Chapter 20

No one remembered how much time had passed when they woke—but Warren was the first to emerge back into consciousness. Stunned like a sleepwalker waking mid step, Warren found himself in the middle of an action of which he had no recollection: scrubbing. Memory came to life and he glanced at the sliding glass door beneath him. Everything within his reach nearly sparkled with clarity. He gazed below; a river raged with foaming white crescents beneath the glass—a new revelation to him. When he looked at his friends, still mechanistically scrubbing away at the writing and still tinted a disconcerting purple hue, the words on the door came back to him.
But the last few words were missing, having been blotted out by his sponge, which he subsequently inspected. It still dripped when he lifted it. He also noted that his hands were the right color. He held his sponge and stood, stretching his arms and twisting his back—as if warding off the kinks and pains he knew were coming. Then with a moment of decision, he stepped to Sofi’s side, knelt beside her, and started scrubbing where she wasn’t.
His sweeps had an immediate and remarkable effect on the glass—and within seconds, it shone with a fantastic gleam, even for the low-light of the cavernous room. After he had cleared as much as he could reach in front of Sofi, she paused in her motions. Warren sighed and waited, searching her face for signs of consciousness. Her eyes seemed fixed on a distant point, far beyond the giant lamps or the room walls.
Then she blinked, and Warren dared to speak. “Sofi? Can you hear me?” he probed. She dropped an eyebrow and blinked again—but slowly. Her lips parted briefly, then came back together. “I know you’re in there, my love,” Warren prodded. This time, he noticed a flush of color rush to her cheeks—then her hands. She closed her eyes, shook her hair, and ran her hand through it. When she inhaled deeply, Warren knew she was back, and asked her, “Are you alright?”
Sofi nodded. “I think so.” Then she noticed the others, compelled to finish their impossible task. “Are they?”
“I think I have to clean it for them. They’re trying, just like the prisoners before them, but are incapable of doing any good.”
“How was it that your sponge worked?”
“I understood the mystery.”
“The mystery of what?”
“The mystery of the door; how to get in. You remember reading what had been written?”
“Yeah, it didn’t make any sense at all.”
“And then you were powerless to understand…you just did things, trying to scrub it clean. But now.”
“I still don’t understand,” she clarified.
“It said, ‘only one who knows language backwards and forwards will be able to clean this door.’ Except parts of the sentence itself were backwards.”
“How did you figure that out? All I remember is collapsing and falling asleep.”
“It was the power I received. Without it, I would have been done for,” Warren noted.
“And with that power’s aid, you figured it out and…”
“And I got this sponge. That’s all I remember before I drifted off.”
“Hmmm.”
“So then I cleaned your portion for you, and you came back to life…ish when you realized it had been cleaned.”
Sofi nodded and raised her eyebrows. I see. “And is that a river I see down there?”
“Yeah, I think so. Let me wake up the others,” Warren said and scurried to Old Fred’s side. Within a minute, Warren had the whole of the door cleaned and the others, in their own turn, began to stir and lose their shadowed skin color.
And just as quickly, Warren was explaining how their freedom had come about. Livingstone seemed the most curious. “I wonder,” he said when Warren had come to a conclusion, “what happened to those whose places we took.” Warren and Old Fred raised an eyebrow at each other and shrugged simultaneously. Sofi paced around the door, as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t quite have it all worked out yet. Livingstone waited, watching her movements like a cat, with hands folded across his chest.
“What if…” Sofi began, hesitating for a moment. “What if we opened it?”
“You don’t mean going down there, do you?” Old Fred inquired.
“What if this were a one-way door, locked from this side by the writing?”
“What are you saying, Sofi?”
“I’m saying that this may be a waypoint—but a sealed waypoint. Imagine it like an iron fence between paths, and we just made a gate in what was supposed to be fixed. What was it that the demon told you, Warren?”
Warren’s mind put the pieces together. “That Sylvara had been exiled here.”
“Right. And that this pathway was largely devoid of intellect,” Sofi continued. Warren nodded and furrowed his eyebrows.
“And in that case, it would only make sense for a riddle to bar the way out, but guarded on the pretense of an ancient trap—of physical detriment” she concluded—Livingstone was smiling already.
“Exactly. Also, we know from the demon’s statements through Ali that the Mar know our past location, too,” he added. “They will likely be waiting for us back there, if not actively pursuing us, already. If we can change pathways again without their knowledge, we should give ourselves a decent advantage.”
“Well,” Old Fred declared, “I love rivers. Let’s get wet!” He bent over and slid the glass door open a bit.
“But let’s not be too hasty,” Livingstone cautioned, with a hand on Old Fred’s shoulder. “We have little idea of what lies beyond that door. We may find ourselves on a pathway without many exits—and there’s no telling what sort of dangers we might face.”
Sofi fidgeted with her hair. “I think the Mar poses the greatest threat to us at the moment, and if this will lend us any sort of benefit against them, I say we take it,” she said in a simple risk evaluation.
Warren felt like his opinion would mean little to these two—and yet he also felt he was somewhat entitled to enter the discussion which Sofi and Livingstone dominated. Trent was strangely silent as well, Warren noticed, and wondered why he hadn’t voiced his thoughts. The man stood curiously still, hardly the confident, enthusiastic type he had seemed to Warren a day earlier. His eyes seemed to stare past them, concentrating on the ceiling, or some other far-off space.
“Trent, what do you think?” Warren ventured, but received no immediate answer. Trent raised his cheeks a bit and squinted, cocked his head to one side. Livingstone interpreted his body language and drew his weapon, spinning to find a golden-winged harpy swooping down to them.
Warren could plainly see it was Sylvara—Sofi and Old Fred mimicked Livingstone in firing at the wind-witch as she landed. But the creature hid behind the shield of her ironfeathers and shrieked, “Peace! Peace! Strangers, listen to me!”
The red room fell silent as the last echoes of the gunshots faded to nothing. Sylvara peeked from the refuge of her wings. “Warren, I congratulate you,” she said, morphing again into his poorly-clothed mother. She feigned applause. “You passed my last test without my introduction to it! You are something else, my wonderful Warren.”
Sofi frowned at that final statement. “Leave us, witch, we have no more quarrel with you. Let us be on our way, and we’ll let you keep your breath,” Sofi threatened.
“Oh, so fiery! Listen young ones, I have no desire to injure you anymore…no, I had but a wisp of hope that you might be my liberators. Which is why I had to take you in, before your pursuers fell upon you and carried you away from me. And this special one, oh Warren! Aha! You delight me, truly you do. For look, you have mastered the door. How many years have I glared at that writing, how many nights have I been haunted by its message; incapable of doing or thinking what was required?”
Sylvara’s wings burst forth and she took a flapping lunge towards Warren. Guns bristled from his companions, but she ignored them and stroked Warren’s hair. “You have given me a great gift, Warren Spicks,” she said, producing a vial from her rags. “And now I shall give you a gift.” With that, she popped open the small glass container and dripped a drop of shimmering liquid on the glass door. At the touch of the drop, the glass slid back immediately, and the square door folded back and rotated mechanically into a circular opening.
“How is this a gift? We already had it opened,” Warren asked.
The harpy grinned. “Oh no, this is your gift to me…my gift—well—she waits for you in that small box over there,” she said, pointing back across the room. “I hope it’s the last time you lose one you love, Warren.”
The realization sickened him; he had forgotten about Ali. When and where he had lost her, he wasn’t sure. He scrambled for the box and Sylvara hopped up to the rim of the opening. “I hope you won’t forget me, Warren, for I will certainly remember you. Goodbye, dear one,” she concluded and disappeared through the opening.
Warren, however, wasn’t listening. Instead he was sprinting across the pillows at top speed, with an arm in front of his face to ward off the returning butterflies. When he arrived at the box, an old cardboard thing which Ali could probably chew through in but a few chomps, he tore it open and found himself gazing into those glittering black eyes he had so shamefully forgotten. Ali squeaked and stood on her rear legs, scratching at the edge of the box.
She hopped onto Warren’s hands and scrambled up his right arm to his shoulder. “Attagirl,” he soothed and turned back to Sofi and the others. “I guess we’re all present and accounted for…” he started. Sofi nodded lightly and with a long blink.
“Shall we get out of this blasted butterfly storm?” Old Fred suggested after a moment’s silence.
“Then, I suppose we are all in agreement that our best option is to follow the harpy into the next pathway,” Sofi asked. Warren and Old Fred nodded. Trent stared without anything that seemed like a spark of life, but mouthed the word, yes. Livingstone stood, arms crossed and facing away from the others. He gazed down through the glass door transformed hatch at the waters below.
“I don’t think…” he began, but lowered himself to the ground, gripped the side, and swung his head through. Warren wandered closer in curiosity. “Nevermind,” he heard Livingstone echo from the hole. “Let’s go,” he said and let his body swing over and through the opening. Then his hands, all that Warren could see of him, released and disappeared through the hatch. He looked to Sofi who just bit her lip and shook her head.
Old Fred laughed. “That’s the impossibility you come to love with Oscar.” He winked at Warren. “Let’s get wet!” The old man searched down the hole, then yelled down to Livingstone. “Hey Oscar, how deep is it?”
“No, don’t…jump…” came Livingstone’s muffled reply, tinged with irritation, as if Fredric’s question was wholly absurd. Sofi grabbed Old Fred’s shoulder to keep him from doing anything rash, as she sensed Livingstone had a plan of sorts. “Catch!” Livingstone’s voice echoed up to them, followed by a rope tied to an old piece of pipe. Old Fred trapped it against the edge of the hatch and pulled it up through.
“What do you want me to do with this?” he yelled back down, and tugging on the rope.
“Tie it…” Livingstone began, but faded into concentration. Sofi raised her eyebrows expectantly. “To this,” he grunted, and a bigger metal pipe came at the opening from an angle. Old Fred handed Warren the rope and bent over to grab the pipe. Warren at first couldn’t figure out what Livingstone was up to, until the pipe came through the opening and Old Fred clanged it across the hatch. He secured the rope around the middle of the pipe and tossed the rope through the hole.
“Will it hold us?” Warren asked.
“I bet so,” Old Fred affirmed. Then he glanced to Sofi with a sly grin. “Ladies first!”

