46

Jonathan took off like a gazelle that knew it was being eyed by a hungry lion.

There was no countdown, no starting gun, nobody screaming “Go!” from the top of their lungs, no cheering audience, no direct cause for the lift off, just a feeling, a spark of intuition that the right moment had come.

Marith’s stomach turned. Her body was pushed against Jonathan’s. She felt like they were an arrow being shot from a bow. They left the castle behind in the blink of an eye.

Jonathan’s feet barely touched the road that Marith was sculpting for them. They were flying over a path of springy forest floor. The original Posbank mostly had trails of sand, but Marith had realized just in time that sand would make Jonathan’s sprint unnecessarily laborious.

The Mage hovered in the air. She barely felt Jonathan’s legs working. The only thing she noticed was his torso swaying softly with each movement and his abs flexing with each leap.

She gazed ahead, along their route, and squinted her eyes, to protect them from the rays of sunshine peeking through the slowly diminishing mists here and there. It was chilly outside, but the warmth that Jonathan’s body was generating kept Marith comfortable.

She listened to his breathing, a soft panting, and his footsteps, regular thumps below her. Echoes of the moment of creation ran with them through the white shards hovering over the moorland.

She closed her eyes and let herself be guided by her third eye, her sixth sense. The Inbetween was her world and she could navigate through it without having to use any of her first five senses. The Mage could simply feel her way towards any Mailbox.

The rhythmic pounds of the music guided Jonathan over the Posbank. Marith let the Scandinavian battle drums swell into something so powerful she knew the Pupils on Earth would be able to sense it as well.

While Jonathan ran Marith back through time another version of them moved through all the movements they had just gone through, until Nate and Lieke would blink out of the gardens and the Inbetween would be an empty and desolate place again.

On Earth William had resumed his attempts at kick-starting Marith’s heart. Marith drew from that, using Will’s energy, and by doing so she was still anchored in her reality of origins.

Marith put her hand on Jonathan’s chest while he ran. Anytime William’s blue lights flashed through Marith she saw Jonathan’s electrical being, his soul, his core, light up as well.

She pulled a Flow from the Web, a stream of energy to accompany them on their quest. She kept his heartbeat steady and strong, she kept the music going and she created a path for them, faster than she had ever created anything before in the Inbetween.

She did it out of love. She was the Universe and any act of love was an act of self-love, strength and progression.

Under the all-seeing eye of Anica Watchmaker senior and Watchmaker junior feverishly worked to save the fabric of reality, by maintaining Time’s Arrow and allowing for entropy to decrease.

Anica stood by as Etienne handed Watchmaker the exact tools and instruments he needed. Most words went unspoken, their collaboration simply didn’t require much. Their silent communication and co-operation was fascinating to watch for the young Oracle.

She had come up with a solution to Marith’s unplanned exit from the Chain, but that solution involved some toil on the part of the Watchmakers.

She knew Marith’s death hadn’t been abrupt or unexpected to Sybil and she wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that she had been slighted by her predecessor.

Anica looked down on the old man, standing in the opened floorplan and the young boy sitting on his knees on the edge of the opening. She took a deep breath. Deep down inside she knew she had no right to have certain feelings about not having been informed about this specific twist in Marith’s journey.

The course the fabric of reality was taking had made sense to Sybil when it had come to her and it would all make sense to her soon. She knew that for certain. It was her birth-right to become as powerful as all the Oracle’s before her and this baptism of fire into her new role would strengthen her position.

Watchmaker joined Etienne on the edge of the smooth white flooring. An ocean of orbs, arms, wheels and trundles stretched out before him. Sweat was beading on his forehead. He had already taken off his tweed jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

Etienne handed Watchmaker some special lenses in an old, but ingenious framework. He held them in front of his face and leaned back to inspect their work. The lenses switched and turned in their settings. Watchmaker nodded to himself and handed the antiquity back to Etienne, who imitated him immediately.

The Clock in the Sky was one of the finest creations of men. It was the pinnacle of human invention and now Watchmaker and Etienne were working up a sweat to get it to do what it was made to do all along.

All three of them knew that the horological wonder was capable of doing what they were asking of it. The machinery was just out of practice.

“Okay, little buddy. What do you think? One more?” Watchmaker asked with a sigh.

“One more,” Etienne confirmed, nodding.

He handed Watchmaker the instrument that they had both thought off, when looking through the glasses. Watchmaker hopped back into the opening for the final stretch.

The Watchmakers were, apart from the very best craftsmen amongst their peers, also excellent toolmakers.

Anica wondered if Sybil had known the names of and the use for all these tools and instruments and whether or not she should learn them too.

When the old man stretched out his hand again Etienne lifted up the biggest hammer they had and brought it to him with some difficulty.

Watchmaker gave one of the elements in the gearwork of the grand orrery a few brusque, but precise knocks and then came back up. He made way for the Clock in the Sky to work its magic.

Etienne crawled closer towards the edge to see with his own eyes.

Wheels and trundles in the complex machinery started clicking, switching and turning before their eyes. Colourful clouds of dust and glittering little lights emanated from the massive clockwork before their eyes.

“Nice,” Etienne mumbled under his breath.

Anica and Watchmaker looked at each other and smiled tense little smiles.

Jonathan’s feet hit the ground the way an Olympic runner’s could never. They accelerated with each step. The skin on their faces rippled under the resistance of the air. Marith’s hair had winded itself into a tangle of knots.

Jonathan’s short toga slapped against his thighs. Marith’s long toga had twisted itself around her waist and legs in an impossible way. Luckily her role in saving her own life didn’t involve running.

The grass, the sand and the heath twisted and warped around them, allowing them to run into the past. The quick sunrise and their phenomenal speed turned the Posbank into a riot of colours.

Marith opened her eyes, saw the horizon coming towards them and knew they weren’t ready yet. No human being would ever reach Jonathan’s speed, not on Earth and not in the Inbetween, and yet they weren’t ready.

A tunnel, she thought, that could speed them up and buy them time, to help Jonathan. With a cliff at the end, but there wouldn’t be land or water underneath the cliff. Just emptiness and stars, infinity and beyond. Endless options, a massive pool of super-positions. The rest was up to the Well.

Marith closed her eyes again and imagined and created an elongated tunnel towards the abyss. Her mind stretched the tube out.

Jonathan grunted. He realised what she was doing and forced himself to accelerate enough to be able to make the Jump worth their while.

The Runner knew that his body wouldn’t go where his mind wouldn’t push him. He had learned that much during his brief time playing college football.

He didn’t hesitate, he didn’t trip, he didn’t falter. His mind didn’t allow his body to make mistakes. All that mattered was how far he was mentally able to stretch the limits of his human vessel.

Marith had created a straight and even path between the sloping hills and at the end… a deadfall. What else was there to imagine to mimic a Jump that would allow them through a, hopefully functioning, Mailbox?

