”

“It’s a TIGER, Di!!! You think a housecat’s hard to boss around!?” 

Vailly, seeing her mortal friends struggle, disappeared back into the pavement. I swear she rolled her eyes when she did, too, but I can’t remember that clearly. When she reemerged, she was floating towards Blackbird and The Tiger, clearly intending to assist the spirit. 

Fisher King let out a haughty breath of air, collecting her braids in her hands to tie them back. “My turn,” she cooed, pulling a letter opening from her pocket. Her skin was utterly flawless, save for one place– her open palm, which always had a pink scar in the shape of an ‘X’ stretching from her thumb to her pinkie. She sliced her hand in that exact place, spilling her blood in thick rivulets. Rather than behave like typical liquid, it twisted and curled, defying gravity as it bubbled back into her palm. She clapped her hands together, and from her wound, she drew a glorious, golden spear. She picked up her shield, then, both shimmering heavenly in the foggy atmosphere, illuminating her form like a candle in the night. 

“Oh, shit. Look at you,” Diamond cooed, her head perking up in a bird-like fashion. She dropped down, the Chernabogs following closely behind. “Did you bring her here so you could prove a point? How liberal of you.”

“Please. Don’t be so ignorant,” King scoffed, her smirk disappearing behind a golden visor. “Since you wannabes insist on whining to my boyfriend on my behalf, you might want to actually talk to me first. Then again, low-class brokies like yourselves can’t really fathom my privileged life, can you?” 

That made them all guffaw, and suddenly, they were charging, approaching King with serious intent to fight. I only realized how bad what she said was when Natalie had the same reaction as the others, glaring at King like she genuinely couldn’t believe that left her mouth. 

Of course, that only meant Diamond had to say something worse. “Baby girl, you can keep it. I’d rather die than wake up with your big ‘ol forehead.” 

“Oh, you CUNT!!! ” 

With a bellowing shriek, King charged at her. That was what Diamond had been hoping for. The other Chernabogs swarmed her, leaping over Diamond and piling on top of King. She skewered one, but was subsequently pinned by the act, covered by their bodies and swiping claws. 

Chariot and Kate joined the pile, helping King escape the pin. Kate pried one loose and ripped its mask off, throwing the human underneath the shell away for Diamond to recover. Her guess that she’d prioritize the human worked, and Diamond rushed after the boy instead of helping the other two. Once Chariot and Kate were able to team up to pry off the second, that gave King the space to move. She slung the Chernabog she’d skewered off her spear, throwing him in the air. From nowhere, Blackbird swooped down, grabbing the Chernabog by the mask. Birdy’s powerful wings were enough to keep her airborne, even despite the Chernabog’s frantic scratching and grasping. In response, she showered acid onto him, burning away the layers of their biological suits. 

I wondered where Vailly and The Tiger had gone, only to have the Beast emerge from the ground a foot away from me. Brian jolted back, knocking me down in a moment of clumsiness. Unfortunately, that alerted The Tiger to us. I pulled Brian and Skully behind me, Natalie coming to my side to protect all three of us. 

“C’mon now, minou … whatcha gon’ do?” Clockwork taunted, her hands raised. 

Vailly rose from the pavement, levitating into the air as the ground formed deep cracks. “Por favor muere. Eres una molestia,” she said, making Chariot scoff. 

“¡Tu puta madre!” 

Meanwhile, the final Chernabog tried to put space between themselves and Fisher King, shielding Diamond and the unmasked human. Before I could tell her “no”, King threw her spear at them, going straight through the servant. I feared the worst; however, there was a loud, vibrating tone as it struck Diamond, unable to penetrate her skin. She’d merely dropped the boy, knowing he’d be more likely to survive that than a spear to the chest. She rippled with an iridescent light, the miniscule facets causing her skin to glow as golden as the weapon. It pulsed outward, but like a tidal wave, it came crashing back, the force of which shattered the spear into black shards. She had to readjust her stance, but that was it. 

“Shit,” Legion muttered, belatedly reacting. He rushed over to help them, picking his friend off the ground.

I cursed as well, shaking my head to wake myself up. Right, right, I was supposed to be a good guy. “Cut it out!!” I shouted at my comrades. “Birdy, put them down!!! We didn’t come here to kill anyone!!!”

“Awww, come on!!” Birdy whined, unceremoniously dropping the Chernabog. He still wore his mask, so he merely turned himself like a cat and landed on the nearest building. 

While Vailly and The Tiger kept us back, her side regathered quickly, taking stock of their injuries. Diamond and Legion were largely unharmed, but they were down a teammate. Kate still had one of the Chernabog masks; coupled with my assumption that Legion wasn’t a fighter, that left the fight five versus eight. The other two were regenerating from their wounds, but it was clear they were all growing worn out. They weren’t built for this kind of fighting like we were; a flaw of a temporary Gift was its use was proportional to the user’s stamina. Underneath, they were only human. 

Diamond cut through the silence. “Fine- what are you pale freaks doing here!?!” She finally asked. 

“We tried to tell you- we were invited,” I told her, hoping to leave it at that. “We don’t want any trouble.” 

There could only be one person that would invite Slenderman’s children. Diamond hissed out Korbyn’s name like an insult, getting into a proper boxing stance.

“It don’t matter what you want!! You are on our turf!!” Legion shouted.

“You wanna go round two, heaux? I’ll fuckin’ dust you! Get manman ou-! ” Natalie barked, cracking her knuckles. Kate resorted to wrapping her arms around Natalie’s midsection, keeping her from making the situation worse. 

“I think we all just need to calm down,” Brian said, speaking with a purposeful sense of peace. “W-We’re seriously not trying to hurt you guys. We’re just looking for answers.”

Diamond hummed slowly in thought. She glanced at her companions, then. They were communicating through their own channel- without any prompting, The Children of Chernabog fled, taking Vailly and The Tiger with them. 

Diamond removed her mask, revealing a too-confident smile. I knew she was up to something- she made no attempt to hide it. 

“I know what ya’ll are looking for,” she said. “I’m gonna make you bleed for it.”

She pulled a string around her neck, pulling a necklace from her bodice. Initially, I thought it was some kind of pipe, the black, glassy surface gnarled like a root. Then I realized its true shape was a skull, not a root. Combined with the mouthpiece and the large hole on the other end, I corrected myself. 

Not a pipe- a whistle.

With a deep breath, Diamond blew into the mouthpiece. All at once, the air filled with a hair-raising, abominable screech. Like the dying wail of an ancient god, its sound burrowed deep into our eardrums, pushing out into the entirety of The Waste. 

It affected Brian the most- he gasped in pain as he fell to his knees. I called for him, but he didn’t seem to react. Fearing the worst, I took my hands off my ears and covered his, trying to protect his more fragile eardrums.

There was a distant explosion somewhere above us. Looking up, I saw a plume of smoke blooming from a collapsing skyscraper, the cloud suddenly tendrilling off. I knew that meant something had just emerged from it, moving as fast as a bullet. 

I felt a horrible, deadly premonition. A strange, ghostly feeling of detachment from the neck down, as if I no longer had a body below it. My eyes then caught a white blur of movement against the static of the horizon, and a blue flicker of light that caused a scream to bubble in my throat. 

But I’d have to introduce myself later. I felt the ground beneath us get softer, as if turning to sand. Then, suddenly, I was dropping, falling into pure darkness.

Soon, the same force that pulled me down soon pushed me back up again, revealing the interior of one of the buildings. The Puppeteer sat cross-legged on a pile of chords a couple feet away, his hands sitting palms-up on his knees as he breathed steadily.

“Ah! Lovely! I got all of you,” he greeted, nodding with satisfaction. “How’d it go?”

Natalie and I both put aside our differences to dive for the coward. Once again, we were stopped by our other siblings, who suddenly had the wherewithal to know when not to fight.

“You’re a piece of shit,” Kate snapped. “Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing!?”

“And waste precious time getting away?”

“We could have DIED.”

“But you didn’t. You’re welcome.” 

Fisher King cut through our fighting with low wince, reaching to nurse her arm. It had large gashes on the bicep, just barely missing a major vein. The bleeding had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. 

“I was careless… Let them bloody jump me…” she muttered, her tone only mildly apologetic.

Hearing King’s distress, I immediately went to her, taking the hand of her uninjured arm in gentle comfort. Again, I forgot I wasn’t with her anymore, nuzzling her temple as I helped her sit without putting any weight on her injury.

“King, you know you were talking out the side of your neck. You’re so damn cocky, stallion…” Chariot scolded. Chariot’s wheels splayed out as she sat beside her, her transition from standing uniquely fluid. She reached into the pouch on her bag and took out a needle, thread, bloodcloth, and glue. She quickly got to work, sewing each gash closed. 

I stayed by King, cleaning the wounds with the towel for Chariot while offering King small reassurance. I even sang to her in German, distracting her from the repeated, bee-sting like pricks to her skin. 

Soon enough, it was over. With her arm stitched up and bandaged, it would regenerate twice as fast. There was a limit to how much we could recover from grievous wounds, though, and I knew there would be later consequences if we didn’t find proper food. 

“I’m not Magpie, but I ain’t that bad,” Chariot said, admiring her work. “Thank you, Nurse Masky, for your dedication to your wife.”

“She’s not my- I mean, we’re not-”

I kept hoping King would show that independence I always saw, refuting her friend’s teasing remarks. Instead, King said absolutely nothing, letting me flounder until I finally just excused myself. They giggled as I fled, making me lift my mask to cool off my burning face. Great; now they knew they could get a reaction out of me with that. Surely, that wouldn’t come back to haunt me.

The Puppeteer wouldn’t entertain the rage of my sisters, whistling happily as he took stock of our surroundings from a window. The whistling didn’t last long; as he looked around, it petered out, becoming gradually less enthusiastic. 

“Ah… Shit.” 

Hated to hear that. “Good news, kids- we’re on the right path. Bad news is we are now coming at the vault from a completely different angle, and now we have to go through that.”

He pointed down, where the world seemed to warp into a hilly cluster of buildings. Snaking between them was a suspended highway complete with painted traffic markers, its shape like a roller coaster as it rose and fell between the towers.

“You think we’ll find a Chaos Emerald in there?” Blackbird dryly remarked, crossing her arms.

I blinked at it, tracing the smooth road with my mind as I formulated an idea. As always, Kate was on the same wavelength as me, bouncing excitedly in place as she resisted the urge to jump out the window. 

I took out my journal. Manifestation was easy for me to do by hand, but for this, it’d be less taxing to write it down.

“Do you know how to skate, Brian?”

“Uh… I can skateboard. Kinda. Why?”

“You’ll see.” 

–

I tried to conserve water, as I only had so much. The downside to being around so much porous rock was that with every step, our moisture was robbed from us. We each had our own supplies, but I still couldn’t help but fret over Kate and The Flock wasting all their energy racing ahead. 

Brian could skateboard better than he said he could. At the very least, he could stay balanced on the board for long periods of time, which meant he could keep up with me. He was bemused by the color of my skates, but he called them “ironic”, which I guess meant he thought they were cool. I think he was more surprised I was so good at rollerblading, having had an entirely different image of my errand work than what I’d described. 

“I used to be more self conscious about what I could do. I’m not exactly shaped for grace…” I admitted to him, contradicting myself by easily gliding around him.

Brian snorted in response. “Really? You’re fitter than I am. I don’t think I’ve seen you sit down since I met you, and you have to bench a solid 350,” he joked, kicking off the ground as he spoke to keep his velocity. It was 450, actually; almost three times my body weight.  

“Used to,” I repeated. “I’m finding myself more and more capable the more I try.”

“Good for you, bro!”

I couldn’t help but giggle a little bit. I hadn’t exactly meant that in a positive way, but Brian practically defaulted to positivity. “Hey, you too. I keep saying it, I know, but I’m really impressed by how well you’re handling all of this,” I praised. “Our brains are specifically wired not to panic at the unreality, but you’re not afraid at all.”

I’m sure the memory of how he’d puked went through his mind- I could see the way he flustered, looking down at his board as he kept his speed. “Yeah… Well. My mom always said that was my best quality. I’m good under pressure.”

I heard the way his voice fluctuated, the strain he put into being neutral. I couldn’t resist anymore. Though I didn’t want to pry into Brian’s personal life, it didn’t feel like it was coming from a place of suspicion, anymore; rather, I was worried that he wasn’t processing the detachment from humanity like I thought he was. It was fine to speak to his parents once, maybe twice… but if he was going to be a Proxy, he couldn’t go back to them.  

“What did you talk to her about the other night?” I asked. 

He hummed, gently swerving to a stop as we reached an incline in the road. It wasn’t so big that I had to stop, but he preferred to walk it. 

“I told her I was alive, and I was safe. Told her I found what I was looking for.” He laughed dryly behind his mask, watching me glide ahead of him. “She didn’t care, obviously. She’s more worried about her image at her church. I guess there’s, uh… precedent for parents killing their kids in my town. No way am I going back, though. That place feels like a bad dream. This… This is exciting.”

I couldn’t help but laugh genuinely at that. Somehow, I took that as a huge flattery. Not even to save his parents’ skin did he go back to them. My world was his reality. He was mine. 

“We could send them a video,” I offered. 

Brian’s steps slowed, watching me skate loops around him. “What kind of video…?” he asked carefully, the tone of his voice odd.

I cocked my head, unsure where the suspicion was coming from. “The videos we make for the internet? I think we could get away with showing your real face, if you sell it right. Dunno…” I mused. 

“Skully, can we fake his death?”

At the mention of his name, Skully caught up with us, clutching his scooter in his arms. Natalie and The Puppeteer were the only ones exclusively on foot, keeping their gazes to the skies. He’d been trailing behind with them, but at my prompting, he chose to walk up the incline with Brian. 

“I know a girl who knows a girl that’s got post-production chops. It’ll make Spielberg eat his own ass,” he bragged.  

“Oh- Oh , like a snuff film!! A fake snuff film!!” Brian said, suddenly catching on. “… Do they have sex in snuff films?”

“The cool ones do,” Puppeteer mumbled under his breath, pretending not to eavesdrop. 

I clearly missed something. “What the fuck are you talking about? And you-” I craned my neck back, glaring towards The Puppeteer lagging a few paces behind. “Shouldn’t you be in the front?”

“Who, me?” The Puppeteer scoffed, feigning disinterest. “You’re impatient. If you walked like me and The Midnight Barber here, you’d all be behind me.”

“Night… Night Butcher. They called me the Night Butcher,” Natalie said, her single eye starting to twitch. 

“How’re you, Chaser?” I called, hoping to diffuse the situation with her input. Even half a mile away while in another realm, it was like she stood right next to me. 

“I bet I could teleport to the end if I tried hard enough,” was Kate’s immediate observation. 

“But don’t do that,” I said quickly. “We need to stay together.”

“Tell that to The Flock.”

As Kate said, they’d already reached the top of the incline. Kate was waiting for me, but The Flock weren’t. King had created an entire golden chariot, which in my opinion was a bit of a waste (and extremely noticeable, if you wanted that bit of foreshadowing). She clutched the reins tightly as Chariot pulled her by two handles. Meanwhile, Blackbird beat her wings furiously in the air, slinging acid as she fought to keep up with them. Their uproarious laughter rang out as they zipped down the hill, bouncing against the glass towers around us. 

I didn’t like how cavalier they were being. They were underestimating Chernabog’s creations, even after fighting some of them. They weren’t paying attention to their surroundings, absorbed in their own fun. Judge Angel was somewhere in The Waste, and she was actively hunting us; it was only a matter of time before she found us again. 

“I wonder…” Skully mused. “Is this place still a part of the Circle…? It can’t be, can it…? That would defeat the purpose.”

Suffice to say, I was deeply intrigued. A rare moment where Skully’s lapse of sanity was on topic, as well. I hoped it was refining into something more akin to an insight; I’d stop feeling so put off whenever he suddenly slipped into madness.

“Purpose?” I repeated.

“Yes… Everything has a Reason for Being. This place… It’s reason is to hide things the others want to forget. Mistakes… Success. I can feel it. This is a good place to put things you never want to see again.”

“Howd’ya reckon?” Natalie asked. 

Calmly, Skully pointed to the televisions. They’d begun to grow more and more numerous, practically begging me to stop and fully acknowledge them. The wires oozed out like entrails, the screens sitting half-submerged in bubbling plastic. That close, I noticed some of them played more than looping clips of surgical procedures. I could see Jack’s house in one scene, and a classroom in another. Memories, maybe…? 

“These worlds can’t help themselves,” Skully whispered. “They become us.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. Just like The Ark, the ground we stood on was the carcass of a metaphysical being- a creature whose massive form, so incongruent with reality, became the very vessel that we resided in. But Jack breathed new life into The Waste, gave it new things to hold and safeguard. Though I had considered the idea before, Skully’s words compelled me to approach one. 

“Girls, wait,” I called, hoping Kate could relay my message. She did; I saw them pause, waiting for us further down the road. 

“What are you doing?”

“Poking things to see what happens.”

I gingerly reached out, placing my hand on the glass screen. Immediately, I felt my body vibrate with electricity, the energy traveling up my arm to settle behind my eyes. When it did, it felt like someone was playing a movie, but inside my mind. It disappeared when I opened my eyes, but when I closed them, it began to play from the beginning. Curious, I didn’t fight it; I closed my eyes, and let myself see. 

I could see blurry images of the inside of Jack’s childhood home, his vision turning and twisting as he (my cameraman, I assumed) threw his things into a suitcase. I could see his reflection in his dresser mirror- cropped hair, brown skin, hazel eyes. He looked younger, more like the mother he was trying not to look at.

He looked alive. 

“Jack, please listen. I’m not saying that, I just-”

“You just what? Don’t want me to go!? It’s a full ride!!! Toronto, same college you went to!!”

“No, no, no. I just… I had strange dreams, beta. I think you should wait a while. Take a year off, spend time with me–”

“Damnit, Ma!! No!!! I don’t want to stay here anymore, especially not with you!!! All of this is your fault to begin with!!! The food, the clothes, making me speak Tamil!? I look like Dad, not you!!! Of course people were going to make fun of me, isolate me!! How can you not see how much you set me up for failure!?”

“...You don’t mean that. Y-You don’t mean that…” 

“I do mean that, Mom!!! You never let me understand Dad, because YOU don’t want to remember him!!! And you know what!? I’m just like him, because I’m not staying another second in this stupid house with your obsessive collection!!! For fucks sake, can’t you put all these stupid eyes somewhere else-!?”

The sound of breaking glass made me recoil, awareness coming back to me as I took my hand off the screen. Only a second or two had passed, but it had felt so much longer. 

“What did it show you?” Brian asked curiously. 

