34

“Why did you ghost me, after our lunch, Marish?” Samuel’s tongue slithered through his mouth as he spoke.

His infinite umbrage at the rest of the world splashed off his face with unparalleled self-pity and hatred for anything that wasn’t him. His loathing of humanity, especially the female part, the free part and the happy part, seemed to fan out over all of time and space.

Because you’re horrendously unlikeable, Marith thought.

“Is it because of my pale skin? My skinny arms?”

“Your beliefs, mostly,” she uttered, less powerful than she’d hoped.

“Please, elaborate.”

“Your outlook on freedom… or… or human rights, for example.”

“Human rights,” he mused. “I was not around when those were made. They may not even be here if I would have been.”

“We’re well aware of that,” Marith said curtly. “I see you’ve found Watchmaker,” she immediately added, to avoid another disquisition on his elite cunningness.

Marith’s chest felt so tight under the pressure of what she was about to attempt to pull off that she wasn’t even sure her heart was still beating. That could absolutely be causing the blots she saw dangling and dancing around Samuel and the squirming and crying Etienne.

“Do you also know why?” He asked ominously.

“So you can reprogram the Web and own time…” Marith’s voice died away.

She honestly didn’t know anymore what this creature’s intentions were. She was too distracted by the fearful cries that escaped the child he was holding so very brusquely.

“Time is an illusion generated by the way you perceive the Web. It doesn’t exist. With your fancy clockworks, trying to control it.”

Marith frowned. Good Lord, you surly moron.

“We are not controlling time… or the Web, we shield it from your influence. That is why you want to control Watchmaker… so we can’t kick you out of here.”

His face twisted into a wicked holler that bared his crooked teeth. He threw his head back in his neck and stared Marith straight in the face after he returned. “Oh, you control the Web alright. You bend it in every way to want it. Running around, like you own the place.”

That day Marith had started to realize he was jealous. He was jealous of their talents, their team, their power. Which also meant he must be feeling threatened. If he was afraid of losing they might have a better bargaining position than anticipated.

It was so painfully obvious and relatable Marith’s psyche hadn’t been able to look it in the eye and acknowledge it before. The Kid wanted to be just like them and he couldn’t. He had learned that and had never made peace with it, which had made him bitter. Even though most Pupils didn’t even want to be like themselves the Kid was still envious.

“We can adjust the Web, only to make sure you will never rule it!” She almost yelled at him, more powerful and self-assured now.

“You people see what you want to see. Humans believe what they want to believe, but I have been around a lot longer than any of you and I know the truth. The truth has no rights in your world, but it does in mine.”

“Truth is subjective,” Marith almost spat, vexed by his demeaning tone of voice. Did he speak to everyone like that? Or did he save all his disdain for the womenfolk?

“Please, enlighten me,” the Kid scorned, almost mockingly.

“Well…” Marith sighed softly, before continuing, trying to remain composed. “The Web is the essence of every living organism in it and every organism perceives the world differently from one another.”

“What you’re trying to say is that the Web is relative, since it is not subjective, but I understand you’re a firm believer. After all, it’s easier to believe in something you can’t see than to come terms with the truth. My existence is a fact of life and you can’t handle me. You can try to hijack the Web all you want, but you will never, ever be able to rid it of me.” Samuel looked her straight in the eye, bridging the distance between them easily with his evilness, and laughed scornful.

“The Web is a construct, made up by two, controlling, self-important dissemblers. It’s a lie and you want to escape it just as much as I do, but neither of us can!” He added, because he had realized, after a brief pause, that Marith wasn’t as impressed or convinced as she should have been by his elaboration on ‘the truth’.

“Samuel,” she started, looking into his fading eyes. “Those are not your parents. These are new, different people. We both grew up in bubbles. That doesn’t mean the rest of the world is evil too,” Marith panted, trying to convince him that his past doesn’t and shouldn’t define everybody’s present. “Oracle doesn’t have full authority. Chains can overrule her. Meaning we can also overrule Watchmaker.”

