Aster’s pupils focused on his face and she stopped shaking. At the same time black clouds with a sharp blue tint materialized from nothing all around them. Aster gasped as if she’d been passed through ice cold water. “Oh no,” Isaac moaned. He remembered that smoke. The storm. He thought. That’s how he’d gotten into this mess in the first place. He was loathe to find out what it would do to him the second time around.

“Come on, we gotta get out of here,” he said to Aster and hoisted her up, hand over shoulder. He gripped tight around her waist to keep her upright.

“Don’t… We have to stay still,” she said. The dark clouds expanded and enveloped them within seconds, turning the sky from dimming twilight into a world of dark blue fog. Chains of lightning criss crossed through the billowing smoke. The eerie movement of the clouds appeared mean spirited to Isaac now after all that he had been through the last couple hours.

“No, we have to move.”

Aster attempted a response but coughed with harsh convulsions against her hand before she managed to speak. “We can’t… it’s too dangerous… to go into the mists.” She peered up at him, and Isaac was struck by how young she was. She can’t be more than twenty. He thought. Perhaps younger. How had he not noticed until now?

“Staying here is dangerous, he’ll kill us in seconds.” She seemed apprehensive. “We’re already in the mists anyways, come on, lets go!” He dragged her with him, careful so as to not put pressure on her ribs.

Aster’s head lolled from shoulder to shoulder, she appeared to have no muscle in her neck fit to keep her head upright any longer. “Where’s Crassus? What happened?” Aster said. Her face was very pale, her speech slurred. She’s lost too much blood. Isaac thought.

“He’s right there,” Isaac pointed, “he’ll throw something anytime now. Please, will you just move?” He attempted to drag her along but she screamed in pain and grasped his hand against her ribs. The dense smoke pulsed blue sparks in time with her shouts as if it visualized the sound waves like a mixing board in a recording studio.

The light made Isaac look up and he saw more than just sparks flying in random directions along the edges of the almost solid-looking smoke. They traced a definite object. They were outlining the shape of a man, walking towards them. Isaac froze, he meant to shout at Aster again, or to force her to start running, or anything at all so long as it meant anything but staying a second longer. But he couldn’t speak, much less move. The shape raised a hand.

“Hello? Anybody there?” said Crassus. He sounded scared, or even… concerned?

“Stay away!” Aster screamed.

“Look, I- I… I’m sorry, alright, I didn’t mean to harm you. Are you hurt?” They heard the sound of a furtive footstep closer.

“Don’t come any closer!”

“Alright! Alright! I won’t, I promise!” Two hands raised up before them, palms spread. “I’ll stay right here, okay? I won’t move.”

Some of the smoke billowed past them and a bubble of clear air surrounded them. Crassus stood in the middle of the clearing and they saw how the smoke shied away from him, almost as if it were afraid to touch him. His eyes were still the eerie shade of opaque white but his expression was more human than ever.

“I just need the key, alright?” he pointed at Isaac, “his key,” he held up his hands, “and then I’ll be gone!” His voice raised an octave, as if to reassure them it really was that easy. “I promise.” He smiled, no doubt to calm them further, but rather than being inviting it made him look like a predator.

“My… my key?” Isaac sounded puzzled. “I don’t have any keys.” He looked to Aster. “I left my keys in the car before I… well, you know?” Her face showed no signs of comprehension. “I don’t have a key! I swear!”

“Yes, you do,” Aster said.

“I don’t!” he said, but her resolve did not budge. Isaac turned to Crassus. Crassus stared at him, but not into his eyes, he stared at him below the neck. The sight unnerved Isaac. “Please, I’ll give you anything you want, I just don’t have any keys on me. Look, I can get you one of the keys you spilled earlier, remember? Or better yet, you could go get one of them yourself, they’re right behind you over there. Would that work?”

Crassus gave no sign he had heard anything Isaac had said. “We all have a key,” he said, and he appraised Isaac with a starved expression on his face.

“Just give him the fucking key already,” Aster said and she reached inside his jacket then down through the collar of his shirt and searched with cold fingers across his bare skin.

“What are you doing?” Aster ignored him and he was about to protest further when he felt her hand close around something and a chain pull at the skin around his neck.

In the same instant all the smoke pulsated once bathing their faces in light. The smoke breathed and billowed, then retracted and imploded again and again in small reversed explosions into smaller and smaller points until nothing remained and the stars twinkled down at them as if the smoke had never been there in the first place.

As one both Isaac and Aster whipped their heads up. Crassus hadn’t moved but a definite change to his body language washed over him like water. His body twisted as his muscles tightened and a demented look slowly warped his face. Then he was screaming. He roared with his mouth wide open so loud he tore his vocal chords to shreds. Spittle and blood splattered down his beard. He stumbled forward, attempting a charge, but faltered and wobbled from side to side too twisted in fury to even run straight.

An icy cold sensation spread through Isaac’s body from Aster’s hand. It felt like his very soul siphoned away from him. Sickening cracking noises sounded from beside him. Aster let out a low moan and he looked only to find feathers covered every speck of visible skin. Clothes ripped and more feathers spilled out, larger and fuller than the feathers he’d seen her grow before. Jet black and gleaming, feathers grew upon feathers, morphing into grotesque chunks of an indiscernible something somewhere between flesh and feather.

Isaac couldn’t reconcile what he saw with what he knew of the world. Even Crassus seemed to hesitate, unsure of what this inhuman display meant. Aster roared—in defiance or pain Isaac could not tell—and without any further preamble exploded like a bomb with feathers in place of shrapnel.

Isaac woke from the pain. If he had thought his body pained him before, it was nothing compared to now. His entire existence was pain. A face hovered above him and he registered that he lay on his back. When had that happened? His tired brain tried to access his memories. Oh, right… explosion. He tried to focus his eyes to make the hovering face less blurry, anything to distract him from this hell that was breathing.