“I…” I trailed off. I was so certain I was able to explain what I saw, but as I tried to, the words died in my throat. I couldn’t find the strength to describe it. As if the scene had been a fight between me and my own mother, I felt Jack’s indignation, his embarrassment. He hid a lot of his emotions behind his anger. The humiliation of not understanding what he was doing wrong, the shame of looking like a man that he didn’t know. People remembered his father- they expected him to be the same. But the older Jack got, the more he realized he didn’t know enough about him to fulfill that expectation. He felt so cornered, so desperate for something to change, he lashed out at the only person he thought was in control. 

“I need a cigarette,” I muttered, reaching into my pocket. They were absolutely crushed and bent, but I found one that was still intact. With one inhale, I felt the stress leave my lungs to make way for the heavy smoke. 

“Please don’t touch those,” I snapped at Brian, seeing him reach for the screen. “It might eat you.”

“What? But it’s just a- well, wait, when you say, ‘eat’-”

Kate sent me a hum of inquiry, but I just shrugged. We needed to keep moving. I’d share what I saw with her when we were alone, but for the moment, I just told her to keep close to The Flock. 

The hill was steeper on the other side. I used the sharp incline to put some distance between everyone, preferring to be alone while I processed my emotions. The wind beat against my mask, the cold air creeping in through the eyeholes and making my eyes water. I switched them, letting them turn black as my vision changed. I could see the green electricity more clearly, then, moving like shooting stars through the veins of the glass towers. Though I could see the beauty of The Waste, I couldn’t find it in myself to enjoy it. It wasn’t home.

It seemed like The Universe was punishing me at this point, putting my every misstep with Eyeless Jack into a horribly sharp perspective. I once again questioned my Master’s judgement, wondering what the point of forcing our war was even for. Jack had sat down with me like a reasonable person the first time. Unlike Jason, he’d treated me like we were equals. I could’ve convinced him to stop killing politicians; really, by that point, things on Earth were so chaotic that it might not have made a difference. 

It’d been a mistake to go purely off of my Master’s opinion of him. If I had trusted people to know how people worked, things would’ve been different. I might not have lost some friends; Jack might not have lost some followers.

I was willing to forgive that. It would hurt, and I would feel like I was betraying the memory of my siblings, but it was the only way. One of us had to stop.

The others soon caught up, Brian cruising next to me with barely any composure. The hill had been a little too steep for his skill level, but he’d managed to avoid wiping out. Seeing Natalie and Puppeteer taking their sweet time, I decided to wait for them, giving Brian’s organs a chance to catch up to the rest of him. 

Though The Flock was too far away for my liking, they’d stopped to wait for us as well. As I watched them, I could see Kate jumping after Blackbird. Eventually, she succeeded in grabbing her ankles, their roaring cries making me hiss as well as snicker. By then, I was almost certain Judge Angels found us, and was merely toying with us. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. 

“You know, I never got a chance to meet Chernabog,” Puppeteer mused. With his hands in his pockets. “From what I heard, he tried to kill himself. Doesn’t really make for a good nemesis, does it?”

“We were never dealing with the real Chernabog,” I refuted, almost rolling my eyes at his attempts to pick at me. “All that tells me is that Eyeless Jack’s victory was over someone who wanted to lose.”

“I wouldn’t say that… If he just killed him? Maybe. While everyone else tried to survive, he chose to lay down and die. He was weak,” Puppeteer offered. “But he didn’t just kill Chernabog. All this-” he waved his hand around at the glass skyscrapers- “-is evidence of that. He consumed him- became him. And that… You can’t give that power. It has to be taken.”

“You sure know a lot for someone who heard this shit secondhand,” I sharply commented.  

At that, Natalie suddenly cut in. “Can anyone do that?”  

“Well-”

The Puppeteer frowned, caught off guard by the pointedness of that question. He appeared to internally debate with himself, as if he was detailing some pithy gossip. He also seemed to have a few questions of his own, regarding Natalie with a curious scrutiny. 

“...Those with the stomachs for it,” he explained cautiously. “Umbra called it ‘Yorma’gund’iir’- ‘One Who Eats The World’. In the very early days- before you were in a twinkle in your dad’s non-existent eye- it was mostly Umbra versus Kharahk versus… well, you get it. Chernabog and Belobog were basically spectators to their nonsense. And that’s because, back then, whichever servant won a fight ate the loser, bones and everything. At first, they thought that the victor just gained the powers of the loser. But that’s not what was happening; really, they absorbed their memories, their identity, them. And once you add their metaphysical properties together with tainted flesh and blood… Eventually, the winner of The Game was an amalgamation of losers, their souls melting into a Superego that none of The Tall Ones could control. Not even Big Z Himself, He Is Not And Shall Never Be.” 

We were silent, utterly fascinated by the picture he painted for us. Not just the idea of our cousins resorting to such senseless, barbaric violence, but what the result of that violence was. Did they still have those creatures? Was that possible? I couldn’t wrap my head around the way our time looped in on itself. 

What I hadn’t fully processed, but was starting to, was that they’d played The Game countless times before The Operator had me. That’d been all they could do- go back to the beginning, essentially restarting the process of their decay from the point of death, constantly searching for new ways to break into the reality laid on top of them. Brainwashed creatures, lost souls that wandered too close- anything to stave off the starvation. While The Operator chose to learn and Chernabog chose to die, that was what “struggling to exist” was like for the others- bloodsports, cannibalism, rinse and repeat. 

“It made us equal in power to our Masters, but it’s… wrong . That’s probably why you kids are encouraged not to eat each other… You, too, could become a ‘Yorma’gund’iir’.”

There was a pregnant pause. “If you had the stomach,” The Puppeteer repeated in a faraway tone, as if that had been something he’d considered. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been. His position was quite low; low enough that he could be driven to turn on another. 

How ironic. Human meat was delicious, but what really forced us to grow was what we considered cannibalism- consuming an equal. Or, in Jack’s case, something greater than himself. 

“Were there any people you met that struck you as… capable…?” Brian asked, morbidly curious. 

Our interest was definitely encouraging him. “Oh, for sure. There was this gaggle of spirits I tried to catch a couple Circles ago. They came from your planet- bunch of people believed video games were real so hard, it accidentally made a bunch of fucked up little guys. No lie,” he explained, smiling more as he went on. 

As soon as it formed, though, his smile fell, replaced with something more pensieve. “Not sure what happened to some of the crazier ones like Sonic.EXE, but I wouldn’t be shocked if one of them went insane and started eating the others. If you meet one named Silver, watch out- he’s a real cunt.”

Natalie hummed. But not a curious hum; a satisfied one.

I stopped, turning on my wheels and putting my toe to the ground to keep my balance. “Clocky, if there’s something you need to say, say it,” I stated, prompting the others to stop as well. “You know me- if there’s something wrong, I want to help. You’re my friend.”

Natalie’s expression grew stony, her single green eye as unreadable as the ticking clock in her other eye. “Walk ahead, Skully,” she ordered calmly, sliding her hands into her pockets. 

Skully hurriedly put away his camera, trying to pretend like he wasn’t going to film whatever argument was about to take place. I’m certain he did that more than I was aware.

“Huh? But why-?”
“Boy-!!!”

He scrambled the instant Natalie whipped her body towards him, her voice sharp as a knife. Brian lingered around me, aware that we’d used The Arkhive but unaware what transpired. The Puppeteer merely rolled his eyes (I think) and jogged after Skully, saying something about “staying together”. Regardless of if he could hear us or not, he wanted no part in our drama.  

I didn’t go anywhere. I waited for her to finally get her feelings off her chest, my foot lifted so I could drift closer to her. I was expecting a conversation about Toby; I hoped I could get her to reveal more about his state of mind, his whereabouts. 

“I’m worried about you, Masky,” she stated, catching me a bit off guard. The fact that she spoke to me using the Arkhive, where Brian couldn’t hear, wasn’t lost on me. 

“When I met you, I could see there was something you were lookin’ for. I thought at the time you were just searching for that special somethin’ you could use to keep your mind from slipping into TonTon’s madness… But you ain’t never been crazy, have you? Lately, I’m thinking you’re the only one allowed not to be.”

I frowned at that, my brow furrowing underneath my mask. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that we’ve changed. I’ve changed. Toby’s definitely changed… But you ain’t.”

“I resent that. I’m stronger, more responsible. I’m ready to fight the metaphysical, and-”

“Podna, don’t bullshit. That ain’t what’s happenin’ to you. Whoever you are is coming out in full swing, and… I dunno. I ain’t sure I know I know you like I thought I did.”

“What? What the fuck does that mean?” I hissed angrily. “Is this about using Nezperdian? Natalie, I didn’t mean to, genuinely. It just comes out when I’m angry, now. I’m sorry-”

“Are you? ‘Cause somethin’ tells me that ain’t gon be the last time you use that voice to order us around. And, for your information, that ain’t what I’m talkin’ about. I’m talkin’ about Hoaxton. He ain’t said a word since you lopped his arm off, and now, everyone treats him like a pariah. You and I may have fiery tempers, but never in my wildest dreams did I think you could do somethin’ like that to your own brother. I thought that your patience was what made you worth followin’. You’d never hurt someone who ain’t deserve it.”

I felt my lip curl. “He did deserve it. You didn’t hear what he said about Kate.”

“And? So he said some words. Kate can defend herself against those well enough. We ain’t supposed to turn on each other like that. You gonna kill me if I say somethin’ you ain’t like?”

At that, I gawked, revealing to our unwitting companions that we were arguing. 

“What?!” I shouted. With my face hot under my mask, I tried to refute her. “Of course not, Natalie. You’re my sister under our great Master. I love you. I know we aren’t that affectionate, but I would never-”

“What about Toby? What if he starts sayin’ things you really, really don’t like? Would you kill him?”

I tried to compel myself to say no, but I kept seeing flashes of his cruelty, his defiance. I knew it, and Natalie was telling me that she knew it too: all of my unconditional, undying love was given to The Operator. Everyone else was secondary. Maybe that was fine when we all believed in the same things, but as the others had doubts, and I remained steadfast… 

The Operator was always watching. I was watching. We both knew what I would do if they tried to hurt my Master. 

I shook my head, unwilling to confront that about myself. I’d gone without thinking about it for so long, I refused to believe it was true. 

At that point, being on my skates felt a little too silly. With a simple, almost flippant wave of my hand, I turned my skates back into my boots. I didn’t even need to take them off. Brian’s amazed cry was the only reason I even remember it. It made me feel uncomfortable that he was, yet again, dragged into my personal problems. 

“It was a weird situation. Once Brian becomes a Proxy, I won’t feel the need to protect him so much. And he’s got this… power over me. Maybe that’s what he’s meant for… to keep me right.” 

“He’s a person, Masky, not your crutch-”

“I KNOW, GODAMNIT. Stop assuming I’m evil, for one fucking second!!! You said it yourself– you don’t know me, so maybe mind your business!!” 

So angry that I completely forgot I was trying to make up with Natalie, I grabbed Brian and stormed ahead, leaving her in the dust with Skully and The Puppeteer. Brian asked me what was wrong, but I ignored it. 

My head spun, thoughts like buzzing spores in my head. She could be so frustrating, sometimes… She had no idea how self-conscious I was, how I was constantly reflecting on my actions and my feelings. Natalie assumed I was as dull as I appeared on the outside, hollowed out by our Master and replaced with fun facts and trivia. 

She was wrong. I knew I’d changed. I could feel it in my core.

“Shi- Masky. Masky, Masky, I think I saw something,” Brian squeaked, frantically grabbing me to point my attention to the skies. I couldn’t see what he was pointing to, but that didn’t mean I didn’t pull Brian back, sending out the call to my siblings.

“Guys, Hoodie may have spotted The Angel. Take-”

I remember being cut off by a white flash. In a blink, the landscape erupted like someone had dropped a bomb on us. 

The Angel had arrived.

I felt the air leave my lungs, the impact cracking my ribs and knocking both me and Brian off the highway. The pain of being struck came in conjunction with my vines growing. Knowing fights like this were exactly why I’d inherited my Master’s physicality, I didn’t hold them in- instead, I let them burst from my back, blooming from my spine like threadlike petals. I yanked Brian out of the air with them, pulling him into a bear hug with my arms. My vines grabbed onto anything they could touch, gently easing our fall to a soft landing. 

As they let go of the buildings and lampposts, the sudden weight on my back strained against my ribs, causing me to wince out a breath. I breathed raggedly, knowing the pain would go away soon. I cracked my ribs all the time- they healed within minutes. 

“Ah… My neck…” Brian whimpered. “I think I got whiplash…”

Immediately, all the panic I’d missed due to the impact surged to the forefront. How do I fix that? How do you treat whiplash in a human? I didn’t get hurt by whiplash. He looked bruised as a peach, even though I’d protected his body from fatality. Damnit, the one time I didn’t want human flesh to be tender…

“Okay. Fuck. Okay. Um…” I stammered, my thoughts bouncing around chaotically. “Just. Don’t move. We can figure this out.”

“I’m good. Thanks fer askin’,” Natalie called, her voice not too far away. I saw her climb over a chunk of the highway, bruised but otherwise unharmed. Her fingertips were smoking, so I assumed she found a way to mitigate the attack with her Gift; she’d created a bubble in front of herself, catching whatever force should’ve knocked her down. 

I worried where Skully had gone, only to see him rising from a mound of black sand, scrambling to pull out his camera as his eyes searched for The Angel. Puppeteer, unsurprisingly, didn’t rise completely out of the ground- he pulled himself up halfway, wading in his own portal and ready to duck down again if his life was threatened.

But who gave a fuck about them– Kate. My girls. Were they alright? I reached out to them with The Arkhive, only to be met with agony from every direction. I cried out as their pain radiated through me, my bones reduced to powder. I feared the absolute worst. Natalie and Skully felt it too- they gasped, grabbing at random limbs as they felt the collective pain of our siblings. 

“W–We’re… alive…” I heard Kate finally say, making my next breath be a relieved one. “King protected us with her shield. She’s… really hurt, Masky…”

Dazedly, I looked up to the sky. Blackbird had not only avoided the attack, but she was airborne, flying around erratically. She was looking for us- I could faintly feel her trying to connect with me, unable to sense me in her panic.  

If Kate wasn’t being actively attacked, then that meant Judge Angels was still choosing her next move. Picking a target, maybe, thinking she’d taken them down. It was between my group and Blackbird flying solo above us. If I was The Judge, I knew who I’d go after. 

“Birdy, get down!! She’s going to strike again-!!!” 

There was another, white flash, and suddenly, The Judge stood with her back to Blackbird, standing perfectly flat in space. The blade of her sword sizzled as ichor boiled on its surface, the acidic quality unable to eat into the otherworldly metal. 

“Wh-?” 

Blackbird flapped once, and suddenly, her wings detached. She let out a sharp intake of air, but that was it- she fell out of sky, free-falling wildly as her body went limp.

Judge Angels was even more terrifying the second time. With her bloody, grime covered straight jacket, she almost disappeared against the snowy horizon of The Waste. Her soul flickered with its static behind her eyeless gaze, her face dripping the mournful, black tears of her father. The tumor-like sword on her arm undulated, the gem at the hilt pulsating with a cyan glow. There was something so eerie about the way she moved through the air. Not as if she could fly, but as if gravity was totally under her command- as if solid ground was the space underneath her feet, and not the physical concrete. Ann was the only one I knew who levitated like that, and it was no wonder who learned how to do it first. Every move I knew Ann for, Judge Angels had the original, refined version. 

I knew Judge Angels was looking for me, but I couldn’t let Blackbird die. She’d been careless, and certainly, our Master wouldn’t be lenient about that. I extended my vines towards Birdy, catching her before she hit the ground. 

The instant The Judge suspected where I might be, she dove, her sword raised to cleave Brian and I in two. Brian let out a scream, clutching his neck as he tried to get up. I covered his body with mine and prepared to shield us with my nine other vines. Despite the threat of death, I didn’t put Birdy down- rather, I held on tightly, prepared to use the last seconds of my life to make sure she didn’t die from impact. 

“HEY!” 

Kate tackled The Judge, the force of which knocked the being off her path. Immediately, Kate latched onto the sword arm with her serrated teeth, her Tall Blade wrapping around her throat as they spiraled into the air.  

The Judge didn’t seem bothered, in the end, even as Kate squeezed her throat to the point of crushing it. She calmly regained control of her momentum, stopping their careening motion with an immediate halt.  

“Inferior tool…” She managed, her words echoing in Kate’s ear and into my awareness. Easily, she ripped the smaller girl off of her with her other hand, sending her skipping across the concrete.

That didn’t get rid of Kate. The moment both feet touched the ground, she teleported and attacked again, surprising Judge Angels with the speed of her recovery. That time, she couldn’t grab Kate- my sister avoided her one, useful hand, biting at her shoulder as her Tall Blade dug into her chest. Kate was trying to rip her heart out, and by the way Judge Angels struggled, she was succeeding.

Judge Angels ascended, taking Kate with her. No matter what, though, the supposedly “inferior” Chaser remained latched on by the teeth and legs, clawing with both hands at the other’s abdomen. There came a point where the Judge completely spasmed, deathrolling at a high speed to shake Kate off. Still, Kate held tight, not giving up no matter how much she was bucked. 

“Holy shit!! Fucking get ‘er, kid!!” Puppeteer cheered, a bit amazed as he rose from his hiding place. “You kids are fucking insane!! What the fuck is he feeding you– wait, nevermind.” 

I was ready for when Kate was forced to let go, having been able to safely pull Birdy to my human arms. With my focus squarely on Kate, my vines branched out, curling tentatively towards the airborne pair. 

When Kate was finally slung off, they shot out to grab her. I cradled her delicately and tried to pull her back to me, but Kate disappeared out of my grasp. “She can’t fucking stop me. I’ll kill her!!!” I heard Kate exclaim wildly, her laughter untamed as she went after The Angel again. I couldn’t help but feel happy for her; for the first time, it felt like Kate had some inner peace about her role in everything. She had the power and the control. She didn’t need to be Kate and The Chaser- she was Kate The Chaser, a split soul carefully sewing itself back together.

Or… whatever “carefully” looked like for Kate, I guess.  

“Hold her still, cher…” Natalie trailed off as she tried to focus, holding her hands out to create a bubble around them. She waited until Kate landed far away, then closed it, sealing The Judge inside. 

Judge Angels noticed the distorting light forming around her, her head darting to look down at us. As she began to slow down, she turned her attention towards her prison. She seemed to contemplate it, her head moving slowly back and forth. Then, as she brandished her sword, the glow from the gem seemed to bleed into the blade. She raised her arm, swiping at the bubble in a graceful arch. 

Such an elegant swipe popped the bubble instantly, and then leveled everything at her eye level. The destruction wasn’t in the blow itself, but the aftermath. We heard a strange noise- like a fly buzzing by your ear, but much, much louder. Then, the world quite literally began to collapse around us. She’d cut the buildings in two, clean pieces. As they lost their support and began falling over, they broke apart in massive chunks, threatening to squash all of us. 