In theory, Marith thought to herself. They had never actually attempted to do so.

The Kid, not unlike both of her parents, had been put on a low information diet by Watchmaker and Oracle for ages. With each passing sentence she had to carefully assess what information the Pupils could afford to give up.

“The Web is filthy, the Web is lies, the Web is deceit,” the mouth of madness spat in response to Marith’s theories, “and we’re all caught in it!”

“That may be so, but I would pick this Web over you even in my darkest hour,” she said, with all the confidence she could scrape together.

“I don’t know what to tell you. Corrupting humans, robbing them of a reason to exist, makes me feel alive.” An evil smile played around his teeth again. Marith had never noticed before how yellow and askew they were.

“It makes them feel like they don't control their own fate,” Marith explained.

“They can’t either way. What is life to mortals if not a journey to death?” The Kid wondered, full of disdain.

“Every action will cause an opposite and equal reaction. It’s a law of nature,” Marith spoke warningly.

“Like the likes of you ever obeyed those laws.”

“No, and neither do you, from what we can see.”

“Then what are you saying, bitch?” His eyes were suddenly burning with icy, blue flames.

“I’m just wondering why you brought the child here.”

“You know why… You will always look for the successor of the current Watchmaker and I will always be watching you.” He held the crying boy closer to the edge.

Marith understood Samuel was in it for the long run. He had no use for the successor yet, because of his age and lack of competence at this point in time. He wanted something from them. Access to the Clock in the Sky, maybe? Well, it would have to be a warm day in the Empty before that would ever happen.

He was going to bargain. That was a fact. Marith knew she had to beat him to it with a better offer, so the Pupils could execute their flimsy, last minute plan.

If the offer wouldn’t be interesting enough he could just kill Etienne, hoping a Mage, more suitable for the role of Watchmaker would step forward soon. Either that, or he was banking on the current Watchmaker’s replacement, without a successor present, so their bubble within the Web would collapse into chaos and he could rise like a Phoenix from its ashes.

Both those scenario’s had to be avoided at all cost, which raised the stakes of Marith’s game.

“Samuel,” she pleaded. She weakly wished now that she hadn’t ignored him after their debacle of a lunch, several weeks prior.

On the other hand, hadn’t he played her first? He’d known who she was, before she could even phantom who he was. Everything he has done and said had been done and said with an angle, a purpose.

“Oh, please, Samuel is so feigned. Call me... Master of Fuckery, Spreader of Emptiness, Destroyer of Dimensions.” He smiled the most smug smile any Pupil had ever witnessed.

“Such modesty,” Marith snorted. “You’re giving yourself waaay too much credit.”

Her brain ran like the wheels, gears and trundles in her clockwork, coming up with the best way to formulate the next few sentences.

When she finally spoke heaven and hell stopped to listen to her words.

“I bet,” Marith raised her voice, “you did not expect it to be a young child. I bet... he’s quite useless to you now?”

“Indeed, I did not expect to find an infant,” he answered as nonchalantly as possible, “but I can still use him.”

Etienne wailed like a siren as the Kid shook him and pretended to drop him. Marith’s bone marrow stirred. The blots and colours dancing in front of her eyes grew bigger and angrier.

“I can give you what you want most!” She burst out, hoping he would stop threatening the kid.

“And what would that be?”

“Life, and with that I will make the Web pure again, for you.”

He snorted.

“A heartbeat. I know you’ve been dying since we killed your pet.”

The Kid took a step forward. Marith was relieved to see Etienne being moved away from the abyss.

“You can’t do that!”

“I’ve done it before,” she shared calmly, trying to come across as wise and competent.

That was Vanessa’s cue.

Samuel glanced over her shoulder. Marith knew he looked at the first Mage of their Chain.

She sensed William’s heart murmur in the underbush between the thinning trees. Her talent was just on, without any conscious effort. Apparently, stress did that to her.