Chapter 19

Well, I see haven’t achieved my goal. If you look quickly, you might catch her exiting through the doors just up the street. Yes, there. Ah, there goes our sweet Sofi in a rush. But her poker face, the very one Livingstone taught her, masks her expression. Could you tell if that phone conversation delivered good news or ill? She has become such an enigma to me; I doubt I should ever unravel all of her secrets. Oh, and now she’s in a cab. Look away; don’t stare as she goes past. Let her go. She has endured far too much to stay.
I, however…I have no pressing duty, so I shall continue the tale, if you wish. Order another drink, perhaps? Shall I call the waiter? But what am I saying? You’re a competent customer—oh, I’ll cover the bill, don’t you worry—order whatever you’d like. Now. Where was I?
Oh yes. Well, the first thing I said to Sofi when Old Fred and Trent had split off to secure the far end of the cavern was to question the condition of Livingstone. Sofi answered in a positive, hopeful tone, “That man can sense trouble better than any alive. I’d be honored to meet the death that finds him. And I can guarantee you that it won’t be by the talons and beaks of the harpies. They have no idea what kind of force they’re dealing with by pursuing Oscar. It will take much more than an exiled demon to bring him down. He’ll be perfectly fine.”
“How did they capture him in the first place?” Warren asked, “Or any of you, for that matter?”
“Surprise. They found us without our most important weapon,” Sofi stated.
“What’s that?”
“Knowledge. And still without it Oscar alone killed more than twenty of the ambushers before they overwhelmed us with the tranquilizers. He was still fighting when I went under. God knows how many he destroyed…”
Warren stared off into space, trying to visualize this hobo as an elite soldier. He had glimpsed it in the past few days of travel, here and there. But to find Livingstone backed into a corner, giving his enemies absolute hell before the end—that he would like to see. Maybe not witness firsthand. But see.
A butterfly landed on his cheek and Warren brushed it away, peering at the giant ovular containers that glowed like the lava lamp his brother had received one Christmas several years ago. It didn’t have the same globular inner motion as that little lamp did, but rather a bubbling or fizzy quality to it. It was almost as if the contents were under high pressure—like a Henry Weinhart’s root beer that you accidentally drop before opening.
Sofi inspected the glass more closely while Warren found a comfortable seat, stretching out a bit on the plush pillows and keeping the butterflies from landing on his face. “This doesn’t seem like demon architecture,” she mused. Warren’s eyebrows shot up.
“That’s good news…right?” he ventured. Sofi nodded. “Does that mean we’re beyond the harpies’ domain?”
“No, not necessarily. They’re cannibals, really, they only…” Sofi began to explain, but a crash above them stole their attention. Warren watched in awe as a figure, shrouded with an aura of broken glass shards, fell backwards from the curved ceiling—bright gunshots flashed from his hand, punctuating a screeching roar which issued from the hole behind him. Feathery forms flapped and fell from the opening, as the figure crashed to the ground, rolled to a stop, and rose to a one-knee stance, still firing at the broken window from whence he had fallen. Warren had covered his head to protect himself from the falling glass, and when the splinters stopped tinkling on the floor, he looked first to Sofi, who now had her weapon drawn and was firing at the ceiling, then to the figure with a glinting sword in one hand and a blazing gun in the other now striding back towards the opening. It could be none other than Livingstone.
In the soft light, he saw a multitude of feathery shadows, but he heard a whole chorus of crazed, dying shrieks. Then he remembered his own powers, though dwindled by the effects of time, but nonetheless there—he felt it coursing through his blood. He touched a writhing harpy and it smoldered into ashes. And so the trio worked, Livingstone and Sofi firing at the stream of feathers pouring from the hole, and Warren sending each struggling, downed bird from her loosening grip on life.
Other voices joined the circle; bigger blasts echoed through the cavernous room. Warren glanced and there stood Old Fred, sending bursts of feathers to mix with the butterflies in what seemed a blizzard of dim color. And after what only seemed a few seconds, the room fell quiet.
Livingstone rubbed his neck, grimacing at the harpies as Warren cleared the last of them. “Don’t,” Livingstone began, as if futilely addressing a disobedient child, “Don’t use…ahh forget it.” He sighed when Warren looked up at him. “We’re already screwed as it is,” he lamented with his other hand massaging his forehead.
“How do you mean that, Oscar?” Old Fred questioned, brushing a butterfly from his eyes.
“Well the only stairway out of here was back up there,” Livingstone said, glancing to the place from which he had fallen.
“How do you know that?” Trent questioned him sharply.
Livingstone scratched at his head idly. “Demons squeal, too, you know, when you apply the right pressure. What’s with the butterflies down here? It’s like you shot at a hornet’s nest…except with bubble guns or something and got butterflies instead of angry wasps.”
“This is a strange place—strange forces at work here,” Sofi answered.
“Like?” Livingstone inquired. Sofi nodded towards the wilting and blooming figures in the center. He squinted and started walking.
“They’re chained,” Warren volunteered, stepping alongside Livingstone “and imprisoned until they finish a task, I would guess.”
“Hmm,” was all Livingstone said while he inspected the figures. He began walking around them clockwise while the others filled in around the scrubbing prisoners.
“Five of them here,” Warren stated, “all mesmerized in trying to clean this door.” He looked back to Livingstone in the dim light. “Can you read it?” he asked the hobo.
“I’m not sure I…” Livingstone began, but then epiphany lit his eyes. “Get away!” he shouted and tried to step backwards. His exclamation made Warren jump, but his feet felt sluggish. Then a chilling numbness crept up from his toes. He glanced to his friends. Old Fred was and to stand as erect as she possibly could. But Warren felt his leg muscles weakening. Then a couple shots rang out—Livingstone fired indiscriminately at the five washerwomen. But his bullets had no effect, seemingly being absorbed by the figures. Sofi quivered momentarily, then collapsed entirely. Warren tried to lift his feet—it was like they were glued to the floor. When the numbness reached his knees, he fell. Livingstone had fallen forwards, into a push-up position and Warren could see the muscles quivering in his arms as he resisted the strange, sticky gravitation.
“Whash gungon?” Old Fred slurred. He kneeled, sitting back on his feet, head lolling to his right side. Warren heard Livingstone finally collapse in a heap, then get to his knees, like the others, including himself, already had. They seemed to be moving inward, slowly, each heading towards one of the five imprisoned women.
A purple gas began to issue from around the door, circling outwards. Old Fred blew at it, but to no effect. When it touched his knee, the mist seemed to seep into him. Suddenly Old Fred turned the same, off-dark color as the washerwomen. Warren gasped and looked around him. Trent and Livingstone had been simultaneously affected. He looked at Sofi who tiredly tried to stretch away from the swirling gas—Warren watched in horror as she was consumed, unable to do a thing. All his muscles were relaxed and he had no command over them.
When the mist touched his own leg, a gasp of wind rushed through the room from the center, blowing back the butterflies and dispelling the dark mist—and the previous prisoners. It was only the five of them, huddled around the glass door. Warren’s four companions all imitated the motions of their predecessors, the lax stretching, then slapping at the glass with dry sponges. He felt paralyzed, but noticed he wasn’t in the same motion as the others. He tried speech.
“Sofi, can you hear me?” he said, and surprisingly well. She didn’t answer him, however. He glanced down at his hands—they were still the pinkish yellow of the Caucasian skin. Immediately he wondered if his sight was deceiving him and he were just as futilely trapped as the others. He grabbed lazily at a pillow and found he could still feel it. He brushed it closer to his side. Perhaps it was the demon’s power. Perhaps he had been spared—had it taken the brunt of the attack? But he was still fairly paralyzed and definitely rooted to the spot.
The good part, he reasoned somewhere in the recesses of his mind, was that he could now take a good look at the writing once every ten seconds or so, since he himself wasn’t part of the obscuring rhythm. So he focused himself entirely on this task—if he could understand what it said, perhaps he could figure out how to break its binding spell, or whatever it was, and get out of this place.
So he focused on the far side of the glass from him, after Old Fred had raised himself back up. Sofi plummeted to the surface, but didn’t cover what he was looking at. Warren squinted. “roodsih” seemed to be the first word scrawled. Whoever wrote this didn’t seem to know how to use spaces, Warren thought. All the lines just looped together. Perhaps it was just rood. He remembered one of his English professers talking about rood. It was an old word for a cross. Perhaps that was it. But what about a cross? Or crosses, plural? Roods?
Warren tried to move on, after Old Fred had tried to scrub roods from the door, and failing, stretched again weepingly. “ihtnealce?” He knew a Neal from high school. Was this a proper name? Maybe it was supposed to read, “Iht Neal” Crosses it Neal? Warren lamented his situation. This was going to be impossible. But he kept reading. “Cotel baeb.” Maybe this meant a Babylonian prison? Or a hotel with cots for infants? Warren felt this was getting a little too strange. So he read on to the only part that made sense to him: “will forwards and backwards.”
His friends were swaying forwards and backwards. Did their movement have something to do with solving this riddle? Warren tried to blink the heaviness from his eyelids. “Will forwards and backwards.” Maybe that was just part of the curse placed on them. He read on.
“egaug nal” he figured before Livingstone had fallen face first on the line. “Gauge,” maybe? That was almost spelled correctly, it only had a letter forwards. And “lan” might have been spelled backwards. Then epiphany sent a shiver down his spine. “lan-gauge…language.” Perhaps all the words he couldn’t understand were backwards, while the ones he could understand were forwards. He looked at the final words, written in front of him. “swon kohwen oylno.”
He tilted his head, trying to place the letters in reverse order in his mind without mental spaces. “Onlyonewhoknows” Yes, that was it. It said, “Only one who knows language will forwards and backwards…” he stopped. It had made sense until he had joined the two phrases. Perhaps he had to reverse it. “Only one who knows language backwards and forwards will…” Perfect, he thought and squinted to see the first part again. “Roodsihtnealcotelbaeb,” he determined after several tries. He closed his eyes, trying to see it backwards. “Beableto,” was all he could pry out without looking. At least it made some sense. He sighed and took a deep breath afterward and held it, willing himself to think. The numbness held his head in a fog. He shook it lightly and looked back to the sliding glass door that wouldn’t slide, but was giving up its mystery bit by bit.
“Cleanthis,” he finally determined. Clean. That was a good word. Then rood. Cross. What did a cross have to do with cleaning a door? He couldn’t figure it out, his eyelids were so heavy.
Did he have to cross himself to break this spell? He tried it the catholic way, right then left, and waited. The numbness throbbed in his head. Then he crossed himself like the greeks, left, then right. Again nothing happened. He blinked for an extended second, head lilting to the right. Back to the beginning. What was it? he asked himself. “Only one who knows language backwards and forwards will be able to clean crosses.” That didn’t make any sense with the writing being on a sliding glass door and not a cross. Wasn’t that what Sofi and Livingstone and whoever else was close by were trying to do? Wash a cross? Or a door? Yeah, a door, he told himself. He looked back to the far end.
The letters down there didn’t spell cross. Backwards or forwards. Why had he been thinking about crosses. Oh yes, he remembered, it was the rood. That old English poem. Or middle English. Something. Rood. But that didn’t. That wasn’t. Warren narrowed his eyebrows, toying on the edge of epiphany. Rood. Rood. Backwards and forwards. Rood forwards was rood. Rood backwards was…was…what was it? he asked himself. He shook his head again. The strain of thinking was so much. He looked to his right. Rood. Backwards.
Sofi stretched backwards, mourning her dry sponge. What would she say rood backwards was? Would he care? She was beautiful, and caring. He couldn’t care about anything less than that. He looked back to the glass with the writing on it. Such a mystery. He gathered himself and ran it through his mind one final time. “Only one who knows language,” he remembered easily, “will forwards and backwards,” he read, then remembered that was wrong and flipped it, “backwards and forwards will be able to clean…” he remembered clean. That was what they were trying to do, right? Warren squinted at the far side again. “roodsiht.” That started with a t, then. Then an h. “Th” he imagined. “This,” was what it said then. “This rood.” No backwards. “This,” then a d. Epiphany clicked. “This door.” Door. Not a cross, he sighed. “Only one who knows language backwards and forwards will be able to clean this door,” was its message. He memorized it. Or thought that he should. Then he wondered if he should say it aloud.Warren licked his lips with a thick tongue. “Only one who knows…language…backwards and forwards will…be able…to clean this door,” he finally spat out.
He waited, expecting the fog to lift. The only thing he heard, however, was a liquid plop at his side. With a flimsy neck, he rolled his head to the left and found a sponge at his side. But it was wet. He grabbed at it a couple times—failing to grasp it. Instead, he gave up and set his hand on it. But it wasn’t his hand. It was more purple than he remembered. He had never had purple hands before. Not ever. And with that thought, he lost consciousness and drifted off into dreamless space.

