6

His soft fingers teasingly stroked the skin of her right thigh. They laid on a sagged old matrass with the lumbar support of a pancake, the drapes were musty and Marith was once again staring at a stained ceiling. All that mattered was that they were happy. His touch filled her with wonder and delight. Two emotions she hadn’t been allowed to experience in a long time.

“What are you thinking about?”

Marith sighed blissful and stared at the little window to her left that was cracked open. She could see branches of greenery pressed against the vehicle. As the fresh mountain air slowly wafted into the room, carrying elevated sounds of chipper birds, she could still feel him inside of her, although he wasn’t any longer.

“Nothing. I am empty.”

“Empty? That’s no good. I can pull you out of that, you know?”

She shut her eyes again, not to ruin the flow her mind was in.

“Some people meditate for years to get to this state of mind and you just did it for me.”

“That’s why you keep coming back for more.”

They both chuckled. She didn’t know who the stranger next to her was, but they had known each other for a while now. He was able to make her feel cherished and secure and had proven to be capable of fulfilling her fiercest desires. Instead of emphasizing the things she hated about herself he had been able to convince her she was worthy of a dedicated and loving man.

“You make me feel light as a feather…”

Feather.

Feather.

Wings.

Leather.

Birdman.

“Do you know about the Birdman?”

“Yes, he was taken care of. You remember.”

“Right.”

She didn’t really remember, but his hand moved up her leg with passion and determination and it knocked her breathless.

“Again?” She gasped.

“You know you want to.”

Her legs started trembling as thick honey trickled through her stomach while he gently stroked her most intimate parts. He flipped her on her side and played with her as she moved her knees up, before he entered her in one smooth move. They moaned simultaneously.

With him she had realized she had never experienced good sex in her life before. He had taught her that being loved was just as important as giving love. Her lover was about to tell her something she wanted to hear. His warm breath in her ear intensified as their movements neared a peak.

The golden light of autumn sunshine woke her up. Marith was bathing in a confused and sweaty fog. A massive headache dawned instantly on her, caused by the depths of her sleep. The indescribable feeling between her legs, that would last the entire day, indicated that this nightly dream was going to be like one of her elaborate daydreams that always hurt as soon as reality took the upper hand again.

The cold and the mist did not affect the forest in the same way it did the lakes. Deep in the woods an accidental deciduous tree surprised its ever green and rocky surroundings with bright hues of yellow and orange. In the midst of the middle of nowhere a group of teenagers and twenty-somethings awkwardly got to know each other a little better.

Marith stared at the motley crew of characters she was surrounded by. They had a strong sense of inadequacy and insecurity over them, which made them feel like family already.

They were all born around the lakes, but not all in the same year or village. Marith wouldn’t have recognized any of them if it wasn’t for the fact she had met all seven exactly once since she had returned to Sweet Lake.

“So… Now would be a great time to explain why we’re here.”

Marith and Jonathan stared at Vanessa, filled with heaviness and anticipation.

“Do you know how the three lakes around here were formed?” Vanessa started off with a question.

“They say it was because of a meteor shower…” Marith began.

“Exactly,” Vanessa took a breath of air in an attempt to start an explanation.

“Why is that relevant?” Jonathan interrupted. His frown betrayed his annoyance.

“Good question. Meteor showers happened quite often, they still do, even to this day. The asteroids that shaped this area hit Earth about six-thousand years ago. They were too small to bring changes to our solar system or Earth’s biosphere, but they did shape this area and carried heavy metals with them.”

“The impact craters not only created the lakes, but also Hotspots for anomalies. We are here because the elements in the asteroids have affected us, and our ancestors, causing slight genetic and hereditary alterations.”

Marith scoffed, but was met with dead serious faces.

“Then why am I here?”

“To worship us!” Brad said with a grand arm gesture.

“No, he’s kidding.”

“Don’t listen to him.”

“You are one of us. You were born and raised here as an infant and so were your father and his parents.”

“Plenty of children get born and raised here. What sets us apart from them?” Jonathan asked.

“Marith,” Vanessa started, turning to the Dutch woman, “have you ever noticed electrical appliances malfunctioning or running out of battery around you?”

The look in Marith’s eyes told her enough. They were saying: well, yeah, an entire train lost power, then gained it again, before the whole thing happened to crash into a major train station.

But they both knew there had been stuff before the train. Anything that was electrically powered tended behaved in odd ways as Marith was close, lampposts and fuse boxes going haywire when she walked by and chronically drained batteries of various phones, tablets and laptops throughout the years.

“And have you never wondered how it was possible that your dreams and visions often came true?”

“Of course…” It slightly bothered Marith that Vanessa seemed to know so much personal things about her, but she couldn’t bring herself to be wonder-struck by that. Maybe her father had shared that with Vanessa, maybe she was a witch woman after all. “I put more energy into oppressing the visions than into analysing them, but I cannot deny I have been curious at times.”

“And Jonathan, have you never asked yourself why the decisions you made so doubtless on the football field or in other aspects of life often seemed logical to you, but a mystery to others? Or why you’re so much stronger than anybody else’s? What about your super-human reflexes?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jonathan shrugged.

“That is because we are wildly, almost hysterically, connected to our surroundings. Not in some hippy way, but in a more sciency way.”

“Yes, when the word ‘sciency’ is thrown around you just know there is rock solid evidence involved,” Marith interrupted sarcastically.

“I mean, it is explainable,” Vanessa retorted, throwing a disappointed look in Marith’s direction.

Marith stared back in a daring way and stomped the ground in an attempt keep her blood flowing to all body parts. After all she was just standing there in the cold with a group of practical strangers overwhelmed by the growing feeling she was about to be converted or subjected to some new religion.

“Please, explain,” Jonathan requested.

Marith was annoyed at how he kept so polite, but decided to listen to what was about to come.

“Everything in this world is connected by waves and strings of vibrating bits of information. We are very sensitive to those bits of information, whether they come to us from the future or tell us something about how the world works right now. The connections these waves and strings make are called the Web.”

“Like the World Wide Web?” Jonathan interrupted again, more curiously this time.

“Well…” Vanessa hesitated, since it was not a reasonless question. “What your eyes see is not as informative or interesting as you think it is. They show you a world, not the world. Your brain is simply giving you an educated guess. The Web is the world and we can feel it and use it.”

“It is basically a union or a collection of stuff. The material and the immaterial, it is all connected to the Web and seen as information in the Web,” Brad helped. “The world we perceive is a mirror of the human limbic system, just like the internet, so you are not far off.”