She could feel the other Pupils as if they were in a lucid dream. Some were still seated in the cars, which they had agreed upon earlier, others were sneaking out, trying to make as little noise as possible.

Sensing their whereabouts was another neat side effect of great stress, probably.

“Don’t kill the child. I can help you survive until he’s a teenager.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I want nothing more than for the child to live.”

She could only hope this would work out. Everybody and everything were depending on it.

“What do you want in return for your services?” He cocked his head with suspicion-filled eyes.

“For you to let the boy be for the next decade and to leave us alone.”

Vanessa looked tense and shifted her gaze from Marith to Samuel and vice versa, as if she was watching a professional tennis match.

“If you give me life. I can give you time,” Samuel answered.

She couldn’t catch one shred of truth in his words, but she nodded anyway and led him into the carcass of Nick’s church. They walked through the crunching, but modest layer of snow on top of the plateau, while thick, fluffy flakes of snow whirled around them.

There was no ideal outcome here, but they had to try to save the child, whatever came their way.

Marith learned that hopelessness encouraged a strength she didn’t know she had. It was as if a fresh whiff of oxygen instigating some glowing and smouldering briquettes on a barbeque.

Why escape all the nightmares she’d had if she could embrace them and turn them into fuel and combust them? Her loathing for their enemy was bigger than her lethargy. She found a way to put it into action instead of into passive suffering.

Vanessa sped to the crawling infant and picked him up. He hugged her relieved, but he was still crying and breathing haphazardly, the way small kids usually did when they were living through trauma.

Nick had not been able to put a roof on the church before the meteor party or before the first snowfall, but given the state of the local economy that didn’t surprise Marith at all.

She looked into the Kid’s eyes and saw just that, a kid. An immortal and perpetual child who hadn’t been allowed to grow up. Held back by his duties and plights, never being allowed to enjoy the irresponsible lifestyle that teenagers were famous for. He had never experienced the freedom to behave in a questionable way and suffer the consequences later. Unable to connect with peers or to ever fall in love or make choices about his own future.

Being young, having fun, making important mistakes. Just like most young people nowadays Samuel never had a chance to do any of that and it showed.

Marith knew the relationship he must have had with his parents had been co-dependent and that could drive the victim insane. He must have been enmeshed with his parents beyond the normal boundaries families were supposed to have.

“I am going to need your wrists,” she said.

He bared his underarms by shoving the sleeves of his thin, torched and shredded jacket upwards.

She touched him and noticed what that did to him. The Kid had been wearing a mask that had been mostly deceiving himself. His eyes brightened and his face was briefly filled with hope and anticipation.

Was this the first time he physically and mentally connected with another human being since he had returned from the Empty?

She almost felt sorry for him, but quickly pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. She didn’t allow herself to forget who she was dealing with here. What he had done. What he was capable of.

When they connected Marith was reminded of enough pain and suffering to last several lifetimes and her pity melted like snow introduced to the first sunshine of spring.

Marith’s skin crawled at the touch, but soon pin pricks ran over her startled, pale body and she felt connected to everything. Nature manifested itself all around them, as if it was a responsive, living creature. The Web flowed like a surging river. The Well was ever present, wanting to witness what Marith was about to do, which was to bring life to an ancient, undead creature, that had no business being in this world.

Marith could feel the Web squelch and tremble at her fingertips as she took the Kid to a new world. Her world.

He was so powerful his existence had created the need for their existence. Chains, all over the world, protecting and serving the Web. Couldn’t he have used that power just not… being evil?

What would even happen if he had been good? Would he implode or maybe explode? Would the Web collapse? Would the Well have to reboot the program it was running? Would that cause the entire tree of the Multiverse to burn down?

She was genuinely curious, before she started to become genuinely mad again. One thing was for sure, they would all be dead at that point. Despite her lifelong struggles she was not apathetic. She wanted to survive. Every grain in her body screamed to succeed and fulfil her purpose.