Chapter 18

Now glance a moment at Sofi across the way. She’s conversing with someone on her phone. And I wonder who it could be. I doubt this is any random hello from a friend—look at how her eyes are suddenly fixated on her wineglass. She must be hearing something important, some valuable jewel of information. And look! What a surprise to her ears—she has not heard this before; her lips open and close in indecision. Perhaps a breath of hope has entered her soul? Perhaps the final dagger of regret has plunged into her depths—either way, she won’t last long there at her table. I must continue my tale before she leaves and plummets into despair.
All you need to note is the sheer opposition a few years have made in Sofi’s story. She’s now a wisping, smoking candlestick in danger of growing forever cold—just a remnant of the brightly burning flame in her soul that hour in the depths of the harpy’s den. But how lovely she was to look upon there in Warren’s arm. Not to take anything from our hero. His heart had been shattered and his love burst forth in what could have been tangible rays of warm, overflowing light. And so the two stood and cradled the other in a slow, rocking waltz to the music of love—which both heard so clearly in the relative silence.
Between the reverent pauses for love, they whispered to each other of the day’s immediate events. Sofi revealed that the only members she knew were alive were Livingstone and Old Fred and Warren told her of his abduction—she of course inspected his wounded shoulder. Warren melted at her tender touch.
But all too suddenly, the echoing flaps of the harpy’s wings caught their ears and she was upon them. Warren jumped when he saw her—her feathered body had his mother’s face. The harpy landed and folded her wings, a sly grin on her lips. “Are you ready for your next task, Warren?”
He nodded and bit his lip, hoping he could pull another miracle out of his pocket like he had with Sofi. The harpy shook the feathers from herself and became Warren’s mother completely, beckoning him to a faint outline in the cliff wall with splayed fingers. Warren followed obediently, Sofi clutching his waist. The harpy pressed on the stone and a door slid upward, vanishing into the rock. Warren’s eyebrows shot up with it and followed her through the doorway.
The hallway was a pristine, white passage with several tinted windows lining both sides. Sylvara strode down the hall with a fascinating pace, and the tangled pair of Warren and Sofi fell behind. But the harpy turned to her left just a few yards ahead of them and opened another door. She turned and extended her right hand. “Please, in here.”
The room was empty—no big surprise for Warren, who had scarcely seen an inhabited or even furnished room since his rescue from his own home by Livingstone. But Sylvara pointed to the far end of the room, where Warren saw a recessed, glass cage. He approached it slowly at first, but recognized the inhabitant of the cage, Ali. She stretched her paws as high on the glass as she could, sniffing for any kind of exit.
Warren dropped to his knees to level himself with the cage. “Are you okay, Ali?” he asked, hands planted on the glass. She squeaked and clawed at the glass.
“We purged the demonic essence from her system—so she won’t answer you,” Sylvara stated, winking at Warren. “At least not in your own language,” she thought to add. “However, your test for Ali’s life is simple: you must retrieve her key from my nest.” Warren dropped a questioning eyebrow. “It’s in plain sight,” she laughed, “an my nest is the biggest one in the middle.” But as Warren turned to go, she cautioned him. “But! You will not be going as yourself; and remember, if you die, the rat dies. If you come back empty-handed, the rat dies. If you succeed, she will live,” she warned him, all the time stepping closer to him. “Now be off!” she said and seized Warren by the neck. He struggled to pry her hands from him for a moment, but then she released him and stepped backwards.
Sofi gasped and turned. In just a few moments, Warren had fallen to the ground, sprouted hair and claws and whiskers. Sylvara smiled at the transformation when all that remained of Warren was a squeaking, terrified rat on the white tiled floor. She opened another door and pulled two collapsible chairs from the closet. “We shall wait here for him, dear Sofi.”
Once Warren had registered the change brought upon him, he had to adjust himself to the drastic changes—mostly in the world of his senses. Smells hung in the air like levitating streams; a barrage of sounds overpowered him at first. But bit by bit, Warren accustomed himself to this new manner of perception and gathered his wits. He had to find the nest, the key—for Ali’s rescue, for her freedom, for her life.
He scurried out of the room and back down the hallway they had come, through the doorway and into the cavernous abyss beyond it. A whole host of streaming smells accosted his nose. But the one belonging to Sylvara was quite keen.
It didn’t take Warren long to find a scrambling path up the cavern wall to the largest of the myriad of woven nests constructed with a motley blend of sticks, plastics, and mud. He scurried into the nest and gave it a quick look over—checking for anything that might resemble a key. But the place was a veritable treasure chest of miscellaneous items. A violet rubber ball, an oval mirror, several loosely rolled wool blankets, a golden pocket watch, a conglomeration of pens, a jar of paper-clips, a spatula, a decorated teapot without a lid, several lighters, a metallic toy plane, two pairs of sunglasses, and a whole host of other items he didn’t recognize.
What he did recognize when it happened was the sound of flapping wings. Warren’s rat eyes searched the thick cavern air momentarily—a winged terror dove towards him, talons outstretched. His instincts took over and he found himself scampering for cover. He found a slight opening between the nest and the cavern wall into which he ran quickly—and just in time, as the harpy slammed against the rock and started to scratch and dig after him.
Warren squeezed himself down through the tangled mess, his heart pumping as the talons tore after him. Then shrieks seemed to multiply around him and the commotion above him increased exponentially. Yet further inward he burrowed, where he found a small cavity. He couldn’t control his shivering and shaking, or the rapid beat of his heart. Sounds of ravenous harpies clawing at the nest moved around him. He searched around frantically for any route of escape—each passage only carried reverberations of doom through it.
Then a soft yellow form caught his attention, creeping through the maze of sticks. It was a moth with restless, fluttering wings. Warren stared at it for a moment while it crawled up to his twitching nose. Then, apart from all the sounds of the world, a thin, fine voice curled itself around his mind. “You will die,” it stated affectionately. Warren recoiled. “Yes, the harpies will find you and dismantle you. Sylvara is a cruel being, exiled to this bottomless pathway of guttural moods and fierce passions. She suffers the torments of her mind, her conscience in this bleak, dying history.”
Warren crouched and thought, “Who are you?”
The moth twitched a furry antenna. “How does my appearance deceive you? Have you so quickly forgotten?”
“What is your name?”
“Unimportant. But if you must have one, I will give you one: call me Thandris. Now, little one, listen to me before hope is lost. Sylvara has been condemned among the living and the dead, the pure and the corrupt. Pay her no heed, for she will delight in your ecstasy and your pain alike—give her no reason to indulge in either.”
“What should I do?”
“Accept my power—I have little to give you now and it will wane with time. But find her key and return to her quickly. She will sense my presence and agree to any demands you make of her—especially if you make an example of one of her minions.”
Warren spun in a circle and looked at his rat-paws, “How?”
“Allow me,” said the moth, which climbed onto Warren’s back. A jolt of energy entered his spine—and Warren felt himself growing, he squinted as light surrounded him and seemed to blow the nest away, like the breeze would a plume of desert dust. Wingbeats surrounded him, but the intensity of the light around him kept the harpies hidden. When the light began to fade, Warren found himself standing on a small ledge of the nest, a strange, blue-steel colored object at his feet: the key. He picked it up with human hands.
At last the light was gone and a hundred glowering harpies flapped in obvious irritation around him. Warren’s confidence soared and he stepped lightly off the nest onto the air. He strode towards one burnt-orange winged fright and without a thought stretched out his hand. The creature struggled with powerful strokes to get away, but had been shackled in place by the air itself. When Warren’s outstretched finger touched the frenzied being, it exploded into a thousand drifting embers.
An echoing storm of shrieks erupted immediately and the creatures fled to the depths of their nests. Warren ran now on the cavern winds, cursing himself for having left Sofi with that monster in the first place. Back down the brilliant hallway and through the door he stormed, the energy of the demon coursing through him.
At first glance, Sylvara screamed and cowered in the corner. Warren stared her down as he walked to Ali’s cage and freed her. The rat delighted in Warren’s smell, his touch, and raced up his arm to his shoulder. Warren smiled and stroked Ali on the head. “You’re safe again now, girl.” Then he turned to Sofi, whose face showed relief, but whose shoulders demonstrated anxiety. “Are you okay?” She nodded.
Halfway satisfied, Warren turned his attention to Sylvara, who gulped and scrambled to the corner, hiding herself with her wings. “Where are the others?” he demanded of her.
“I will kill them if you touch me,” she warned.
“Where are they?” Warren commanded, stepping closer.
“Keep away from me, demon, and I will tell you,” Sylvara hissed. Warren stopped and she glanced at him from behind a veil of feathers. “Next door on the right,” she said, grinning a wretched smile.
Warren followed Sofi, who was already out the door. Sofi struggled with the door, then turned to Warren. “Locked,” she said. He grasped the handle and the lock split open. Warren smiled; the harpy hadn’t lied. There, in shackles, lay Livingstone, Trent, and Old Fred. Sofi bounded in behind him and sighed. “Get up guys, time to go,” she said and gave Warren a little push from behind to free them.
He came first to Livingstone and touched his chains, which fell from his wrists and ankles like liquid. With such simplicity, he freed the other two, who patted him on the shoulder and thanked him. “Where are the rest?” Sofi asked. Old Fred shook his head with downcast eyes. Warren shivered at the fates of those poor soldiers. Livingstone’s poker face, however, hadn’t changed a bit. Warren knew he wanted the story behind his powers. But Sofi was not in the mood for discussion and urged them out of the room, like a mother hen escorting her chicks.
As they sprinted down the hallway, Trent pointed to a red door ahead of them. “I remember seeing them store our weapons there—before the drugs took complete effect.” Warren nodded, slid to a stop, and opened the door. Old Fred went in and started handing out the goodies. Warren couldn’t help but envision him as a jolly but dirty Saint Nick passing out presents. But not only were their armaments piled in there, but those of other victims as well. Perhaps expeditionary teams into what the demon had told Warren was an asylum for exiles. Old Fred grinned when he picked up an ancient, but powerful shotgun and slung it over his shoulder. Livingstone rolled his eyes and grabbed a sheathed katana. “Oh is that right, Samurai Jack?”
A smile almost crossed Livingstone’s lips, “Yes, indeed. And you’ll thank me when you run out of shells.” He winked and Old Fred shook his head. When the group had re-armed themselves, they pressed forward again, searching for an escape from the tunnels. Trent led the party, looking at his watch as he jogged ahead.
“I think there should be a passage to the surface just on the other side of this wall up here. If we could…” he began, but a spine-tingling screech echoed down the corridor, effectively silencing him. Four of the five slowed and turned to check behind them, readying their weapons.
Only Livingstone kept moving, yelling back to them, “I wouldn’t stop there if I were…” But before he could finish, the floor fell out from under the four. They plummeted down a short shaft and landed on an incline, spiraling downwards. A small, circular outlet door opened and spat them out into a warm room, lavished with soft red carpet, pink suede pillows strewn about the room like autumn leaves, and what seemed to be giant lava lamps populating the perimeter of the circular room. But far more curious to the four was the thousands of butterflies flitting about the room, dazzling the air with swirling color.
Sofi was the first to stand, followed by Trent, while Warren and Old Fred only propped themselves up on their elbows to gaze at the spectacle. “My God,” Fredric stammered. “What is this?”
Warren laughed to himself in the irony that Livingstone wasn’t present to point out the stupidity of asking such a question. But if anyone were to ask it, it would have to be Old Fred. But as he looked through the haze of butterflies, he saw silhouettes—figures bending, stretching, squirming. “Do you see those…?” he began and Sofi nodded, squinting beside him. Now Warren stood and helped the old man to his feet.
Trent was already several paces away, heading towards the shadowed people with his pistol drawn. Warren reached for Sofi’s hand—whether for his or her comfort, he couldn’t say—and followed him. Old Fred hobbled after them, a hand on his back, the other clutching his shotgun, which he employed as a walking stick.
Across the pillowed, carpeted floor, through the butterflies and the soft crimson glow, the oddly-moving figures huddled—perhaps five or six of them—and every now and again, one would flail its arms backwards, splayed out like a kitten stretching for a piece of string just out of its reach. When Trent was within twenty yards or so of these blossoming figures, he called out to them.
“Hey there!”
Warren watched as they paid not the slightest heed to Trent’s greeting, and kept undulating from their knees. They were women—or at least had the feminine figure, Warren clarified in his own thoughts. He imagined they were trapped in a ritual of some sort—he began to discern chains around their waists and wrists. Through the clouds of butterflies, he also found a distinct, pale sort of mist rising from their midst.
“Are you okay?” he heard Trent ask again, his handgun still leveled at them, but irritated at their ignorance of his questions. “Are you slaves of the harpy?” He stopped a couple feet from them and Warren and Sofi joined him at his side. The girls wore paper-thin purple garments, which hung on them like moss an old withered tree branch. They were chained to the floor in a semi-circle, but seemed unaware of their bindings—each focused on the space between them, each had a dark, glazed pot of liquid and a sponge in each hand. In a waving sort of dance, they stretched skyward with their sponges collapsed down to the floor, eyes and noses only inches from the surface, then they would twist sideways and soak both sponges in the pots and repeat the process—but never at the same time; they alternated with an inconsistent rhythm.
Warren craned his neck to see what they bent over to scrub while Trent kept the torrent of questions raining on these unresponsive beings. Old Fred, however, simply walked up to one, cupped her chin in his hands and twisted her face towards him. Dark blank eyes stared at him, as if she couldn’t quite pinpoint why the rhythm of her life had been interrupted. Then she squirmed from his hands and fell back over to the floor. That’s when Old Fred gasped and motioned for Warren and Sofi to step closer.
There, resting in the floor, was a sliding glass door, with a luminescent glow—so out of place with the rest of the room—like a lemon among cherries. Warren also noted that the butterflies seemed to gravitate away from the radiance of the door. But as he inspected the glass, he saw, in a brilliant lime-color, a loopy handwriting scrawled across its surface. It reminded him of Sylvara’s note. He dropped to a knee, next to one of the slaves, squinted, and tried to read the writing. But the interference of the sponging girls made it almost impossible. He looked up to the others.
Trent was walking from each to each, looking for the spark of intellect in any pair of eyes—and evidently failing to locate it. “Hello? Can you hear me?” he yelled in obvious frustration, yanking on their arms or hair. “Anyone in there?” Still he tried, and still they stretched, searched, flopped, and scrubbed. “It’s like they’re zombies or something,” he stated, “only instead of the crazed, bloodlusting frenzy they’re just on a cleaning binge.”
“Perhaps we have to figure out what’s written on the glass, first,” Warren volunteered.
“Let’s make sure the room is secure first,” Old Fred suggested. “We don’t want to get jumped by that harpy and her minions again.”
Sofi nodded, but added quietly, “I think Oscar might be a preoccupation to them right now.” Trent shook his head and placed his hands behind his neck.
“After all,” Warren suggested, “We can’t assume that Sylvara has complete control. She might just be a force who has no choice but to make her home in this dangerous pathway. The ‘demon,’” he made quotation marks with his fingers, “told me she had been exiled here. Who knows what other forces are at work here besides the harpy?”
“Right,” Sofi decided, “Trent and Fredric, sweep the far side of the cavern, Warren, you and I will check back that way. We’ll meet back in the center. Good enough for a start?” Everyone nodded and left the imprisoned girls to their impossible task in the middle.