“The world turns by the grace of the Web. That is why people who put so much into the world, take more out of it. Everybody is in some way connected to it, but our brains are hyper-wired to it,” Juliette added.

“Information flows freely through the Web, through all times and every dimension,” Vanessa continued. “We receive shards of that information, but as individuals it’s difficult to make anything out of it. There is… a person, a being… that we call Oracle. She experiences the Web passively. She can’t influence it, she can only receive our visions, the information that came to us.”

“She makes logical conclusions by the information she is presented with and shows her insight to us,” Kyle shared.

“Who presents her with that information… and how?” Marith asked.

“She gets her visions from the Prophets,” Amber answered. “Mages can influence the Web actively, but they need to know what to do. Bringing sense to our dreams and visions she communicates a course of action back to us. That information needs to be transferred to the Mages. This can be done directly by the Prophets, but also by Runners. Runners connect the Mages and the Prophets, especially when they are not close to each other, physically speaking.”

“Thank you, Amber. That was very clear,” Vanessa complimented her.

Marith and Jonathan stared at them as if they saw burning water.

“Oracle is the sum of the signals and visions that not only the Prophets, but also humans with a sixth sense and even animals perceive and receive from the Web,” Vanessa emphasized as she witnessed the looks on their faces.

“I got that…” Jonathan hesitated and then shook his head. “I mean… Prophets, Mages, Runners and an Oracle… seriously?”

“There is more,” Juliette started. “As I just said, Sweet Lake is a Hotspot. There are several around the world. Around each Hotspot a Chain can be found, a group of people like us, always consisting of twelve people. Four Prophets, four Mages and four Runners.”

“Why?” Marith asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do these Chains exist? What is the use for them?”

“The Web is programmed by an old Mage we call Watchmaker. The Watchmaker and Oracle are equals. Pupils can support and sustain the Web, led by Watchmaker and Oracle.”

“Watchmaker uses the elements the asteroids brought to Earth in his clockworks,” Juliette added.

“Is that why he is called Watchmaker?”

“Yeah, basically. His clockworks are energy points in the Web. He can always feel them. He can locate the members of each Chain, because of his clockworks…” Brads voice trailed off and he stared hesitantly at Vanessa, who gave him a little nod.

“And?” Marith inquired.

“And he can create other dimensions,” Brad finished.

“That, however, is a technicality that we don’t have to worry about. It is not our job to be concerned with that,” Vanessa said, thinking she enlightened their burden somewhat.

“His clockworks don’t have access to the information in the Web, by the way. They are just tools. The Chain receives information from Oracle and acts accordingly. The clockworks serve us, not the other way around,” Brad pointed out.

“How do they serve us?” Jonathan asked.

“Watchmaker can safely communicate with us through them, in a very basic way. So we can meet each other for an exchange, for example.”

Marith remembered how Vanessa suddenly dragged her from the tearoom to the clock store to see Kyle last Saturday. She pulled a pale hand from a pocket in her coat and gestured from Kyle to Vanessa.

Kyle looked at Marith with great interest. He understood what she had just realized, nodded and laughed.

“Wait a second…you guys touching…”

“Kyle is my Prophet,” Vanessa explained with keen eyes. “Watchmaker notified me on my clockwork when we were out last weekend. In the clock store he shared what he knew about the robbery at Jonathan’s.”

“And you?” Marith asked Amber.

Amber nodded as well. “Brad is my Mage and Juliette is our Runner. I informed her.”

“I ran to the police station,” Juliette completed the circle.

“Where I was just having lunch,” Brad felt the need to add.

“Aha,” was all Marith could bring herself to say.

She tried to come up with a logical explanation for this entire conversation. An explanation that would ensure she was not the insane one. Something outside the normal realms of the human mind was being discussed and, worse, accepted for truth here. Where they high? Had they eaten mushrooms? Salem was in Oregon, right?

“Remind me…” Marith started again. “You brought us here why?”

“The two of you are the last additions to our Chain,” Vanessa said matter-of-factly.

“How do you know we are potential, you know, candidates for this Chain?” Jonathan inquired again, feeling intuitively that a crucial piece of information was missing.

“As I mentioned before, in your case it would be your great physical strength, insanely fast response time, your readiness to fight and your strategic insight. In Marith’s case it is an extreme sensitivity to all things both electrical and human on top of the uncontrollable clairvoyant visions she had as a child.”

“How do you know all this?” Marith felt vulnerable, since Vanessa’s mysterious views were spot on.

“I happen to be a Mage. It is one of my talents,” she proudly shared.

“What are you not telling us? Before, at the store, you said we were specifically targeted.” Jonathan pointed at himself and Marith.

“Yeah, that sets you apart as well,” Brad said with his arms crossed.

“That is unfortunately our only way to find new members,” Vanessa admitted. “When you are targeted by the Kid we know for sure you are one of us, a Pupil or a candidate, so to speak.”

There he was again, the Kid.

“Why would someone want to attack us?”

“And… and how would that person find us and arrange a train crash or a robbery?” Marith started to get furious at her own incompetence to grasp what was going on or how to ask the right questions.

“The Kid was, once upon a time, also wired to the Web. From his prison he is regaining power and having occasional access to it, now that Oracle and Watchmaker are getting weaker. That is how he could stage the train accident and the robbery,” Brad informed.

This sprouted a vast range of questions in Mariths subconscious, but she was interrupted and they eluded the conscious part of her mind completely. She hated when that happened.

“We are close to completing this Chain. It is in the Kid’s best interest if the Chain is never formed.”

“Okay, why?” Marith decided to go along with all of it to see where it would end. She felt as if she was sucked into a social experiment that was – much like the European Union in its current form - destined to fail. Maybe that was why she felt so disconnected.

“We are the only ones that can stop him, but only after the Chain is completed,” Juliette explained.

“Right now we are no match for him, but once fully formed the Chain can produce more power than the sum of its parts.”

“It is called emergence,” Brad shared proudly with a wide smile.

“I told you that,” William pointed out.

“Luckily he is not quite among us at the moment,” Juliette finished her part.

“Where is this kid then?”

“There is a part in the Web, not accessible to us, where his mind was captured a long, looong time ago. We call that the Empty. Only Watchmaker can reach there. I mean, a predecessor created it and he has to perform maintenance on that part of the Web as well,” Vanessa explained.

“The Empty doesn’t resonate with the Web. That is what makes it truly empty. The Empty has always been off-limits for Oracle. The Prophets can’t see there and it would be too dangerous for Oracle to take a look herself.”