The surging wind played with their hair, yanked at their clothes and yelled in their ears. The heavens had packed with fresh clouds and snow had started to fall again a short while ago.

Their physical bodies were still standing in the church, but their souls had left this dimension.

Brad had been waiting outside, leaning against his truck, his eyes closed, his mind focused, to escape the elated quibbling of the others. As soon as Marith took the Kid to the Inbetween he felt Marith’s soul leave their world.

Vanessa didn’t witness the glowing fishbowls around their heads floating away, because she was busy setting Etienne’s clockwork. An unreasonably elaborate task.

“Do you know why I love classical music so much?” Marith asked as they opened their eyes next to one of the many fountains that adorned the gardens Nate had built with his mind, redirecting years of agony.

“Enlighten me,” Samuel invited in a scoffing tone of voice.

“When I hear classical music I hear civilization, I hear discipline, I hear the music that accompanies an era of great enlightenment and scientific exploration, I hear freedom... to create, but most of all I hear the freedom that you hunt for, that you want to take.”

“So many assumptions,” Samuel spoke, trying very hard to not be impressed by the world around them.

They strolled through the gardens to the openings in the arcade. Marith noticed how he kept glancing quickly into the brand new world around him. He attempted to hide his amazement and was doing a bad job at it, she realized with a smirk.

She could take him to the Horsetail Falls or any other high place or object to jump off together, but just like Vanessa the Kid - the undead dead person currently lacking a pulse - required a heartbeat, which is why they were there.

“Creation is willpower put into action. You rob people of that willpower and then feed on their misery,” Marith stated.

“You’re miserable and you’ve created this.”

“So it’s not true?” Marith tried to confirm, ignoring his previous stab at her mental issues.

“To the contrary,” Samuel said, strolling alongside her. “I take the part of humanity that is already there - apathy, laziness, greed, hatred, you name it - and I feed it, so that I can exist. I feed on the chaos, the decay, the descent into madness, but it’s not like humans didn’t possess those traits to begin with. I am not foisting myself upon them. I just give little nudges. It is in my nature. It is not like I am doing it on purpose… I want to live too, you know.”

“I know,” Marith said as monotone as she could. She presumed that everything that had preceded his last statement were blatant lies, but there was no point in an argument.

Despite all his power he even lacked the willpower to do better, to become a better person, and Marith judged him for that.

They continued towards the stronghold in a silence that they dragged along with them like a cannonball through gravel. The calculating part of her brain realized the Kid was an important force of nature, the emotional and compassionate side of her just wanted to eradicate him.

Marith had been cherishing fantasies in which his head exploded, his tongue would be cut out of his mouth or other great physical harm would permanently impair him, but realistically speaking that would never happen. They had to find a way to life with him existing in the Web.

William had stayed behind, far behind. That way the Kid wouldn’t notice his pumping heart, the hammering in his chest, his soaring blood, or his panicked breathing. His lungs were painfully constricting at the cold and the thought of what he was going to do. He tried not to think about it.

Marith had reached out to him briefly, before she had locked her fingers into the Kid’s pale, dead wrists to ensure that their plan was still being executed.

William sat hunched in the bushes, in between the plateau and the place where the trees ended, where Brad had parked his truck. He wasn’t doing too well, Marith had sensed, but she knew he wouldn’t disappoint them. All he had to do, was continue running, after he would get the signal, and not stop, not for anything.

Vanessa had set his clockwork as well, the way she’d done for most Pupils at certain moments in the past.

As soon as Marith and Samuel left the playing field Brad sprinted to the bushes where he had noticed William, and tapped him on the shoulder as if they were in a relay race.

Will hadn’t heard the Mage coming and turned around in horror, his face as white as the snow that reflected the moonlight.

“Now!” Brad hissed.

Will nodded, but didn’t move.

“William, you need to go now… and don’t stop. Whatever happens, do not stop!”

Will nodded again, panting, his lips trembling, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets. He was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Brad could see it.