By the time the horizon had shaped itself into a cliff the Scandinavian drums had morphed into Dutch hardstyle. The waves invaded their minds and that of the Pupils on Earth as well.

Jonathan suddenly accelerated beyond Marith’s expectations, as if the Universe had upgraded him with a jet engine and a set of wheels with the best suspension money could buy.

As the sharp end of the horizon came into view again a past version of Marith send Lieke and her unborn child back to Earth.

Their physical bodies had disappeared by the end of the tunnel. They were mere electrical pulses, only energy. Marith connected to the higher consciousness of the Well and let go of all possible outcomes. It simply wasn’t up to them anymore.

She could feel the tentacles of Earth reaching out to her, through the Mailbox the Watchmakers were creating. The energetic field of Marith’s consciousness and the nervous system of the body she had left behind longed to be reunited.

She could feel each surge of electricity that escaped William’s tired hands. She could almost feel the tears of the Chain and, if she wasn’t mistaken, she could hear the sounds of their helpless screams, encouraging William to go on. Their emotions washed over her.

The Mailbox was opening!

She told Jonathan. He let her know that it was not a moment too soon.

His muscles were starting to suffer from acidification and it was getting harder and harder to keep his breathing under control, despite Marith assisting his heart in the supernatural test his body was fighting through.

They ran into the light until they didn’t any longer. Jonathan jumped over the edge of forever with Marith in his arms. His feet searched for solid ground, but instead they cycled through the air.

The rays of sunshine suddenly made place for what seemed like a starry night. Marith and Jonathan plummeted into an endless void filled with twinkling lights. They didn’t have to protect their eyes from the light anymore, because the only light came from the tiny glistening specks of dust that flickered all around them as they kept falling into nothingness.

Instead of letting go the Mage and the Prophet clung onto each other with more ferity.

On Earth each and every clockwork stopped ticking and the snowflakes refrained from fluttering down. For a few undecided moments the hands of the watches and the snowflakes in the sky stood still, hovering in limbo.

Then, with the efforts of the Watchmakers, Jonathan and Marith, the snowflakes started to make their way up and the hands of the timepieces moved backwards, as if they were struggling their way through molasses.

An overwhelming sense of tranquillity washed over Marith. The Mage realized they were all one. She was one with the Chain, one with Anica, one with the Watchmakers and she was one with the Kid. There was a beautiful necessity to them all. They were all pieces of a ginormous supernatural puzzle that was waiting to be solved.

A blueish slit opened up below Marith and Jonathan. Glittering dust escaped the illuminated opening.

Let’s gooo! Marith screamed right before they flashed through.

Their physical bodies, in so far they could have still been considered physical in the first place, lost their substance and fell apart into the elementary particles that their souls were made of.

Marith felt like an exploding bag filled with diamonds.

Jonathan felt like he was about to wake up in his college dorm room, only to find out he had been drugged at the party after the last game they had won. If the previous months had been one massive trip it would be a lot easier to grapple with.

Jonathan secretly hoped he was on drugs, because that would make more sense than to be hurtling through some cosmic, interdimensional portal, engineered by an old guy in a tweed suit and a 8 year old child with some sort of disorder.

But deep down he knew it was all real. His parents having been admitted to the clinic, him getting a Rebirth, performed by not one, but two Oracles, his grandmother dying and now this.

He realized that flying through nothingness with Marith in his arms, in an attempt to save her, was exactly where he needed to be. He wouldn’t trade this life for being in college and playing football anymore.

A tuning fork struck. A peculiar and familiar ringing in their ears followed. The collapsing waves travelled through their scrambled minds.

Marith steered them in the direction of the sound, as much as she could. Jonathan left it up to Marith to determine their course. He had done his part.

Soon their thoughts became thick and syrupy.

Despite their mind-boggling speed, they were floundering and fluttering in between worlds, in between realities and states of being.

What were they at the moment? They didn’t have bodies, their memories were severely lacking and their minds were looking like the first in a stack of pancakes, a mess of semi-baked batter.

Then another colourful tunnel. What was left of Marith’s brain vaguely remembered this order of events from previous Jumps (and throws). She just didn’t remember it being so violent, so very violent.

Their core particles were holding onto each other for dear life, being slapped from one side of the tunnel to the other, while travelling at a tremendous speed to wherever they were going. Their destination was hard to remember at the moment, even though it felt sort of important to keep it in mind.

The walls of the tunnel were beguiling and beautiful, an unimaginably violent explosion of lights and colours. The experience was disturbing, yet fascinating, as if they were watching the origin of life and the beginning of time.

Marith peacefully floated over a large body of water. She liked what she was and she liked what she was doing, which was nice for a change.

She looked around and saw Jonathan, his wings stretched out under the sunlight, trying to catch a thermic bubble. Such a nice guy, she thought. She was having a nice flight with a nice guy… and the weather was nice too. Not a cloud to be found against the blue sky.

Thick blankets of greenery spread away from the lakes over the mountains as far as their eagle eyes could see, like the mountains had been carpeted. It all looked quite familiar to Marith.

The air smelled of damp wood and decomposing leafs and pine cones.

Soft, comforting sounds from the ground reached them. They sounded like white noise. Children playing on the tree trunks, birds chirping and dogs barking, demanding that balls be thrown.

Treetops, so many treetops. They were oddly soothing, but who needed them?

She did! To stay calm, to work on her mood-swings, to heal herself.

Their heavenly flight appeared to be accompanied by a background tune that was swelling with every circle they made. Marith looked over her right wing, to see if Jonathan was hearing this as well.

He was!

‘In the hall of the mountain king’ from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite flowed over into ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ by Richard Wagner. After a few more minutes being lifted higher and higher in the sky by their wings and the laws of nature the classical music made place for ‘Fortunate son’ by John Fogerty and 'Paint it, Black’ by the Rolling stones and then some music that Marith was pretty sure was written and sang by Kanye West was alternated by some rap music that made Marith wish she was back in that colourful tunnel.

She quickly realized that those song suggestions had likely originated in Jonathan’s mind, so she patiently awaited Beethoven’s ‘symphony number 5’.

A core memory accompanied each piece of music. Snapshots of where they had been before flashed through their minds.

Marith saw birds, lakes, friends, old people, homeless people, a pale creep and an extraordinary pretty girl. Lieke! That was Lieke, her sister. How could she forget?

She was alive! She remembered now. Her sister’s life was all that counted. She had saved her… together with an unusually handsome guy. His blue eyes and his brown curls stirred feelings of familiarity, trust and warmth. He looked like sunrise and he felt like spring.

A band tightened around her heart. How would she find her way back to him if she couldn’t remember his name?

She needed his love to live. Without it she had no purpose. He gave her that love and that purpose.

She focused on how he made her feel instead.

An abrupt tug yanked them away from the green tree-tornado back to the unfortunate, fated and electric journey they were making.