“This Empty… I’ve heard about it before,” Marith shared softly. A chill ran down her spine as she said it and there seemed to be a sudden shift in the atmosphere.

She was met with silence and apprehension.

“When?” William finally asked.

“Dr. Sybling, from the clinic, told me about it, after my father was committed.” She looked up from the forest floor to look into Vanessa’s concerned eyes.

“The stronger the Kid gets the more emptiness he spreads,” the Mage shared. “That is the main cause of the homelessness we’ve seen and the overcrowded psychiatric wards in the area.”

“There is one piece of luminous news, however. From the Empty the Kid is not strong enough to keep attacking us, not at this paste,” Brad shared elated.

“Tell that to all the mental patients, the addicts and the homeless,” Will taunted.

“The situation is getting worse every week. We can all see that. He is gaining power. We are not sure how yet. There must be some kind of anchor in our world that empowers him.” Marith could hear the uncertainty in Vanessa’s voice as she said that. That shaky tone seemed unusual for her.

“So, basically… my store was trashed by the reflections of the mind of a dead psycho?”

“An undead narcissist, possibly holding a grudge, yes.”

Some nervous chuckles followed.

“What’s his goal, his endgame?” Jonathan asked. “He is spreading misery and darkness, but what does he want?”

“He wants to control the Web, first by taking Watchmaker and eventually using Oracle for her predictive and analytical gifts. That is why both of them are not around.

“If the Kid wins the Prophets will lose all ability to see in freedom. Their visions will be continuously compromised. The Mages will lose their guidance and their powers and the Runners have nothing to fight for any longer.

“He wants to gain full control over our fabric of reality. If he does there will be nothing left of this world. Everything you see around you will be changed forever, but not for the better. There is no room in the Kid’s Web for Prophets or clarity and honesty. There will only be the Kid and his enslaved Watchmaker and Oracle. He will decide what we see and when we see it. He could even change history.” Vanessa swallowed and gazed around the group, after she was done talking.

“There will be no freedom of thoughts, no freedom of speech, no freedom of love. And within a generation it will all have become normal,” William finished.

Everyone took a moment to process that, to look at the scarce sunlight making irregular patterns on the tree trunks, rock and ferns around them, trying to envision a world in which the Kid would be almighty. They couldn’t.

“Where are the Oracle and the Watchmaker now?” Marith asked after she felt their silence had been thoughtful enough, as an odd curiosity took a hold on her.

“Hiding in another dimension,” said Brad with a teasing smile and a conspiratorial look in his eyes.

“Is there no way to prevent the Kid from waking up and avert all of this?”

“No, not when Oracle and Watchmaker are both getting weaker. He knows that now is the time, since both Oracle and Watchmaker are up for replacement,” Vanessa continued. “The current Oracle and this Watchmaker are not the original ones. They have cycles.”

“Why?”

“They have ultimate power in their field. That kind of power corrupts people if they are reigning too long.”

Jonathan nodded. Apparently, this sounded plausible to him.

“How do you even know all this?” Marith asked, alternating between incredulousness and a sense of revelation.

“The Elders said that when Oracle and Watchmaker are being replaced the Kid’s soul will return to Sweet Lake,” Vanessa firmly put out there.

Marith and Jonathan raised their eyebrows in unison.

“Did you just say his soul returns to Sweet Lake? What about his body?” Jonathan demanded.

“Why would he come here? You said there are other continents with other Chains,” Marith retorted worried.

A heavy silence followed.

“Vanessa?”

“He was buried here.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was captured in Asia, last time around, but that area was too densely populated, so his body was, you know… buried here. The community that lived in these mountains was small and they travelled around a lot. It was the logical thing to do, back then.”

“We don’t know for sure what he looks like. His tomb is sealed, but we assume he takes back his original body when he wakes up,” Kyle added.

“Not even Keymaker can open the tomb, because his predecessor has locked it,” Brad said, as his eyes wandered to William.

Marith made a deliberate decision to not ask about this Keymaker she just heard about. There was too much fresh information swirling around in her head as it was.

“How will the thing escape then?”

The lot stared uncomfortable at each other and at the ground, with hands buried deep in their pockets.

“Well?” Marith urged.

“The key is sort of… buried with him.”

The air got knocked out of Marith’s lungs. That happened to her fairly easy and fairly often, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable.

“Why?! Why would anyone do that?” She panted.

“We don’t know, but let’s just assume, for the sake of our sanity, they have thought it through and there is a good reason for it.”

“Starving the Kid doesn’t actually kill it.”

“Neither do bullets… or so we were told.” Brad sounded bothered.

Vanessa bit her lip. “He can escape anyway, because then he would just attach himself to another host. Now he will at least use his own body. On top of which, the Watchmaker and Keymaker that were alive back then didn’t want anyone to move the body or to create an incentive to organize quests for the key that would stretch out over generations. We can at least keep somewhat of an eye on his presence this way.”

Marith looked at the young mortals she was surrounded with. This gallimaufry of people, that wasn't even complete yet, had to save the world as they knew it, going up against a mythical creature that ostensibly couldn’t be killed in any way known to humans.

The evasive range of questions that dodged her consciousness earlier now managed to surface. “If he is about to awaken why didn’t you visit us sooner? Make sure we got to you safely and in time?”

“The Prophets feel the attacks of the Kid coming. However, they can’t step in if they don’t know whether or not it is decided yet. The Kid decides all his moves at the very last minute, so the Chain cannot help until the is unfolding, basically.”

“We can see or feel certain events happening, but we cannot sift possible Pupils out of the seven billion people on this planet, so we had to wait until he would strike.”

“We used him to find you,” Brad clarified again.

“We can also not know the time and place of future events at the same time. That is also why we can often only intervene at the last moment,” Kyle added.

He went on to concretize that the Prophets can see the future, but they don’t always know when or where a vision will become reality. Their Adversary knows this and will decide everything at the last minute to exploit this disadvantage.

“What about Daan?” Marith suddenly wondered.

“Who?”

“The teenager, that was with me in the train, before the accident happened. We were the only two passengers during rush hour. Isn’t that strange?”

“The Kid needs a witness, otherwise the accident might as well not have happened,” invested Kyle.

“Isn’t the victim a witness?”

“More or less, but that’s not enough,” Kyle answered again. “Daan was your witness. You were Jonathan’s witness.”

“Couldn’t Vanessa or Juliette have been witnesses?”