“It can’t go wrong… if you just keep on going. You’re a tank. Marith and Vanessa have it under control. Go!” He slapped him encouragingly on the shoulder.

“I WILL see you in the clinic, after this is over,” Brad affirmed, to make him feel slightly more secure.

He was still holding Will’s shoulder and gave him the tiniest of all pushes to get him going.

Eventually William went, in his own clumsy, troubled way, but he was off to the races.

“You do know this place right? There is an actual plan behind what you’re doing?” Samuel asked condescending, while they entered the cool arcade.

“You’ve literally had ten millennia to learn some manners, you know, some basic social skills and this is what you’ve involved into,” Marith muttered darkly under her breath, while her eyes raced down the arcade.

“Manners don’t really matter to me. They’re boring and highly overrated,” Samuel answered, nonchalantly. “What I did learn in all my millennia is that knowing what questions to ask in each timeframe makes existing in this world slightly more bearable. Would you like to know what conundrum has never ceased to marvel me?”

“Enlighten me,” she dared him, while noticing a distinct lack of energy pushing them in any direction. No winds were pulling anyone towards any doors.

“Okay, here goes. Ready?”

Marith didn’t answer and put all her energy into not rolling her eyes.

“Were we designed with the Universe in mind or was the Universe designed with us in mind?” Samuel asked her cryptically.

“What is this about?”

“I have had ten thousand years to overthink this. I want your point of view. Did the Well create us first and shape the Universe so that we could exist in it or did we come into existence by fluke, by coincidence, because our surroundings accidentally allowed us to be here?”

Marith was quiet for a few cautious moments, while they strolled by several of the humongous oil-paintings - that Samuel ignored as well – when she realized that what he asked boiled down to another, much simpler, question. Is the reality humans perceive a result of communal brainpower, or do humans owe their minds to something bigger, that was created before humanity?

She figured that humans as a species could not give birth to the Multiverse, so there must be something greater than them.

The Mage swallowed. “The Well must have created us,” she answered, her mind still mulling over the enigma.

“But did the Well exist, before we did? Or was the Well shaped by us and not the other way around? Did we think the Well into existence and by doing so create ourselves, including good and evil?”

“I would like to think humans were pure, before you came along,” Marith shared, with growing doubt behind her statement.

“You’re running from reality, Marisshj, but judging by this world you have already realized that,” Samuel stated, looking over his shoulder, with his right hand on the brass knob.

“If what you claim is true we also think the future into existence,” Marith rebutted, with a frown.

“We do,” Samuel said, with a flick of his eyebrows, before resolutely opening the door and entering. “Please understand, Marisshj, the only power I have is the power that you give me.”

Marith didn’t fail to notice that at no point Samuel had considered taking the doors in the back of the hallway. He had known which door would send him back to where they had come from. He had been aware of the door that the Mage had fantasized into existence, before they had entered the arcade.

After he had disappeared she ran up the stairs, leading up to the first tower, for the second time that day. She stumbled over the crude, hulking castle wall towards the next tower again, while Samuel’s words turned into an echo, slowly fading away.

Keymaker’s bulky son came bolting over the harsh, frozen rock like a bullet.

If they would have been in a cartoon the whole cliff would have been shaking and trembling, but they weren’t and since time in Nate’s gardens didn’t tick like time on Earth they were in fact starting to run out of it.

William was hard to get into gear, but once he was going he was even harder to stop. People would know better than to leap in front of him.

Vanessa briefly wondered why he had never joined the high school football team, then she remembered his asthma. She focused on Marith and the Kid again, curious when they would return to this world and whether she would be able to notice when they came back.

His heavy footsteps grew louder and sounded flat and uncoordinated. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t look at Marith or their enemy in the skeleton of the church. He didn’t look at anything, except Etienne.

Vanessa waited until the last moment, before she lifted the dome over herself and the child.