King, I thought desperately, remembering she and Chariot were somewhere amongst the destruction ahead. I clutched Blackbird close to my chest, hoping she could help me find them.  

I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t feel her. The knowledge sent a blinding, numb cold down my spine. Where was she? Where was my girl? 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!! Isn’t that kind of overkill?!” Puppeteer shouted with frustration. “Damnit, Clara, what the fuck have you gotten me into…?!”

Seeing us, helpless as ducklings against such overwhelming strength, he knew he couldn’t get away with running again. He didn’t waste time- he rolled his sleeves up, raising his hands to the sky. As he did, it revealed Nezperdian words etched in his palms, spiraling out across his fingers. The symbols glowed yellow as they traveled up his arms. The words were interlaced with images of gears, the glow they emitted giving the illusion that they were turning. He gathered the strength of his unknown Master, drawing from the wellspring of a redundant god.  

It wasn’t enough. “...Shit, the fuck is your name- Masky!! Give me access to your Master’s power!! Don’t worry about me, I can handle the transfer!! Just do it like you do your aunties!!! You too, cowgirl, that shit on your hands isn’t just for you. Keep him from frying my brain!!!” 

Hearing that, Kate leapt back into the fray to distract The Angel, and Skully stepped back, knowing I’d be a hazard until I stopped. Natalie sidled right next to The Puppeteer, one hand pointed towards him and the other pointed towards me. She appeared a bit unsure about what she’d have to do, but to me, this was nothing. A connection had to be established between us- A to B to C.

At least, I thought so. I never did it to someone that wasn’t my Master’s. Still, I gave it a shot, concentrating on the pain inside me, sifting through it for the tightness in my chest. I could feel the ichor bubbling in my throat, my eyes already dripping with it. I coughed once, and that was it. I could feel the presence inside of me, as if it were sitting just underneath my skin. 

I then noticed how much I was shaking, my hands trembling as I white-knuckled Blackbird’s tattered jacket. Though she was alive and well, she hadn’t moved, rendered utterly catatonic by the loss of her wings. Flight had been the greatest gift our Master ever gave to her- more than her friends, than me. And it was taken from her, just like that.

I couldn’t stand- even just the thought of it caused my legs to lock up, my heart thudding as I gagged on pure fear. I’d just watched an apocalyptic level of destruction happen in the blink of an eye. As far as I knew, my loved ones were dead. They’d been laughing just ten minutes ago, and now, everything was destroyed.  

But it was alright. Everything was fine, because we were stronger. We were better. Nothing ever had to die, if we didn’t want it to. 

I hadn’t realized it, but I’d never used both aspects of my Gift– my vines and my infection- at the same time. But when I did, it was like I’d done it a million times, the dark tendrils reacting instinctively. They stabbed the ground, and I could feel them branching out and boring down into the concrete. It felt borderline natural; even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn’t.  

Natalie let out a panicked squawk, barely avoiding being knocked off her feet by one vine. The Puppeteer let out a wary noise as well, not expecting the surge of energy to course through him.

To be honest, neither did I. The spores I released transformed into sand right before my eyes- which, to everyone else, I assumed looked like sand appearing from nowhere. Yet I felt no sense of loss. I was consuming something, but… what was it?

Whatever I was doing, it was pissing Judge Angels off. She grabbed her head, letting out a rare cry. I was wounding her, somehow, distracting her from what we were doing. 

The instant The Puppeteer held up his hands, black portals began to materialize in the air. The more aid I gave him, the larger they became, turning into vortexes of pure, black sand. Golden thread shot from the holes like spiders’ threads, tying to each other and the collapsing skyscrapers. They caught the pieces of building in their net, dragging it into the portals. Miles away, the debris reemerged, kicking up plumes of dust as it crashed to the ground. 

I regretted ever thinking we didn’t need The Puppeteer; so far, he was the only one that was strong enough to counteract Judge Angels’ sheer, destructive force.

That was all he had, though. As soon as the crisis was averted, he collapsed, falling back on his ass. He was sweating profusely, the liquid sizzling as it ran over the burning markings in his skin. He even began coughing, which startled him greatly. 

Brian coughed, clutching his chest. “I guess… that’s what the sword does,” he managed, slumping to the ground. He lifted up his mask as his coughing fit grew more and more intense, his saliva tinged red as it dripped past his lips. 

I was causing it- I was worsening The Sickness inside him with my Gift. It was because I couldn’t move him in time, otherwise I would have put him as far away from me. He’d have to bear it, if he could. He might be able to survive being overwhelmed with Sickness, but not getting cut in half or crushed. 

Kate had resumed chasing Judge Angels, hopping from ruined skyscraper to crumbled tower as she swiped opportunistically at her. The entity tried to chase her back, but Kate was simply too fast, even for her. And because of the layout of The Waste, Kate could (theoretically) teleport anywhere within it. All she needed was to see where she was going to be, and The Operator took care of the rest. 

Finally, I saw the barest traces of annoyance, The Judge’s face twisted as she grasped her head again. She glared down at me, then her sword. I think I knew the relationship, then- I was draining something from The Waste itself, which caused a reaction in its guardian.

There was no way Jack didn’t know I was there, now.  

“Enough,” Judge Angels said, her voice stoic yet booming. “Clause One, Line Three of The Treaty dictates that I, Judge Angels, never step into the boundaries of The Ark for purposes of gathering resources, seeking companionship, and/or sowing chaos and/or discord. Clause One, Line Four dictates that you, Children of Belobog, not do the same. You have broken this agreement, therefore, in accordance with Clause Five, Line Seventeen, I will deliver your heads to my Master, where we will then place them upon pikes measuring exactly twenty feet in length and six inches in diameter. They will be available to the public for contemplation for five out of the seven days of the week, sparing two days for cleaning and maintenance of the pikes.”

“Ya’ll think of everything, dontcha? ” Natalie drawled.

I heard a loud roar, and suddenly, one of Chariot’s wheels sailed into view, aimed at The Judge. She dodged it, only to lose an arm to the second one hiding in its shadow. Not the arm with the sword, unfortunately; however, The Judge had flinched, protecting that arm more than the other, which told me that was her weak spot. 

From the rubble, Chariot crawled out on her hands and knees, the apparatuses attached to her legs broken and twisted. She was bleeding from a gash on her forehead, the blood coating her face and matting her hair. Her eyes were feral and black, her teeth sharp as knives as she bared them. When she saw she’d taken The Judge’s arm, her grimace turned into a sickening grin, a wounded laugh leaving her.

And then she slumped forward, still as a stone. 

The Judge lifted her arm to her face, studying it closely. It didn’t bleed- the meat was a dark wine color, cold and dead. 

“...Formidable,” The Judge complimented. 

The gem on her sword flashed as it relit. “Come out,” she demanded coldly, descending gradually to Chariot’s body. “I feel your intent.”

She wasn’t speaking to Chariot. Fisher King had also appeared, each step measured. She should have been dead; her wounds were plainly fatal, her right entire side almost completely gone. Her shield arm was missing, what little bit of left mangled and twisted. Her beautiful face and hair were destroyed, the skin peeling back and flesh hanging onto her bones in fine sinews. She’d favored her right side when holding her shield, and with it, she’d caught a missile. 

But she hadn’t died, and that was entirely the result of her quick thinking and our Master’s Gift.  Whatever blood she’d lost, she near-instantly transfused it into gold; it dripped from her exposed veins like it ran with it, her crystalized rib glittering in the snowy light. It was the only thing keeping her together. Hell, for how badly she was injured, she might have already been dead, and her soul was just too stubborn to leave. 

King heaved with every breath, the black of her sclera unable to dull the ring of gold in her eyes. Without a word, she used her remaining hand to pull her spear directly from her side, spitting out ichor as she eyed The Angel with a predatory intent. That was my girl; a Princess and a Knight, beautiful in her bloody insistence to live.   

“Dina!!!” 

That name made The Judge- and for that matter, the rest of us- stop dead in her tracks.

It was Korbyn. Or I thought it was; as she passed through a patch of light, I saw the form flicker, indicating I was looking at some sort of projection. 

“Dina, you need to disengage!!!” Korbyn called, her voice carrying surprisingly well. “You’re going to destroy The Vault!!”  

Now, that really caught her attention. Judge Angels’ posture suddenly eased, her spine curling as she wrapped her limbs around herself. She very obviously pointed our destination out to us, turning her head to the direction it assumedly was. She frowned as she struggled to form the words, though I knew she was capable. 

“...Is Jack angry at me?” she asked, almost timidly. It was an almost completely different voice, right down to the air being pushed through her nose instead of her diaphragm. 

“No, no. Everyone’s safe, so it’s fine,” Korbyn reassured. “But… I was trying to tell you. I invited them. They’re here to see Chernabog’s memory. It’s Clause Thirty, remember?”

“...Oh,” she cooed. She blinked, looking around at the mess with growing unease and guilt. “Oh, no. I was… My apologies, Miss Korbyn. I’ll go get help immediately.”

And like it was nothing, she vanished. Quite literally- the boom of her sudden mach speeds kicked up the wind, blowing dust from the debris around us in miniature tornadoes. 

 “...Oh, thank heavens,” King breathed, dropping her spear with a clatter. “I didn’t really… have a plan. I just… wanted to show  off…”

Fisher King stumbled, then, still mindful of her friend underneath her. However, she couldn’t support herself anymore; she collapsed on top of her, her blood running red as it oozed from her side. 

Dead. Both were dead. 

My vines reacted instantly. They caused more destruction as they uprooted themselves, branching out rather than snaking around the rubble. I grabbed both of them and pulled them to me, the movement taking less than ten seconds. Even that was too long to wait. 

I let out a choked sob as I saw the damage up close, afraid King would fall apart at any touch lighter than a feather. “Ah- help,” I gasped, trying to get the others’ attention. There was no need- they were all staring at me, their expressions mixtures of concern and wariness. I must have just looked fucking terrifying; ten eel-like limbs writhing around me, my body taut with overwhelming emotion. There was nothing they could do, even if they had the medical supplies- I could feel King and Chariot’s bodies get cold. 

At that moment, nothing else mattered to me than my loved ones. If I waited to see if they’d become Revenants, I’d miss any window to save their first lives.

I needed to save them. I needed to do something. 

 “We need help. Please. I’m sorry for everything. Please help us-”

Korbyn’s apparition lifted her hands, trying to reassure me without touch. “Don’t panic. Besides them, how many of you are hurt?”

Brian winced, still nursing his neck. He’d stopped coughing, but he looked significantly paler. Kate had patches of raw skin where she’d hit the ground, as did most of us; however, Chariot and Fisher King were the only ones down for the count. Skully was fine, I was fine, and Natalie was fine. Blackbird was physically alright- like me, it wasn’t fatal to lose her extra limbs. Unlike me, however, losing them was permanent. I knew there had to be something we could do. We could find her wings, and maybe reattach them. She was still-

…Hadn’t she lost her wings? Had I imagined that? Because as I checked for the stumps, I burned my hand running my fingers from root to tail. Inexplicably, her wings had grown back. More than that- it was like they’d never been severed at all. 

Chariot stirred. So did King. Brian jolted back as all three girls began moving again, their legs twitching and eyes opening. Not better than ever, but certainly better than nothing. 

I couldn’t believe it. I had been certain I felt our connections die. But they were still with me- still fighting. I expected nothing less from my siblings, I thought, all my fear melting into pride.

“Don’t move, King. Just stay with me, okay, love? You’re incredible,” I cooed, seeing her single lung attempting the work of two. “Thank you, Master. Thank you, thank you…”

Within my mind, I sang his praises, blessed his many hands. Through him, I was able to do wonders. With him, my loved ones were eternal. I owed that Gift to him alone, and I was so, so grateful. My eyes were wet with my relief, my gratitude.  

Fisher King tried to smile, but I could see even that hurt her. With Brian further away, I concentrated my Gift. I chose only King, and the spores obeyed me. I used my Gift to heal her, essentially; I gave her my strength, allowing her body to regenerate faster. 

Her breath sputtered, but grew deeper as the seconds passed. As I began coughing softly, she began to breathe more regularly. I was repairing her organs first, even though they took more from me. Soon, the coughs came from deeper within my chest, my eyes burning as I felt an emptiness in my gut. 

King grabbed my arm, forcing me to stop. “Don’t, darling. You’re going to kill yourself,” I heard her say in my mind. 

In that moment, it was worth it to me. Unfortunately, Blackbird and Kate seconded her, and so I felt compelled to obey their wishes. 

Though awake, Blackbird was still oddly quiet, helping Chariot wipe her face. The cut on her forehead had closed completely, and by the way she recoiled in disgust and crawled away from me, I guessed she was fine, too. Not like Birdy, though. It was like she was seeing me for the first time. Of course, she’d already put together that I’d gotten her wings back. Neither of us knew how, but she knew I had to be the reason. 

“Good, good… No casualties,” Korbyn declared, breathing a sigh of relief. “ Ah-wey … that was really impressive. I’d never seen Dina so close to losing, before. I was more worried for her than you guys.” 

“H-How in the motherfuckin’ Sam Hill did you do that?” Natalie gagged, staring at the place where Judge Angels once floated. “She just fuckin’ all up and… absconded. ”

Korbyn let out a little, amused chuckle. “Yeah, she’s… A character. She was taught to think reactively, and sometimes, concepts like “too far” and “too destructive” get… muddled. EJ figured out saying her name resets her… kind of. If she hears it, the human part still attached to the body comes out, and she can be reasoned with.”

In my vulnerable state, Korbyn’s laughter pissed me off immediately. To say I was furious was an understatement. None of it was necessary- if she’d just taken us herself, we could have avoided all the hardship. It seemed like the entire ordeal really had been a trap, and Korbyn was only showing her face because we’d survived it. I couldn’t hide my displeasure, my vines curling to strike; that is, until I remembered she wasn’t actually there. Smart of her.

“H– HEY!!!” Korbyn cried, seeing Puppeteer hiding amongst the shadows. Her shout had made him jolt, his bright eyes exposing his location immediately. “ YOU-!!!”

“He’s with us,” I told her, dripping with bitterness. “You didn’t really give us a map, so…”

“Although. You have outworn your use, Puppet,” Natalie drawled, cocking an eyebrow at him. “How much you want for ‘im?”

“Charming,” The Puppeteer sneered, coming up to greet Korbyn like a proper gentleman. “Yes, we’ve met. I stole some knowledge from you-”

“I don’t care about that, it’s a library. You’re supposed to do that. No, you VANDALIZED The Vault!!! Who the fuck writes their name on the wall!? Are you a little kid?! ‘The Puppeteer wuz here’?! You were in a LIBRARY and you didn’t even have the dignity to SPELL CORRECTLY!?”

The Puppeteer’s face lit up like a lightbulb as we all collectively focused the same, judgemental stare at him. He sputtered, utterly helpless against the shame from a handful of teenagers. 

“I thought it would be funny!!!”

“Oh, you are DEFINITELY not getting back in,” Korbyn snapped, crossing her arms with finality. “...And. Well. On that note, I guess… I can take you whenever you’re ready to leave. Some of you can stay and wait with your friends, but…” 

Some of us- not me. I had somewhere to be. 

“I’ve already told Jack you’re here. Not that I needed to… He knows,” Korbyn added, shrugging at the end. Yeah, no shit, I thought; How could he not? The space was vast, but it was hard to not to notice an entire block getting chopped in half. 

I started to protest- I wanted to go with my girlfriends to make sure Jack treated them well- but Blackbird stopped me by taking my hand. “It’ll be okay. You’re the vessel- that’s your job,” she said, her words soft and comforting. “You need to go.”

“Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it. To be honest… I’m good,” Chariot said weakly. “I don’t want to know. I like the story he tells us… It’s a nice story.”

I understood that. Brutally, I did. It was so much simpler. I let her take Fisher King from my arms, then, letting out a heaving breath of my own as I saw their blood on my clothes.  

My vines drifted around me, coiling in my peripheral vision as they helped me stand up. Kate hurried to me, checking to make sure I was alright myself. My mask was pretty stuck to my face, by then; the ichor had dried into a hard wax, and Kate had to scratch at it before she could peel it off. I didn’t like it, but she turned it into a how-to lesson for Brian, showing him how to clean up the “black goo” he was going to start excreting.

“...Huh?” Brian drawled. “Like… Every hole?”

Kate and I wanted to lie to him so badly. You have no idea.

“Face holes,” I muttered, my cheeks turning red. “What is wrong with you today…?” 

Minutes passed- precious time for Fisher King, who’d need blood to keep her regeneration from stopping. We wouldn’t leave until Korbyn’s supposed help arrived. More accurately, I refused. I watched over King, unwilling to leave her presence until I was forced to. I was definitely transferring my antsiness to my other siblings, my nervous energy making feet tap and breathing quicken.

“Masky, why don’t you climb up and see if you see a car coming?” Korbyn suggested, hoping to keep my pacing and fretting from driving everyone insane. 

I jumped to obey her. I wanted to feel useful, didn’t want to just stand there and watch my girlfriend suffer. I had to be more useful than that, otherwise I’d drive myself insane. 

I decided to use the alone time to flex some of my dexterity. I didn’t often have a chance to move freely with my vines, so I used Korbyn’s diversion as an attempt to get better at it while I had them.

Of course, Brian audibly gawked at the sight of my vines taking over my movement. I flushed at the sound of his marveling, feeling a bit like a freak when he kept saying “cool” over and over. It really didn’t phase him that I looked the way I did; though I thought I’d frighten him the most, he simply wasn’t. 

As far as the experience went… It felt a bit terrifying to not have my hands or feet on anything. I had a strong grip on the building I was climbing- stronger than my human limbs could ever hold- but there was an element of floating that triggered a mild fear of heights. Their confidence far outweighed mine. Regardless of my anxiety, my vines gripped the porous rock and pulled my body upwards, the oily surface leaving black stains in the wake. Though pain was the same, neutral or positive sensation was different for extra limbs- I could feel, but only because my brain was telling me I was supposed to. I wondered if that was purposeful, or the result of our evolution. Maybe I’d grow into having more refined nerve endings… Then again, maybe being able to feel that much with so many extra limbs would probably confuse my brain.

My vine wrapped around an empty window, curling inside; by consequence, it wrapped around one of the televisions growing inside, hidden just out of my view. Unbeknownst to me, touching one of the screens with my vines counted as activating it. I was rising up when I felt a tremor of electricity through my body, my vision swimming as I shut my eyes.

Blinking them open (though not really), I saw a pretty smile as it leaned into view, followed by a gentle hand covering another. Neither were mine.  

“You know, not everyone who thinks you’re odd thinks that’s a bad thing. Me and my friends are pretty weird, too.These other trogs don’t understand. People like us are just… special. We’re born that way.”