“No,” Kyle answered with authority, “I understand why it is confusing, but the victims and the members of the Chain don’t count.”

“Why not make sure the train is packed with commuters and create even more chaos and misery?”

“This may seem contradictory, but the Kid doesn’t want any other victims than the ones he is targeting. For his goal as much humans as possible need to be alive. He isn’t interested in killing anyone besides possible new members of the Chain and the current Oracle and Watchmaker of course.”

“It is not in the Kid’s nature to kill innocent people. It is in his nature to control them. This is why the train was empty and there were no further victims. There wasn’t even a machinist,” Brad added in a meaningful tone.

“He needs suffering and death people don’t suffer anymore,” William concluded.

Marith nodded. That part of the puzzle was now solved, in the backwards way things were being explained to her all afternoon. However, there was another, maybe even bigger mystery that she craved an answer to.

“What about the Headmaster … in the train? I suppose you guys know him as well?”

Amber, William, Juliette and Jonathan gave her stares so blank it seemed like their brains had stopped processing for a moment.

Kyle, Vanessa and Brad on the other hand were ready to explain.

“Yes, we do.”

“We do?” Amber and Juliette wondered simultaneously.

“He works with us.”

“He does?”

Vanessa rolled her eyes at them. “It’s Pavan. The one with the yellow windbreaker. One of the Elders transported a reflection of him to the train to warn Marith.”

“Oh, we do know him.”

“He showed me visions I had seen in the past. I thought I had banned them out, for good, but he entered my mind and retrieved them to show me, with ease. The most nightmarish foresights… actually coming true a decade later.” Marith’s face looked pained and the group listened astounded.

“I remember what it was like.” Amber nodded dreamily. “I just started to know and see things. Things I could not be knowing and seeing. It was all very confusing. When I was younger I figured they were just stories people had told me that I must have forgotten about. After a while I found out these where not old memories or things I had seen on television, they were things happening at that moment in a different place or I was seeing things that had yet to happen. “Unfortunately, with the clear images came the horror show. Nightmares, not limited to the night time, filled with manhunts, torture, blood, dying animals… Those images continued until they started to hurt physically… Suppressing and banning those visions is the only right path to take at that point.”

Waves of sensible inferences and strings to her past started tolling through Marith’s mind. The experience of Ambers precognitions were disturbingly similar to hers.

Marith stared at Amber, thankful that she was willing to share that. Kyle stared at a pine cone. Brad plucked at a fern.

“But…” William thought deeply about the phrasing of his question to make it sound intelligent and then decided he couldn’t. “A decade in advance? How is that even possible?”

“Maybe even longer ago.” Marith shrugged it off.

Vanessa had an undefined look on her face. It was a levelling of curiosity and misgiving.

“I don’t know. It is not uncommon and Pavan did add new, recent visions to your existing memories. Those came from Oracle.” She sighed and then continued with a frown. “I don’t get it, though. We already have four Prophets. Mariths visions and precognitions should be an indication she might become a Prophet, but that’s impossible.”

“What do you expect me to become?” Marith wondered for the first time, since she had learned about the Chain and it’s various disciples.

“I anticipate on Jonathan becoming a Runner and then there is no other option for you than to become a Mage.”

Marith glanced around the circle. “So, Amber and Kyle are Prophets… where are the other two?”

“Yeah, why are there only eight of us right now?” Jonathan reported.

“The others are out of town. The more powerful the Kid becomes the harder it gets to get clean and clear visions. He will attempt to decide what is true and what is not. Because of this, two of the Prophets decided to leave Sweet Lake. By doing so they got a better access to the Web and the information in it. The other two members are running errands for the Chain.”

“Shouldn’t they be here? Although I am having difficulty believing all of this, it does sound important enough to be present.” Marith shared her concern.

“The four people that aren’t here today are some of the earliest members of the Chain. They are very familiar with everything that was discussed. They know when they have to return,” Juliette stated.

“How?”

“They will be able to feel through the Web. Also, they have their timepieces, crafted for them by the Watchmaker. Don’t worry. They will return in time.” The last part sounded like she had to affirm herself rather than Marith.

“When do we become like you?” Jonathan asked a little too enthusiastic for Marith’s liking.

“L-like what?” Vanessa suddenly stuttered.

“Well, a Mage or a Prophet or a Runner?”

“Ah, you need a Rebirth,” Amber cheerfully broke into Vanessa’s contemplations.

“What would that be?”

“It’s like being baptized,” Brad quickly brought in. “No big deal.”

William shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He looked uncomfortable. Both Jonathan and Marith eyed the group with suspicion again.

“Really, it’s nothing. Mostly ceremonial,” Vanessa hastily explained.

“Your precognitions will become less painful and easier to handle after your Rebirth. If… when you become a Mage they could disappear altogether,” Amber whispered to her with big eyes.

Marith felt as if she had finally become part of something greater than herself and came to the shaky realization that she had no clue what that would encompass. She was sure that nothing she knew about this world was an absolute certainty anymore.

“Where do we go from here?”

“That is up to Oracle, but we will be seeing more from each other.”

“How…?”

“Soon.”

“Not an answer.”

“We can only call each other if none of this is mentioned. Modern technology, the telephone network, the internet are just as much part of the Web as our minds are. If we need to run something sensitive by you our Runner will take care of it.” Vanessa pointed at Juliette.

“That’s our only one?”

“For right now? Yes.”

“How?”

“Well, as I said two of our Runners are on the road and Jonathan has yet to be… trained.”

“Why aren’t they... you know, running around here?”

“They are running errands, for us, for the Chain. Trust me, it is important enough.”

“James is currently collecting Sunshine in Scotland,” Brad blurted out, before receiving a warning look from Vanessa.

“I wasn’t aware they enjoyed sunshine in that part of the world,” Marith remarked.

“That’s probably why it’s taking him so long,” Brad snickered. “And Anton is in Hungary… in Budapest to be precise.” Brad’s eyes lit up as he said it.

“What?! It’s my job. I am the locator,” Brad retorted annoyed at an angry stomp from Vanessa.

Vanessa was a multi-talented woman, so much had become clear to Marith, but her greatest talent would be the ability to make grown men feel like toddlers again.

“Don’t worry about the Kid for now. You are with us and he isn’t powerful enough to attack so soon again, not from the Empty. He needs to save his energy to awaken,” Juliette assured.

A persistent, cold drizzle - the area was famous for those - had started a little while ago. It gave their surroundings perpetual shades of almost fluorescent green. The birds around them had stopped chirping and twittering and the group was slowly starting to get soaked.