She was holding Etienne and practically tossed him over to Will, so he wouldn’t have to slow down. She had explained everything to Etienne. He knew that he would go home, to a safe place, a place where he belonged. He had stopped crying and let himself be plucked from the air by Will, when he thundered by.

Only a few more steps and he disappeared over the edge. Right before the fall he turned around, in what looked like a surprisingly elegant pirouette, so Etienne would be on top in their embrace and so they could both look at the stars, while plummeting downwards.

Vanessa admired that decision and the execution. It was better for both of them that way. She immediately spurted to the edge to see if the Mailbox would open.

At the ridge she let herself fall on her hands and knees and peered into the darkness, while heavy, white snowflakes fluttered onto the rock plateau around her. She didn’t hear or see William or Etienne. All she heard was the screeching wind and all she saw was the kind of blackness that gave her shivers.

She peered over her right shoulder. Marith and Samuel were still standing in the church, with their eyes closed, Marith’s fingertips pinching Samuels underarms. They slowly swayed on their feet, but they kept their balance.

Two flashes of light formed in thin air, no more than ten metres above them, and rapidly travelled downward, like falling stars. Before Vanessa could get back on her feet she noticed a blueish twinkling in the corner of her left eye. She gazed abruptly back into the abyss. A purple and blue, glittering slot opened and closed far beneath her. It was as if Oracle and Watchmaker had waited until the last moment to open the door, as if they wanted to be certain Samuel hadn’t jumped with them.

Vanessa never saw Will or Etienne travel through it, but she knew they had. She felt it in a way she figured the rest must have felt it as well. William was the missing link that would finish their Chain. His Rebirth travelled through the wiring of their brain like fireworks. Goosebumps ran over their arms and music played with their eardrums. Their symphony was about to be completed.

“Whooh!” Samuel exclaimed, like a reborn man. He looked around to confirm to himself they were actually back on Earth.

Marith put her hand on his chest. Through his thin, torn t-shirt she felt his lean muscles, his cold sweat, his slightly heaving lungs, and, most importantly, a strong heart that was reassuringly beating with slow, steady intervals. She had done well.

“You need to have more faith in yourself,” Samuel said.

He gently took her hand and enveloped it in his. Marith cautiously glanced at him with a skewed look. He seemed almost charming.

Could Pure Evil have redeeming qualities? The answer was a firm ‘no’.

The Kid did not possess any admirable traits, except maybe for the physical strengths he had been born with, but Marith was yet to fully grasp this. She thought she understood him now and yet she didn’t.

“Why did you do it?” He asked her.

“The Web is love. For me the opposite of love will always be pain. If there is no love there is ultimately only suffering.”

“You’ve got an overly developed sense of imagination.”

“At least I have one.”

“Ouch,” he grinned and then briefly hesitated. “You would be a great asset when I take over.”

“No, thanks. Your darkness sounds really alluring and all, but I think I’ll pass.”

“We’ll talk later,” he replied, while he let her hand slip out of his tender clutch.

Marith wandered away from their spot in the carcass of the house of prayer as nonchalantly as possible.

“Well, well, well. If it isn't the Holy Crusader Alliance,” Samuel commented, looking at the Pupils behind Marith.

The others hadn’t been able to contain themselves. They all wanted to see how things went down with their own eyes. They wanted to see him, alone and humiliated.

The Kid looked around the group, taking in their faces. He had roughly known who belonged to the Chain and in what capacity, but he hadn’t met all of them in person yet.

There were significantly more men than women on their bloated Chain. How convenient for those cunts, he thought envious.

They were also all in the ages of 16 to 32, except the extra one, of course. His eyes sped over the group, searching for the young Mage this whole day had been about.

“Where is he?!” Samuel demanded.

It took him a moment to realize what had happened. That fat ginger wasn’t there and neither was the child.

That moment it would have been less scary if Samuel would have let out an Earth-shattering scream. Marith froze and she assumed the Pupils behind her did the same.

His muscles turned as cold and hard as marble, his eyes drilled holes in her cranium. She could make an educated guess about the scope of his thoughts.