Chapter 17

The first thing that occurred to Warren to say when the creature that appeared as Sofi led him to Sofi, chained wrist and ankle to the cavern wall on the dark side, was to ask if she were alright. Yet a tiny Livingstone hiding in the back of his mind advised against it. Her condition was fairly obvious to him: poor, yet alive. She stood rather defiantly in her shackles, rather than sagging in them, as others (several yards away on each side) did. But her head was bowed, her chin pressed to her chest—only when he was within an arm’s length of her did she look up.
Warren would never forget her face in that moment of recognition. There was joy, yes. But it weighed heavily both with relief and with exhaustion. He longed to hold her up, embrace her, keep her safe. But the harpy was near—she was watching. He had to win her mind. Such enigma inhabited those words. And so he chose his own carefully, and fortunately, she sensed that he must speak first and waited for him.
He swallowed and began. “A young lad went into town one afternoon, but having very little idea where he was headed.” Sofi cast him a strange glance, but didn’t interrupt him. “About halfway through town a voice from his side told him to enter the café to his right. He had not known this voice long, but he heeded the instruction nonetheless and entered. He felt very out of place; in fact, if you had asked him, he might have told you he didn’t care for coffee or tea at all. But in he walked anyway and almost immediately his eyes found a girl.
“From the start, he could tell she was exceedingly beautiful—the voice at his side even suggested he make her acquaintance. Suspecting the intentions of the voice from the start, the young lad nonetheless walked over and stirred up conversation with the girl—a pleasant one, too. It soon became apparent to him that she knew much more than he, for he asked a great deal of questions, of which she answered very little. But she found something desirable in him—a taste for adventure, a thirst for knowledge which wouldn’t be satisfied with half-truths.
“But almost as suddenly as the conversation had begun, it ended. And the boy slipped out of the café to head to the woods to think, but not before stumbling upon an article in the local newspaper, authored by the very same girl with whom he had just been conversing. The article addressed God’s business in the garden of the universe.
“Now imagine this lad’s surprise when he made this connection, and tell me, Sofi Gio Seville, if you can, what that boy might have told the girl next he saw her—if he saw her?” Warren finished. The harpy kept a corner of her mouth open in expectation.
Sofi herself simply smiled. “Are you a rose in that wonderful garden?”
“And what would have the girl responded?”
“Which path in the garden do you tred?”
“And the young man’s answer to that?”
“Wherever I must, in order to smell the roses,” Sofi replied, her eyes fixed upon Warren’s.
“Shall I finish the story then?” Warren asked of the harpy, whose delight was palpable. She came and kissed him on the cheek.
“You truly are a wonderful man,” she praised him and fished a key from her rags. She unlocked Sofi’s fetters and looked her squarely in the eye.
“Do not let go of this one. Ever,” she demanded of her. Sofi managed a weak smile and nod, and collapsed into Warren’s embrace. Then, with a rush of wind, the harpy burst into the air with her great flapping wings. “I will leave you two for a while. But your tests are not finished, Warren. You have more friends to rescue.” And with that she flew off into the darkness.
Warren simply stood and Sofi simply relaxed in his arms. And for several defining moments, she rested her head on his chest and he held her tightly. They exulted in feeling the rise and fall of each other’s breathing and could say nothing.
Then a whisper from Sofi reached his ear: “What was your task, your test for my release, as the creature inferred?” Warren sighed and stroked her hair.
“To love you,” he answered her whisper with his own.
“How was that?” she wondered.
“I had to rescue your mind, she told me.”
“Why my mind?”
“I guess she thought your passions would overtake you, otherwise.”
“Warren?” Sofi asked, looking in his eyes for the first time. Warren noted that this was the first time she had used his real name and gladly returned her gaze.
“Yes?”
“When we were taken last night, I thought only of you and how I’d let you slip from me. You were there, so tangibly, so pristine in your affections for everyone, so excellent in your love for anyone, your mind of questions only ever improved your understanding in any situation. And then, just like that, you were gone. I didn’t expect to see you again, Warren. And then, then there you were, with a creature that looked like me, talked like me, but wasn’t me. And you knew it. I knew you knew it when you looked at me. In that moment…she was right. My passions had taken me over.”
“And now?”
“Now I know I love you, rather than simply feel that I love you,” she stated without blinking, in a soft voice like jasmine in the cool midnight air. “Your story, Warren. You moved my heart from the moment into duration. You anchored my spirit in memory. I thought back as you spoke and realized how perfectly necessary it was for me to love you.”
Warren drank in her words like nectar. “Well I’m glad it worked,” he said at last with a wry smile. “I wasn’t at all sure what I was doing.” Sofi dropped her eyebrows and grinned.
“Yes, you were. You were talking to me; that’s all you needed to do.”
“For what, the harpy’s satisfaction?”
“For my love.”
“So I suppose now would be a good time for me to say how I can’t stop thinking about you, what you’ve meant to me in these crazy past few days, how I want to give you every thread of my love?” Warren asked with raised eyebrows. Sofi blushed, sighed, and placed her head back on his chest.
“Yes, it would,” she whispered.
“Sofi?”
“Yes, Warren?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” Sofi smiled and tightened her grip around his back. “You have meant more to me in these past few crazy days than anything else,” Warren continued. “And I love another girl.”
Sofi instantly pulled away to arms length—yet did not dare let him go—dropped her eyebrows, and stared him down. Warren’s poker face cracked into a smile. “What can I say? I love Ali, too,” he said, laughing. Sofi scowled and tried desperately to keep from smiling.
“Not funny, Warren,” she said, resisting his tugs and a smile.
“Sofi?” he said.
“Yes, Warren?” she answered.
“I want to give you my undying love. I want to love you with every fiber of my being, heart, mind, and soul.”She relaxed her shoulders and let him pull her back into his embrace. He kissed her forehead. And for the next several minutes, they stood in each other’s arms, participating in pefection.