Jack didn’t know if he should be happy someone like her was talking to him or terrified. He was unsure, but so lonely. He didn’t trust it, but he wanted to. Nothing had turned out like it was supposed to; he’d come to reinvent himself, to find where he belonged, and he felt more isolated than ever. He stared down at his anatomy books, the pages memorized front to back. His intelligence was his first friend, and sometimes, his only friend. He knew he needed to be brave- to change. An animal that froze would be caught.

And he couldn’t run. Not again.  

“I don’t want to make you a target,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, you totally should have. It’s about time someone started speaking the truth… This world is so unfair to people like you and me. We know we deserve better, and yet we’re the bad guys for pointing it out.”

He looked back, gazing into soft, baby blue pearls, partially obscured by golden, blonde hair. He was terrified and elated by what he thought he saw behind her gaze. I understood that emotion; how easily one could get swept up in it, relieved to finally have someone that could see you.

“You should hang out with me and my friends tonight. There’s something about you… I feel like you’re the guy I’ve been looking for.”

“What is it?”

“Just something me and my friends from Philosophy and Religion have been working on. We’re forming a sort of… group. We’ve got plans that will really change the world, and I think you’re the only guy around here that’ll understand what we’re trying to do.”

He was flattered. Starstruck, even, by the vision the girl helped him paint. People of all creeds and colors sitting with cups of coffee and piles of books, slowly working out how to solve everything. It was what he always wanted; the feeling of community, of being a part of something. 

What a snake, that girl was. Almost too good. I could only see how she manipulated him because I knew what happened next. Perhaps she believed every word she said… She just kept the details on what she needed for him vague.  

What came next should be familiar to all of you, as well. 

Jack Nyras-Nichols went out that night, expecting to become the new addition to a group of friends. Instead, he was turned into the sacrifice of a budding cult- a bunch of morons that found their parent’s old “spellbooks” and decided to be just like them, as stupid people tended to be. 

The things they did to him were almost unspeakable. He was lured into the woods and beaten into submission. They mutilated and carved his body, plucked out his eyes, painted him with boiling tar. They said horrible things about him, called him names I’d been blessed so far to never hear. They filmed his torture, praising Chernabog the Destroyer for removing this plague from their country: a poor, gangly kid that couldn’t hurt a fly. 

Jack died screaming that night. But when he opened his eyes, he didn’t find himself in Heaven or Hell. Instead, for reasons known only to Chernabog, he found himself in The Waste- a flat, barren world, housing the one and only Lord of Order. Thousands sacrificed, and he was the one who had succeeded in gaining his audience. 

Jack was the size of an ant against a massive God, his body obscured by the horizon itself. The ground bled as its claws dug canyons into its moon-like surface, threatening to crack the realm in half like an egg. It brought its gigantic head towards him, bathing Jack in a blue haze as it drew close. Jack saw his reflection in the ocean glass of Chernabog’s Judgement, its emptiness reflecting back to him. 

“̸͙̀W̴̱̌h̵̙̊ò̴̪ ̴͈̌d̷͇̔ó̷̫ ̶̪͐ỳ̵̞ò̸̰u̴̡͛ ̵͈͐s̴̜̒a̷͍̽y̸͋ͅ ̶́͜Ï̵̤ ̵͖̎a̵̠͛m̷̫̂?̶̫̕”̸̫̎

His voice, though it radiated through the air, was weak, raspy. The self control not to eat Jack right then and there was immense, made evident by how impatiently he pushed his face closer.

It was the answer to that question that began Jack’s true journey. Because it was in death, in his very final moments, that his life crashed into himself. Every heartache, every fleeting joy came back to him, and within the reflection of Chernabog’s mask, he saw The Circle for what it was. He saw how truly miniscule his shame was against the uncritical design of The Universe. All things had its place, as did he. Nothing like destiny at all- wherever his will took him, that was where he was meant to be. It wrote itself, and when it was over, it began again, ever changing. 

And it was then, finally, that he realized how truly passive he’d been all his life. How he allowed people to tell him who he was, and how he accepted it uncritically. He could see their lives in their true perspective, and he could see that they had the exact same flaws he did. He wasn’t special in his grief, his desire to belong. He was truly just like everyone else. 

“Who fucking cares,” he answered. With a strangled cry, he punched the blue expanse pressing down on him. It shattered, destroying his reflection and the entity at once. 

I say who I am. No one else. I have chosen to be this way, and it is who I will choose to be. 

Chernabog thought he was perfect. Exactly who he was looking for.

“Masky!”

I let out a sharp noise, feeling my body dropping. My vines had grown loose, and they threatened to let go of the building. My hands shot out to grab something, my boots scraping along the side as I attempted to find purchase. Not that I was in danger- once I came to, my vines adjusted their grip and pulled taut, catching me. Not only that, but Kate was with me- she’d climbed up when she’d noticed me falling. Her hand was resting on my shoulderblade, unafraid of the writhing mass on my back. 

“Masky?” Kate repeated, nestling close to me. “Do you see them?”

I stared for a moment, having forgotten what I was doing. Then, gently, I touched her hand. Kate let out a low gasp as I shared my visions with her, her hand covering her mouth as her eyes watered. 

“Y-You shouldn’t touch those anymore,” Kate admonished me. “That’s not for you to see.”

“I didn’t mean to, that time…” 

“...I didn’t know he went through all that. I-I mean, I did, I just…” Kate mumbled, her chest letting out a heavy sigh. “Oh, Jack…”

I pulled my hand away, gazing out into the span of The Waste. I wished there was a way to find where they were coming from- some sort of marker, like a light, or…

“Am I crazy, or do I hear heavy metal?” Natalie said below us.

I heard it too. Very faint, but definitely there. Not in the direction Judge Angels had turned, though; it was coming from behind me.

I turned around, and there, about fifty miles away from where we were, a particular building stood out from the others. Not for what it looked like- it resembled all the other skyscrapers around it, if a bit larger. What made it special, however, was that it was lit up like a disco ball, with pulsing, multicolored lights pouring from every window. That had to be Jack’s headquarters; even from that distance, I could see people crawling around the structure like bees in a hive. By the looks of it, they were in the throes of an absolute rager. 

Hilariously familiar. We Underrealmers certainly had a fondness for partying, didn’t we? 

Finally, I saw the car Korbyn spoke of pop out against the blue shadows. I’m almost certain it was supposed to be an ambulance, but it was just a van they’d repurposed. They’d spraypainted Chernabog’s symbol on the door, the caduceus on the hood. 

Once they arrived, we carefully transferred King to the bed of the van. Jack’s servants were uneasy about us, clearly, but we were so focused on taking care of our own that we didn’t waste time antagonizing them. Once King was secure in the van, Chariot crawled in after her. Blackbird preferred to sit on the roof of their van due to her wings; while not technically injured, she was too shaken to have any urge to keep going with us. She was staying with her friends until they were good as new, and I didn’t blame her. I was in the same boat with Brian and Kate; I tried to convince them to go with The Flock and get treated for their injuries, but they both insisted they were fine. Brian proved that he could move his head without any pain, showing that he’d been wrong about having whiplash. Kate’s road rash was healed, too, but with her, I was worried more about the constant regeneration taking a toll on her. She needed to eat, soon. We all did; I, too, started to feel a gnawing weariness, my vines taking a lot of my energy with their constant movement. 

“Don’t worry. From here, it’s just a short walk.” 

–

“Short” walk, she says. Not short enough.

Our group had been reduced to myself, Brian, Kate, Natalie, and Skully. My original group. True to her word, Korbyn refused to allow The Puppeteer inside The Vault until he legitimately apologized for defacing it. You’d think that’d be simple enough to do, and yet, he chose to accompany the wounded to the big, fancy party going on instead. Piece of work… I should’ve asked Clara for that jar she kept him in.

The entrance was in a one story building with no windows. Its door was wooden, which I suppose would’ve been our clue. I felt a tad robbed; sure, I would’ve died before I ever got to that point, but that wasn’t important. I would have easily figured the trick to the door out, and it would have been so satisfying to discover on my own. 

The illusion led us into the building, where yet another door opened to reveal a set of stairs leading into abject darkness. I wasn’t intimidated, taking the lead behind the fake Korbyn as she guided us down the narrow staircase. With every story we passed, the concrete walls slowly grew marbled, turning red as it bled into flesh. The familiar scent of rotting meat filled my nostrils, permeating the air. I began to see eyes bulging from the walls, their vision unfocused. Smaller at first, then larger the further we went, the pupils of which shone milky behind our sparse lights. 

Soon, we reached the bottom, the floor made of a seamless, black glass. Without a moment of hesitation, Korbyn’s illusion walked straight into the pulsating walls of flesh, sinking into the fibrous meat. Seconds later, it peeled back to expose one, final door. The third door was made of Telekinetic Alloy, blackfired to its sturdiest. The handle was a large mechanism shaped like the valve to an airlock. Its gears groaned and clunked as it unlocked, hissing deeply as dusty air spilled out the seams.

The door’s slow, steady swing revealed an expansive library. Nothing like the comforting atmosphere of ours, with places to sit and things to contemplate. The rows of Chernabog’s library stretched as tall as the skyscrapers outside, lined more like filing cabinets than for perusing. The shelves themselves were made of the same meat as the staircase outside, but gray and tough, the eyes shriveled and half-closed. The room was sharply lit by the television screen walls around us, the slight blue glow to everything giving the room an ethereal veneer of dust.

“Up here!!”

At last, the real Korbyn made her appearance. She was suspended high above our heads, a system of ropes and pulleys keeping her aloft. With a small tug, she soared downward, her legs outstretched as she dropped past shelf upon shelf of ancient book and tome. 

“Ah… Ha! It’s about time. Welcome to my dark, twisted fantasy,” she greeted, smiling a bit coyly as she gracefully touched the ground. “This is my home away from home.”

Korbyn may have been a bit awkward, but she knew how to read a room. She dropped her playful expression quickly, removing the belt of her pulley system with some haste.

“First off, because I know you’re angry at me: no, this wasn’t a trap. I begged Jack to give you one more chance, but he wouldn’t let me- said you wouldn’t change even if you did. So I arranged that huge party outside to distract them, give you time to maybe sneak in. I thought it would work, but Jack caught on pretty fast. He can’t stop me now, though. This place is entrusted to a Seer- nobody’s allowed in unless I say so.” 

I could tell that was true. Korbyn had a lot of power in that room; I could feel it reacting to her, like the way you can sense if someone’s been charged with static. The others overlooked that, but I had no choice. My Master had gifted me his intuition, and alarm bells chimed in my head just seeing her.  Seers were always the most powerful amongst us. They could tap into the beyond, could play with reality like a harp. 

“I’m here,” I stated, remaining just outside the boundaries. “So you’re going to explain what’s going on now. That was the deal. Everything, just like you promised.”

Korbyn sighed, seeing my wariness as stubbornness. “Right… Everything. I know it’s been confusing to you... It used to be so much easier to talk to you… Now, I only see you for briefest moments.”

I inwardly recoiled at that sentimental tone, feeling nauseated with guilt. “Don’t just state things you know we don’t understand, and then refuse to elaborate,” I argued. “I don’t think you’re crazy at all- I’m begging you to tell us what you’ve seen.” 

She visibly bristled, clenching her fists as she collected herself. She’d been waiting her whole life for someone to say that- for someone to acknowledge her visions as a potential reality, an omen that was going unnoticed. But it came from me… I know that sat bitterly with her.

“Tim… The reason it’s so difficult to tell you is because there’s nothing you can do about it. Knowing, not knowing… it doesn’t change anything. No matter how much you influence, you’re still just a player… We all are.”

She let out a deep sigh, smearing the corner of her lipstick as she absently rubbed her cheek. 

“Where do you want me to start?”

Good question. “The beginning, please,” Kate begged. “What are Tall Ones really? Why are they fighting? What happened to them?”

That made her laugh, that bitter, unfair laugh. “The beginning? When is that? The start of the Overrealm, or Birth of the Underrealm? When we were reborn as stardust, or when you swallowed his Spore…?” she mused. “So many things overlap, contradict… I saw them when I was a little girl, and now, it’s all so obvious, I forget it doesn’t make sense to everyone else.”

Running her hands through her hair, she took a moment to collect herself. “Just… Follow me. I’ll show you.”

She turned, then, walking down the aisle. While Natalie easily followed behind her, Skully, Brian, and Kate lingered a bit, unsure if I’d step into The Vault. I did; I finally felt pressured to, the desire to learn this “forbidden truth” outweighing my urge to avoid danger. The Operator had let me get that far, hear that much, all without punishment. I was still following the path he wanted me to take. 

I needed to trust Korbyn. I needed to know. 

She led us to the center of the Vault to a hexagonal space. There was a single desk for Korbyn, already cluttered and lived in with her books and makeup. A sleeping bag, too– I even saw her dreamcatcher, hanging innocuously from her writing chair. 

None of her things got in the way of Chernabog’s symbol etched into the floor, intentionally placed to never obscure it. When Korbyn stepped into the circle, a strange obelisk popped up from the diamond the symbol was holding. As she leaned towards its glasslike surface, her possessed eye glowed a bright cyan, the symbol etched into her retina illuminating with a brilliant, white light.  

She straightened her back as she retreated, and the obelisk dropped back into the floor. “Don’t move,” was her warning to us. Suddenly, the shelves of books began to dissolve right before our eyes. Instead, what remained almost resembled Null. Although the floor hadn’t changed, it went for seemingly ages around us. The screen-like walls had shut off, showing nothing but a void of pitch black. Despite the abject darkness that should’ve created, we were all illuminated as if we stood in the midday sun. 

“This is Chernabog’s personal collection,” Korbyn explained. “It only contains one thing- the memory of when he was part of the Singularity. This… is Nezperdia.”  

And suddenly, it was there. It appeared all around us, revealing itself to us in all its grandeur. 

Nezperdia, The Singularity.

It was hard to pin down exactly how it looked- indescribable would be the only truly accurate word to use. But it wasn’t a frightening kind of indescribable. It was pure, innocent, but chaotic. It was a kaleidoscope of colors, weaving through each other like mandalas as it swayed and writhed organically. Formless, yet constantly changing, constantly reinventing itself: fibers of flesh, gases of a nebulae, cytoplasm of a trillion hues. Its voice was like a fetal heartbeat as it sang quietly to itself. It consumed nothing, gave nothing. Perfect entropy. It had everything it needed, and All within it breathed in perfect unison. 

Patterns repeated. Scales grew, and we saw deeper within it. The wisps of stellar dust, the tiny pearls of solar systems, all against a brilliant rainbow of a sky. And above it all, we saw Them.

Little, star–shaped creatures dancing in a circle around a black hole. Those were our Masters- those tiny, innocent denizens. 

I hadn’t realized it, but I’d started bawling, my face hot and wet behind my mask. I shuddered, nearly choking on tears as I was startled by my own surge of emotion. 

“Hey, you’re crying. What’s wrong, cher?” Natalie asked. She hadn't been speaking to me- she didn’t call me ‘cher’. I looked over to see Kate choking back sobs as well, her mask off as she covered her face. 

Skully was in no better state, his tears dripping freely down his mask. “I–It’s so beautiful…” he whimpered, clutching his chest. “I miss them so much…”

Kate suddenly wrapped her arms around me, and in return, I pulled her close. “Masky, look. Y–You can feel that, right? We’re somewhere in there,” she whispered, babbling. “I can see a piece of you, a piece of me… We’re right next to each other. We are each other.”

“Whoa- guys?” Brian called, a bit unnerved. “Should I be crying, too…?” 

“Oh. Right… You guys drank the Kool-Aid ages ago,” Korbyn muttered under her breath. She wasn’t impressed- she’d seen it so many times, even something so beautiful had lost its splendor. I almost felt sorry for her. It must’ve been awful to lose that wonder. 

“It’s a little overwhelming to see, huh? You three remember what it was like to be this. Toby cried, too, but… He’s a tough one to understand, I’ll say that much.”

What did she mean by that? When did she meet up with Toby? 

“So, ah… This it? This them?” Natalie asked, quickly turning the subject back to what we came here for. “It’s mighty pretty.” 

Korbyn nodded, walking around the shapes dancing in front of us. “Representations. How it felt, more than it actually was. That’s just how memories are… Biased,” she clarified. “But I know the story. They were once, collectively, named Nezperdia- symbolically, that’s what we’re standing in, right now. All of this… was them.”

Immediately, the name caught my attention. There was an origin to my Master’s language- they were the words Nezperdia spoke, when he was a part of its voice. 

Korbyn gestured around to the overwhelming brilliance surrounding us. “The Tall Ones never knew exactly how big Nezperdia was, but our Universe is still trying to fill the space it left. They were omnipotent beings, but with minds like single-celled organisms. Their only purpose was to keep Nezperdia alive, just like our organs do.”

Korbyn gave us a moment to drink it in. Ethereal, primordial children dancing through an absence of everything, shimmering with all the starlight of the universe in their bellies. I felt strangely aware of who was who– I was able to pick out my Master immediately, I pointed Kate to the two stars at the end of the line, skipping in floating leaps through the nothingness. Nothing indicated it was The Operator– I just knew, like you’d recognize a photo of yourself.

I saw they held onto the final entity, who didn’t move as the others did. It grew more pronounced as they danced through the air, its rhythm slowly, but surely, falling out of step. What caused it was unclear, but our Masters still clung to them tightly, determined not to break the connection. 

“What happened?” I asked, my voice tinged with sadness. It felt like I already knew. I’d felt this deep, aching sadness before, hearing The Operator lament about his kind. Normally, it came with the smell of cigarettes, and craving for them like no other. 

“...I don’t know exactly. It’s vague. Chernabog wanted to save this half of the story more than the bad,” Korbyn admitted. So all that time he could’ve spent trying to return to Earth- all those times his human witnesses called for him, knowing his presence despite his every attempt to conceal it- was spent preserving the oldest memory in the Universe: siblings playing a Game. How useless, I thought. 

“What I do know… No matter what my mind tells me, there’s six. It’s right in front of me. I just… refuse to acknowledge it. Is that their punishment…?”

Brian gasped, calling attention to himself. “...I think I know who you’re talking about. Mek-”

“-Don’t say it,” Korbyn quickly interjected. “I-I’ve just been calling them Apistoke, but you… You know their real name? Where did you hear it?” 

“I saw it in their classes. I-It was right there, out in the open. It’s not like they’re hiding it, they just-”

“-Can’t perceive them… Can’t acknowledge the sixth directly. ‘And so We look away from The Broken, Who Broke The We that We were’... So it’s true. Yes, that’s it. That has to be it,” Korbyn declared. “They’ve been there this whole time, but we’re being forced not to acknowledge them directly.”

It was as the Operator said. As far as they knew, they couldn’t “die”. But they could shut their sibling out- force all eyes to turn away, refuse to breathe existence into the one that splintered them. The Operator could compel all his servants to forget and ignore; however, that didn’t mean they simply stopped existing. They would always be alive at some point, even if it was for only a microsecond. And within that microsecond, the forgotten sibling could give birth to stars, Beasts, and echoes. It could constantly try to get our attention, constantly try to force us to look.  