The surfeit of colours and flashes kept going all around Jonathan and Marith until the glitter returned.

Soon they were both falling through some sort of gearwork. They slipped through the openings in the wheels and trundles without being hit.

It was as if the machinery was literally revolving around them! So ingenious, so inventive.

Who could engineer such a wonder? they thought to themselves.

It was as if they were falling through one of their watches, but in actuality the other end of the Mailbox that Etienne and Watchmaker had opened came in sight.

Dazzling, blinding lights attacked their essence until they didn’t anymore.

As if a hatch was opened just for them they plummeted through the final stage of their flight down, into nothingness.

Every secret of the Universe - the stuff scientists know they don’t know and the stuff they don’t know they don’t know - flashed by the two Pupils in a fraction of a fraction of an Earthly moment… and then they were back. Forced into their human vessels, their earthly bodies, like a rocket hitting an asteroid.

In the same way that anti-matter prefers to decay into matter, the parts of Jonathan and Marith that were left wanted to be reunited with their physical bodies, even though the experience was not something to have happy memories about.

As if entering a black hole all the information about the secrets of the Universe fell apart and disappeared, never to be unravelled again, at least not by Jonathan or Marith.

Cold snowflakes fell down on their faces. The sounds of gasps and cries reached their eardrums. Their souls were reunited with the three pounds of electric pudding in their skulls.

Jonathan fell backwards when they returned, breaking free from the pinch of Nate’s fingers in his wrist.

While blue light broke free from Marith’s skin she also just arrived in the Inbetween to find Nate and Lieke by the water fountain.

All eighteen Pupils and the two humans presents were instantly illuminated by the glowing Mage.

Will had just removed his hands from her chest and looked at her with growing surprise. The light didn’t seem to leave Marith’s body, as it had before.

Her lungs were fried… and so was her brain.

Marith felt like a new-born baby with all those eyes looking down on her.

Nate took her head in his hands and held it, until she would be ready to sit up.

Marith looked up at the face of the handsome one she had seen on her way here.

“Nate,” she remembered now. His name was Nate.

They kissed. It was a careful, but sloppy kiss.

“Boy, that was a ride,” Jonathan moaned, perking himself up and rubbing his face with dirty hands.

About half the Chain piled themselves on top of Jonathan. Some were hugging him back into the world, others were helping him to get up. When they were done Jonathan was standing on shaky legs, so the other half of the Chain could embrace him.

Everyone was covered in slime, snot and mucus. The stink seemed to have become a part of them and nobody noticed anymore.

All eighteen Pupils were sobbing, hugging and slapping shoulders, elated by the fact that they had somehow pulled it off.

Charlotte and Lieke did realize that Marith and Jonathan returning was good news and to some degree they felt it as well, but they stood by rather passively as the Pupils celebrated. Pedro kept a close eye on them. What he had done to the girls earlier wasn’t something he practiced regularly. The effects were supposed to wear off after a while.

Jonathan made his way to Marith and held her, after Nate was done holding her, but before Lieke felt obligated to.

“Thank you,” Marith whispered.

“That’s what family is for,” Jonathan answered, to which Marith hugged him even harder.

“Guys?!” Anton asked for their attention, after everyone’s initial relief had been displayed extensively.

Vanessa and himself seemed to be surrounded by fast moving galaxies, filled with colourful clouds, blinding stars and glittering specks. Anton spread his arms and looked like a phoenix, arising from its ashes.

The Web’s magic then jumped to James, Alexander, Meriyem, Theresa and Brad and Kyle and Amber. The swirl seemed to follow the order in which the Pupil’s had been Rebirthed, after having been pushed towards the Mailbox of their respective Hotspot on Earth.

Finally the nebula’s swirled through and around Marith’s chest, to her head and her hands and feet. The swirl ended with William, the last Pupil to have been Rebirthed. It had only skipped Lieke and Charlotte.

Some of the Pupils reached inside their dirty clothes to grab their clockworks. Once flipped open the faces of the horological mysteries emitted the exact twisting and turning dust-clouds filled with colours and tiny shining stars that had just solidified the bond of the Chain, the exact dust-clouds they had broadcast before Samuel had awakened from his eternal slumber.

“We’re back in business,” Joshua shared cheerfully.

With the help of Jonathan and Nate Marith had managed to sit up. Her eyes darted from Samuel’s body and his severed heart to the frozen monsters.

The air rippled, like the heat-warped space above the road on a hot summer day. She could see it, despite the darkness. Thin illuminated strings, as delicate as angel hair, floated through the air, leaving tiny clouds of dusty glitter behind. The Web shone bright with Oracle’s eternal beauty.

The blue glow inside Marith intensified for a few moments. She took a deep breath in, to let the tension in her chest out with a sigh. The entire tree of the Multiverse resonated briefly within the Mage. It was a deep, but comforting echo.

A resounding statement travelled to each and every world dangling from the branches of the tree, like a wave: a new Gatekeeper had arisen.

Anica understood now that this was what completed the Mage’s transformation of becoming Gatekeeper. The Jump from the Inbetween back to Earth had finalized her second Rebirth. This pursuit of a second chance at life had solidified both their new positions.

“Incredible,” Marith whispered with big eyes.

“Does this mean that we did it?” Charlotte wondered.

“We did it, baby!” Kyle answered enthusiastically. “Although, not entirely…” he added somewhat hesitantly.

“Why are they still here?” Jonathan wondered, gesturing vaguely at the blobs, frozen in the shadows of the night.

“Probably because the nymphs are still here,” Meriyem figured.

“Why didn’t they die with the Kid like the last time?” Juliette wondered.

“That’s what we got from the diaries,” Pedro started, “but maybe it’s different now. Maybe they are still being kept alive by the magic they spread around town. And by magic I mean darkness, of course,” he clarified quickly when he saw their faces.

“Maybe we should accept that past results are no guarantee for the future when it comes to Samuel,” An shared, spinning Jonathan’s axe around, before handing it to him.

“He didn’t have computers either. The last time,” Marith sighed.

“We need to deal with them,” Meriyem stated resolutely.

“Do we really have to fight the nymphs today?” Nate asked, worried about Marith.

“Yeah, I am kinda at my maximum levels for excitement,” Lisa muttered.

“I passed those levels before breakfast,” Kyle said.

“The blubbers will always follow us if we don’t,” Jonathan said with a sigh, looking down on his axe. His sweatpants was sticking to his legs, but his knife was still neatly tucked in his waistband.

“Not much of a threat now, are they?” Pedro wondered, looking over his shoulder at the frozen women.

“An’s ice won’t hold forever,” James shared. “They will come.”

“I feel like we can totally outrun them,” Juliette joked.

“As much as I want to take a nap I do agree with James,” Amber said. “We need to finish this now, otherwise the problem will haunt us forever.”

“Okay,” Kyle moaned. “Let’s toss the corpse on the flatbed and move.”