Chapter 16

Before I continue, notice our poor Sofi’s condition has slightly worsened. I fear she may yet lose all patience, ask for her check, and leave. I suppose I’m trusting her resilience. I’m fairly certain that she has undergone traumatic situations worse than this. For instance, she had suffered much by the time Warren found her in that sagging, dying apartment building. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Just please keep an eye on Sofi; I would hate for her to leave early and miss her surprise.
Back to the tale. Shortly after Warren felt the bone-chilling shriek resonating through him, a blur of motion and feathers shot up from beyond the edge, folded its wings around itself and landed with a shock on the floor. Warren’s heartbeat began to rise as he studied the now motionless figure. Then movement caught his eye. The wings began to drop away slowly. Warren squinted, watching the form intensely, and inched away with his left arm.
The dropping wings revealed a human form, head bowed, chest covered with feathers, and eagles feet perched on the floor. The wings continued to spread and the figure kept its head bowed. When it had stretched to its full wingspan, it promptly glanced up at Warren, whose mouth dropped open. For the creature before him had Sofi’s face.
Warren tried to speak, but the harpy folded her wings in a bit and smiled grimly at him. She waltzed over to him, hopped around him, fluttering her wings for balance now and again. Warren shuddered, with ice filling his veins.
“Hello Warren, my love,” she rasped in a hushed whisper. She stroked the side of Warren’s face with a claw on her wing. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”
Warren somehow found the courage to speak, “I’ve been here for hours…”
“Yes, yes, physically. But what does that matter if you aren’t here,” she tapped on his head. “What is the body without the mind? It is a flimsy thing, fit only for a meal.” The creature with Sofi’s face licked her lips and clicked her tongue. “But you, Warren,” she continued, hopping around him and giggling, “you took awhile to arrive, today. Ahh but here you are, and what a delightful little surprise you have become. I think that the rest of this morning will be extraordinarily…” the harpy paused, as if searching for the right modifier. “Pleasing,” she said at last, with a wry smile. She folded a wing around him. “Come, Warren. We have much to discuss. But not here, in this disaster. So come along.” She halfway lifted him to his feet with her powerful wing and pushed him towards the edge. Warren found his balance, but didn’t walk with her.
In a moment, the pressure from the wing was gone and a burst of air sent the dust in front of him swirling. He glanced backwards in time to see the harpy burst towards him with incredible speed. She hit him in the ribs and sent him over the edge and into a freefall. Warren found himself facing away, and in the few moments he had, he noticed that the buildings outside of the crater didn’t adjust in their perspective as quickly as he thought they should in such a long fall. Then another shriek echoed through the ruins and he felt a terrible grasp around his shoulders again, and then the painful grip as her wings opened to direct their fall. They shot through what he thought was a stairwell breezeway and out over the backside of the apartment, where a true crater, nearly the size of a football field, dominated the ground. He was flown right into the center of the place and down into the darkness.
For nearly a minute, the only reason he knew he was moving was the gusts of air on his face and the sound of pumping wings above him. Warren tried to keep his feet tucked in, he certainly didn’t want to smack his shin on any debris likely littering the tunnel. So he hugged his knees with his arms, closed his eyes, and waited for disaster. The forces of turns and drops and rises all played on his stomach, until he was certain they had navigated to the center of the earth. After a while (be it seconds or minutes, he wasn’t sure) he opened his eyes and actually noticed some difference. Faint orange lines swayed across the darkness, stretching, glowing, then disappearing. It was a mesmerizing dance, one that grew in brilliancy as they moved onward.
Then he found that those orange lines had preceded the bright hue emanating from a large, vacuous cavern. The light shimmered off the rock formations, and as he quickly approached the light source, the talons gripping his shoulder released him. Warren’s heart jumped into his throat and flailed a bit for balance and fell towards the stone. But as he neared the floor, it dropped away, so that he felt himself flying over the rock surface, falling into a bath of light. Whatever it was directly beneath him glowed intensely—he nearly squinted as he fell down the hole. Then the side-walls ended and he found himself dropping into an even more monstrous and more brightly lit cavern. The light below him still seemed a ways off—but off course, still rapidly approaching.
Then he felt the talons again, but not as brutally this time. They wrapped around his arms, tightened their grip, and he felt himself slowing as he was edged into another spiral. Warren tried to take in his surroundings as they descended. One side was definitely brighter than the other; he thought he could pick out structures of some sort on the brighter side. But as he approached the ground, he was dropped again. It was a short fall, however, and he splashed into an underground reservoir, which acted like a mirror for the lights above him. He sputtered and kicked himself towards the brighter side of the shore.
When he pulled himself from the water, which had been surprisingly warm, his shoulders felt like hamburger. So he crawled forward on his knees, set his head on the rock and let his shoulders sag. When a shadow enveloped him yet again, he let himself fall sideways and rolled onto his back. There was Sofi’s sly face staring down at him. She perched herself on his chest and gazed thoughtfully at him. “You are something else dear Warren. All this…sensation! And still you manage to think.” She tapped his sternum with a talon twice. Warren decided against questioning her and making a fool of himself.
“Warren, let me tell you something,” she continued and leaned forward until her face was but inches from his. “You are a special person. You realize this don’t you?” She seemed to focus on his mouth and brought her wing over him, again stroking his cheek. “I think you do. Why else would you be here? Oh Warren!” she cried and buried her face in his neck. Then she whispered in his ear, “it has been so long since anyone in our path has thought as you do! They feel and they burn and they hate and they kill. Such an eternity has passed since anyone here thought. Even them!” she swept her wing back and Warren found hundred of hovering harpies watching him. “Their passions have undone them, Warren. I say again, rationality has fled this path; I trod alone in darkness.” She pressed her nose against his
“Can’t you see what difficulty it is to keep one’s sanity in the midst of such animalism? Can’t you understand how many ages have passed since I have sensed thoughts like your own? In the glow of your intellect, it’s impossible to know how I endured those years of darkness!” she exclaimed and brought both wings to Warren’s face, enveloping him in a warmth of feathers. She slid herself down his body and pressed her head against his chest. “Oh do say something!” she said, quivering in anticipation. “Tell me why you have come! What drives you, dear Warren?” she asked, suddenly raising her head from his chest and peering into his eyes, running her wing claws through his hair. “Is it virtue that you seek? Are you planning for the greater good? Or are you just along for the ride, soaking up information like a sponge, ready to use knowledge for your own benefit?” Warren let her talk, eyebrows narrowing and dropping as she went on. “I see you judge me now. Must you focus on outward appearances so much? Listen to me, Warren. Converse with me and discover my mind.” She seemed to study him and decide on a course of action.
“As you have probably guessed, I am not Sofi. My name is Sylvara. I had hoped you wouldn’t be so shallow as to require a similar form for conversation. But I trust this shall aid you, my dear.” Upon those words she stretched out her wings and with a swift motion downwards, shook the feathers from her arms. Warren stared, dumbfounded. The bird was gone—just Sofi’s human form, clad in rags, straddled him. She brushed her hair back and caressed Warren’s hair with soft fingers. “Now speak with me,” she said softly. “I have much desired conversation with you; do not hold out on me.”
Warren’s heart threatened to explode within him; he told himself again and again that the woman on top of him was not Sofi, but some foul creature of an underworld he knew nothing about. She was after something, he knew, and her deceptions likely wouldn’t end here. But then she bent over him and kissed him on the lips—and ignited a war between his senses and his mind. When she pulled back, Warren fidgeted under her pouting mouth, her begging eyes. “I know it’s in there; why won’t you let it out? Can’t you see, Warren? All I want is to talk with you.” Then her expression changed slightly, darkening a bit. “Unlike them,” she said, gesturing to the sky, “they just want to feast.” Warren shivered and she lowered her face again to his and kissed him lightly. “Talk with me?”
Warren couldn’t quite figure why this creature wanted to converse with him so badly—he knew that he knew very little about what was going on. But neither could he discern any reason not to talk; so he managed to swallow once, take a breath, and speak. “Um. What do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“What did you think, when you read that note?” she asked, intrigued beyond measure.
“I was concerned for my friends’ safety,” he answered.
“Yes perhaps you were; but something else, too. What was it?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. I have nothing left in the world but my friends, without them I’m alone and meaningless.”
“Ah! But was this a fear for them, or a fear for you?” she probed.
“I suppose both.”
“And yet…yet there is more here, more to your reaction. Why did you run?”
“I didn’t want to be too late.”
“To arrive before they died?”
“Yes.”
“Did you think you could do anything about it? You knew nothing but my name and a location not too far from you. Did this mystery enable or disable your actions? Would have done more, had I told you the reasons for your friends’ capture, their precise holding location, or the fact that I had to kill two of the more rambunctious ones?”
Warren’s smile faded. “You…you what?”
She sat back on his hips. “Do not burden yourself with the lost. They weren’t your friends, don’t worry. No, the ones you care for are still alive. For now. But what about the mystery, Warren? What did you think of the unknown?”
Warren sighed. “I’m not sure; I decided to try to help them, whatever that meant.”
“Despite the unknown, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Oh Warren. Be assertive! You did what few in the whole history of my path have dared to do. Tell me what you did. You risked all for the thought of love, didn’t you?”
Warren nodded. “Yes, I did.”
“And now I have you here, with a legion ready to tear you limb from limb, and you don’t seem to sense the danger to your life. Why? Is it only because I talk to you in the form of someone you love? Have you pity or understanding for a lie?”
“Why shouldn’t I give you a chance to talk? I have nothing to do with your deceptions—why should you have to appear as Sofi? What difference does that make?”
The creature in Sofi’s skin reveled. “Oh Warren! You are something else entirely,” she giggled. “If you saw me in my true form, you wouldn’t dare speak with me. I know you wouldn’t. But that does not matter, for we are speaking. And if I speak from a lie, it should not follow that I speak lies, am I right.”
“You are. But if you spoke truth from truth, I might be more apt to believe it as such, you know,” Warren pointed out. Sofi’s lips smiled and she tossed her hair around.
“So you have yet to ask me anything to resolve the mystery. Don’t you want to know where your friends are? How they are doing? How you can rescue them?”
“Would it really make that much difference if I knew?”
“Warren, Warren!” she laughed, “your questions are an ecstasy! It has been so frightfully long since anything of the sort has been put forth to me. But believe me when I say that yes, it would make a difference. Knowledge is power, Warren. And you, whether you choose to believe it or not, are a very powerful individual. I wonder what you will choose to do with that power? For instance, let us look at Sofi, whose image I have. She will not say it (for she does not know it, as I think you do) but she loves you desperately. She feels, but she will not acknowledge it. And with the power of the mind behind her passions, she will drift away into meaninglessness. But you Warren, ah! you will love her, and you will focus your mind behind it. This will rescue her, more than you could ever hope to do by breaking chains with your hands.”
Warren kept silent for a moment, considering her words. When he began, it was a slow and deliberate chain of words that he spoke. “Are you saying that if I can rescue Sofi’s mind, no earthly bonds will hold her?”
Sofi’s eyes flickered with excitement. “Yes, Warren. Rescue her mind with your knowledge. I long to see it—the love of two in mind and spirit. But beware! Should you fail, you will lose her forever.”
“You mean, this is a test,” Warren clarified. A sly grin crossed Sofi’s lips.
“You are precisely right. It is easy enough to think for yourself…but to bring true thought to another being—even I have seen the sheer impossibility of that. Look around me, Warren. You see years of my miserable failure to lead these wretches from the bonds of their passions. And from this I have learned this: if you fail, you will drive them even further into their ignorance. Just look at them, the mindless souls watching our every move, waiting to devour. Your precious Sofi will become just like them, unless you can light the beacon of reason in her mind."
Warren bit his lip and stared at the creature sitting on top of him. After a moment’s pause, he asked the question she had been waiting for: “Where is she?”