“Their language is so limited already, but they don’t even have a word for what this sixth Tall One did,” she continued. “It’s called a ‘wound’ in The Operator’s memory, but a ‘spark’ in Chernabog’s. Some kind of schism started by the sixth, which made them take sides. When that happened, they began to think, to form selves… Nezperdia could no longer sustain itself. Then… They broke.” 

Broke, and then became Everything we-and you- were made of- all the energy, every atom. Every action and reaction. All of it was the echo of its obliteration.  

But its pieces- its gears- hadn’t ceased. Under our feet, I could see them. Gnarled, dying lights, their shapes erratic and quivering.They’d changed, becoming metaphysical beings we served liked Gods. Where they were once microscopic, to us, they were gargantuan.  

If The Sixth’s intentions were to kill its other siblings, it’d failed to do it immediately. They remained dying underneath the new world, trapped in the negative space on the other side of the event horizon. Watching. Learning. Whispering. Waiting for something to bridge the gap, to teach them how to Exist again. 

I watched as a thin, oily black tendril emerged from the ground, coiling upwards at my feet. Once it was ankle-height, it stopped. It then blossomed into a vivid, red flower, its core as black as the void it came from. 

I looked back at Korbyn, only to see her staring at me, her expression somber. 

“We weren’t supposed to be like this. Not according to Apistoke,” she told me. “The truth is… We’re an invasive species. If we continue like this, there’ll be nothing that separates the Underrealm and the Overrealm.”

The Beasts. The lingering presence of the human soul. The strange phenomena that even we couldn’t fathom. All were signs of that inevitability. They were all related. 

And that’s why The Sun was indiscriminate, I realized. By the time it awoke from its slumber, we would have overtaken the world, more infected than uninfected, every child born a Proxy. The indiscriminate slaughter was a killswitch- a final effort to wipe us out before we went past a point of no return. 

I expected that to shake me more than it did, but I think I already saw that coming. I wanted to be afraid; I tried to be. I wanted to feel the weight of my consequences flatten me to the ground, crushing me beneath its sheer mass. 

Because I’ve been dancing around why The Sun exists. Why The Tall Ones had grown to such a problem, such a menace, that their one equal adversary was willing to kill everything to kill it. 

I can’t deny it any longer. I really am no different than he is. If I don’t acknowledge it, then surely, it can’t be true. Yet despite that, it still was. 

I exist; therefore, they exist. That was why I, of all creatures, was so important to all of them. Because I was the bridge that brought them. Not just The Operator, but all of them. They had all the tools, all the power, but it was people like me that taught entities Slenderman how to understand it all. They needed that perspective, and suddenly, their omnipotence had context . They transformed their single-celled thinking into higher awareness.

They needed human eyes to do that.

I was the eyes they’d chosen.

As Korbyn alluded to, there really were two beginnings; when The Tall Ones split, and when I became the first vessel. The end of one was the start of another. It bloomed outward, reweaving and reshaping our Universe with every spin. Things that didn’t happen happened, people that didn’t live lived, knowledge we shouldn’t have was gained. 

Without even noticing, I’d become something more than a person. I became a metaphysical epicenter. A catalyst- a crucial element in how The Circle spun. 

Action and Reaction.

⦻rigin and Ending.

I still remember that. Do you? I hope so. I hope the sweet memories didn’t let you forget what I was, what I’ve done, what I invited into our home. Hopefully, it doesn’t surprise you to hear me admit to it so bluntly, either. I told you that when I first started writing that it was all my fault, and every page since has been detailing how. 

Do you understand me, now that I’ve bared my soul to you? I need you to. I truly need you to understand the kind of life I was blessed with, the kind of power I had. Power I’d been holding so calmly , for so long. My whole life. Every life. 

Because I need you to understand why I didn’t feel guilty for doing it. 

What Mekhane created was an accident. Still, we allowed it to exist at the cost of our joy, our togetherness, our Singularity. And for what? For these cretins to piss on every Gift they were given? To waste it all making plastic? Humans, collectively, were willfully ignorant. If you turned their heads towards the mouth of the cave, they would scream in terror and look back to the shadows on the wall. That ignorance might’ve been innocent, were it not for their sheer, ravenous urge to ruin whatever they had. It was a shame that we were hurting them, truly, but their screams for mercy weren’t enough to convince me to lay down and die. Not when I’d seen how much it pleasured them to watch. 

If we overtook them– no, if we reclaimed what was rightfully ours- then so be it. It was natural selection, at that point. In my eyes, the humans were the invasive species, and we were the resilient, native flora. We deserved to watch the consequences of their actions kill them. It was necessary. It was life, and no matter how they squirmed, it would happen. 

… But then I think about who they could be, described to me by the people I loved more than they. Despite it all, there was this yearning within the human spirit to be kind. Indeed, that kindness was the human spirit, proclaiming it existed through action. That was the piece of Nezperdia that we shared. They, too, searched for a time when we were all one, connected, and everything. I could throw a fit for hours, but when it was over, I couldn’t find it in my heart to truly forsake them. 

There had to be a reward for the effort. Even if they failed, they did try. If there was a punishment for those who failed, then there had to be a reward for those who tried.

"But... I'm so small. Why me…?" I whisper, my eyes glowing with the stars before me. I felt the urge to apologize to them- apologize for making them learn my name, for making them blink.

“To be honest, Tim… I’ve wondered that myself,” Korbyn said. “Which… is why…”

She let out a low sigh, and her eye began to glow. “I’m really sorry for pulling this. I really did want to show you the truth about The Tall Ones, and believe me, you’re all caught up. The only things left to wonder are things only The Tall Ones themselves can explain. But… I also figured that was the best way to get you here.” 

“Wh– HEY!!!”

I heard Brian react in alarm and felt Kate suddenly let go of me. When I turned around to see what they were reacting to, I found myself alone with Korbyn. She’d isolated me, somehow, the rest of my friends completely shut out.

I was trapped. At that point, I was just exasperated. 

My vines immediately went for the walls, ricocheting off them in an attempt to find the dimensions. The room was smaller, which probably meant my friends were just on the other side. I could feel Kate when I placed my hand against the wall. A soft “click, click, click” as her fists pounded against the barrier. I tried to send out a signal that I was alright, and whether she got it or not, the banging soon stopped. 

Korbyn coughed out a laugh, wholly unintimidated by either of us. “Relax. I know I don’t act like it, but I am on your side.”

“You want us to stop building the Underrealm. That’s not being on our side,” I accused, speaking harshly to hide a wince. I had to calm down, or else I’d pull my spine right out of my skin.

“...I didn’t say that,” Korbyn refuted. “I’m not entirely against our worlds combining… if we can control it. But in order to do that, you have to recognize The Operator is feeding you a comfortable lie.”

A comfortable lie? Of course it was. Because everything beyond what my Master told us was littered with “possibly” and “maybe” and “perhaps”. He told us what he knew. Not what he guessed, or what he speculated. If he didn’t know it, we didn’t learn it. He didn’t want to lie to us, and he didn’t want to lead us on, either. And what a painful truth it ended up being; he was, essentially, murdered. By someone closer to him than I’d ever fathom. No wonder he cherished the love that he saw humans express. It hadn’t been a lie when he said it reminded him of the Singularity. That must have been what love felt like, to a creature like him.

“I know what he’s been doing,” I argued. “It’s necessary. My Master tries to help us evolve as much as he can, even if it’s not always successful. You’re all the same… Just because he does things that seem inhumane to you , you want to cry foul. It’s not fair.”

I far preferred Ben’s way of describing The Circle. Like a video game. There were bad endings that taught our Master how to play differently, better. They didn’t matter– they weren’t “real” in the same way my continuous experience was real. I assumed that was true for everyone else, save for Korbyn. Yes, the things he had to do to us were disturbing, but they helped us. If I knew less about medicine, I would have said the same thing about surgery. 

Hearing the defensiveness in my voice, Korbyn held out her hands for me to take. “May I? If you’re in here, I can take memories directly from you. It’ll just take a moment, and then you and I will have nothing else to share with each other. I’m still looking for answers, and… You need to see what he’s willing to do to you.”

I didn’t take her hands, at first. I wouldn’t just trust her without asking- not again. “What are you looking for?” I asked hesitantly. 

“A dead memory. Something that ‘didn’t happen’, as you so kindly put it. We’re actually full of them- deja vu, prophetic dreams. All a result of The Tall Ones’ movement through the Circle,” she explained. “I can’t have so many minds around when I’m Seeing, otherwise the strings get tangled.”

“That doesn’t answer me,” I said tersely. “What are you looking for?”

She stared for a moment, mentally debating whether or not to lie to me. “... I want to find out why we’re immune. The Tall Ones don’t know what happened, do they?”

I froze, not expecting her to know that. No, they didn’t know; at least, I thought they didn’t know. It would be beneficial to them if they did, because then, they could recreate it in the other denizens. With that, I was warming up more to her request. “And what if you don’t find it?”

She frowned, giving me a pointed look as she nodded to her hands. She didn’t know- that was what she gained from inviting me there. All she knew was that I was where they were keeping their darker secrets. I was like the room I stood in, in a strange way- I contained things that didn’t happen, holding them inside me forever. 

If it was just another book for her collection, I was going to be pissed. 

But… I supposed I owed her. I understood my Master on a new level. He was an organism as well as a phenomenon. The entity he became, The Operator, King of Dreams, was the result of us children: our dreams, our hope, our boundless wonder of a world just beyond the darkness of sleep. He wasn’t a God, not that I ever thought he was; he was a father of a different kind to me. 

Cautiously, I took her hands. With a twitch of her brow, I felt a small pinprick in the back of my head– like a hair was plucked from my crown, the sensation underneath my skin. Korbyn’s eyes flashed with both glee and bioluminescence, her lips quirking as she found the memory right away. That either spoke to her powers as a Seer, or my desire to see this done and over with. Or a third, more likely reason: I was too far away from The Operator for him to interfere. 

The blackness faded into television static; then, much like The Arkhitekton, the walls seemed to dissolve away into a fully rendered world. 

Right away, I could see I was in familiar territory, but within a world I no longer knew. I recognized the dilapidated walls of Rosswood Medical, but not the dust and sand that collected in its corners. Normally, the outside forest was constantly threatening to swallow the building. Not even mold grew, then- Rosswood was mummified by the wasteland outside the windows. The trees I knew like the back of my hand were gone, with no stumps or roots to speak of. The Earth was gray, cracked like dead skin as sparse, black plants sprung up in tufts. The early morning sky was a sickly green, the eerie, black clouds slithering across the horizon more than drifting. The Sun would rise any day, in this world. Not a matter of if, but when. 

Much like before, seeing the planet so warped left me with a deep, existential sadness. For the pawns within the Circle, they had to play to the end, lest the Tall Ones all agree to start over. They rarely did- while I could perfectly understand why, the human part of me cringed deeply at that level of prolonged suffering. 

I was back in that room. I saw the burn mark, now just another scar in the building’s ruin. I was unsurprised to see Government agents; they were always the reason things went wrong, for me. I was a bit surprised to see them so covered, their suits seemingly built for radiation and biological contaminants. There was heavy padding lining their arms, legs, and neck, most likely to protect against bites. 

Gunshots rang out, triggering a sense of panic deep in my chest. I immediately knew why I wasn’t allowed to see this; my absolute nightmare was dying in that place, particularly in that room. 

“That symbol…” Korbyn muttered, taking notes of everything as it materialized before us. She could move freely through the space, the logic of walls not applying to her; I however, was kept in my small box. I hated it at the time, but now that I have hindsight, I have no resentment. 

I recognized the symbol she spoke of. They’d painted on the floor in blood. It was Severance, but the alignment was different- the inner circles were turned to be diagonal. It no longer resembled an eye or a flower, but the atom. Seeing it turned that way made me cringe, the urge to look away from it embedded into my core. That was Zalgo’s name in Nezperdian, and when rotated that way, it was to call directly upon him.  

“Wh… What is he doing here…?” 

Every turn of my head was a new trauma. Because who should I see but Liu Woods himself, standing in perfect health. He was the only person not wearing the biohazard gear, and he also seemed the least happy to be there. I couldn’t say the same about his companion, an average man by all measures except temperament. He was excitedly pouring over a collection of screens behind them both, giving readings on air pressure, radiation levels, even the magnetic pull of the Earth. As the sound of screaming and crying grew from the corridor, he turned on his heel, watching as they dragged me in by the arms. 

Once again, I looked different, so it was a little easier to process what- who- I was seeing. I was older, thin as a rail. My hair was curly and cut short; I was losing it at the neck, and that was either a sign of my age or the Sickness. What little skin I had exposed was ghostly pale, nearly translucent, and filthy. It was black at my fingernails and the tips of my ears, where my flesh was thinnest. 

My face was bruised, my right eye swelled shut as my nose and lip bled freely. I didn’t fight their grip on me, but I’d gone completely deadweight, forcing them to haul me in like a sack of potatoes. My double wasn’t doing it out of protest; rather, he was far more focused on crying so hard he was dry heaving. 

“You killed him… No… Noooo…” he managed. They finally dropped him into the circle, where he curled into a fetal position. “Give him back… Please…”

“Where’s Briar?” I heard Liu say monotonely, his voice making me physically gag. I felt my teeth grow, my jaw tight as I struggled to maintain control. The very sound of his voice induced a murderous rage that, to this day, can’t be matched.

“FUCK YOU!!! LET ME GO!!! I’LL KILL YOU, I’LL EAT YOUR FUCKING HEART-!!!”

Right on cue, they led a girl in by the arms. She was kicking and fighting far more than I had, screaming angrily at her captors. 

In sharp contrast, my friend looked healthier than me by miles. She’d certainly seen better days, as did her clothes, but she didn’t look so soaked in plague. Though pale, her skin was unblemished by illness. She had long, shiny dark hair, pulled tightly back with a plastic, red flower. She was pretty- worn by the ruined world around her, but she had a life in her pale eyes that I instantly loved.

…That I recognized, too. Why did I recognize that, of all things?

“Oh! That’s The Briar Rabbit!!” Korbyn gasped, as if that was a mystery to be solved. She startled me, the overwhelming situation making me forget she was even there. 

“Incredible… She’s only born if the apocalypse happens early… If humans collapse before The Sun,” she marveled, writing furiously into her notepad. “I thought she wasn’t real… Everyone else forgot her, even Jeff… But you remember her. Why…?” 

“You’re monsters!!! All of you!!” Briar shouted, still kicking. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish with killing the Horrors, but The Sadist will find you, and he will DESTROY you!!” 

“Oh… He’s gone, sweetheart. Your God abandoned you, just like ours did. He can’t help you now,” the man stated, his voice lilting with malice. Korbyn stepped out of his way as he crossed the room to face Briar, his smile utterly mirthful as her expression shifted to terror.

“What…? What do you mean, ‘gone’?” Briar choked out. She knew exactly what he meant, though; unbeknownst to her, the place she called home no longer existed. 

“Not all gone,” Liu commented, looking from her to me. 

“Oh, right, right- his little babies!! Oh, it’s been hilarious watching you two come here to make out. And you have no idea just how related you are!! Well, it makes sense- we are in Alabama, after all-”

“SHUT UP!!!” Briar screamed, nearly wrenching free of the men holding her. They forced her to her knees, her cries of pain mixing with her cries of misery. “Shut up, shut up!! I hate you, I hate you-!!!”

“You shot the other three?” the man asked the soldiers holding her, completely ignoring Briar’s anguish. They nodded, and he smiled wider.

“We got their whole army all in the raid,” the soldier elaborated. “We were able to take a few of them alive, like ‘Eyeless Jack’ and a few Horrors like Jeffery Woods… But the higher ups plan to euthanize them soon. Gotta drain the good stuff, first.”  

Liu only had the slightest reaction to Jeff’s name- a flicker of his eyelids, the barest twitch of his trigger finger.

“Good. Now it can’t jump to any of them… Alright. Phase two.”

The bang I heard made me feel numb. It was loud, and it was close. They’d put a barrel to my double’s temple while he lay sobbing on the ground, and pulled the trigger. As his hands went limp, I saw he was holding a black mask with a painted face. 

Briar’s horrified scream was the backdrop to a cold, deep chill in my gut. I was dead. Blood oozed from the hole in my temple, my face slowly growing blank as my muscles relaxed. It was an instant death, most certainly; my double wouldn’t have felt a thing. Once I was truly dead weight, they hauled my corpse into the center of their circle, turning me onto my back before my body stiffened. 

Once the shock wore off, I was filled with a profound confusion. I was dead…So… So why was I still there, in that memory? Shouldn’t my memory have stopped with me? 

“Wait… What the fuck?” Korbyn gawked, having that same realization. “That’s not how this works. Did someone plant a memory in your head?”

I couldn’t answer her. I tried to speak, but no sound came out. The urge to scream was slowly building in my chest, the buzzing in my skull growing unbearable. Why was I still watching? Why was I still here? If this wasn’t mine, then who did this memory belong to? 

Finally, Liu put an end to Briar’s screaming, smacking her with the butt of his rifle. “That’s enough. It’ll come whether you’re screaming or not.” 

It. Zalgo? But if The Operator wasn’t there, then Zalgo wasn’t there, either, I thought. They must not have known that; perhaps their instruments could only detect The Operator, and so they based their assumption of Zalgo on other things. Whatever the reason, it was a miscalculation. My death was still a marker; a sign that things were about to spiral out of control. 

“Bring in the Horrors,” a soldier called.

A pair of soldiers left the room. A minute later, they returned with three young women, one of them I immediately recognized as The Witch. She looked terrified, the tracks of tears staining her face. She and her friends were shackled together with lead, their fingers cut off at the knuckles to prevent them from writing or drawing. They were only left with their index fingers, giving their hands a disturbing, wormlike appearance. They forced to sit in a triangle around my corpse, which steadily leaked blood onto their white prison suits. 

“Go on. We taught you the words,” a soldier commanded, the thin barrel of his gun resting on a girl’s shoulder.

Shaking and trembling, they bowed their heads and began to pray. 

“Zalgo, Zalgo, Zalgo, send us your Angels. Zalgo, Zalgo, Zalgo, send us your Heralds. Zalgo, Zalgo, Zalgo, hear us cry. Zalgo, Zalgo, Zalgo, hear us beg. We reject-”

They choked on their words almost simultaneously, prompting each of them to be struck until they found their voices. 

“-We reject our lords and Masters. Zalgo, come to us, Zalgo, Zalgo, Zalgo…”

I covered my ears as they chanted those phrases over and over, their voices growing louder to seemingly no effect. I could see the humans shifting in place, unsure of what should be happening. Even Briar seemed confused, wondering how they were speaking the infamous being’s name without immediately being possessed. They always expect some kind of light show, every single time. Well, who knows, I thought; maybe there were supposed to be bright lights and flames. Without Zalgo to answer, though, nothing was going to happen.  