“Stay here, okay? I’ll get the car,” Nate told Marith.

Nate jogged to his car, so Marith wouldn’t have to walk all the way back to the line of vehicles.

While Lieke stood beside her, gazing around lazily and mostly emotionless, Marith let her eyes wander through the darkness. The night was silent, too silent, now that the women couldn’t cry out in agony anymore.

No signs of life, apart from the people around her, reached her senses. The forest animals were probably as repulsed by the stink of the monsters as the Pupils had been.

When Kyle, Brad, Lisa and Nate started their cars the headlights illuminated their oblong, but hunched shapes. To Marith the women could resemble creatures from Jheronimus Bosch paintings, if it wasn’t for the fact that the painter’s depictions of human moral failings were quite sweet and innocent compared to what the nymphs had created.

Marith averted her eyes when the massive lights on Brad’s truck came swerving towards her. When she registered a dark shape lying on the ground in front of where the second schoolbus had been parked her breath stalled. The memories came flooding back. The last moments before she had lost control were hazy at best, but she did remember now how Samuel had ended Gene’s life.

“Pedro,” Theresa whispered at the Mage.

“She isn’t human anymore. There isn’t much I can do,” Pedro answered softly.

Tears started streaming over Marith’s face as fear and confusion washed over her. She hugged herself and couldn’t help but tremble.

Lieke had followed Marith’s gaze to Gene’s body. She stared at Marith with a blank look on her face.

Theresa almost immediately kneeled down next to Marith and wrapped her arms around her shoulders.

She was still sitting on some of the Runner’s jackets. They were wet and cold and so was Marith.

The Prophet hugged her and whispered “Don’t look at it, Marith, just don’t look at it anymore.”

“I-I can’t,” Marith answered, unable to tear her eyes off her dead father.

“Pedro, can you please just try?” Theresa pushed, slightly rocking back and forth with the Mage in her arms.

Pedro sighed and kneeled down next to the Mage as well and closed his eyes. He put his hands together, as if he was praying. He channelled a Flow and when he had just about enough power between the palms of his hands he spread them and placed them on either side of Marith’s head, focusing on her temples.

Once her crying and trembling descended into the dark and unholy little sphere of oblivion that every Pupil carried in their brain Pedro removed his hands and made some movements around her head that resembled someone practicing reiki.

“It’s working,” Theresa almost hissed.

“How is this possible?” Pedro asked with big eyes, investigating his hands, when he was done.

Theresa breathed in and out in the meaningful way that the Mages and Runners had heard the Prophets do time after time.

“Oracle says: second Rebirth,” Theresa muttered, still kneeling by Marith’s side.

“We need a second Rebirth?” Pedro asked, shocked. “Truth be told, Theresa, I am not sure I am willing to go through that again…” his voice died away, when he saw in her eyes that she was still channelling Anica.

“No,” she shook her head, after the connection had ended, “she said that Marith just got her second Rebirth and that changes things.”

“Like what?”

“I think we are all about to get a lot more powerful,” Theresa told him slowly and with big eyes, as the message of Anica resonated within her.

“What for? I mean, didn’t we just fight the greatest evil of all time?”

“Get in!” Kyle yelled through the opened window of the van.

Charlotte sat next to him, in the passenger’s seat. Amber, sitting in the chair behind Kyle, opened the sliding door, before the van had come to a full stop.

“Go,” Lieke told them. “I can stay with Marith.”

Marith looked up at her little sister, through the rays of blue light escaping her face. She understood now how Lieke kept so calm. She had gone from the Kid’s trance to Pedro’s hypnosis, which was probably for the best, given the circumstances.

She helped Marith up and they headed towards Nate’s SUV, which came just swerving around a group of the frozen creatures, to park behind Brad’s truck.

The Runners had rolled Samuel’s body into a tarp and now tossed it onto the flatbed of Brad’s truck.

The Pupils were tired and sore and covered in slime and other stinking substances. The Runners could have ran a marathon, even after the day they had had, but they didn’t want to, so they sat around Samuel’s body, on the sides of the truck. They were still holding their weapons, making them look like a bunch of guerrilla warriors.

Marith waited in the middle of the road, stunned and unable to feel anything meaningful about any of the things that had happened that day. She stared blankly at Nate’s car, halting about 10 metres away from them.

Marith sensed the two bald eagles were headed for them, as if she were connected to them by a long, invisible wire. Their flight was soundless. They didn’t make themselves known until their landed on two of the broken streetlights and called for attention.

She turned around slowly. To her mild surprise it wasn’t a menacing, awe inspiring sound. Their calling sounded more like the song that a smaller bird would sing.

Their sweet, gentle sounds broke the cold, threatening silence of the night.

Marith noticed how Juliette was standing under one of the streetlights, staring up at them.

“There is a native story from around here,” she started, “which tells that the bald eagle helped the other birds get their distinctive calls when the other raptors were too proud to help… and because of that the eagles were gifted with the ability of song, where the other birds of prey only got squawks.”

When the Runner got no response to her story she turned around and helped Lieke get Marith into Nate’s car.

“Wait,” Marith whispered, so that Juliette and Lieke would let go of her elbows long enough for her to bend over and reach for the soft, red organ at her feet.

The Runners had forgotten one thing when they had hoisted the First Runner’s dead body up onto the flatbed and that was his severed heart.

A modest layer of snow had formed on top of it, yet she recognized it instantly. To the disgust of both Juliette and Lieke Marith picked it up with no hesitation or any sign of revulsion.

As soon as Lisa and Nate joined the small caravan of cars the eagles spread their wings and took off. They flew just a few metres above the ground, so that the headlights would catch their movements.

Brad knew to follow them, with the other three vehicles in his wake. The four cars slalomed between the last groups of frozen monsters, rolling over the slushy roads, back towards Sweet Lake.

Nate looked to his right, at his girlfriend holding the cold, bloody organ in her hands like a delicate flower and swallowed. Marith didn’t seem to be herself in any way, but he didn’t dare to tell her to put it away or throw it out.

The light emanating from the Mage’s glowing skin reached far outside the car. Little kids stood by the side of the road looking at the cars, but mostly at Nate’s truck with the girl emitting blue light inside of it.

Vanessa shuddered, Lisa and Theresa cried quietly. The other Pupils mumbled stuff about helping the children.

These tiny humans were the leftovers of the battle with the Kid. Samuel had taken no interest in them and their parents had likely been killed over the previous weeks.

A little girl with a teddy bear and a night gown stood on the sidewalk, bawling. Other children were just sucking their thumb or waving at the Runners, who sat in the back of Brad’s truck looking like the Taliban.

“They are probably hungry,” Vanessa figured.

“I can’t handle this,” Theresa wept.

“I don’t think they have eaten since their mothers left,” Meriyem said.

“That was this morning,” Amber spoke with a trembling voice, snorting her nose.