The look on his face killed a part of her. A part that would remain in her body forever, to remind her of what they had done, how they had betrayed him. It would twist and turn and hurt regularly to let her know he hadn’t forgotten about her. That instant she knew she would never, ever be save anywhere ever again.

When his wrath would finally come it would hit her like a lorry truck blustering down a mountain with no driver or brakes.

A silence settled over the plateau, so thick it was almost as tangible as the snow falling around them.

Cold shivers ran from her face to her neck and down her body. She knew her relationship with Samuel would never be right ever again. It had been tainted from the get go, but now it was broken for all eternity. Any progress they had just made was now null and void.

He would make them pay, and thanks to Marith, he now had all the time and energy in the world to come up with a suitable revenge strategy.

“Where did he go?!” Samuel demanded again.

“He ascended to a higher plane of existence,” Vanessa mocked.

His eyes hardened into small, black diamonds, with an evil twinkle. “You will regret thisss.” Samuel staggered towards Marith trying to clutch her neck.

At that moment Marith didn’t find it very difficult anymore to believe the story about the need for their creation.

Vanessa had cast one of her diaphanous domes the moment they had returned to Earth. The Kid just hadn’t realized that, until he tried to grab Marith.

Samuel hit his head pretty hard against the confinement. A dull thud travelled across the plateau, while he recovered.

Marith just stood there with her hands in her pockets, in between the First Runner and the Chain, with a pitiful look on her face, which seemed to enrage him further.

She could hear soft chuckles behind her. Marith wished they would just be quiet. It became clear to her the other Pupils hadn’t felt what she had felt mere moments before. That message, that deep, dark, ominous feeling, had been just for her.

He pushed his fingers against the invisible cage around him. They could see his skin touch the material as if he was pushing against a glass window.

“I was there when you were born. I promise you I will be there when you die,” he almost whispered.

Marith looked up from the snowy hunk of rock they were standing on and stared back into his cold, empty eyes. “We shall see,” she whispered back. She knew he could hear. She wasn’t sure the rest could. The information that passed between them wasn’t meant for the others to know.

When Marith looked into the Kid’s eyes for the last time that evening she wasn’t shocked to see her mother, the perpetual martyr. She witnessed this ugly, vengeful side that boiled over if a narcissist felt ever so slightly wronged.

She turned her back on him and the feigned victimhood in his eyes.

“You don’t even know me!” He slapped with his flat hands and his long, skinny fingers against the transparent dome.

“Maaarishj! Maaarishj! Why?”

Marith joined the others, as they walked back to the cars. Her head hung low, the gut-wrenching feeling that he had foisted upon her ate away at her insides.

During such epic shifts in the Web Mages could often feel their place in the grander scheme of things. Their presence on the time table of existence. Their distance from being conceived and their distance to disappearing again.

“How long can you hold that dome?” Juliette informed, pulling Marith away from her contemplations.

“I don’t think I can hold it at a large distance. At least, I’ve never practiced anything like this,” Vanessa admitted. “I guess he’ll be free when we’re out of range.”

“You think he will come after us?” Amber asked, hesitant.

“For sure, but all Watchmakers and Oracles are safe now and we know who the Kid is. This is what progress looks like in our world,” Vanessa said.

“I guess,” Amber sighed.

“Will he be able to stay in this dimension now?” Theresa wondered.

“This heartbeat will slow the process of his physical decay down, but I think the Web will spit him out eventually,” Marith answered with a tired, monotonous voice. She felt her energy seeping away. That day had taken a toll on her.

“We have no way of knowing any of this, so it could be an astronomically long time, before that happens,” Pedro commented.

“At least he will keep the same body then,” Brad brought in. “You told me he would find another host if this body wouldn’t suffice any longer?”

“True,” was all Vanessa brought out. She was either lost in thought or as drained as Marith was.

“Well then we can keep an eye on this one,” Brad concluded, without any certainty in his voice.