So busy were they, staring at my praying sisters, they didn’t notice the presence that entered the room. Not Zalgo, but close. 

Korbyn shrieked at the sight of the entity, scrambling back toward the opposite wall it was standing in. I, too, felt a surge of fear, instinctively moving to put distance between us, my tendrils curling protectively around me. 

If I could describe the creature, I would say it looked like a skeleton; however, his skin and flesh appeared to be made entirely of ichor, the meat translucent as it conformed to the shape of a man. He had stringy, white hair, and  very human eyes sitting in his visible skull. He was dressed in dark rags, exposing the large bolts of stitches across his limbs. He carried a scepter in one hand, the large, green orb at the end glowing with a dim, red light.  

I thought that was all to him, but I was wrong. With a shudder, the entity spread his wings, his feathers made of pure darkness. 

Briar saw him, then, the sharp intake of her breath both of wonder and terror. 

My sisters were first on his menu. Their voices were cut off as they gagged, their blood bubbling in the corners of their mouths. Their bodies arched, and suddenly, their hearts ripped themselves from their chests, splattering blood across the symbol on the floor. 

The humans all jumped, finally detecting the presence that’d joined them. They began to crowd around each other, pointing their guns at the Angel that appeared before them. 

“Zalgo!!” Liu shouted. “We command you!! Obey us!!” 

That wasn’t Zalgo, and he should have known that. In all meanings of the word, it was too small to be him. Still, yet again, I felt a haunting sense of familiarity. I was confused, too. I didn’t know him, but somehow, I was more curious why he was there, of all places. Shouldn’t he be somewhere else…?  

Silently, the entity raised the scepter he carried. 

The hearts of the soldiers were next. The organs were pulled from their chests, breaking their armor in two with the force of it leaving them. Briar was left in a pile of dead bodies, but rendered utterly still by the creature’s work. 

Liu and his companion’s faces twisted. Unsettled by the entity’s actions, they backed away, trying to move towards the door. 

“Obey us!! We summoned you!!! We killed his Vessel!!” Liu shouted. “That’s how it works, isn’t it? Once again, Zalgo claims victory over everything!? As reward, take me and my people to your heaven!! We submit to you!!”

As he spoke, he progressively got more and more manic. “I want my reward!! You don’t know what I’ve done to get it, so give it to me!!!”  

The entity didn’t look at them. He looked at Briar; transfixed, his eyes reflecting something almost akin to kindness. 

“...I am not Zalgo,” he stated, his voice gravelly and deep. “And you didn’t kill his Vessel.”

Liu let out a shocked gasp as his companion was next. The man coughed, blinking wildly before his eyes went unfocused. His chest burst open, spraying Liu with his blood as his heart joined the many now levitating in the air. The floor was soaked by then, slowly dyeing the concrete and ruined tile ruddy red. 

It was Liu’s turn to scream; unthinking, he unloaded his rifle towards the entity. A useless effort, as they had no effect. It was as if their momentum died just before they reached the angelic creature, dropping uselessly to the ground before they could strike and do damage. When that didn’t work, Liu dropped his gun and drew a knife, charging the entity. 

Unlike the others, the entity didn’t rip out his heart. Instead, he swat at him, sending him through the wall like he was shot out of a cannon. There was no way Liu survived that; I think he died the instant he hit the wall. 

Daylight poured in through the hole he’d made with his corpse. I’d been right about The Sun waking up, soon. My skin crawled as the bodies began to undulate under the light, growing tumors as they swelled and sludged together. 

For a few, long seconds, the only sounds were the entity’s careful steps, the sound of mutating flesh, and Briar’s hard, ragged breathing. 

She was the only one left. Briar’s eyes narrowed, and she stood up on trembling legs. 

“D-Did they summon you?” she asked, her voice meek.
“I was the only one left to answer,” He whispered softly. “I, too, will soon waste away. This-” He gestured to the hearts around him. “-Is my final meal. Even I wish to die comfortably… My Master is no longer here to stop me.”

“Wh-Why aren’t you… t-taking my heart?” 

”...Our creators loved each other, once… some have forgotten that. Gemberlings never will.”

“Who are...Wh-Who are you?” 

He cocked his head to one side, blinking only once. “You and I have met under circumstances that will never happen again, young one. Do you wish to know, or do you wish to seize the opportunity?”

Briar flinched, her eyes fluttering as she fidgeted in place, her mind racing as she thought over what to do. “I-I want to save them,” she declared, her voice hoarse. “This isn’t supposed to happen. I know there’s something about me that’s special, so if that’s what you want so you can stop this from happening, then please take it. I… I don’t want them to die.”

That, of all things, resonated with the entity. He raised his scepter, revealing a heart suspended within the crystal. It appeared alive, undulating as it beat slowly. With a turn of his wrist, the organs levitating in the air exploded, turning to a red mist. The mist was then absorbed by his scepter, causing it to illuminate brightly. 

Alright, so maybe it was a light show. Sometimes. 

The entity turned his head to Briar once more, his gaze almost softening. “Once they understand what’s been done to you, they will demand you forfeit. They will call this ‘cheating’. When you stand before them, tell them the truth. You gave him this Gift. You have fought and died enough. You deserve it.” 

Briar nodded only once, stopping as she clutched at her chest. Gasping, she spat up black ichor. I saw her eyes bleed black, the fluid pouring from her nose and tear ducts. Her red shirt bled black as her heart was carefully, delicately pulled from her chest. 

The heart was black and gnarled, its valves and ventricles writhing like serpents. The world around us grew strange, then; as The Sun illuminated more of the room, the walls seemed to flicker, warping around us. 

Briar, still alive, was able to take a few steps towards my dead body, falling to her knees over me. From there, she curled up at my side, her head resting on my shoulder. 

“It’s okay,” she managed, slowly closing her eyes. Somehow, she found a way to smile, her soul at ease. “I’m okay. We’ll be… okay. We’ll try again… tomorrow…” 

Briar’s role was done. Now, I was extremely confused. She was dead, and I was dead.

Whose memory did this belong to?

The entity held her heart in the palm of his hand, studying it as it writhed and squirmed. He then tapped it with his scepter, the glow within absorbed by the blackened meat, drawing into it. It seemed to shudder, then it withered, shriveling into a stone the size of a cherry pit. 

He crushed it, and the memory shut off. 

I fell back, hyperventilating as I tried to crawl away. Everything had locked up for me. My head was nothing but a loud buzz, the pressure inside like it’d pop. I saw things. Flashes. People. Faces. So many faces. I suddenly felt the dimensions of the room I was in, pushing against the invisible walls as I panicked. 

“I want out,” I begged, my tendrils thrashing wildly. “I want out, I want out, I̵ ̸w̸a̸n̴t̵ ̴o̷u̸t̷-”

The sound of glass echoed around me, but I felt no shards land on my skin. Instead, I felt a pair of strong arms around my neck, hauling me to my feet in a bear’s embrace. 

“We’re leaving!!” Kate shouted, her arms clutching me tightly. “This was your last chance!! I’ve tried being nice about you, but you’ve officially pissed me off with this weird obsession with my brother!!”

“Yeah!! Fuck you!!” Brian joined in, noticing my distress before Kate did. “...Masky? What’s wrong?”

My eyes filled with tears as I looked at Kate, my body still frozen. She looked so much like Briar- they both looked like me. What did that mean? Who was Kate? Who was I? Were we reflections in a metaphorical sense, or was that literal? Were they made from my rib? Was I made from theirs? What did that make them? What did that make me? Was I my body, my mind, or the black core growing inside me? What am I? 

Brian remained the only one aware something was wrong with me. The others, too focused on Korbyn, continued to yell at her, innocently coming to my defense. “You know what!? He and Toby have been actin’ wild ever since YOU showed up!! I think I’ve been yellin’ at the wrong goth all day!!!” I heard Natalie shout. “No wonder they’re both so fauché’d!!! Whatever freaky shit you keep showing them ends right fuckin’ now, missy!!!” 

The yelling wasn’t helping. I felt myself start to hyperventilate again, and before I knew it, I pushed Kate away, my vines wrapping around me as I tried to control myself. I felt something solid building up in my throat, my eyes burning as I struggled to find my breath.  

“Hey… Calm down,” Brian ordered, carefully stepping into my field of view. “Relax, and breathe.”

Instinctively, I obeyed him, my panic attack completely dissuaded. That was why Korbyn insisted Brian came; because I was right about Brian. He could control me. That wasn’t his only job, but it was something he could do. With the power he had over me, he could simply order me not to lose my shit.

Brian got closer to me as I began to ground myself, reminding myself of who I was. I was Masky. I was The ⦻rigin of The Operator. I was his Proxy. That’s who I was. 

When I finally came to my senses, I saw Kate, eyes wide as plates and her expression nothing but dejected. It’d been a hallucination. She was my sister, yes… But she didn’t look like Briar. Or me. She looked like Kate. 

“...Did you find what you were looking for?” I asked Korbyn, my voice weak.

Fearing our anger, Korbyn had stepped back towards her things- obviously, to grab her gun. For the first time, that look of familiarity was gone. She didn’t know me. 

“I… I think so,” Korbyn said distantly, looking at the vacant space where that entity stood. She clutched her notepad, glancing over at her desk for the briefest moments. “… I could call you when-”

“--No. I don’t care anymore about past Circles. They didn’t happen,” I said firmly. “I saw what I saw. My Master is vindicated . I am meticulous… Whatever I am.”

I would have to confront The Operator about what I’d seen. I knew I couldn’t accept a “comfortable lie,” as Korbyn put it. I needed him to tell me who Apistoke was. The more I really thought about it, it was clear The Operator wasn’t hiding the truth because it was painful for me.

My Master was broken-hearted. He was still grieving. He had no words to understand that grief, and so he could only give us permission to find it for ourselves. 

I softened up, letting out a low sigh. “Can you us to Jack’s? We’re tired, and I…I need to square things with him.”

“Uhh… Well… You’ll get a good meal. As for sleeping… You might be out of luck.”

Right. The party. I’d been excited about it going into the building. Coming out, I could only pray the car ride there would give me a chance to quiet my mind. Coupled with my stress, the noise might’ve popped my head clean off.

–

I tried to put what I saw behind me. I couldn’t rationalize that memory; any attempt to do so made my anxiety fill me like steam in a bottle.

I kept telling myself what I knew: I wasn’t anyone but ⦻rigin. I was like The Operator, always clinging to survival. I would always find a way to live, always choose to fight.

The others asked what Korbyn had done, and I gave them a censored version. My immunity was a Gift that had embedded itself into my being- it was, to put it simply, a part of me, from the moment it was given to right then. That was all that really mattered to me, anyways. Korbyn, I was sure, was drooling over what a “Gemberling” was and the cryptic nature of his words, but I was done with her and her visions.

…But maybe I’d listen if she found out he was still around. Inwardly, I worried about that entity reappearing. It’d be nice to know if he had a weakness. 

 I blamed my haunted gaze on my exhaustion and back pain. My vines had shriveled and turned to dust, so they all knew I was serious about being tired; therefore, nobody called me out on it. Korbyn was just as cagey, giving short responses (which, for her, was highly unusual), but she wasn’t who they were programmed to fret over. Though I knew Kate was desperately worried about me, I hadn’t fully unpacked the experience. I didn’t want to talk about it, and that time, I couldn’t be coaxed. 

I did, however, let Kate get close to me again. I didn’t want her to think I was upset with her, as she’d done absolutely nothing wrong. If anything, her presence in Korbyn’s van was the only thing I had to distract me from my turbulent thoughts. I knew who I was in relation to her, and I clung to it as we were taken to Jack. 

Eyeless Jack’s base, called The Tower, extended both upwards and downwards for (allegedly) 108 levels. The Hospital was below the ground, accessed through a vehicle lift hidden in plain sight. With an experienced guide, it was actually quite fascinating to see how Jack used the chaotic, concrete jungle to hide secrets. It all seemed to be the same, noninteractive wasteland, where all you could do was wander. Once you see someone actually pressing buttons and opening doors, it jumps out at you. 

We could go to the bottom floor van and all, which meant we could sneak in without being seen by the general population. It was only until the doors were pulled open did Eyeless Jack’s followers realize we were there. 

As always, they were startled by my friends, terrified of me. They pointed at me immediately, gaping like fish as they shouted nonsensically. I was surprised they didn’t try to kill us; then again, they clearly weren’t wearing those scrubs to throw hands. 

Korbyn was the one who explained why we were there, but it was Natalie who actually broke the ice for us. When she got out, just the sound of her accent made them warm up to her. They started asking where she was from, and she happily told them, chatting away like we weren’t mortal enemies. 

At first, I thought of them as idiotic for trusting us that easily. Really, I was the one not reading the situation correctly. They had absolutely no reason to be afraid of us. We were beaten, outnumbered, and in desperate need of their kindness. Kindness that, mind you, they were willing to extend to us, as long as we proved ourselves. 

One of Jack’s followers- Head Nurse was the only name she was addressed as, though I could guess she was their leader from her authority alone- delivered us to the floor where they were hosting The Flock. It struck me, then- really sank in- that Jack’s followers weren’t Proxies. Not even Chernabog’s equivalent. They were all humans. Not even “special” humans; they were people I would’ve walked straight past on the street, feeling neither malice nor affection for them. They weren’t chiseled, sculpted, or made. There were nurses I saw who were visibly aging with soft, pillowy frames, their skin not just different shades, but different states of whether. The only thing I noticed as a pattern were scarves tightly wound around some of the nurses’ heads, keeping their hair completely hidden. I noticed because, admittedly, their collective choice to wear black and keep their mask on as a “second” face was both startling and very clever.  

The Head Nurse took us past the main room, where beds were lined three by three with a split in the middle for a hallway. Where there were bodies, there was equipment like IV drips and alarms measuring the internal conditions, as well as a plethora of doctors orbiting their beds. The doctors wore specifically blue scrubs underneath their white coats, their faces covered by their masks as they tended to their patients. Some bodies were in an advanced stage of decay, yet they were being meticulously cared for as if alive, their IVs dripping black fluid into their empty veins. I even recognized some minions I and my siblings had killed, their heads reattached and their necks fixed with braces. 

One doctor was actively at work, which immediately caught my and my friends’ attention. It looked like surgery, if the practice was invented by Frankenstein himself. They were quite literally putting people back together. Their organs were “rinsed” in a container of Jack’s ichor, which he’d anointed to reverse any damage to the flesh. Once their wrinkled, rotting organs were pulled out, fresh as new, they were then placed back into the cavity. Finally, the doctor dipped her gloved fingers into the fluid, and with it, painstakingly reattached everything to its proper vein and artery. No need for stitches; the ichor did that, bonding the flesh together again.

The doctors weren’t the only ones busy. Next to them, nurses were carefully glueing bones back together, using what appeared to be cartilage, but stored in a squeeze bottle for icing. I heard them ask, “did we ever find his leg?” and was given a rather chewed up foot. Unsatisfied, the nurse announced she was going to speak to their prosthesis and physical therapy team. 

“The nurses and doctors get the body to the best shape possible,” the Head Nurse explained, seeing our interest. “Then, Jack collects their soul from the atmosphere and puts it back. After that, it’s as easy as waking them up.”

“More than that. He does cosmetic surgery- the good stuff,” Diamond added, slapping her bare arm to trigger the shimmer of her skin. “He makes you pay for it, though.”

“In what? Cash?” Natalie gawked. 

She smirked. “Stuff,” she said simply. “Don’t worry about it.” 

I still didn’t believe he chose to comb through every possible atom to find the ones that made up the souls of these people. It was like capturing smoke after it's already dispersed. The time, the effort … But it showed in the final product. The person was as alive as they had been before. Better, even, his ichor restoring them to a pinnacle of health. 

And for that, Jack asked for nothing. He did it because he felt compelled to- like there was nothing else he could think of to use such immense power for. 

Despite our grievances, they’d treated my girls with the utmost dignity. A private room they shared, with a horde of nurses rotating in and out. By the time I’d arrived, they were either up or resting, their wounds healed and their energy restored. I still clicked with them, and they still smelled the same. Eyeless Jack intentionally created his methods to avoid having control over who he treats, even us Proxies; he could have easily manipulated them, made it so they couldn’t return home, but even he understood what that would mean to us.  

Even though I knew the mastery of his handiwork, I was a little startled by it. Fisher King’s arm had been completely reconstructed, even though it’d been obliterated by the impact. The only evidence of her struggle were the hairline seams of her scars. Gold, of course. Blackbird said that she was like kintsugi pottery, where the damaged pieces were mended with gold, creating an even more stunning, elegant piece.

The scars were beautiful to me for an entirely different reason. Seeing them, all I could think about was how she’d been willing to sacrifice herself to protect my sister- how courageous she was, her heart as golden as her blood. No one could ever tell me King was genuinely awful, because I saw how she always put others before herself when it truly mattered. 

Jack’s nurses wouldn’t let me get close to her until Chariot and Blackbird vouched for me. I guess I seemed a little crazed, making a beeline for King the instant I saw her. They were understandably wary about the crusty, half-feral boy barking at her curtain, but after I gathered myself and entered King’s space, I could see them crowding though the thin, mint colored veil. I didn’t mind it; if she needed something, they were right there to help. I couldn’t help but find it a bit amusing, though. Had Jack not painted me as the sensitive type? I suppose that made sense, given the times we’d interacted. I’m sure Blackbird had plenty of stories to share (and did). 

I took off my gloves to hold King’s hand, my head bowed to silently pray to The Operator. Once again, I thanked him for not taking her from me too soon. I owed the whole Flock more than I could ever pay, and their first lives were just one of the many treasures they deserved to keep. 

King opened her eyes after I sat with her for a few minutes. “I spoke with our Master,” she whispered, her voice tinged with groggy urgency. “He says he wants to speak with you right away.”

I smiled as I helped her sit up, although it felt bitter on my tongue to smile at all. I already knew she’d want to check her makeup, and though I was hesitant to give her the little compact she carried, I knew she’d want to see the results of her treatment. It went about as well as I anticipated; she gasped at the sight of herself, touched the scars tenderly, and then gushed, admiring her reflection with a (somehow) renewed vigor. 

“Ah- is it even possible for me to have a flaw?” she cooed. “Oh, they even rebraided my hair- thank you, ladies, you’re all lovely. I’ll have my people call your people- there’s this spot in Prague I always want people to try, so chic. Just ask for Paul and mention me, he’ll take care of you.”

“I forgot where Prague was. It’s Belgium, right?” I heard one of the nurses mutter. 

I huffed softly. I was content to entertain King, but I was curious. “Did the Master say anything else to you?” I asked. 