Seeing these kids made the Pupils break down after a long and miserable day.

“I sure hope these kids have family outside of the area,” Kyle said, referring to the fact that they were now parentless and there weren’t enough adults left to do the childrearing.

They parked the cars in the front of the Bellevue. Almost every apartment in the building was dark and the parking lot was quiet and deserted. The only light came from the street lights and the headlights of the cars, which were soon turned off.

The eagles landed on the awning of the entrance to the building and looked at the Pupils expectantly.

The Runners jumped out of the flatbed and opened the back to drag Samuel out. They accompanied the Kid’s body like the president’s bodyguards.

One Runner could have easily tossed the body over his shoulder, but instead four of them each took a corner of the tarp to carry the body towards the building. Juliette walked up front and Jonathan closed the ranks, his axe at the ready.

The Prophets and the Mages spilled out of their respective cars as well and joined the Runners.

Nate forced Marith to put the heart inside some Tupperware which they had found in the back of Kyle’s van. He rid it of its mouldy contents and cleaned it out with a handful of snow. With some reluctance Marith parted with the organ.

“So we’re putting the Kid’s body back in the tomb, but the nymphs are also here?” Joshua repeated what had already been explained to him.

“So it seems,” Theresa sighed, looking around nervously like they could be jumped at any moment.

The group moved towards the building, as calm and collected as they could.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s not underestimate these bitches,” Kyle spoke up.

His hoarse and hushed voice cut through the cold, quiet night like an explosion of fireworks.

Vanessa shivered, thinking back to her experience with one of the nymphs at the Pine mansion. That encounter had been less than 10 hours earlier, but it felt like multiple days had passed since she had left the house in a hurry, looking for Marith.

The group walked onto the pavement that led to the entrance of the building. Lieke and Charlotte followed the Pupils, docile and clueless.

“Huh,” Jonathan said, peering through the closed glass sliding doors. “That’s strange.”

“You mean to tell me that there isn’t usually a pile of furniture obstructing the entrance of every retirement home in this country?” Pedro asked.

The entrance was barricaded by the chairs, benches and bookcases the Pupils recognized from the hallways and the communal areas of the Bellevue.

Some lights flickered deep inside the dark building.

“It’s those fucking nymphs!” Meriyem almost shouted.

The Runners mentally prepared themselves to defend the Chain from anything that would arise from the darkness.

“Let me call my dad,” William said shakily, fetching his phone from his pocket with trembling hands.

“Let me,” Lisa said, as she saw him struggling.

She held the phone in front of Will’s bloodless face to unlock it and then called his father.

They all realized that Keymaker had been down in the Corridors for most of the day. He knew and, in a way, guarded all the entrances. This phone call wouldn’t give them all the answers, but it would give them some indication of what was going on.

“It’s ringing,” Juliette said.

“I know,” Lisa whispered back.

“That means he is not underground,” Brad said.

William nodded, not reassured at all.

“No, I mean I can hear it ringing,” Juliette pressed, closing her eyes and walking backwards, away from the entrance, to focus on the sounds that were coming towards her.

Jonathan did the same, while the other Runners still held the tarp, uncomfortably shifting their weight from one leg to the other and peering into their dark surroundings to scan for impending danger.

“Will, can you hear it?” Jonathan wondered.

“No… but I can feel it,” he said, opening his eyes abruptly.

“How?”

“I somehow sense the vibrations, the pulses,” he answered.

He raised his left hand and let his fingers move through the air, making movements as if he was playing an invisible piano.

“There is a small electric devise on the other side of the building…”

Lisa broke the connection by pushing the red phone on the screen.

“What about now?”

“I can still sense it, but it stopped vibrating.”

Meanwhile Brad had followed the lead of Juliette and Jonathan, walking back towards the parking lot to get a better ‘signal’.

“I thought you couldn’t see when the Kid and his minions were involved.”

“Something happened back there,” Brad mumbled, trying to concentrate, referring to what had happened to each Chain-member after Marith had returned alive. “Something meaningful,” he added.

The Runners understood and left him to do what he was trying to do.

“Hey guys!” He yelled back at the others, about fifteen seconds later. “They’ve got your dad, William! I know where they are!”

Brad started to jog towards a narrow path that led around the Bellevue, but was stopped by Jonathan.

“Let’s think this through, Brad… We don’t know what they want exactly and we still got to get his body back,” the Runner spoke mindfully, nodding towards the tarp held by Joshua, Anton, Alexander and James.

The Pupils agreed to face the nymphs as a Chain and to leave no-one behind, not even Samuel’s body. They would approach slowly and sensibly, but they would strike swiftly and mercilessly at any sign of a trap or an attack.

There was a small clearing in the forest, on the other side of the Bellevue, Jonathan informed, a place for the residents to sit outside and have meals in spring- and summertime. The Pupils realized that the nymphs probably wanted them to meet there.

“There isn’t any light on that side of the building,” William said, focusing.

Brad nodded, zooming in as well.

“We have Marith,” Meriyem suggested.

“Marith has been through enough today, don’t you think?” Nate asked tersely. “She shouldn’t have to go first. It’s probably a set up anyway…” his voice died away, as he saw An stepping forward.

“I will set them on fire at any sign of dirty intentions.”

“They have my dad, of course they have dirty intentions,” William almost hissed.

James sighed, indicating he was done with the squabble. He let go of his corner of the tarp, leaving Joshua to carry Samuel’s feet, and stomped towards the Prophets and the Mages. He pushed An forwards and grabbed Marith’s arm, to which Nate insisted he walked up front with her as well.

Marith didn’t resist anything anymore. She felt dull and blissfully empty inside. James could have tossed her over his shoulder and thrown her off a mountain and she wouldn’t have protested. She truly didn’t care what the nymphs were about do to her or anyone else and that was an amazing feeling. A small portion of her brain told her that this was what a drug addiction must feel like and at that moment in time Marith had nothing but understanding for the addicts of society.

The group of twenty snuck around the building, continuing through the crunching snow and thickening vegetation. Marith, Nate, James and An walked up front. Most Pupils had their weapons drawn, even though they would probably do as much damage to the nymphs as they did to the hordes of monsters earlier.

“These dryades are weakest in their tree-form,” Kyle whispered loudly, panting heavily at the thought of what could be waiting for them around the corner, “so that’s when we have the upper hand.”

“These whats?” Joshua, Brad and Lieke asked in unison.

“The tree-nymphs, you muppets,” James responded, talking over his shoulder.

“This is why I use small words with you people,” Kyle sighed, shaking his head.

Jonathan turned the axe around in his hands and stared around incredulously. “Kyle, we cannot chop down thousands of trees in the hopes that some of them will be nymphs.”

They slowly crept around the last corner of the brick building.

“The nymphs are alive, right? Then Vanessa and Marith should be able to see and sense them,” Alexander said.

“No, need,” James informed dryly, staring up into the starry night.

