We tend to think of the big moments in life as things that have a lot of build up. Maybe that’s because admitting that everything can change in less than the blink of an eye is too hard to bear. We need to feel some level of safety in order to go about our lives.

I’d felt safe with Minnie. I had to. Her house (apart from her room) was like any other house. Her family was like any other family. When my meta-awareness screamed a warning that danger was approaching I’d been slow to react to it because danger was so out of context for the moment. I paid for that hesitation with blood.

One moment I saw the Shadow Courtier enter Minnie’s room, strolling casually in from the hallway. My first thought, before recognizing it, was to separate the Dreamlit world from the physical one so that Minnie’s father wouldn’t notice anything weird.

My next thought was the observation that I kind of needed those internal organs that the Shadow Courtier had perforated with his knife-like hand.

“JIN!”, Minnie yelled. Without meta-awareness to warn her, Minnie was lagging a little behind me and so she merely got to see the gory spectacle after it was far too late to prevent it.

The Shadow Courtier was surprised by the turn of events too though. It had acted on pure instinct and so was slow, by Shadow Court standards, as it whipped its head to see Minnie, all four feet eight of her cowering on the blood splattered bed.

Meta-awareness hammered in a truckload of information in the brief instant of confusion the Courtier displayed.

I’d mistaken the Courtier for her father because that’s who the Courtier’s spirit was possessing. It had been latched onto her father but was sleeping to until it could leech enough energy from him to act at full power. By entering her bedroom, her father had stepped into the Dreamlit world and the Shadow Courtier had found a being of like-power waiting for it. Me.

To say it found my presence disturbing was an understatement. It knew on some instinctive level that I neither prey nor pawn and that I had the power to challenge it. For the Shadow Court that was the definition of “deadly enemy”. That had woken it up in a big hurry. In between one heartbeat and the next it had seized control and reacted.

In the millisecond window available, meta-awareness wasn’t able to tell me how Minnie’s father had become possessed, just that the body underneath the glamour was his but the mind in control was not. The last tidbit of knowledge it was able to impart was that the Shadow Courtier would certainly kill Minnie next. A former pawn it couldn’t control anymore definitely made the list of “deadly enemies”.

I grabbed the arm that the Courtier had buried in my chest and wrenched the Dreamlit world apart from the physical world. It was like trying to rip a phonebook in half. Pulling with all my might in one direction was impossible. I couldn’t take just the Shadow Courtier with me, so I had to, metaphorically, open the phonebook up and tear it in half another way. I brought the Shadow Courtier over with me and Minnie as well. Everyone with glamour tumbled onto the Dreamlit side of the barrier, while Minnie’s Dad and her bedroom remained in the physical world.

That even carried my blood off her sheets.

Then I died.

Or at least appeared to. It was rather artistic I felt. My body sublimated into a gentle stream of rose petals that fluttered softly away. The Shadow Courtier was left at a complete loss. Mission accomplished, except that I wasn’t able to share what was really happening with Minnie.

There’s a myth that if you die in your dreams you’ll die in real life too. Even before I’d gotten my powers I’d known that wasn’t true. My nightmares had proven it early on. When you die in your dreams, the dream simply changes and you re-enter it later in some other guise.

The implications of the same thing being true for me even when I wasn’t technically dreaming weren’t lost on me. The Shadow Courtier had been right to strike quickly at me. And also very, very foolish.

This wasn’t the first time I’d died in the Dreamlit world, Way had “killed” me too, but this time I learned something new. I knew Minnie hated her minotaur form. What I didn’t know was how much that didn’t matter when one of her friends was in trouble. Where the Shadow Courtier’s attack had been like lightning, Minnie’s roared like rolling thunder.

She rose from her bed as the tiny human girl she was but by the time her feet hit the floor she’d cast that off. Reason was left behind as well. In the eyes of the beast that towered over the Shadow Courtier there was only blinding rage.

When she struck, her fist flew fast enough that even the Courtier’s hyper-natural speed wasn’t sufficient to avoid the blow. Her fists struck the the monster before her like a stick of dynamite detonating in the small central chamber of the labyrinth. The impact shattered the Courtier’s spirit body to a bag of pulp and imparted enough force to blast him through the nearest wall. That the wall was solid stone barely slowed him down.

Unfortunately, as a spirit body, the Shadow Courtier was able to recover from the blow. From the hole in the wall, he oozed forth and congealed upwards into a vaguely humanoid shape.

Minnie howled defiance and in her rage probably would have beat on the Courtier till no stones remained standing in the labyrinth. I would have let her too, except for the cost she would have paid. Apart from the physical toll that sort of violence would have taken on her, I wasn’t sure how well her mind would have handled the psychic cost of losing herself to her rage for that long.