Her smile grew coy, and she closed her compact with a snap. “He praised me, of course. That’s nothing special… I’m his favorite, after all. But if you must know… He says he wants me to start training to take over Nurse Ann’s old job. Until I die, I’m going to be a special kind of Berserker like she was!!!” she declared excitedly. “So… I’ll be home far more.” 

I laughed openly at that- the kind of laugh that healed my soul. That was great news for me, who wanted to do nothing but stay home, lately. “When did the nurses say you could leave?”

“Oh, whenever I feel like it. These beds are so comfortable, Masky, you simply must let me buy you one.”

“No need!! We can make you one!!” One of the nurses piped up. “Master’s got plenty of extras-”

“Hey!” Diamond gave them a stern look, taking off her mask in the process. “You know how he feels about that. We don’t call nobody Master. He’s Eyeless Jack,” she stated. 

“Oh- Right, I’m so sorry. I forgot.”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t need a mattress, she’s just bragging,” I said. 

I saw Blackbird and Kate, then, both wanting to come in. I kissed King’s hand gently, then I stood back to let them have a personal conversation. I didn’t feel unwanted; they were comfortable speaking in front of me, embracing tightly. 

“I didn’t do it for him,” King reassured Kate. “I did it for Dreamy… And ‘cause of Movie Night.”

“Yeah! Movie Night is forever!!”

“Thank you,” Kate warbled, wiping her eyes. “I used to be annoyed that Dreamy wants to be a Muse, but now… I’m glad. Even if I never see her again, I still want her to be safe.”

“Sometimes the safest place our loved ones can be is far away from us. ‘Ts’not forever, love,” King reminded her, cupping her face.

“Not if I can help it. I miss you, too,” I grumbled, making them giggle.

Suddenly, there was a bit of a commotion outside the curtain. The nurses’ cries of alarm almost hid The Puppeteer’s voice, but as I poked my head out to see, I heard him loud and clear. 

“There you guys are!!! So, what did we learn?” The Puppeteer chirped.

“Circles, hexagons, we are all connected by three points of contact, the sixth is unseen…” Skully murmured, reaching out to grasp his arm. 

The Puppeteer didn’t let him. “Oh, wow, that’s nice. Wait, sorry, just remembered- I don’t care. I just wanted to make sure you all lived so Akagumo doesn’t neuter me. If you’ll excuse me-”

“Wait,” I called, stepping out. “You’re welcome back to The Ark, Puppet. Our Master will claim you, so the call for your head will get lifted, too.”

He blinked at that, shocked I’d extend such a courtesy. He shouldn’t have been; it was a tactical move. The Puppeteer was close with The Scarlet King’s new Vessel. If we were going to try to assassinate him, it might help to have someone both stealthy and familiar with Papa Grande.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely, nodding once. “Now, if you’ll excuse me- I’ve got some religion to hawk. By the way- any of you ladies want to know about the Truth that is Puppetry, call me in the dark of sleep!”

And like that, he vanished, transforming into a wisp of sand and leaving through the air vents. After that, the others were a bit antsy to see what was going on upstairs. They were trying to hide it, considering they were in quite a stoic place. But we could hear the thudding music above us, the barest wafts of food drifting down. My team was still hungry, and though just being able to sit and relax did wonders, it wasn’t enough to heal us. 

Eventually, Korbyn entered the room, her arms crossed the moment the door was shut.  “He’s ready to see you,” she said, barely concealing her terseness. Not towards us; I imagine her conversation with Jack wasn’t exactly pleasant. “Careful walking through… Things are crazy in the common areas. I’m not sure how things will go, given your affiliation… but we’ll see.”

“Do they have guns?” Brian asked, fully intending it as a joke. The look he got in return told him that it was a valid one.

“Probably. We’re not flashing them, obviously; but you’re the only ones that fear guns. Just don’t grab anyone’s belt, and you’ll be fine.”

“Shit sounds like my uncle’s third wife’s bridal shower,” Natalie quipped. 

“You made that up,” Kate accused, smirking.

“...Aight. You caught me. It was for the second wife.” 

As we climbed the staircase to the first floor, the noise oozed down from above it. It poured out of the double doors at the top of the stairs, left propped open by a group of men smoking. Blue masks adorned their persons, whether on their head, their belt, or hanging around their neck on a string. They tensed when they saw us, but the presence of Diamond seemed to reassure them. They outright moved out of Korbyn’s way like she used telekinesis, menacing us only with her back turned. I’d just seen how they treated Korbyn, so that obviously didn’t frighten me. 

Korbyn had outdid herself. The whole tower was alive, the chaos stacked like a tiered cake and spread to every corner. A mix of emotions swam through the levels- joy and merriment as people danced in clusters around a stereo system, somberness as others looked over some art displayed along the walls. There were even mattresses, blankets, and pillows all over the place, being used by people to lay down while they braided hair, slept, or enjoyed “light chatter”, as Rogue called making out. 

Despite the clear attempts not to, people were obsessed with the image of The Chernabog mask, incorporating his face into their art, fashion, and even the decorations for the party. It was all abstract, breaking down the image of the blue face with two, black holes down to the barest shapes.

And that was all on just one of the floors. The next floor revealed a full-scale concert, which had been the source of the metal music I’d heard earlier. There was a different performer now- two girls performing some sort of dark pop routine, with one manning the turntables while the other danced wildly across the stage and wailed like a banshee into the microphone. I was so enthralled, I almost forgot I was there for business. 

“You could do that, Kate,” I pointed out, inspired by it. 

“No way, dude. Music is your thing, not mine.”

“But look!! You dance way better than her. You could totally steal that-”

“Lame! I don’t copy anyone.”

Eventually, it occurred to me that there had to be over a thousand people in Jack’s Tower, which kind of unnerved me. How could he trust this many people to keep a secret- Hell, how could he trust this many people to behave? Then again… I doubt they would do anything to sabotage their position; they revered Eyeless Jack far too much, clearly. And who’d ever guess they weren’t on Earth, if they heard someone describe this place? 

“Hey, look!! I wonder if we can sign up to perform!!” Kate offered, gesturing to a poster by the staircase.  

I flushed at the idea. Perform? On a stage? I’d wanted to before, but the instant it was put in front of me, I recoiled. Too much attention. 

“Toby’s not here,” I said after a moment. “He’s our lead singer.”

Except… Yes, he was there. I clicked with him- I could feel it. Toby was already in The Waste. When? How?

Natalie. My head snapped to her so fast it almost cracked, my blood boiling. She’d been playing defense for him that whole time, concealing the fact that he’d snuck away to see Jack before I did. I didn’t want to think he was trying to sabotage me, but I couldn’t rationalize his actions. I never could, but that time was impossible. 

I considered exposing Natalie on the spot, but I held back. She was right in one way- I had developed vindictive tendencies, which I noticed then. I wanted to prove her wrong about me. I wasn’t going to punish her, even though I was angry at them for sneaking around. I wouldn’t tell The Operator, either; not until Toby could tell me himself why he came to The Waste.  

“Wait. I’ve seen a place like this before. I stayed in one for a week,” Brian pointed out, his voice raised over the noise. “They played Christian music nonstop! Left when they brought out the Kool–Aid, though.”  

“Reminds me of a halfway house,” Legion stated, approaching us coolly. “It’s about the same. Not everyone strictly follows Jack’s command, but they’ve all been given a place here if they want it. We help them get better lives on Earth, here- anywhere.”

Diamond glanced around, waiting for the people to disperse before speaking more on the topic. “Some of these people are dead to the human world. Literally- they’re supposed to be dead. They can’t simply return to normal lives, so we’ve started to create ones for them here,” she explained quietly. “The way Jack sees it, Earth isn’t going to survive humans, let alone The Sun. He doesn’t want to try to control them from the inside like you do. He just wants to grab who he can and leave before they’re put in the line of fire.”

“Why would he do that…?”

“He told you,” Korbyn stated, audibly frustrated. “The Operator doesn’t care about good people at all, aside from what he could get out of them. To be invited to The Ark, You have to be born special. One in a million. You call that fair, but it’s not. It’s a lottery system with weighted averages.”

I wanted to argue with her, but I quickly realized I was going to bring up the memory she found. I chose my words carefully, dragging patience up from my depths. “When we find out how to give it to them without killing them, you’ll be the first to know. I’m capable of a lot of things, remember? ” 

Korbyn flinched, and Diamond rolled her eyes at me, unaware of how threatening that actually was. “As long as your homies don’t go feral, they can chill,” Diamond told us. “I know ya’ll are hungry. We got barbeque goin’ on the next floor-”

“Barbeque? Say no more. Allons , cher, I’m ‘bout to show ya’ll why I ain’t never leave the South.” 

I watched as Natalie grabbed both Kate and Brian by the hoodies, dragging them with her towards the smell of food. Skully looked torn between staying with Korbyn and going with them, but eventually, his empty stomach won out. Not that he should be hungry; he hadn’t done anything aside from film. 

“Damn. Not too worried about you, huh?” Legion drawled smugly.

“One call, and they’re right back,” I warned, wiping the smirk off his face. He wouldn’t even hear it. Proxies were confident in each other, not careless. Faster than any computer, I could send a distress signal to Kate, and she’d bite first, ask questions later. 

“This way?” I asked innocently, pointing towards a pretty obvious door. It was clearly lit, and it had several Chernabogs sitting around it, acting as guards and bouncers for the event going on below.

Legion tried to follow Diamond and I, but Korbyn stopped him. 

“Be careful, Masky,” Korbyn warned. First time she didn’t call me by my real name.  

I pretended I didn’t hear her. She shouldn’t say that name so confidently, either; she wasn’t even sure that’s who I was. 

At the door, The Chernabogs hovered around us, pushing their masks into my face; however, Diamond beat them away, snapping at them to go collect trash to burn. At being ordered by her, they slunk away, their heads low with embarrassment. 

Before she opened the door, Diamond let out a deep sigh. “We’re even, alright?” she said bluntly. “Legion ain’t ever gonna say it, but I’m glad you were there. You helped me talk some sense into both of them. You’re not a bad guy… I’ve seen some real assholes in my lifetime, believe me. Just because you understand what you went wrong, though, that don’t mean you can stop us from saying what we need to say. You let Jack say his piece, and then you apologize. That’s the only way it’s gonna work out. Listen, and humble yourself. That’s your brother, you know- it ain’t blood. It’s deeper.”

The help was a mild surprise, but I was appreciative of it. Certainly more useful than “be careful”, I thought dryly. With that, she opened the door, allowing me to step through. 

The door led to a series of stairs, the walls bare and concrete. It felt like I’d moved to a different building entirely; logically, I should have seen this jutting out of the tower. I turned around, jolting as I realized the door had disappeared. Ah- it was one of those. 

I let out a weary sigh, the creepiness doing little to build my suspense. He’d kicked my ass before, so there was no mystery. What was he going to do if I screwed this up? You guessed it- kick my ass again. 

Instead, I quickly began to feel pity for Jack. I could see evidence of a depression nest. Food wrappers and cups decorated the steps, as well as a full trashbags lining the wall. I saw a few jackets, each one torn up or stiff with blood. I expected Jack to keep a tidier home, but then again, he had a lot going on. He didn’t strike me as the type to want people in his space, even to clean up after him. 

Right away, I could smell death in his room. There was a corpse by the open entryway, wrapped in a tarp that was starting to leak. By scent alone, I wagered they’d been dead for at least eight hours, but it could have been longer. It was fresh enough that my stomach growled at the smell, no doubt alerting Jack to my presence. 

What he called his bedroom was plainly a throne room. The obligatory chair of power was in the center of the chamber, melding into the veiny, black floor. The room’s interior resembled the stomach of a beast, its foundations shaped like a ribcage. Rather than windows, there were huge, boney archways, allowing the hum of the horizon to drone throughout the circular space. Like Korbyn, he’d thrown a few pieces of furniture in there, including a beat-up television and futon. He had quite a few chests and suitcases, which I noticed contained a lot of his knick-knacks, books, and games. He had a lot of stuff, but somehow, it didn’t feel like he lived there completely- the absolute epitome of a nerdy bachelor pad. The poor guy didn’t even have a bed frame; his mattress was on the floor by the window, the three or four blankets he used strewn over it.  

My amusement died when I finally found him. Eyeless Jack was sitting by an archway, his vines wrapped around him as he stared emptily at The Waste, his eyelids drooping over his empty sockets. His chest was bare, save for his necklace, so I could see the scars from his torment. I could vividly recall how each one was carved into his skin, seared into it with tar and fire.

 “Cool place,” I said, speaking into the droning quiet.

No response, which was… fine. I wasn’t dead yet, so that was something.

“A-And great party downstairs. I should talk to your friends about music, th-they seem really knowledgeable.”

Nothing. Now I saw how annoying it was when I pulled the silent treatment. 

“I just want to talk, EJ,” I said, exasperated as I dropped the smalltalk. “I know you’re a reasonable person. You don’t want to fight, if you can avoid it.”

He huffed dryly, and didn’t answer me. He did acknowledge me, though, so progress was being made still. Right, I thought; I wasn’t there to amuse him. I had something important to say. 

I bowed my head, folding my hands in front of my core. “I’m sorry about what I’ve done. Especially what I tried to do to your mother,” I stated, meaning it with every fibre of my being. “I shouldn’t have targeted her. My Master… shouldn’t have allowed that.”

“And yet he did. Can’t imagine why,” I heard him say bitterly. “Guess his test of innocence involves a brown paper bag.” 

I flinched at the biting sarcasm, but I didn’t let it deter me. “I know you’re angry. You’re right to be. Truthfully, I think what happened to Chernabog’s cult almost happened to ours. We thought we weeded out the toxic ideology, but… I can see how it affected us, in the present day.”

“That’s convenient. Blame it all on the Nazis, which you totally got rid of. All that’s left is a bunch of white freaks that want to kill you just for the sport of it.”

“If that were completely true, we wouldn’t be able to speak like this. He has to do what… What that big guy wants.”

“Zalgo, you mean?” He snorted, turning his head slightly. “I’m a Tall One. I can say it.”

I felt my annoyance build at his obtuse attitude, but I remembered what Diamond said. I had to be patient, let him express his anger however he felt it was right. Even if that was unbelievable levels of snark. 

“What do you know about him?” I asked.

“I know that he loves to sabotage you, Belobog. He’s done it to you almost every single Circle. You’re the only real competition for him, so… Once you’re gone, he wins. Not that it matters, since he dies soon after. But it’s not immediate, and that’s a looooot of time for a Tall One.” 

“I thought you’d be a threat to him-”

“Why? I don’t want to play. Zalgo just likes fucking with you . Can’t blame him. You cry like a bitch over everything.”

Worried he’d just continue to bully me, I decided to go for it. “I know you have an image of me in your head, but it’s not true. I’m not like-”

“Don’t even start,” Jack hissed, glaring blindly over his shoulder. “You and Belobog are one in the same. You both think you can control people, if you just love them enough. Hell, look at you now. Here because you want me to like you.”

“Is that wrong of me to want?” I asked, starting to grow exasperated. “I understand what you’ve been trying to tell me, now. I’m ready to forgive-”

“Forgive!? Forgive who?!”

Jack’s extra limbs helped him get up, turning him towards the sound of my voice. The sight of them rearing back made me stumble, raising my fists to fight back. 

“-No, that’s not what I was going to say-” I tried to stammer. I was going to say “ready to forgive our spilled blood”- a term I’d read from my Master’s books that meant to put aside our casualties. But it seemed he was waiting for me to mess up, happily escalating the conversation to an argument. 

“Same old fucking Pale Face!!! All that fawning to disguise a rotten, spoiled brat underneath!!! You and I knew what we had to do, and you betrayed your promise to play with dolls!!!”

I bristled at the unfairness of that, and I felt something snap behind my eyes. I’d already felt so fragmented. I’d felt like the living patchwork of everyone but myself, my memories and my body not quite what I thought they were. It’d been one thing when it was just my Master and I; now, it felt crowded in my own head, and I was being forced out by everyone else. The fight soon grew strange, our words not quite our own. But still, we were arguing, always arguing… 

“I inherited a MESS, Chernabog!! And you didn’t help me!!!” I shouted, my fists clenched. “I didn’t understand anything about this new place, with all of these new rules!! We promised we’d do better, not die!! You gave up, and I kept trying to survive!! I found a new life, a better life!! One where we all can have everything we want!!!”

“You became just like Zalgo and Khahrahk is what you did!!! So what if you’re not as sadistic?! This isn’t why we were Broken, and YOU know that!!! We were supposed to die, Belobog!!! You agreed with that until you saw all their shiny things!!!” 

“Because I didn’t realize what they were doing!! They weren’t destroying, they were creating!!” I rambled. “I wanted to do that, too, but without the part that hurts. And look what I did? Isn’t he beautiful? This life is so much better, isn’t it? We’re ourselves, but we’re still together. I get to be me, you get to be you, but we’re still Nezperdia. I’ve enjoyed being alive so much… Feeling… Experiencing…”

Eyeless Jack visibly recoiled at that. “I swear, finding that boy was the worst thing that ever happened to you,” he growled. “Look at yourself. That poor kid had a life he was supposed to live, and not only have you taken him from the Wheel of Samsara, but you’ve picked him clean. There is no piece of Tim Wright left. It’s all just you .”

Suddenly, I remembered where I was. Who I was. My name startled me awake, like I’d been sleeping standing up. 

“That’s… That’s not true,” I stammered, my stomach lurching. “It’s… I’m…” 

Suddenly, I coughed, doubling over as my breath became short. My spine burned, but there was no reaction- just a burning pain that sapped me of my strength, my legs startle to buckle. 

“...Shit, shit. I’m sorry, I- shit. Fuck, I forgot you haven’t eaten.”

To my surprise, Jack immediately came to my side, helping me cough up the ichor in my lungs. He didn’t mind the mess it made, patting my back firmly as I threw up ichor. 

“It’s not-” I gagged. “...I’ve been through a lot these last few months.” The most of it happening in the last few hours. “I don’t… I don’t know who I am, anymore…”

Eyeless Jack sighed, helping me sit on his throne. I hesitated, giving what it represented, but he forced me into it, chastising me. It was just a chair, to him- not even a comfortable one, either. Too narrow.

“Y’know, I teach a lot about individuality, but… It’s not entirely what I believe. My… My mom would tell me about The Wheel of Samsara- the cycle of death and rebirth, where our vices and virtues decide how we proceed through it. I used to wonder how we knew who we were, between being a snail or Brahman himself. And she would tell me that we knew, because we- our experience- was the atman . The Eternal Self. It witnesses every life, every experience, every trial and tribulation. Usually, you have to let go of everything to see it through their eyes, but… I think that’s not possible, for you and I. In order to understand Everything, we have to see it from the atman’s perspective first.”

As he spoke, my fit calmed down, my breathing getting under control. What he said resonated with me. It made The Circle make more sense in my mind, the idea of being someone completely different not that disturbing. Each life was meant to teach us something- we were supposed to carry some things into the next. 