He was focusing on the canopy of the trees on the other side of the small clearing behind the Bellevue, some 20 metres away from where the Pupils had halted.

The Runners abruptly let go of Samuels body when they saw Keymaker’s hanging in the air. The Kid hit the snow like the dead weight that he was.

“Dad?!” William gasped.

Lisa and Pedro grabbed the Mage to prevent him from charging towards the trees holding his father suspended in the air.

Keymaker couldn’t have warned them. Branches and vines had grown over his mouth and also covered his ears and eyes. He looked like a fly caught in a spider’s web and he probably wasn’t even aware that the Chain had arrived.

“Is he still…?” James asked, glancing from Marith to Vanessa.

“Yeah,” they both answered.

William had been right. The back of the Bellevue building didn’t receive any light from electricity generated by human inventions. The moon, the stars and Marith’s glow were their only sources of light. Her skin illuminated the snow and the trees around them, covering everything in a soft blue hue.

The first thing William had noticed was his father dangling in the air, between two humongous trees that weren’t native to the area. They stood in stark contrast to the pine trees surrounding them. It was clear that the nymphs weren’t caring about camouflaging themselves anymore.

The first thing Marith had noticed was the impossibly tall, blue creature, standing in the middle of the recreational area. The towering, but slim nymph was wearing a white dress, made of transparent fabric, that barely covered the important parts. Her silver hair cascaded over her shoulders and framed her alien face perfectly. She had high cheekbones, a long nose and small ears, almost sunken back into her skull. Her skin was covered in a thin film of something wet and slimy, which Marith assumed allowed them to shapeshift fast and successfully.

The androgynous woman looked at Marith with curiosity and disdain.

To Marith the nymph looked like death. The sight of the creatures sparked something in the Mage, something she didn’t know she could still feel.

She recognized it as… a blinding hatred.

Marith stared into her bright orange eyes, not with fear, but with anger. She breathed heavily in and out, it almost became a condescending snort. The blue light she was emitting intensified. Nate exchanged worried glances with An and Vanessa.

“What do you want?” Marith asked the nymph bluntly.

We need to get into the Corridors, she answered, with no explanation.

“Don’t fall for it!” William screamed, fighting himself free from Pedro and his girlfriend. “My dad would’ve had the keys! They’re messing with us.”

He sounded delirious, besides himself.

He didn’t, the nymph shared curtly.

Her mouth didn’t move as she spoke. As a matter of fact, her entire face remained motionless.

Will didn’t charge the nymphs when he was free, instead he decided to stand with his fellow Pupils to figure out their next move. His father’s live was at stake now. They had to approach this issue carefully.

Before they had arrived at the clearing James’ keen eyes had noticed a small, square, brick structure, almost hidden between the trees. It had a tiny light on above the door. The Brit elbowed Brad and nodded back, towards the modest building. They exchanged a meaningful glance and then both snuck away. Jonathan followed them.

You’re not getting the keys, Marith said resolutely, to the surprise of everyone.

Why not?

Because you want something else, Marith responded, looking her straight in the eye.

The Runners smirked at Marith’s forthright ways, but the Mages and the Prophets held their breath as they anxiously awaited the nymph’s response.

The nymph’s orange eyes wandered over the green-eyed brunette with the spots. She was still glowing with residue from the Well. She had been so very close to entering the Otherside, Mynthia thought, and yet she had still pulled through. She was a special one indeed.

The blue and purples flecks in her eyes changed in shape and even place as she focused on the Mage. They didn’t reveal any emotions. Was she sad? Was she happy? Was she relieved? Nobody knew.

But you have them on you, the nymph spoke, her eyes wandered to Brad, who just came marching back with a can of something or other in his hands. James and Jonathan walked in his wake.

Otherwise you wouldn’t be here with his body. Her eyes immediately shot to Samuel’s soulless hull.

“I told you this is a simulation,” Kyle hissed at Juliette, his eyes darting from the trees to the slender, slimy, blue nymph.

“I totally believe you,” she whispered back.

“It’s all fake,” Kyle tried to convince Amber now.

“I know,” Lieke said dreamily, shuffling closer to the Prophets.

Lieke and Charlotte were both wearing jackets given to them by the Runners. It wasn’t like they needed them in the first place. They just wore them to not be naked. They stood in the middle of the group of Pupils and as Pedro’s magic slowly wore off they started to understand the inexpressible bizarreness of the world they were living in.

“We can only win this once everyone realizes that,” Charlotte spoke wisely.

Kyle wrapped an arm around his little sister.

We are not living in a simulation, the nymph told them slowly, now haughtily gazing upon Kyle. But the black one’s Elder is right…

She stretched out her arm and pointed at Jonathan, like a child that hadn’t been taught yet that pointing is rude.

“Bitch, you’re blue!” Meriyem almost screamed, barely containing herself.

The nymph hissed at her. It was a sound Marith had only heard in documentaries about lions, tigers and other big cats before.

When she did so she revealed a row of sharp and uneven teeth. For a creature with such a hauntingly beautiful face she had horrible dental hygiene, Marith thought.

“I am too tired for this,” Jonathan sighed.

“Aren’t nymphs supposed to be able to sing really pretty?” Amber whispered.

Mynthia smirked at her, with a look on her face that said ‘you shouldn’t have’.

Their surroundings went oddly silent. Nate, Kyle, William, James, Brad, Jonathan, Alexander, Anton, Joshua and An zoned out immediately. They stared at Mynthia as if she was an angel descending from heaven.

“Oh oh,” Theresa mumbled, looking up at James.

“This is what must have happened when they broke into the clockstore,” Juliette breathed, staring at her male counterparts.

“And to all those pirates at sea,” Vanessa spoke, impressed by Mynthia’s ability to control a group of men so instantly and so successfully.

Charlotte slapped Kyle to get him out of it and Marith tried shaking Nate to make the hypnosis go away. How dare that creepy succubus mesmerise her man like that? And how dare he be too weak to resist her?

“Marith, what’s happening now?” Lieke asked her sister.

“I think they are enchanting the men or something,” Marith answered frustrated.

“We need to snap them out of it,” Amber decided, marching up to Brad.

She stroked the stubble on his cheeks, but this didn’t provoke any response from him.

“That won’t do it!” Charlotte informed her, before slapping her brother across the face a second time.

“Right,” Amber whispered, not sure if that’s what she wanted to do to Brad.

“Neither will slapping them,” Pedro said calmly.

The women stopped all their movements and turned around to look at him.

“You can’t hypnotize the hypnotist,” he shared with a smile and a wink, when he saw the women’s faces.

With a fluent movement Pedro came up with a smooth solution that helped the men out of being tantalized by the siren. He spread his arms and repeated what he had done before to calm the girls down.

This time, however, he didn’t mesmerise the men. He stopped the siren’s singing from penetrating their brains. He was blocking her signal in a way.