Although many questions had yet to be asked and answered it was time to break up the assembly. People needed to head home again, before they had to explain their absence. Dinners needed to be cooked, homework had to be made and newly acquired knowledge had to be digested.

“Don’t forget. The nervous system of this town knows more than it is letting on,” warned Vanessa, closing down their meeting.

“I’ve noticed,” Marith muttered.

“Try to stay under the radar,” Brad advised.

Specks of rain on her glasses blurred out her vision and made it impossible for Marith to prevent her ankles from wavering on the un-even grounds they were on. She took them off and tried to polish the specs with an old tissue she fished out of a pocket.

As she was making things worse she noticed Jonathan dawdle around her. She looked up to see a woozy version of him.

“Duchess?” Jonathan handed her something white and angular. “We never got to it.”

Marith hastily shoved the dirty frame back on her nose and examined the object through a greasy haze. It was a power converter. She didn’t know what to say. About his parents, the robbery or this unexpected act of kindness.

“Wow, thanks! I forgot all about it,” she managed to bring out, after deciding not getting into his family situation was probably the best course of action for now. “What do I owe you for it?”

“Nothing. It’s on the house.” He smiled as he made a discarding hand gesture.

“Thanks again.” Marith smiled back. “How is your store?”

“Up and running again,” he answered shoving his hands unusually deep into the pockets of his bright red coat, his shoulders tense. She could see it was a stressful topic for him. “It’s all cleaned up. There’s new glass in the shop front. The insurance company took care of the lion’s share.”

“Good to hear,” concluded Marith.

Marith had barely any sense of direction and was grateful that Vanessa had picked her up and walked her home for the gathering. To Marith the forests surrounding the lake were one massive, moist maze.

As long as she had the lake for orientation she was safe. Today however, the group had been brought to new terrain to evade the mist. The territory was largely unknown to Marith.

She had learned the visions she had experienced as a child could predict the future at least a decade in advance. She always knew when she was being lied to, even over the phone. She had developed a strong sense of justice, of right and wrong, very early in life. Why couldn’t she just feel herself through the wilderness?

“What do you think?” Vanessa carefully inquired as they sauntered back through the woods, together again.

Marith liked hiking in the forest. She didn’t have to look her conversation partner in the eye. She could shamelessly focus on the irregular forest floor, with its slippery, loose rocks and intertwined roots, while listening and not be impolite doing so.

“What do I think?” Marith answered surprised. “I think it is all infinitely unlikely, although it starts to make sense in a wild way,” she decided as they squinted their eyes at the last sunshine of the day. It broke through the branches high over their heads to say goodbye.

Vanessa could not suppress a smile at that answer.

“I am fairly new to all of this, but I think we should resist it. Stop that creature… come hell or high water.”

Although she had been mistrustful since the train accident it was confusingly reassuring to Marith that she was confirmed in her lifelong suspicions to discover there was so much more to this world than most people could even imagine. The explanations she had been given that afternoon had been dubious, but probably as sequacious as any.

“Are we going the right way?” Marith dared to ask after a good half hour of indeterminate waves of nausea and hollowness.

Every pine, fir and hemlock started to look like every other pine, fir and hemlock. Weren’t these the same boulders and tree trunks they had passed twice already?

The daylight was fading fast, but at least the canopy shielded them from most of the rain as they had been trotting through ferns since leaving the open space. Little did they know they were being watched by a large leathery birdlike creature.

Making sure not to disturb the quiet air with his giant wings he was shadowing the women by clambering from tree to tree. He kept a thorough distance, so he would go unnoticed for now by these young supernaturals.

“Sure, why do you ask?”

Marith hesitated. “Animals can sense when something is wrong.”

“I know…” Vanessa stopped and looked over her shoulder with a puzzled look.

“I usually know before any animals do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just instinct, I guess. A result of being on my own a lot, maybe, but the way back seems longer than the way to the meeting place.” Which was unusual.

“That’s probably because it’s dusk.” Vanessa opened the top half of her coat and fished a shiny, circular timepiece from an inside pocket.

She flipped it open with the long red nail of her thumb and gazed intently at it. Marith came closer to glance over her shoulder and saw how it elicited clouds of swirling colours and lights.

“It’s beautiful,” she commented. “What does it all mean?”

The instrument that filled Vanessa’s palm wasn’t just a simple clockwork. A little universe with moving parts, tiny transparent discs and dials, with what seemed like a compass underneath, stared back at them. The horological wonder was mysteriously luminescent, since they didn’t need another source of light to behold its complexity.

Seemingly the clockwork was capable of informing its owner, but Marith couldn’t fathom how. To her it just looked like a complicated mechanical device with a bucket of magic poured over it.

“You seem to be right. Something is off.”

Even though she was wearing the warmest boots and the thickest coat she had been able to find goose bumps ran over Mariths body, from her hands to her back, from her feet to her face, as she was hypnotised by the ingenious invention.

“What is it?” She asked with a shudder.

“We are going the right way… and also the wrong way.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s like the Web isn’t vibrating as usual… it’s curving, bending over backwards.”

“Maybe that’s because we are getting closer to the lake? You did say it is a Hotspot.”

“No, it’s not that. I know what the Web looks like around the lake. I have never seen this before.”

“Is it some kind of disruption?”

“More like an intrusion…”

Marith exhaled trembling. “What do we do?”

“We keep going,” Vanessa decided determined.

They marched in the direction of Nick’s mansion at double paste. Vanessa up front lending Marith a helping hand when they had to climb over the necessary obstacles, such as slimy tree trunks and slippery boulders. As they continued through the crackling ferns Marith became very aware of the noise they were making.

“How much longer?” She inquired quietly.

“Less than fifteen minutes.”

“Okay,” she answered with a soft voice.

“Why are we whispering?”

They had stopped again. The Birdman hung between trees and branches with his limbs stretched out, like a giant spider, a couple of hundred metres behind them.

Marith tried to catch her breath. “I feel like we are being watched.”

Vanessa reached for her timepiece again.

“Don’t.” Marith grabbed her hand in a freezing clutch.

They both stood as still as the trees they were surrounded with. Waiting for a sudden movement around them. Breathing shivering clouds of fear.

“I don’t hear anything,” Vanessa finally hissed.

“But it can hear us.”

They scrutinized the scenery like hawks, but their eyes didn’t register anything unusual.

“Do you notice anything?” Marith’s lips barely moved as she uttered those words.