Chapter 15

It’s difficult to say what dreams might have haunted Warren that night in a dusty, unfamiliar room. And if he had remembered any of them, explanations might have been far from possibility. But troubled his dreams certainly were—for he awoke early, anxious and sore. The sun had already nipped above the horizon and extended its first few rays through the windows, laying them brazenly on the off-white wall opposite him. Warren tried to turn over and cling to the last vestiges of sleep, but found his brain already pondering the questions of the new day—namely where Ali had gone. He had surely watched as she had curled up next to his pad, hadn’t he? But now he propped himself on his elbows and scanned the room.
“Ali?” he said, coughing hoarsely afterward. He swallowed and tried again. “Ali, where are you, girl?” She was nowhere in sight and for a second he listened, hoping to catch the sound of any of her motions, the scratch of her claws on the wood flooring or the squeak of a sneeze.
Unsatisfied with nothing, Warren rolled out of bed, scratching at his scalp with one hand, and picking the sleep from the corner of his eyes with the other. The silence was desolate—nothing moved or ticked, not a shadow flickered nor a light flashed. He exited his room to find an empty, barren hallway. Dust lingered in the air, motes swirling lazily from his breath in the still beams of light, fixed in place by the shutters. Each step he took sent a small puff spiraling into shadows.
As he entered the front room, with a brazen, but dust-covered, chandelier hanging meaninglessly over the vacant room, Warren stopped. All the suitcases and bags and equipment were gone. The room had been stripped as bare as it had been when they arrived the previous evening. He glanced furtively around the room, nothing caught his eye at first, until he found a single notebook page, curled at the edges, resting in the early light. Warren approached the paper with obvious care—holding himself back, as if it might leap up and bite him—and his right eyebrow dropped into a scowl. He squinted at it, determined that it did, in fact, contain a lightly scribbled note.
When Warren crouched and picked up the piece of paper, he began to read the following, written in a loopy script:

“Walk east five blocks the moment you read this and you will live. Come unarmed and alone and one of your friends shall live. Give us what we desire and we may give you two more. Deviate from our instructions in the slightest, and you and your friends shall die.

--Sylvara

Warren’s heart must have missed a beat, for he stood there, looking at the torn piece of paper like a deer in headlights. He managed to read it again and react—he yelled about the house and waited for answer. None came. He spun and searched the walls, now brighter in the morning sun and he began to observe that which he missed upon first glance: several bullet holes. And something else, something new, came to his attention as he inspected the wall more closely. Fine little dots had been splattered across the bland yellowed wallpaper. Warren rubbed his thumb across one and it streaked red in the rising sun’s rays. He staggered backwards and hastily searched the other walls. Everywhere blood had been sprayed onto dust-coated surfaces.
He glanced back to the note; he figured he had no choice but to follow the note’s instructions. With the paper in hand, he burst through the doors and into an already balmy summer morning. He found the sun and began running east on the street just beyond the drive. It was a divided street with giant willows lining the middle, allowing only the tiniest snippets of light to fall on Warren like a fine crosshatch pen stroke. A squirrel seemed to notice his urgency and followed him in the trees, racing across the limbs and hopping lightly from branch to branch.
By the fourth street, his run had slowed to a minor jog and he couldn’t help but wonder where precisely he was supposed to be or what exactly the note-writer wanted him to do. But he felt his friends jeopardy acutely—he knew he wasn’t a soldier, like Livinstone, and had immediately abandoned hope of a forced rescue. He would have to play this game and trust his intellect to carry him through, Warren decided. Above all, he reminded himself the importance of questions—of asking the right ones, as Livingstone had taught him (although with a slight dose of frustration and humiliation).
But as he began down the fifth block, he found the sun’s light much intensified in only a couple yards. He squinted at the glaring light—flattened his hand over his brow. The tree just beyond him, nearly indiscernible in the brightness, seemed to be lacking foliage. Warren kept his feet moving, his hand at his forehead, his eyelids barely cracked. As he approached the first tree, he found its bark blackened, as if scorched from a fire, with only a few thick bare limbs stretching into the sky. Not a single leaf inhabited its heights, nor even the smaller twigs.
He looked back to the west at the brilliant, fully-leafed trees behind him, glowing green in the rising sun. A squirrel paused at the last healthy tree, quite reluctant to continue on. It chirped a couple times, its tail bobbing with each, and then scampered frantically back west. But then, on the street behind him, he saw a long, swimming shadow, stretching across the whole of the street. Warren’s right eyebrow dropped and then he turned to find the source. It seemed a figure in the sky—but he heard nothing of the thump of helicopter blades, nor the roar of a plane engine. Glancing back, he watched the shadow dancing on the street, approaching the long tower of his own. When the two combined forms, he glanced back up just in time to see a great span of wings silhouetted against the sun, hear a couple pounding flaps, wonder for a moment how big the bird must be, and then raise his hands to shield his face from the impact.
In the next moment, he felt as if a truck hit him. Then weightlessness occurred to him—he did not dare to open his eyes. He waited to hit the pavement again. When nothing of the kind occurred, he realized a dull but forceful pressure on his shoulders and armpits. His left arm went numb, followed by the realization of his weight again. He was hanging, Warren ascertained and tried to will himself to open his eyes.
One by one his senses returned to him—the deep monotonous wing beats assaulting his ears, the rush of a breeze on his cheeks, then sight of his legs dangling over a black and gray, debris-filled, smoking quarter of the town. Warren craned his neck upward in a failed attempt to ascertain his captor’s identity. Instead he focused on the vice-like talons hooked around his shoulders—they were the feet of an osprey, rough scaled toes with curving claws to keep prey from slipping their grasp. And the longer the flight lasted, the more acute the pain of the talons digging into his shoulders became.
Then Warren noticed a slight change in what was otherwise a fairly straight flight path towards what he thought was the center of the desolation. He felt himself dipping and turning north; then the banked turn became even more severe as he was dropped into a descending spiral—heading for what he thought the tallest building in the area, a six or seven story apartment complex with a gaping hole in one side. This appeared to be the target of his abductor and Warren found himself slightly concerned about the speed with which they were approaching the building. And all too quickly they dove through the opening and then he felt the wings spread wide and a brutal pain from the talons as they slowed from the descent.
Then he was free of the grip—but free falling to a large, emptied room. When Warren landed, face-first and sliding across the wood flooring, he cringed and coughed. He rolled himself over and grabbed at his left shoulder—it felt wet. He tried to use his tingling left arm to prop himself up, but failed and collapsed back to the floor. After a few short breaths while lying on his back and a grunt, he pushed himself into a sitting position with his right arm and glanced around the room. He found no sign of his captor, but just the cracked floor ending abruptly fifteen feet or so in front of him, affording him a good view of the surrounding buildings. Each seemed coated with ash; most of the windows were shattered and doors blown open. He wondered what sort of catastrophe had occurred here.
He pressed his right hand to his opposite shoulder again, pulled the collar of his shirt down to get a look at the wound. It didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly, so he kept some pressure on it and scanned the room. He imagined there had been another room between the one he was in and what used to be the edge of the building, as he found himself far within the cavity of the collapse. A room to his right, across the expansive hole in the building, was visible from his location, as well the one below it, and a section of the roof above it.
Sheer silence held the place captive, save a drip from a still-leaky pipe somewhere in the recesses of the ruins. Warren struggled to his feet and made a trip around his prison. The obvious first deterrent was the four-story plunge into wreckage. The wall to the right had no doors or windows, unlike the wall to the left of the edge. But when Warren inspected it, he found no doorknob, and it wouldn’t budge an inch when he kicked it—which told him that it had been boarded up or was otherwise blocked from the far side. A couple windows behind him were devoid of glass, and Warren wondered if they led to a balcony or fire escape. When he leaned out of them, however, he saw that perhaps there had been, at one time or another, a ladder of some kind, but nothing of the sort existed anymore. All he stared at was the cluttered ground, seven stories down.
Indeed his room was meant to be a self-containing cell, Warren figured, and sat against the wall by the door. An hour passed, while he massaged his shoulders and closed his eyes and tried to picture Sofi’s brilliant eyes gazing into his own. In fact, the percentage of time he noticed that he spent thinking about her served as an subject which ate up a rather substantial portion of that time. When he lost himself in thought, he watched the shadows shift along the skeletal buildings outside, in that repetitive sundial dance of daylight. What seemed to be more time than perhaps actually passed edged onward, while his throbbing shoulder counted the seconds better than any microwave timer.
These hours of solo introspection brought the same questions to his mind time and again: what am I here for? Who am I to these people—to Sofi and Livingstone, to the Mar, to the demons? How did it come to this? Why me? These, or other variations, sapped his mental energy while he sat there, on a cracked, dusty, wooden floor, rubbing his shoulder. As far as he could tell, he had no idea whatsoever to explain why he was in this particular position.
Warren felt it was series of disastrous and unexpected and flat-out strange events that had sent him tumbling to where he was now: like he was a rock that had been jarred loose on a steep hill and had gained too much momentum to stop on its own—as if he needed to hit something solid first. Problem was, he couldn’t find anything solid if he wanted to. He had been separated from his family in a morning. He had been driven out of his home town, even his home state, by several hundred miles. And now all of his new “friends” had disappeared overnight. What was solid in that? And now he found himself wounded and powerless, trapped in an exposed, seventh-story prison, awaiting who-knew what to save the lives of these people who had ruined his life.
Why was he so important? What could he possibly have or know that could have set off this chain reaction in which he found himself so impossibly buried at present? These unanswerable, but quite nagging questions pestered his soul to its core. Indeed, it seemed as though his very will had been stripped of him starting that night when he went to bed several days ago in his own bed, carefree and in love with life. Why had such change found him so quickly?
And the longer he thought about it, the more he meditated on these questions, the more it occurred to him that Livingstone was absolutely correct in renouncing the meaninglessness of such inquiries. What did it matter that this happened to him, one of billions (even on a single pathway…probably of billions more)? For every question that came to him, there existed a counter question just as far removed from an answer as the first. And the more he decided to lose himself in pondering these abstractions, the further he stretched himself from any answers. If there were a right way to dabble in abstraction, Warren decided that it wasn’t considering one set of questions without the other. Theory only amounted to something like an alignment on a racetrack. It was setting his wheels on the tracks. And bad questions only disrupted this process, and once set in motion, could steer him of course—perhaps ending in disaster.
So Warren decided to ask himself, “Why not me?” along with “Why me?” He thought about the consequences of his purpose as meaningful or as meaningless to the others he interacted with. And within a few moments, he determined that, if he were a drastic asset to either side, or completely worthless, his life still had value to him. And so if he sensed a necessity to keep an identity of value to keep himself alive, then so be it. If it seemed better to him to do the opposite, then of course he would. He would steer himself towards life at every opportunity.
The only issue for Warren, then, remained the question of Sofi—and whether he might tie his purpose to her. Unfortunately, nearly the moment he began to consider her value to him, a shriek pierced what had become a comfortable silence. It echoed up from the depths of the ruined apartment below him—and it certainly wasn’t human.