The men snapped out of their trance instantly. Some shook their heads, others just frowned and looked at the women as if to ask whether they had noticed anything strange as well.

Time is indeed fake, Mynthia went on, trying to act unbothered by Pedro’s interference. All that exists is the present. And it is stuck between anticipation and horror. None of the Oracles ever want to lift the veil of reality. And who can blame them? When you lift the veil madness always follows.

How? Jonathan’s facial expression asked.

I was standing outside of the Bellevue earlier today.

“That means they can tap into our communications,” Jonathan informed the others.

The nymph flashed a sneaky little smile, refusing to divulge their secrets any further.

Damn! The Pupils thought.

But the joke is on the Oracles. We are the madness and as long as he exists, she pointed at Samuel’s lifeless body, stretching out a long and skinny arm, there will be us and there will be others, there will be madness forever, because the present is all there is.

You would be surprised how susceptible people are to madness, how ready they are to embrace it. The reality that humans perceive is just a collective agreement. We can make them break that agreement.

The other nymphs stood motionless behind her, but the Pupils knew they were listening to every single word, looking at every single response from the Chain members.

“What now?” Juliette asked the group tersely.

You were lied to, the nymph continued, still hijacking the situation.

Nobody asked what they had been lied to about, so the nymph took it upon herself to tell them anyway.

You were told that each Chain has 12 Pupils, for balance, but when the madness is strong enough the balance is off. You need more Pupils.

Some of the Pupils from the original Chain frowned and let their eyes wander to the latest additions to their Chain. They already knew that, they thought. There were 18 of them now for a reason.

You will need even more, the nymph clarified, understanding their train of thought, once we are through.

She kept herself from looking at the two pregnant girls. She was too smart to give everything away, not now, not when it still counted.

Instead she looked Marith dead in the eye, moving closer to her, so swiftly only the Runners noticed her subtle steps. Marith stared back at her, defiantly. The nymph knew that Marith had been Samuel’s favourite Pupil, the one he had the greatest plans with. She remembered the instructions her master had given her and her sisters, in case he would cease to exist on this plane indefinitely again.

Because of those instructions Mynthia knew that Marith was too powerful to take on, except after sending her master back to the Empty.

“Ehm, hey, what is your name actually?” Joshua asked, in a weak attempt to distract her.

He wasn’t sure why she was edging closer to Marith, but he did know it was bad news. This was leading up to something, something that the three nymphs had surely rehearsed.

Samantha, the nymph answered curtly.

“Really?”

No, she told him, still holding intense eye-contact with Marith.

Marith swallowed, she didn’t like the look in those unnaturally bright, alien eyes at all.

A slow, but certain panic crept up on Marith. Something wasn’t right. When had not-Samantha gotten this close to her? And how?

Vanessa was ready to catch Keymaker, but none of the Pupils were prepared for what not-Samantha was about to do.

By the time Marith noticed something was off it was too late.

The nymph leapt forward and grabbed Marith in what could have been a loving embrace if it wasn’t for the fact that the Pupils and the nymphs were natural enemies.

The last thing Marith remembered was a coldness slithering over her skin and then settling under it. Every oscillating particle inside Marith froze for a few seconds. The residue of blue light that was glowing inside of her was extinguished.

“No, not again,” Kyle whispered, only audible to the people standing around him.

While the majority of the Chain was concerning itself with Marith, Mara and Melania slithered into their humanlike shapes, retracting their roots and branches and vines and dropping Keymaker like a brick.

“Vanessa!” Will cried out.

Vanessa worked her magic, wrapping Keymaker in a bubble that prevented him from shattering every bone in his body.

The shimmering orb floated towards the ground like a bubble of dish soap, before it burst.

Jonathan wasted no time and tossed his axe into what had been Mynthia’s right ankle a fraction of a second ago.

Nate tried to get in between Marith and Mynthia, but the nymph shot her roots into the ground and wrapped more tentacles around Marith’s neck. Her vines felt like concrete in his hands. They quickly grew upwards around her head and rested around her temples.

They weren’t tight and they weren’t hurting Marith physically. It was the mental part she was fighting against, the first fight she lost that day.

When Mynthia finally let go Marith’s mind had returned. The blue glow had disappeared and Pedro’s magic had worn off.

Two sets of orange eyes came at the Pupils from the darkness. William thundered towards them. The Runners and the Mages had his back, finally charging the nymphs, weapons drawn and their talents aimed to kill.

Brad loaded the nozzle and the tube attached to the container they had found earlier with a few fierce pumps and sprinted towards the blue monsters, holding his weapon in the air.

Meriyem had fired several arrows before both parties physically met in the middle of the clearing. Juliette send a few well aimed knives their way.

The nymphs flashed from their humanoid forms back into trees in the kind of still, quiet panic only they felt. A few more knives and axes bore themselves into the trunks of both trees.

William kept running, ignoring the trees. He sped straight to the large figure behind them, laying in the snow.

He almost threw himself at his father, landing right beside him with a thud.

Amber wasn’t sure why she had joined the charge at all. She was a Prophet. What could she do, apart from admire the speed and skills of the Runners and the talents of the Mages? She decided to follow William into the darkness behind the tree-nymphs.

“Dad! Dad?!” William almost begged.

Keymaker was conscious, just not entirely.

Amber and Will helped him sit up. He looked around confused and dumbfounded, wondering how the day had gotten to this. How much time had he lost?

“Dad, what happened?” Will wanted to know.

The memories slowly flooded back, but Keymaker’s mind worked as if he had taken a sleeping pill a few hours earlier. There were big gaping holes in his recollections and the last moments, before stepping out of the elevator and into the Bellevue, were missing completely.

The Mage and the Prophet decided to help him get up and bring him to safety.

The Runners and the Mages spread out and encircled Mara and Melania. After Juliette and the other Runners had pulled their weapons back from the bark Vanessa wrapped the Pupils in a donut shaped bubble.

A branch shot out to Vanessa and prodded her dome investigative. Brad stepped forwards and sprayed it with Roundup. Its effect was immediate. The branch shot back in agony.

“Hey, An!” Brad wondered, before spraying some more Roundup in the air. “Can we make it rain?”

An stepped out of Vanessa’s translucent shelter as well.

As soon as Brad shot another dose into the air An set it on fire. The burning raindrops appeared to have a maximum effect on the tree-nymphs. They pulled their twigs, branches and vines back and flashed back into their humanoid form, so the Roundup wouldn’t have an immediate effect on them anymore.

Mara and Melania knew better than to make a run for it. They had already become acquainted with Vanessa’s talent and her bubbles were impenetrable.

The only way out was a way around.

Will and Amber were trying to ignore everything that was going on around them as they struggled to get Keymaker to safety. Faltering and stumbling they tried to get the large man across the clearing, with a detour around where the Pupils were releasing hellfire upon the nymphs.