Vanessa closed her eyes in an attempt to invigorate her other senses.

She felt how her guide trembled with a sudden terror as she had sensed it too, but it wasn’t long before Vanessa’s usual steadfast self took the upper hand again. She bared Marith’s underarm and bore her fingers in the senseless, frozen flesh.

Can you hear me?

Yes, Marith thought back with al her might. What is going on?

It’s a lack of things going on, actually... There is no life around us.

Marith send Vanessa a mental question mark as an answer to that.

This forest is deserted, except for us and one other lifeform. I can sense it too now.

What do you think it is?

I have never been so unsure of anything in my life.

That’s the spirit.

Marith could feel how Vanessa was wrecking her mind.

What do we do? She tried to speed things up.

Vanessa strongly exhaled. The fear came back to her, and therefor to Marith, like a wave crushing into a million elementary particles on a rock at the beach.

The Birdman grew impatient. He was still hanging there. High in the trees, a chill wind playing with his limp and languid wings. Peering through the irregularities of the ancient woods he could make out their shapes, but they seemed to have stopped moving and talking.

The fundamental pieces of the universe, that splattered around them, carried some information the Birdman wasn’t aware of. Shards of terror and distress wafted towards the two women and hovered around them like a thick cloud.

Marith knew that fear. It was a fear that could provoke a powerful rage.

She showed a single image to Vanessa, who didn’t waste any time.

Run… like hell.

They took off as one. Rushing towards thicker greenery they ignored the vegetation and rocks cutting through their clothes and their skin. Marith felt as if she was going to lose her legs. Vanessa was right behind her now, closing the ranks.

A serious dark mass swept over their heads. Apart from cracking branches and crumbling tree barks it was soundless.

They stopped dead in their tracks and frantically scanned their scarcely lit surroundings. Their only source of light were the irregular rays from the waxing moon, forcing itself through the canopy.

“Where did it go?”

Backs turned to each other for safety they twirled around, awaiting the monster. Marith’s throat hurt from the sprint they had taken. She wheezed for air. The noise she made wasn’t relevant anymore. The hunter had found its prey. A flicker in the moonshine that had managed to reach them indicated a movement above them. Some of the ancient trees they were encircled by lamented lethargic.

It came for them as sudden as was to be expected from a predator. A downward movement of air told the two young women something massive had let itself fall from the sky and was planning on landing on top of them.

Luckily Vanessa was faster. He furiously scratched the sharp nails of his black, fuzzy, gnarly claws over the dome that secured them.

Sheer willpower forced Marith to look up. She didn’t want to see eye to eye with the horror that this parallel world, she was just getting acquainted to, had to offer.

It turned out to be worse than what Marith had witnessed in her dreams. She was getting used to reality being worse than she could imagine and becoming more abysmal with the passing of time, but this thing defied all train accidents, robberies and addicted parents.

The Birdman didn’t have a beak like an actual bird. It had a gaping black hole, through which it seemed to suck air and, apparently, birds. Silvery, grey spikes for teeth grew crisscross through the dark opening. Yellow, crevice shaped eyes, set back in its hideously deformed skull rabidly glared down at them.

The monstrous bat seemed angry and screamed at Marith with the force of a thousand tortured birds, savagely beating the dome with his big black wings. They covered their ears and Marith lost every sense of place and time.

They stood perched up against each other, unable to move. All air had left Marith’s lungs once more and her eyes were as big as the Petri dishes she had used in university to study brain cells, not even close yet to comprehending the imaginative power of the mind.

Although the Birdman couldn’t possibly enter the dome, a rotten smell did penetrate their cone of safety. The fresh, wet blood dripping from its talons ran past them, creating little red, downward streams, as if they were behind bars. There had been previous prey today, Marith figured, glancing around their cell, still protecting her ears.

The creature kept pouncing, beating and screeching.

For the first time since Marith’s life had taken a sudden and well-defined path downhill she felt as if she was going to faint. The sum of all her misfortune had taken the best of her and she was ready to give in.

Until some sort of detonation woke her up from her untimely pity party. More bangs followed and the Birdman paused his violent and frantic attempts to break through the dome.

Silence.

They lowered their hands from their ears and checked the surroundings, as was their assaulter. The Birdman inquisitively arched his head in every direction, like only birds could do. Apart from that, he was as motionless as a mountain.

Marith studied the fearsome animal in the light the moon and the stars cast on them. Its four claws balanced on the invisible, sloping ceiling above them. Through the congealed blood she could see the talons were yellow-striped. His massive body consisted mostly of black, sticky fur and feathers. Only the wings, that must have had the span of a glider plane, constituted of leather-looking skin.

He wasn’t quite ready to give up his prey and protectively bended his body and his wings over the dome. The atmosphere was so tense all three of them could hear the click. Under normal circumstances it would have been a nugatory sound, to be ignored, but Vanessa and Marith knew it could mean their salvation.

The gunfire recurred and the Birdman soared up with a single beat of his wings. The displacement of air after the blow threw the women off their balance. Marith tried to stay on her feet, but she felt some loose rocks slipping under her boots and instantly knew it was going to end painful. The first thing she remembered after that was the damp, earthy taste of moss.

She stayed where she was until the last shot was fired and she heard the rumblings of approaching footsteps. She had fallen off a rock plateau onto lower grounds, between ferns and decomposing leaves and pine needles. Groping her way through the shadows she came across a head of hair.

“It’s me,” Vanessa answered, reassuringly intercepting Marith’s searching hands.

“You fell too?”

“No, I jumped after that thing took off… I just couldn’t hold the dome up any longer and I didn’t want to risk getting shot.”

“Hey, my aim is better than that!”

“Brad?!” Marith almost cried.

A flashlight was shone around, at the treetops in particular.

“Yes, your knight in shining armour,” he shared elated.

“I think we’ve found our anchor,” Vanessa panted in awe getting back on her feet. “It’s… slightly bigger than anticipated, I must confess.”

“I didn’t know that thing was real!” Marith shared as she scrambled up.

“You have seen it before?”

“In my nightmares. That’s why I showed him to you,” she answered Vanessa, even though Brad had asked the question.

“I recognized it,” Vanessa admitted, slightly out of breath as well, after her exertions.

“From where?” Marith wondered.

“Kyle has shown it to me before… without any context. So, I didn’t know what to do about his this… what did you call it?”

“Birdman?”

“Yes!” Vanessa had heard Marith name the massive bat when she had shared the image. “Oracle is the epitome of all our visions. You involuntarily showed her and she must have shared that with Kyle.”