The humans, unconsciously, seemed to understand the predicament we were all in. They were completely helpless in it, and so of course, the only answer that could satisfy them was the idea of being graded, judged, and determined, sent along a wheel towards enlightenment. And, perhaps… Perhaps that wasn’t an incorrect assumption, either. 

 “I really am sorry,” I whispered. “She seems like a nice lady.”

Absently, Jack clutched his necklace. 

“...She is.”

Jack then let out another, almost defeated sigh, his head hanging a bit. “So what do you want me to do, Belobog? Just lay down and die?” he asked wearily. 

“No, but… You have to stop killing the human leaders. I understand you hate them-”

“Godamnit– NO!!!” 

Suddenly, he began speaking fast, his words almost overlapping in their speed to leave his throat. Before I knew it, he’d wrapped me in one of his tendrils, lifting me high into the air and pinning me against the jagged ceiling. 

“No, you STILL don’t understand. HATE isn’t enough to describe how I feel about those pigs. I hate when I spill sweet n’ sour sauce on my shirt. I hate getting stuck in traffic. But them? No. You don’t understand. I am far past hatred with them.”

He brought me down just to grab me by the collar with his own, two hands, yanking me close. As he laughed bitterly, the smile that formed was manic with its rage. I could see the inky form of Chernabog behind his sockets, the dim, blue glow reflecting a million, tiny eyes. His body was a husk- a bottle containing his true form, capped only by the mask he had nestled against the side of his face. 

“You think they’re bad now? Ohhhh, You have no idea. It’s a challenge to them- who can destroy the pretty landscape the fastest, who can own the most people through paperwork. Prisoner, inmate, contracted, indebted, impoverished. You wish you were powerful enough to wipe out humanity. You won’t even make a dent!!!” 

I think he expected me to fight back, but I didn’t. I listened. When he saw that I wouldn’t retaliate, even when threatened, he took a breath, his anger faltering to expose the raw emotion underneath. 

“You see the joy. I see the pain. Thanks to my omnipotence, I can close my eyes, and I can live someone’s life- I can just experience it, in all its entirety, all at once. Do you understand what that means?” he asked, his voice trembling. “I see the future through the eyes of its victims. The things they do to each other… over nothing … And nobody can stop them. Because the only thing that works- the only thing they’re afraid of- is death. Nobody wants to do it- not even you. But someone has to. If things are gonna get better, those motherfuckers have got to die.”

I honestly didn’t know what to say. I knew how much pain he was in- more than I was comfortable with, honestly. He had the right idea, and by all measures, he was successful. He was sharing our world to those who truly deserved it, and he was punishing those who didn’t. I couldn’t say I didn’t admire and empathise with that- it followed our Master’s teachings to the letter. 

Kill the abusers. Love the victims. Jack’s sights were merely grander than ours. 

But I knew humans would collapse if their comfort was disrupted. The ones in power would go one night afraid, and then they’d turn the dial up on the boiler. More death, more restriction, more weight. There was no scenario where humanity didn’t utterly tear itself apart, with or without our influence. They had weapons we still couldn’t match, and they always, always outnumbered us. 

With Jack’s input, I could see they weren’t all the idiots we encountered. Their smartest were masters of psychological poison, designed to corrupt everything and conform it to what they wanted. The suffering we experienced was a line- he merely stood in front of me, going first into the meat grinder. I knew that if I did nothing- refused to acknowledge that Jack simply knew what he was doing- I would be allowing innocent people to be killed. People I had no quarrel with, and maybe even people I owed. 

They needed me. The Underrealm needed Chernabog. I needed Eyeless Jack.

“...You’re right. I know you’re right,” I said, my voice quiet. I took off my mask, then, exposing my true face. “It’s my fault. He used to think perfect children look like me. But that’s not true, and we understand that now. I promise, we do. I’m sorry I caused so much trouble for you, Jack. I should’ve supported you, and I should’ve listened.”

At that, Eyeless Jack lost all the rage he had. He almost looked confused by it; one half of him wanted to accept that apology– because he’d never heard it before, living or dead- the other half wanted to hang on to his anger out of a sense of justice. I understood that, too. It could easily be a lie. I could hurt Jack again two minutes from then, and it’d be like we never spoke.

But he knew I wouldn’t do that. I wasn’t like the humans that killed him, and that was purposeful. I wasn’t born with empathy, I was molded to have it. I learned to be different. I had nothing but contempt for people that refused to learn, and if I was compared to them, it mattered to me . 

“...Look… Apistoke didn’t break us apart for it to end like this,” Jack pointed out. He knew the Broken One’s real name, but to spare me the headache, he used the one Korbyn coined. “They may not want us here, but they clearly don’t give a fuck about the realm they created, either. They want it all to run off the rails to its own end, and we can’t allow that. What they made is important, and I think you’re right to want to preserve it.”

I felt my spirits lift at that admission. What Korbyn suggested was still just theory, based on times where we couldn’t get along. But now… 

“We need each other to finish The Underrealm. That’s still our best plan- build it and wait out the disaster. As childish as it sounds… we need to stop fighting over Earth and share it. Preferably before it’s a hunk of rock,” I proclaimed. I extended my hand to him… Then remembered he was blind, and decided to go a bit further, taking his hand and physically putting it to mine. It was a bit of a risk with his vines ready to strike me, but he allowed the gesture. 

“You may not trust me,” I said, “but I’m going to trust you.” 

Jack scoffed… Then frowned, shocked. “You’re fucking with me,” he deadpanned. “You realize what that means, right? You’re gonna get blamed for a lot of shit.” 

I nodded, unbothered by it. “I want to share. Help us, and we’ll help you. We have the same enemies- all I’m asking is that you let us make a few of them look like accidents.”

He shrugged idly, making a face as he pulled his hand away. “...Your boyfriend suggested the same thing,” he commented, unable to stop the sly smirk from forming on his lips. “You know he’s here, right?”

My lip curled in distaste. “For how long?”

“Not long after you showed up, actually. Idiot was snooping through my shit and got packed up by my guards. Why’d you think the Hospital downstairs is so busy? He made me work my ass off.” 

He paused, his head tilting to and fro as he debated his next words. “... Truth is, he’s been tryin’ to talk to me for the past month or so. He found my email, somehow.” Korbyn, I thought immediately. Her hobby was meddling. “Guess that’s why I gave him a chance. He’s funny.” 

I kept my smart remark on the back of my tongue, where it belonged. Exactly the reason why I wanted to wait before getting angry. 

“One of my friends, Clockwork-”

“-I’ve been threatened with her before, I’m aware.”

“-Right. She knew he was here, and was hiding it from me. Why?”

“Probably because you’d think he was up to no good. Not wrong to think that, looks like. Contrary to what you may think, though, he begged me to give you a second chance,” he admitted. “If you only knew how he talks about you. He left me thinking I might be gay for you.”

I scoffed, but only to disguise the laugh. “Be serious. I’m worried about him-”

“And he’s worried about you. Maybe ya’ll should both chill out, stop obsessing over each other. Don’t take my advice, though. I’m a doctor, not a therapist.” 

God, I bet he’d been waiting his entire life to say that. He exuded a prideful, smug air the moment it left his lips. 

“So… We’re cool,” Jack stated, his tone mildly hopeful. A big turnaround to his standoffish nature before. “You’re welcome to stay and chill, if you follow our rules.”

I nodded politely, affixing my mask back to where it belonged. “Thank you. We’ll extend the same gesture, next time we throw a party.”

“...Did you notice I called it The Tower? ‘Cause you have The Ark, so I thought, y’know, what if mine was, like, The Tower of Babel? And I got all these different people in it, so it fits- you don’t give a shit, that’s fine. You like Dragon Ball Z?”

I blinked, a bit caught off guard by the conversational tone. Was he trying to impress me, now? Why? I thought we’d established he was the one to impress. “Kate does,” I said simply. 

“See, I fuckin’ knew that. She’s gonna be some dude’s Bulma, for sure-”

“She’s gay.”

“-Look man, I’m trying here.”

I think I caught on to why Jack wasn’t very intimidating to the people that knew him. No matter what he did, he made it painfully obvious how much he wanted to be liked. 

Luckily for him, I was charmed easily.

My nose had caught the scent of the corpse again, the smell of Death making my core ache with hunger. “Are you gonna finish that?” I asked, my mouth immediately watering. 

Jack grabbed the body with his tendrils, dragging it to us. “Haven’t eaten, yet. You mind carving?”

I drew my knife. The Heart for me, The Kidneys for him. Just like old times.

–

Jack wanted to clean himself up before he came down to “reintroduce himself”, as he put it, so I decided to return alone. In truth, I was never in danger of being antagonized. Jack explained that they weren’t allowed to fight inside The Tower (the exception being the boxing ring on the 8th floor, naturally), so even if they had a problem with me, all they could throw at me were harsh words. I know they had them; those that didn’t look at me with concern looked at me like I was a bug. Much like with my siblings, it would take some time for us to get used to each other. Strangely, I was far more optimistic about it the second time. I guess that’s what good wisdom did– I didn’t worry if they liked me, because I knew we’d eventually get used to each other. Coexistence wasn’t frictionless, and in some ways, the friction was needed to coexist. Better to disagree over something like food and music than humanity. 

It wasn’t all hostility. I was surprised to see a pair of faces moving through the crowd that I recognized. It was that woman I met during my first mission with my Collective and her daughter. They were thriving, and that was plain to see; the daughter wore a bundle of neon necklaces around her neck, her hair shiny enough to reflect the colored lights above her head. She was eating a pickle, of all things, holding it in a plastic food baggie. It was her mom who caught my eye. We exchanged recognition, my chest growing tight as I saw her grasp her daughter’s hand. Then her daughter saw me, and her eyes lit up. She pulled at her mother, wanting to approach me. I saw them exchange a few words, and suddenly, the girl tackled me, wrapping me in a hug. 

“Oh- H-Hey! Carla, right?” I chirped, wobbling a bit. “How are you, kiddo?”

“I’m gonna be a professional scuba diver!!” she declared, as if she’d been waiting all that time just to tell me that. I guess that did tell me everything I needed to know. She was able to have dreams. There was a future for her, after all, and she could see it. 

“Cool!! I wish I could play with you, but I gotta find my friends. And a snack!! Can I have that?”

I playfully reached for the pickle she had, and she screamed, running back before I could “steal” her snack. That brought a smile to her mom’s face, which was all I wanted.

I was glad they were happy. It felt so genuinely rewarding, seeing my influence actually result in good things. 

Then I saw Toby, my hackles raising immediately. As it turned out, he’d been in the concert hall the entire time. There was a second floor to the room constructed out of metal grating, sitting just underneath the small windows near the top of the ceiling. People were clustered up there, both to smoke and to enjoy the shows from a bird’s eye view.

I noticed Kate first, clustered up with Natalie and The Flock, who’d finally felt well enough to join them. It looked like King made friends immediately, which delighted me. She was being absolutely fawned over by women just as beautiful as she was, and for the first time, she was flustered from the praise. 

But there Toby was, leaning over the railing, watching me. His goggles gave him away- even in the blue atmosphere, the slightest flash lit them up like headlights. With his head resting in his hand, he all but beckoned me up. 

My steps rattled the metal staircase as I stormed up to the second floor. My friends saw me coming, but that time, they got out of my way, much to Toby’s chagrin. 

Growling deeply, I didn’t give him a second to speak, grabbing him by his jacket and pushing him back. I pressed him to the railing, his upper half leaning into open air. 

Toby was unafraid, even though I could easily let go and send him over the edge. He seemed enthralled by it, his eyes glowing orange as they flashed and dilated. “‘Sup?” he teased. “Is that a knife in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

“Cut the shit!! Where were you?!” I shouted through the Arkhive. 

“What? I was with my mom, and then I got bored. And before you even snap at me- I wasn’t trying to steal anything. They totally misunderstood my sarcasm.”

I growled, still refusing to let him go. “Why do I feel like that’s a lie?” 

“You gonna call me on it?” Toby drawled back. 

I considered it. With one look from Kate and Natalie, I deflated. I was too tired to have the same fight with him over and over again.

“No. I believe you, Toby,” I relented, albeit with a strained tone. I let go of him, then, stepping back before I did something I’d regret. “I don’t want to cause problems here. If The Operator allowed it, then I don’t care.”

If anything, that only irritated him more. Brian and Skully quickly diffused the situation, however, bombarding me with all the videos they’d taken of the performances. The drama with Toby was easily discarded for something fun and lighthearted. This was a good day, I thought; I didn’t want him to ruin it for me. 

Besides; eventually, I felt him sidle next to me, his fingers brushing against my thigh in a subtle bid for my attention. I nuzzled him without a second thought, just happy he was alright. 

“You showered,” I pointed out dryly, whispering in his ear.

“I know, right? Even I’m surprised,” he muttered back. 

I snorted under my breath, giving him a subtle kiss to his temple. “You wanna do that?” I asked, glancing down at the stage. 

He huffed out a laugh, tugging at the mask covering his face. “Jack said he’d hook us up,” he told me, betraying his pleasure with his tone. “Guess we got work to do, huh?”

I nodded, closing my eyes as he leaned on me. “Think you can stand me for that long?” I asked.

“...’Mm sorry, Masky. I wish I could t-tell you what’s going on, but I don’t even know. It’s hard.”

“Whatever it is, Toby… You know how I feel about you. I’ll do anything for you.”

He was quiet for a second, his cheek pressing to my shoulder. “... Forget what I said. I like King,” he said. “Don’t let me tell you who to be with.”

I saw the girl in question had heard her name, but she resisted the urge to turn around, choosing instead to try to flirt with Brian some more. I was pleasantly surprised by his change of mind; he normally didn’t when it came to people. I guess he’d heard about what King had done to protect Kate, and considered it a token of gratitude… To let me keep dating her. 

I couldn’t get annoyed by it. He’d already learned his lesson, so to speak. 

The girls wanted me to dance with them, so I couldn’t pretend to not cuddle Toby for much longer. As we descended the stairs, though, Jack finally made his appearance, Korbyn guiding him by the arm while Judge Angels walked in front, keeping everyone at bay as they passed. She didn’t raise her sword, though she was fairly animated with her other arm as she cleared a path to the stairs. 

Eyeless Jack’s presence caused all activity on the floor to cease, everyone turning their attention to him. He raised his hand in greeting, and the applause he received was thundering. They started chanting his name, prompting him to raise his tendrils to further elation. Korbyn said something, and it seemed to embarrass him, somewhat; he shook his head, his prideful gait dropping as he sped up his approach. 

By then, the others had joined us at the bottom of the stairs, curious what Eyeless Jack had to say to them. Toby, as he always did, contrasted us sharply. He ducked Judge Angels, who’d approached him with murderous intent, then easily walked right up to Jack, barking out a noise to announce his presence. 

“Chill, Dina. I recognize those shitty Converse, now,” Jack said. As if to prove that, they greeted each other, slapping their hands together and bumping shoulders.

He didn’t say anything to us, at first. He took a deep breath, looking around him vacantly. Korbyn nudged him, her lips pursed as he hesitated to speak. He made a face, scratching the scars on his chest as he clicked his tongue. Funny that he struggled to say publicly what he easily did privately. 

“...My kind and your kind are allies, now. If any of my kind sees your white mask, we’ll back off. Same goes if you see anyone in a blue mask. Should we ever cross paths, we’ll immediately acquaint ourselves to you. You’ll do the same. Anyone we say is off limits is off limits. In return, we’re going to stop making a show out of who we’re killing. They don’t even deserve to be displayed, anyways...”

“What? But I liked how you display your victims,” Toby cooed, leaning against him. “Game recognizes game, dude!” 

Jack snorted, daring to crack a smile as he pushed him off with a tendril. “I should just give them to you guys to eat, huh? Maybe… But I want to be clear about where we stand with each other. I’m not your ally because I agree with everything you do. It’s the opposite. Order has to be maintained. That’s what I’m going to do- make sure that you stay the delightful anti-heroes you were born to be. And if you aren’t…”

The room got eerily quiet. I felt the aggression of a thousand souls, their devotion both keeping themselves at bay and compelling them to tear us apart. I got the message loud and clear.  

Since he was making such a show about it, we decided to play into a bit. Giggling amongst ourselves, we clustered together, and simultaneously bowed our heads.

“Our Master thanks you for your hospitality,” we said in perfect unison. “Together, we are all connected. May our friendship grow and blossom.”

Korbyn turned pale, though Jack’s followers thought it was an absolute riot. 

“Pale freaks…” Jack grumbled, looking like he already regretted our allyship.

“I like them,” Judge Angels stated matter-of-factly. “Very polite.”

–

I awoke already moving.

She was there, leading me. Dressed in glowing white, the red flower tucked behind her ear and pinning back her long, black hair. Her eyes were gone, her face a shuddering blur. 

I was holding her hand, but I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t even know who “she” was. Was she me? Was I her?   

“Keep going,” she whispered, breaking the empty silence. “You’re almost there.”

Obediently, I followed that voice, holding onto her hand- which, now that I think about it, seemed to curl around mine with almost rootlike grip. Every step I took, I began to see my reflections appearing at my sides. One by one, all of them walked in perfect sync with me. All of them just slightly different, but all of them me. 

She was the same. I saw her, The Slenderman, myself, and a line of tall, strange men in suits. Each one slightly different, but all of them her. We looped into each other, versions of me slowly becoming versions of her. 

All of us the same, with the same, pale eyes.

“This is how we learned,” she explained quietly. “How we came to understand. It is why… We love you so much.”

You. I used to think I understood what that word meant. When my Master declared to me, “I love you,” I took that at face value. I love you. I love you- the person I was.

But who did the Master speak to? Was it really me? 

Was it ever me?

She stopped, then, turning to face me. She stepped closer,  and I felt a surge of fear, my heart racing as she drew closer. Then, she leaned in, tapping her forehead against mine.

“There were Circles where we couldn’t have you. Where they took you from us, and you wouldn’t listen to our voice… But we still loved you. We would never leave you alone.”

The way he said it made it make so much sense. That was his power- where we needed books and tomes to quantify their words, they were somehow so simple. 

“Why?” I asked, my voice hoarse. 

She faltered at that, reaching up to grasp the sides of my jaw. “...The way that we were was perfect… But it left nothing to be done. Nothing to learn. No story to tell. It was… empty,” she admitted. “We did what we thought was right. But… We didn’t know it would hurt.”

I saw her eyes fill with tears, dripping down her cheeks in thick rivulets. They were black as ink, leaving dark tracks as they rolled down her pale skin. 

“We are selfish,” she confessed. “We wanted something more. Something that made our choices worth it. And we found you… And you were perfect, no matter how we failed.” 

She smiled through her tears, grasping me just a little tighter. “If we only have one thing, we have you. It is a Gift to us.”

The words were so sweet. Nothing I didn’t already know.