Chapter 14

Up until this point, it had not occurred to Warren that he was entirely hopeless to return to his former life. He had been told that his family was dead, yes. He had accepted that they were gone and that he was embarking on something new. But the first glimpse of that new moon, that intriguing and frightening moon, had told him that not only had his circumstances changed, but the whole of the world, even of its history, had developed into a intensely different scene.
His paradigm had been pressed and attacked, but the moon had shattered it. This was a new world, and it could be utterly foreign to him, moreso perhaps than a casual visit overseas. What had happened differently in this place? His mind drifted to some of the simple, momentous events of history. Had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. given his famous, “I Have a Dream” speech…or in that case, had he been assassinated? And had John F. Kennedy been killed? Had he been President? Who indeed was President? And of America…had it fought any wars at all? More? Had WWIII occurred? Even smaller questions pressed his mind: had his parents married each other in this history, too? Was there another Warren (with or without that name?) walking around?
And all this had been opened to his mind by the moon. And therefore, he had little success in looking away from it. Not to mention it gave him an excuse to lean against Sofi’s side—which he noted was an action she didn’t protest. While Warren certainly had a newfound respect for Sofi, in the few quiet moments he had, his thoughts drifted to her—he thought of her smile; he imagined her eyes gazing into his own. And naturally he wondered if she thought the same of him. But had you asked Warren if he were in love with her, he would have denied it vehemently. Which might have only proved the point that he found himself attracted to her. And so relished this quiet, semi-intimate moment with her, staring twofold out the window at strange moon in a foreign night.
When Old Fred slowed to a stop and announced their arrival at the second waypoint, no one immediately answered him. Warren slept, head tilted straight back. Ali had curled into a ball in his lap, next to his elbow. Sofi’s head rested on Warren’s shoulder—a fact which no one in the vehicle mentioned for days. Old Fred had weighed his options: startle them all awake with a blare of the horn or just exit the vehicle, hoping the sound of his door closing and a small breath of fresh, cool air would get the job done. Prudence led him to attempt the latter, and it paid off.
Sofi woke first and blushed immediately at her predicament. She looked at the waking Warren, pulled her hair behind her ears and over her shoulders, and straightened in her seat. She took in a breath and held it, closing her eyes for a second. Then she touched Warren on the shoulder. “We’re here,” she whispered to him.
He awoke from dream to a dream. He blinked several times and yawned, stretching behind his head. “Thanks,” he mumbled as she exited the vehicle. He looked at Ali in his lap. “Alright, wake up, girl; time to go to bed.” She quivered as he slid his hand underneath her belly and relaxed in his grip. “There we go,” he said and slid out the door into the mild night.
Fredric was already carrying a load of equipment into the place, so Warren followed him. Trent busied himself in the first room, ordering supplies to different sections of the house. When Warren and Ali waltzed in, Trent pointed to a hallway. “Down there, first right is where you’ll sleep. Take an air mattress,” he said, gesturing towards a pile of inflatable pads. “Blankets should come in soon, so come back for one,” he winked and scurried to help a soldier unload a tangled mess of wires and equipment from his arms. Warren picked up a mattress and found a nice corner in the room, next to the window (where he could still see the moon) and began inflating his pad. And these were no cheap air pads either, he noticed. These probably ran upwards of a hundred apiece, he guessed, as it hadn’t been so long since he had browsed an outdoors shop.
Just as he had finished inflating the pad, on which Ali was now sniffing and pacing, Warren noticed a moth beating against the window, straining to find the light. He watched intently, as if drawn to the plight of the bug as it slid across the pane left and right, searching for an entrance. And just as soon as Warren saw that the window was cracked open and stood to remedy the situation, the moth found the gap and fluttered inside.
But then, to Warren’s bewilderment, the insect veered sharply away from the bulb in the ceiling and alighted on his pad, his wings flattened outwards and swaying slightly. It’s front antennae twitched as it spun ninety degrees to face Ali, who had noticed the intrusion and had scampered up to the moth. She sniffed at it, whiskers trembling. Warren kneeled and studied the moth’s movements as it crawled towards Ali. Warren gave her a warning. “Don’t even think about it.” Ali turned her eyes to Warren, blinked at him, sneezed, and sat back on her rear legs. Then she turned her attention back to the insect.
“Warren, do you have a blan…” Sofi called from the doorway, but lost her words when she saw the spectacle before her. For a moment no one spoke or moved. Then Sofi tried again. “What are you…?” she tried to ask.
“I’m not sure…it’s just this moth…” Warren attempted to reply. Sofi sauntered in, squinting at the scene.
When the moth stopped moving, Warren blinked. He looked to Sofi, to Ali, then back to the bug. It had simply frozen—its wings were as still as the glass surface of a pond on a summer night. Even its antennae held their position. But that didn’t seem especially extraordinary—not compared with what happened next.
Warren swore that his bleary eyes were not seeing things; Sofi would have dismissed the events altogether, had it not been for the damaged, green moon shining outside the window. But when a wave a color crept over the moth, turning it a golden brown from the pale gray it had been before, Warren could help but point it out. “Sofi! Did you…?”
“Uh huh!” she whispered back, entranced by the occurrence.
Ali seemed the only living thing in the room that wasn’t surprised. She ambled up to the moth and, to Warren’s absolute horror, plucked off a wing and promptly ate it. Before he could stop her, she then snatched the whole of the moth and devoured it before their eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing found its way out. Instead, he gazed into Ali’s radiant black eyes and thought he suffered a heart attack when the rat twitched her nose and spoke.
“Hello Warren,” Ali said in a cheerful, soprano voice and blinked. Warren’s eyebrows made a slow journey up his forehead and Sofi’s hand again found its way to her mouth. “I have received this gift, that I may aid you.” Ali clasped her front paws together and bowed slightly. “Do not be troubled, Warren, and look on me as your servant and friend.”
While Warren floundered in amazement, a light of suspicion had grown in Sofi’s eyes. She found her tongue and spoke to Ali. “The demon sent you,” she accused.
Ali shook her head and twitched her whiskers. “No, it was the Mar who sent me to Warren that they might track him; I was ignorant then and searched only for pleasure and security. In this, I thank you, Warren for your generosity. I owe you much. But it was the ‘demon’ who gave me the ability to communicate with you. Its gift is precious, as is the message he gave me to deliver to you.”
Sofi narrowed her gaze. “Which is?” she demanded.
“The reason why you are where you are,” Ali ventured, and scratched at her cheek with her foot.
“And what is that, Ali?” Warren questioned.
“At your first waypoint, the Mar surrounded you, led by the demon Maghalis. In your analogy of the universe, Sofi, you compare histories to paths in a garden and waypoints as the places where those paths intersect, do you not?” Ali reasoned. Sofi could only nod. Ali continued, “Then at the last waypoint, you thought to switch paths in order to follow your plotted journey to St. Barthe’s in western Florida, correct?” Sofi didn’t reply, but Warren found himself nodding in agreement. “Well you must realize that that waypoint was not a crossing between two paths, but three. For sake of analogy, imagine your two paths met at a bridge over a third path. The Mar decided simply to create a hole in the bridge and ‘drop’ you into an entirely different path than you expected.”
“The pink globes,” Warren deduced. Ali nodded.
“Then Maghalis just moved his ship into position to ‘catch’ you.” Ali blinked and waited for her words to sink into the minds of her audience. Then she began again, “Now, my benefactor is an ally of Maghalis, but not necessarily a supporter. What Maghalis intends for the futures of the universe seems much to risky to our unnamed friend and thus he will attempt to undermine the demon in any way he can.”
“Wait,” Sofi interjected. “What are Maghalis’ plans?”
Ali looked at her paws. “That I cannot say, for it was not planted in my mind. But the intentions of our friend is quite clear. He will aid you in any way you can; but know that if you reveal his objectives to Maghalis or the Mar, you will lose that trust forever. But why you would find that option appealing, I don’t know. It would be absurd to refuse this generous offer. For it was he that ‘lifted’ you back onto your chosen path before the waypoint closed. It will take the Mar some time to mobilize and navigate to the next possible waypoint converging with this path. This is the most important news I bring you: you have at least 16 hours before the Mar will arrive on scene, and this waypoint closes before that time. However, if you enter the waypoint, they will be able to close on you within two hours of your departure for your next waypoint. Either way, our benefactor has given you a slight edge on your enemy. If nothing else, thank him for time for a good night’s rest.”
Sofi nodded and turned to Warren. “If we have 16 hours, we might be able to find an alternate route for a couple waypoints and increase our lead. I need to talk to Trent about this, but you. You get a blanket and get some rest.” Then she stooped and held out her hand. “Ali, will you come with me?”
“Certainly,” she said and scurried to the outstretched palm. Warren followed the two out. Once in the main room, Trent tossed him a blanket and a pillow. He caught both, watched as Sofi motioned Trent over, whispered to him, and then called Livingstone over as well. Warren turned to head back to the room, as the discussion evidently was not going to involve him. He slipped through the doorway, threw his pillow to the floor and watched the three shadows flicker on the floor in front of him as they moved to another room.
Warren rolled onto his back and kicked the bottom half of the fleecy blanket into place. He adjusted his pillow, closed his eyes and tried to process everything that Ali had told him—or even the simple fact that Ali had spoken to him. As he adjusted to the silence, he heard the muffled voices from the discussion taking place next door. They weren’t quite audible, so he tried not to focus on it. What was the point of straining to understand anyway? At the moment he probably understood more than Trent or Livingstone did.
But the voices, which had began in a hush, grew in volume, until Warren found it nearly impossible not to listen. Livingstone had been speaking when Warren decided to open his ears completely and eavesdrop.
“And you don’t believe this demon has some ulterior motive for ‘aiding’ us?” he was asking. “Even if Maghalis controls the Mar, you don’t believe this one has no influence at all, do you? Listen, demons hate demons as much as humans. But for a demon to betray a demon in the name of helping a human? That’s unheard of. I wouldn’t trust him if he were standing over my burning body with a bucket of water.”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense that a demon would aid us, but he has. We can’t overlook that fact. We would all be locked in some demonic prison, waiting to be chopped into tiny bits for some horrible experiment right now if it weren’t for his actions,” Trent retorted.
“Yes, true. But imagine if he had some ambush planned and Maghalis got the jump on him; he frees us, gains our confidence, lies to us about the time we have, and lures us into his own trap—take the credit for our capture for himself. He might even gain enough influence to seize control of the Mar from Maghalis. I don’t care what he’s done for us, I will not trust the devices of a demon.”
“But don’t you think he risks much by giving us this information through Ali?” Sofi asked.
“Certainly not. He knows his quarry. We wouldn’t dare negotiate with Maghalis—he knows that. He assumes that we will take his charity in good faith and uphold our end of the bargain…until he smashes the deal and destroys us himself. As much as we hold that humanity is not completely bereft of the power to do good, we must understand that demons are not on the same plane. They are corrupt thoroughly and are not capable of a good action. Not to say that their actions might lead to good, just as the growth of a weed in the garden might give the gardener cause to uproot it and churn the soil to make a fine place to plant a flower. But no. make no mistake, these demons are masters of deception, and I, for one, will not trust them. Any of them.”
“You seem to know much of the universe, o wise and masterful Oscar,” answered Trent, dripping with sarcasm. “You don’t trust anyone—so what would you know of trust? Why should we listen to you condemn what you have never known? I don’t care what the demon’s intentions are; I care about his actions. He has aided us, that much is certain. And it seems that he would like to continue to do so. We were in a tight spot, but now we have some room to work with. If we accept his future help, we are not relegating ourselves vulnerable to him. We would accept his information as we would any outside source, treating it according to protocol and comparing it to our own research. We can be as ready to terminate our agreement with him as he might be to do with us. Just because he might be playing us, doesn’t mean we can’t pay him back. The opportunity here of an ally within the enemy is too great to pass up—even if he’s only a momentary ally. I say we cross check his information with whatever the boys have found by morning and make our plans accordingly.”
“May I say something?” Sofi interrupted with a much quieter voice. Apparently the two didn’t object. “I don’t like the idea of trusting a demon any more than you do, Oscar. And I realize the aid he has already given us, Trent. But let us look at our situation. From what we’ve found already, signs indicated that another waypoint for them to merge with this path was fairly distant, at least not within twenty hours or so from our departure from the Denver waypoint, right. Well that seems to fit with his information. So I agree with Trent that we should finish some comparative data analysis in the morning; but I also think that we should watch our steps and be ready for anything. Is this reasonable?”
Warren imagined both nodding when no replies came. He listened for a moment and heard nothing more. Then a knock on the door frame caught his attention, Sofi peeked in. “I brought Ali back,” she said, winking with a slight smile. She bent to the floor and set Ali down, who scampered to Warren’s mattress and curled up next to it. “Good night. Sleep well,” she whispered and closed the door before Warren could reply. He yawned and stretched.
“Well Ali. I guess I’ll see you in the morning, girl.”
“Likewise, Warren,” she squeaked and nestled herself into a little ball of gray fur in the shadows.Warren looked back up and out the window. There hovered the decimated moon, and despite the strangeness of the glow, the dustiness of the air, the absurdity of his situation, Warren sighed and fell asleep, thinking of Sofi snuggled up against him, arm around his waist, her chin on his chest.