“Oh,” Marith muttered. She hadn’t expected to experience the Oracles all-knowing, distributing powers in practice so soon.

“I couldn’t believe it was real either.” Vanessa pinched Marith’s arm as she said it. “But it seems to hold somewhat of a grudge towards you,” she continued.

“Why would that be?” Marith asked shaky.

“Probably, because you’re not really one of us yet. He might think you’re an easy target.”

“Which I am,” Marith concluded gloomy.

“The Kid is still trying to prevent the Chain from being formed,” Brad needlessly informed.

Marith took a closer look at their saviour. She noticed an insignia on his dark, heavy coat and realized he hadn’t been wearing his uniform this afternoon.

“Brad, how did you know?” Marith asked.

Vanessa briefly closed her eyes. Marith had yet to grasp how fast their communications could be.

“Kyle and Amber saw you were being followed.”

“How did you find us?” Marith urged.

“I am the locator, remember?”

“Isn’t the Watchmaker the locator?” Marith felt foolish. This had all been explained to her earlier the same day, but it was all just too much, too fast and too incredible.

“The Watchmaker can only locate his timepieces. I can locate anything and anybody if I know what or who I am looking for… except for the Kid… or that winged miscreant.”

Marith threw him a grateful look.

“What even is this?” She asked, nodding towards the unusually elongated weapon. The firearm had a wooden stock, decorated with brass.

“A polar bear rifle,” he proudly imparted.

“It looks… old?”

“I collect antique firearms.”

“And you just happened to carry it with you?”

“I was getting dressed for my shift. I was about to leave for the station when Juliette ran the visions Kyle and Amber had to me.”

“How late is it?” Marith suddenly wondered confused.

“Late,” Brad said, “I already had dinner.”

Marith and Vanessa stared at each other. “We’ve been out here longer than we thought.”

“I’ll walk you guys to the Pine mansion,” he offered as he handed out some flashlights. “I don’t think the bullets will actually kill him. It’s just highly inconvenient. That’s why he left,” Brad said, mostly to himself, as the two women were patting the forest floor off their clothing in an attempt to clean themselves up.

“Why not use a standard police weapon?” Marith was curious.

“First of all, I couldn’t justify the use of my service weapon in this instance. Second of all, …” Vanessa shook her head at Marith as Brad started off on the magnitude and scope and reach of the rifle, while locking and loading it again, just in case.

After that they went on their way, as stealthy as possible. Marith felt like a vole hunted by an owl. She was weak, vulnerable and her eye-sight didn’t suffice.

Sneaking through the underbush they continuously scanned the canopy for irregularities. None occurred. In less than twenty minutes the yellow lighting of the massive white building came in sight through the trees.

“I feel like evil has been with me ever since I came back from the Netherlands.” Marith exhaled strongly as they walked uphill.

“With you?”

“Yes, like it keeps an eye on me. It doesn’t know I can feel it, but I know for sure it is lurking at me from the darkness.”

“What darkness?”

“The water.”

They stood on the elevated terrain leading up to the mansion and looked down on the cold, black mirror below them.

“I think it has been trying to get a hold on all of us.”

Marith nodded.

“We won tonight,” Brad assured them.

“I know. I guess it’s a good thing he attacked us and not the others.”

“Why?” Vanessa frowned.

“Because of your talent. You could protect us, shield us, but what could the others have done?”

A crackling sound made them all jump. The noise increased until Brad picked up. It was the police station. Two young women were reported missing. They hadn’t been seen since this afternoon. Names and characteristics were passed along.

“I am on it,” Brad affirmed.

“This is good,” he said, turning to Marith and Vanessa. “We now have a viable reason for why I am with you.”

They tried to stow the polar bear killing machine in Vanessa’s battered, old car, before ringing the doorbell, but it wouldn’t fit.

“That’s fast!” Nick exclaimed.

He sounded elated and distant as he opened the heavy doors behind them. It had clearly been him who had informed the police of their absence and he had probably been waiting behind the windows of his study.

Brad quickly tossed the rifle in the shadows the car casted in the lights coming from the massive chandelier in the hallway. They could see Nick’s silhouette and Marith hurried towards him. She was cold, soaked, scratched and exhausted and had to fight the urge not to fall into his arms.

“You guys look terrible!” He pronounced, letting her in.

Vanessa made up a nonsense story about how they got lost after having lunch together and how lucky there were Brad found them at the start of his shift. Brad then went on to make a rather sexist joke about women and surviving in the wilderness, which Nick nervously laughed at just a little too hard.

Vanessa separated the keys to Gene’s apartment from her own bundle of keys, before driving Brad back to where he had parked his police car, with the barrel of the gun sticking out of an opened window.

“Here, in case you want to pick some things up for him.”

Marith frowned bewildered. She may have been flabbergasted by the attack and the existence of the Birdman, but she wasn’t too occupied with that to not be surprised by where Vanessa kept the keys to her father’s apartment.

“Won’t you need them?” Marith fished.

“No, a friend of mine copied them earlier today. I am picking them up tomorrow.”

“Oh, okay… Thanks.”

After taking a shower and putting on some dry clothes Marith sat curled up in a leather fauteuil next to the fireplace in the living area right outside the kitchen. Nick sat slumped on the couch with his dress shirt unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up, staring at the mail.

Marith was neurotically chewing on a grilled cheese sandwich, like a rodent on a carrot, while frantically staring through the glass sliding doors. Were they being watched right now? Could this monster enter the mansion? She figured it probably could. Was she losing her mind? Had several years of solitary confinement made her lose ‘it’?

The most painful part of it all was that she couldn’t share today with anyone. They would think she was on a cycle of nonsense and lock her up. She decided she needed some distraction and chose Nick as a target.

“Did they take it?” Marith asked, putting the empty plate on top of a book carousel.

“What?” Nick looked up from some paperwork.

“The house? You had people for a showing today, right? Do they want to rent it?”

“I don’t think so…” he sounded occupied.

“Why not?”

He sighed. “It’s not for everyone, you know?”

He went back to his paperwork, which send her thoughts back to a childhood in which she was barely acknowledged. It stirred a confusing irritation in her.

“What are you reading?” Marith asked uneasy.

“Some mail from my favourite uncle…” His voice drifted off again as his eyes flowed over one of the letters with suspicion.

“Which one?” Marith wasn’t aware he had any close relatives left.

“The taxman.” He folded the piece of paper and put in on a pile on the side table.