While the sky around her was illuminated by the poisonous rain that was supposed to kill them Mara caught some awkward movements behind the curtains of fire. She smiled a nasty little smile and tipped off her sister.

The dryads shot their roots into the frozen ground below them with all the strength that they had left. To the surprise of the Pupils they appeared to be taking their losses by partially shifting back into their tree-forms.

Unbeknownst to the Pupils the nymphs let their vines grow where no sane plant would go during wintertime.

To Marith everything was happening in slow-motion. Brad and An burning the nymphs, William and Amber supporting Keymaker, the people around her speaking in worried tones, the disturbances under the snow moving towards Amber. She could see it all as if she was looking through the eyes of a night owl.

Marith’s eyes flashed from Mara and Melania being showered with bright orange drops of rain to the young Prophet. Before she could formulate a warning Amber was slapped against the ground as her legs were pulled away from under her.

Joshua heard strange dragging and shuffling sounds in the snow behind him that hadn’t been there before. He turned around and squatted to the ground to peer into the darkness.

“Fuck! They’ve got Amber!” Joshua screamed at the rest.

The air had been forced out of her lungs when she had met with the ground. She now grappled around in the snow, unable to make a sound, while being dragged closer to the hot mess of bark, vines and re-emerging body parts.

The Runners took out their knives and stood next to Amber in a heartbeat. Red blood and tree resin spat around as they started stabbing the twigs and vines that grew around the Prophet’s legs.

More and more vines shot up from the snow to wrap themselves around Amber in a Hail Mary attempt of the nymphs to save themselves.

Alexander took a hold of Amber, to prevent the vines from dragging her further across the clearing. He flipped her around so that she was laying on her back. The Runner sat down next to her in the snow and helped her sit up, while the others kept stabbing and chopping at the tentacles.

Amber moaned in pain as the slender, flexible limbs of the dying, supernatural creatures tightened around her legs. She tried pushing them off and stomping them to no avail.

She finally stopped and stared at the smouldering wood that illuminated parts of their surroundings. She could see human forms struggling in the flames, as if they were buried into the snow from their waists down. One of the shapes turned around and looked at her, with eyes as bright and orange as the fire around her. If the nymph could have laughed at Amber she would have.

An released some more fire bombs into the mess before him, to finish them off.

“No!” Amber shrieked, staring at the snow disappearing.

A gully appeared in the snow and it travelled closer to Amber and Alexander with great speed.

“An!” Alexander raised his voice to be heard. “An! The vines are on fire!”

The Mage realized the mistake he had made and extinguished the fire immediately, allowing the nymphs to recover somewhat.

As soon as the burning stopped the vines grew tighter around Amber’s legs. More roots reached the tackled Pupil in the blink of an eye. She cried out in pain.

“Guys, we need to come up with something else,” Alexander instructed tensely.

Brad yanked the tube from the jerrycan of Roundup and screwed off the lid, while he sped over to Amber. He held the can upside down and poured the leftover poison over the tentacles that were about to break Amber’s legs.

As soon as the tangle of roots and vines came into touch with the substance they shot back into the melting snow, back to the source. The source happened to be a smouldering heap of bark and skin.

Weak and bruised Amber wriggled herself out of the tangle of branches and wood. Brad aided her, actually doing most of the work. He then helped her to her feet. The adrenaline caused her to tremble and shake uncontrollably.

Brad instinctively wrapped an arm around her and gently wiped the tears off her face with his free hand, before pulling her closer to his chest.

For the first time since Marith had arrived in Oregon she saw Brad acknowledging Amber’s love for him.

For a few quiet moments the hug was all there was, all that existed.

“Are you alright?!” Nate almost screamed at Marith, grabbing her by the shoulders.

“Yeah,” she whispered, nodding, looking at Amber and Brad over Nate’s left shoulder.

“Where did you go?” Jonathan asked exasperated, still chopping away at Mynthia.

“Nowhere?” Marith answered, hesitant.

As far as Marith was concerned she was watching the nymphs get destroyed, which was going swimmingly.

“Yeah, you did,” Jonathan said with big eyes, halting his movements.

“Give that to me,” Charlotte demanded.

Jonathan handed over the axe. He was fully focused on Marith now.

“You glitched,” Kyle said wisely, walking up to them with Theresa and Lisa in his wake. The battlefield was no place for Prophets anyway. They were Pupils of the mind.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t you think all of this is a little too easy?” Kyle wondered, gesturing at his little sister, a non-Rebirthed human being, chopping away at a powerful supernatural creature… and clearly winning. And at Brad spraying Roundup around… and the substance clearly working.

“Woah, watch out there, Lizzie Borden!” Keymaker joked at Charlotte.

Juliette and Vanessa were now helping him to get out of the blast zone. His wits appeared to have fully returned to him. His walking was still a little wobbly, but at least he wasn’t slurring his words anymore.

William, An, Meriyem and some of the Runners were playing out their wildest fantasies on the almost deceased nymphs. They figured literal overkill couldn’t hurt when dealing with the supernatural.

Anytime William saw their blue skin and orange eyes reappear he electrocuted the creatures for taking his father hostage and for grabbing Amber. He was not a violent man by nature, but this felt justified.

Unbeknownst to him Pedro took their senses away each time, right before William or An would strike. Pedro wasn’t a violent man either. He agreed the women had to die, but he wasn’t completely at peace with the methods of his fellow Pupils.

All that remained now were a bunch of flailing limbs in a sea of near-corpses. Mara and Melania writhed in the snow, soundlessly squirming around as if they were having seizures. Pedro understood that these were their final moments.

“They got what they wanted,” Juliette clarified, on her way to get the axe away from Charlotte, before she would hurt herself or anyone else.

“Which is what?” Lieke asked, with a weak, little voice that indicated she already had a gut feeling about the answer.

“For some reason Marith had to ‘glitch’ or whatever,” Juliette said, grabbing the axe clean from Charlotte’s hands on a backswing. “An?! A little help over here,” the Runner requested.

An and Pedro were standing next to two heaping piles of burning wood and blue flesh.

Mynthia looked from Juliette to An and Pedro. Finally her gaze landed on Marith. They locked eyes for the last time. The blue siren laid there on the frozen, white ground, her tall body morphed and twisted into bark and vines from the waist down. It looked uncomfortable to Marith. The creature arched her neck, which made cracking sounds, to look up at her.

The madness remains, she emphasised, addressing just Marith, forever now.

The look in her eyes was empty and telling at the same time. They told the Mage she had now fulfilled her purpose, she had known it was wrong and yet she regretted nothing.

Kyle was right. It was all in the glitch she had just experienced. Taking Keymaker hostage and demanding access to the Corridors had been a ruse, a distraction, a nothing-burger. She felt like it was going to be a long time before she would figure out what had happened just now and that had the potential to drive her crazy again.

Something about the wiring in her brain had altered. She was infected, like a computer with a virus.