Chapter 13

“Well Warren, first order of business is to teach you how to take flashbangs. Grenades roll into a room, you close your eyes, turn away, and cover your ears. Doesn’t do much good, but it helps. It’s certainly better than staring at it with the curiosity of a monkey. Second order, you need to know that if something’s leaking gas, don’t breathe it. Especially if it comes from me.
“Okay, now that you’re all caught up, you can realize that since you did none of the above, you were out like a light—it was people like you that flashbangs and gas grenades were made for. So a few moments after you went down, they rushed in like the good little Mar boys are all taught to do and we, being the nasty little rebels we are taught to be, shot back at them and rushed back out of the room.
“After that, we had the two recon teams pretty much down and figured more would be coming in. Well only one came down. And it wasn’t Mar. Matter o’ fact, it was a demon, though not as nice a one as you met, evidently.”
“Wait,” interrupted Warren, “Demon?”
“Yes, demon. Nasty sons of bitches, demons are. Listen, let me explain to you what we’re up against: the Mar are stupid, greedy, ignorant sissies who have lots of connections and weapons and can usually get away with murder. The demons, who pull the strings of the Mar, are not any of the things the Mar are. They are cunning, resourceful, and attentive killing machines. My point is this, if the Mar want you dead (more than just the local thugs) that means demons want you dead. And if demons want you dead, you’re probably going to wind up that way. So.”
“So? What?”
“We’re going to need a car soon before the demons show up again to kill you. But while they go find them, you need to hear about Maghalis—he was the demon who dropped the ground from beneath us and landed us in a portal (or something) to his ship. Anyway, he’s a tall-walking, purple-winged wonder—long teeth, big claws, twisted horns, pointy tail. You know pretty much the portrait of your classic demon. Not to say they all look like that.
“But on with the story. We still had our weapons of course, so when we landed I the demon-shsip, we opened fire on the Mar operating the cargo hold (as we later discovered that’s where we were). It was a short journey to the bridge in which we decimated the defending Mar. I mean, they really didn’t stand a chance. I kind of feel bad about it, you know?
“So we take the bridge and check the instruments to find your location (since you hadn’t dropped with us). Sofi sprinted off for you, while four held the bridge and the other four went on a sweep and destroy patrol. There’s nothing sweeter than sweep and destroy missions on an enemy vessel. Loads of fun.
“Well anyway, the first group of four (with Trent) were attacked on the bridge by a couple demons and the gyro governor was damaged (you might have remembered the shift) and I think they were still holding them off when we got ported here. So by then our sweep team (slowed a little by the tilt) had scored ten or fifteen Mar kills and one demon kill. The demon had jumped us around a corner and would have taken Max’s head off had he not been in a corner-check motion with his bayonet armed. He sort of accidentally beat the demon to the punch. It screamed. We fired. A lot. It sort of writhed a bit and then burst into flames. Probably nothing but charcoal left now.
“It was right about that time we found ourselves a little light-headed and looking back at the blue sky. Are the trucks ready yet?”
Warren was still a little foggy about the demons, and decided to press the issue. “So if Maghalis is so powerful, how come he didn’t just kill us all? I mean, isn’t that what you’ve been saying they want to do?”
Before Fredric could wind himself up, Sofi answered. “The demons are each their own master—they work together on occasion when the outcome benefits them all. Which is rare. And to say that they control the Mar is also somewhat outlandish. They are not the Mar—though they will use the Mar to their advantage. Of course the Mar believe they have made the deal of the ages, working closely with demons, as if they have harnessed a great power. So rarely do they work in suspicion of the other’s motives, but even less frequently do they actually agree. It’s hard to tell which one is the host and which one the parasite in their relationship.
“Maghalis is probably the most Mar friendly demon in existence, and therefore most dangerous to us. But don’t be deceived, Watson, Maghalis doesn’t want you personally dead. He is fighting a larger battle and would much rather figure out why we want you alive and where we are taking you. He’s not a beast of anger and passion for destruction like many of his lesser imp friends—it’s his rather insatiable lust for knowledge that compels him.”
At this point, Livingstone, who had been sitting in silence, fidgeting, now spoke out with an unrestrained passion. “Which rulebook will you be playing by, ehh Sofi? Are we to tell him nothing or everything? You’ve been quite reluctant to reveal anything to him in the past; what has changed now? I mean, no offense to your faculties of thought, Watson, (they aren’t in question here) but honestly the less you know the better.”
“He has seen a demon and the demon has seen him; I should think that’s reason enough to explain his situation.”
“Watson,” Livingstone addressed Warren in answer to Sofi’s question, “we are trained soldiers. I cannot lie about that to you; you yourself have seen it. We fight against the Mar; you have witnessed this. And now you know about the faction of otherworldly demons which may or may not aid the Mar. This is not necessarily dangerous information for you. But if you come to understand any purpose behind our actions, if you come into enemy hands, they will find out. And, as Sophi said, once Maghalis knows, he will have very little use for your life. So when I tell you that it is better that you don’t know, believe me, for your own life’s sake.”
“You think I would tell them?” Warren began, but Livingstone shook his head. “These are no ordinary interrogations they would perform on you, question and answer type. Not even torture. No, once they have you in their custody, they will know what you know. It’s a simple psychic process and they will access your memories like an electronic file. Now as soldiers, we have had a defense mechanism implanted within us (by our voluntary choice) which disrupts this effort and will make them resort to torture, which we can and will withstand. But I have no wish for you to suffer nor for the demons to gain access to our purpose; therefore, for the common good, I will not, nor will I let anyone in our troupe, tell you more than you need to know. You do not need to be accountable for our actions.”
Warren stared wide-eyed at the hobo soldier and turned to Sofi, who glanced away. “Do you understand, Sofi?” He measured her silence and then nodded. “Do you understand, Fred? All of you?” No one said a word. Then Livingstone put a hand on Warren’s shoulder.
“I hope that you understand our intentions for you are nothing but for the best possible outcome in the sequence of events that have already begun cascading through time. I trust we have demonstrated this thus far. So look back on the last two days, Warren. Tell me if you would trust in us to lead you on—and not just to safety, but to understanding. And in the end, when you understand it all, then look back on us and judge our decisions.”
Warren pulled Ali from his shoulder again and looked at her gleaming eyes. “I think we can do that, can’t we, Ali?” She squeaked in admonition and tried to chew on his thumb. He raised his eyes to Livingstone. “I think we can do that.”
“Excellent,” Livingstone said, smiling for the first time in a long time. “And perfect timing, here are the trucks.” Warren searched in the direction that Livingstone pointed. Two giant, black SUVs raced around the corner and dipped to a stop. Then Trent spoke up. “Sofi and Warren go with Old Fred and Max, in Connor’s vehicle. Oscar and the rest of you, come with me in Shan’s vehicle. Let’s go; let’s go people. Long drive to Kansas City.”
Warren followed Sofi, as he was entirely clueless as to which vehicle belonged to whom. Old Fred climbed into the front passenger seat and Warren found himself seated between “Max” and Sofi. And he didn’t really mind, though Sofi seemed a little downcast since Livingstone’s rebuttal. As they buckled themselves in, Ali squeaked and caught Warren’s ear in her teeth. “Ow. Hey! I need that ear, Ali,” he said, wincing. Then to the rest of the passengers, he added, “Does anyone have something edible for Ali to snack on? I think she’s hungry.”
“Yeah,” Old Fred said, rummaging through the glove compartment. “I think…ehh…somewhere in here are some…aha! Here, she’ll get a kick out of these,” he exclaimed and handed back a pack of Jalapeno Cheddar flavored sunflower seeds. Warren hummed monotonously in indecision. “Okay, maybe lick them off first or something,” Fredric suggested.
Warren decided to rub them off as best he could; he did so and held it up for Ali. She sniffed the seed with interest—then promptly sneezed. “Hmm, maybe I’d better rinse it off,” Warren thought aloud. “Anyone have a water bottle?”
“There’s a bunch in back,” Connor, the driver, offered.
“I’ll snag one,” Max chimed in for the first time and pulled one from a package of bottled water behind him. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” Warren sang, ripping the plastic off the top and opening it. He dripped a bit on the seed, rubbed it thoroughly, and handed it to Ali. She took it in her nimble paws, turned it around a couple times, and started gnawing. Warren watched her devour the whole thing, and then repeated the process. Even Sofi, who had seemed quite emotionally displaced from the furry little gray ball atop Warren’s shoulder, glanced over every now and again to watch the spectacle.
Warren thought Ali could sense the attention and believed that she rather enjoyed it, as if she were made to inhabit the spotlight. And so for the next ten minutes, they watched Ali devour sunflower seeds, with Warren dripping water down the edge of the cap so Ali could drink every now and again.
“We still need to operate on her, you know,” Sofi said quietly, eyes fixed on the little ball of fur. Warren’s gaze snapped to her—a smile tugging at his lips.
“Thank you.”
The rest of the day passed without much, Ali occupying the entertainment spotlight on the trip. Conversation drifted in and out—usually centered lightly on Ali’s antics. Several hours in, Old Fred took control of the wheel and shortly after announced their departure from Colorado. Warren felt somewhat uneasy without the mountains in sight, but distracted himself with keeping Ali in line.
The sun faded quickly behind them, revealing the glittering fields of stars above them. But what soon caught their undivided attention was the rising moon. Fredric, with his eyes searching the road for wildlife, had noticed it first, but hadn’t said anything until at least half of the bright orb had escaped the horizon. That second glance had hushed him in the middle of a story, and when the others had prodded him to continue, he pointed in the general direction of the moon and said something like, “I…look.”
Warren had to lean close to Sofi, a necessity he didn’t mind in the least bit, in order to glimpse the moon. But what he saw wasn’t the moon—well, half of it was. And most of that half glowed bright green in the sky. The other half hung in space around it, drifting in what must have been nation-sized chunks. Warren gazed with open mouth at the spectacle before him—he wasn’t sure which half of the moon to wonder at.
Sofi drew a long audible breath and raised her hand to her mouth. After a healthy silence, she all but whispered, “What in god’s name happened?” Warren shook his head and continued to stare. Only Old Fred dared to reply.
“I reckon the waypoint worked.”