“Why didn’t they take the house?” Marith tried again, now that she seemed to have his attention to some degree.

“Big house, in a town crowded with homeless, far away from any city, with your family belongings mostly still there. Speaking of which.” He raised a finger, so Marith knew she should stay where she was, even though she had nowhere to go.

He hastily disappeared into the hallway and then entered his office.

“I bumped into this one today.” He smiled proudly, stomping back into the living area, awkwardly holding her antique Italian cello. It was once gifted to her by her grandfather, who was delighted to have a grandchild following in his footsteps. He had been a merited cellist. Unfortunately, he wasn’t among the living anymore.

“I also got some other stuff.” He vanished again, while Marith studied her long lost instrument.

The deep brown, varnished wood felt remarkably soft under her fingertips. A mellow and familiar smell penetrated her nose. She pulled out the pin, plucked the strings and immediately sensed it needed rigorous tuning.

“I found this thingy and this…” He placed the music stand and some sheet music in front of her and handed her the bow with a chivalrous gesture. Lastly, he gave her a metronome and the resin for the hairs of the bow, wrapped in a suede patch. “The case is in my study,” he clarified, so she wouldn’t think he had tossed the instrument in the back of his car without protection.

“Nick, I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t. Play something.”

Marith had always loved the cello. She had never doubted about playing any other string-instrument. Not just because of the warm sound and the melancholy it would elicit as she played it, but mostly because the instrument had an undercurrent. Even without intent there was always something brewing underneath the music.

That evening she didn’t need the music standard or the sheet music. She played what she knew. She decided to start off with the Prelude into Bach’s first cello suite, not to deter Nick too much, but she soon found herself pulled to avian related pieces, playing ‘Song of the Birds’ by Pau Casals and ‘The Swan’ by Camille Saint-Saëns.

“What is it like,” Nick asked when Marith paused to fine tune one of the strings, “to be so good at something?”

Marith blushed. “I am not that good. It’s just a hobby.”

“Right,” scoffed Nick.

“Do you play?”

“What?”

“An instrument?”

“Does the triangle in primary school count?”

Marith was not unappreciative to talk to a normal, hard-working, mostly sane, down-to-earth human being, that was unaware of what was actually out there. Slowly she had become slightly more talkative when it came to Nick. Until she had moved in with him she had believed it was normal to go through her days alone. At least, it had become her normal.

The hospitalization of her father had come with a restless guilt, something she hadn’t experienced often yet in her young life. Not to mention the disturbing train crash and the iniquity and wickedness she had come home to in Sweet Lake. Being reunited with something that was so dear to her was relieving and uplifting.

For the first time since her arrival Marith wore her mouth-guard that night, after downing the last painkillers from the hospital. No need to be confronted with Kids and Birdmen when she was trying to get some rest.

As she shoved the sleep mask from the airplane toiletry bag over her eyes Marith forced some earplugs so deep into her ears her eyes bulged a little. She could feel her heartbeat against the plugs, which made her feel strangely at ease. She was in possession of a heartbeat and a body. She was alive.

It wasn’t long before she sank in a black, bottomless, uneventful and overdone sleep.

That same night in Peru a young woman called Anica was tossed of one of the highest accessible mountains, with much concern for her safety and that of the future of the Web, of course.

As she plummeted to her uncertain fate, inebriated by the Mist that had been slyly mixed with one of her drinks earlier that night, a purple-blueish slit opened up to break her fall. Much to the relief of the Mage on top of the mountain she slipped through it and disappeared, like a letter through a mailbox.

Anica’s fall was broken and she was pulled away from the world she was falling out of. Soon her bones liquefied, her eyes twitched, registering colours and shapes she didn’t know existed and her ears perceived a peculiar pitch that seemed to swell. Her muscles ached as she appeared to be travelling at great speed through a tossing and turning tunnel.

The moment she assumed her soul, what she felt was the core of her being, was travelling at approximately the speed of light five of her senses gave up on her. Her sixth sense knew the tunnel was about to spit her out. That sense also knew that whatever lay beyond the horizon of that tunnel would be the last and greatest discovery of her human life.

As she landed on a springy and embracing surface she was mildly surprised to learn she was still in possession of her earthly body. At a lethargic paste Anica’s lost senses started to find their way back to her.

Since her tactition had already been given back to her she tried to encourage her fingertips to give her some information about her surroundings. Frustrated she came to the conclusion that her muscles were cramped and painfully uncooperative. She wanted to force the blood in her veins to flow to her arms and hands, so she could put them to work.

“Anica,” a warm, female voice next to her said, which indicated her ability to hear had returned.

She inhaled a fresh gulp of air to respond to that, but she seemed unable to. The oxygen that her blood now carried around, however, made her muscles relax. Her hands moved around a little at the height of her hips. She felt smooth, fluffy softness underneath her. Was it possible she was in a bed?

It wasn’t until a soft, oblong object stroked her forehead she could open her eyes and take in her surroundings. She was indeed in a bed and not just any bed. They laid in a massive mahogany four-poster bed in a spotless environment.

She looked up through thick, torn fabric at the heavens. They seemed to be under a dome. The sky was bright, blue and almost free of clouds. The weather outside was clear and sunny.

Straining her stiff neck she looked in the direction her name had come from earlier. She was met with a pair of big grey eyes. They were set in a perfectly symmetrical face. Looking a little longer into those eyes, still unable to speak, Anica saw threads of blue and green, cheerfully dancing across her irises.

She swallowed heavily to prepare for speech.

“Why…?” She sighed, dragging her tongue through her mouth.

“This is your Rebirth.”

Anica closed her eyes and nodded. She had been told about the Rebirth. She needed to live through it to join the Chain. They had conveniently left out the Mist and the Push and the interdimensional journey.

She tried to sit up. Oracle sat up as well in one smooth, effortless movement, without offering help. Anica noticed a large white feather in her hands.

She looked around for a bit, since sitting and staring was all she seemed to be able to do. They were in a perfectly circular space, surrounded by transparent walls, except for the grey door opposing the bed.

She took it all in. The massive telescope in the middle, antique instruments seemingly scattered across the room, the old desk and the snow-peaked mountain ranges that encircled the dome. Oracle gave her all the time she needed. They had plenty of it, after all.

Anica glanced to her left again, to the woman that accompanied her. She was long and graceful, wearing a figure hugging white tunica with gold embroidery.

“What happens now?” She asked with a slight slur.

“You stay,” the goddess next to her answered.