I tried to think of what I could do, apart from “die” repeatedly, while I watched Minnie beat on the reforming Shadow Courtier. Her blows were unrelenting, smearing the reforming goop of the Shadow Courtier’s spirit body into the shattered remnants of the floor. Whatever level of regeneration he had, there was no way that didn’t hurt like hell.

Pain was hardly a foreign experience for the Shadow Court though. Through the fusillade of hammer blows it managed to reform a whip like arm that grasped Minnie around the neck. Against anyone else the Shadow Courtier could have pressed that advantage and either strangled or decapitated their foe. Minnie was far too durable for either of those tactics to be an option though so the Shadow Courtier had to settle for hurling her away to buy time to regain its shape and rise to its feet.

I knew what was going to happen next. With its body reassembled, the Shadow Courtier would regain its full speed. Minnie was too tough for the Courtier to skewer her the way it had me, but a thousand smaller wound would achieve the same result.

I needed to save her, and meta-awareness provided an answer. It wasn’t a good answer. It wasn’t even an answer I was sure I could live with. In the face of what lay one moment away for Minnie though neither of those was enough to hold me back.

“Hold!”, I called, appearing in a crack of lightning between the two combatants.

I was Jin, but not as the human girl I was. My casual clothes were gone, replaced by a regal gown of black cloth and silver spikes. On my brow a crown of silver thorns rested, purple flames rising from them. In my hand I held a thin scepter carved from a human bone and adorned at its head with the dead Heart of the Shadow Court’s realm. I’d poured myself into the title that the former Queen had given me and crafted the illusion of its authority around me.

“Who…who are you?”, Minnie whispered. The force of my entrance had shocked her out of her rage.

I turned to the Shadow Courtier who been caught off guard by my arrival as well. He was in human form and was tensed like a bowstring waiting to snap.

“Proclaim Me!” I commanded the Courtier, letting meta-awareness guide my words once more. I felt the mindset of the role I was playing steal over me. He was beneath me, a servant and a pawn to do with as I wished.

It was dangerous to think that way, but critical that I play the role right. There were expectations of royalty that I had to meet or he would be free to strike against me as a pretender to the throne.

The Shadow Courtier’s gaze shifted around rapidly. He could see the signs, he knew what my bearing and dress and command meant, but none of it made sense to him. I saw the source of the dissonance in my two streams of memory.

I knew that the Shadow Court was ruled by a Queen, but that was a memory from my time in the Shadow Court’s realm. In the real world, in the new history of the Court, there had never been a Queen. Only glorious, pointless anarchy. The Courtier before me had never bent his knee to any ruler, but within the essence of what he was there was the allegiance and submission to the title I carried.

The dissonance within the Courtier built to an unbearable level and he cast around, desperate for an avenue of escape. I gestured and imagined the broken walls back into solidity. Another gesture and the exits to the central chamber vanished. He wasn’t going anywhere till I was done with him.

“I do not know you.” the Courtier said at last. He covered his fear with disdain.

We really couldn’t have that though could we? I shuddered at the thought as it appeared in my mind. I was happy for his fear and I knew that wasn’t right.

I swept the scepter forward and pointed it directly at him. I needed to end this soon before I lost myself in the role entirely.

“Whose office do I hold in my hand? What title do I bear?” I felt my lips twist maliciously over the words. The questions caused the Courtier more dissonance and pain. That felt good, far too good.

I fought against the feeling, struggling to remain the normal Jin I wanted to be for my Mom, but I had to play things out to the end with the Courtier. If I retreated into “normal Jin” neither Minnie nor I would leave the room. She’d be dead and I’d be a thrall of the Shadow Court.

The Shadow Courtier flinched at my words, his face contorting as he fought to hold back the words that filled him with terror.

“Answer!” I called with royal authority. I thought of my Mother. I thought of losing her. I gave a tiny spark of that fear of loss to the Heart gem. The dead jewel awoke and began to burn, hungry for more power.

I’d thought it was only the illusion of the Heart, that I’d left the “real Heart” in my room. I was wrong. My outfit might be an illusion, the role I was playing perhaps a deception, but the Shadow Court’s dead Heart gem was all too terribly real. It had come at my unconscious bidding and was a mark of office that no one, not even I, could deny.

“You carry the Queen’s Sceptre! But…”, the Shadow Courtier trailed off, unable to reconcile what he saw before him with what his immortal memory told him to be true.

“But there was no Queen of the Shadow Court was there?” I taunted him, picking at the only resistance he could offer me.

“No.”

“What title do I carry? What have I been named by a Courtier’s own lips?”

That I’d been tricked into the title didn’t matter. It was mine. It might destroy me to carry it, but by claiming the title fully as my own, I’d branded myself in a way that no member of the Shadow Court could mistake. No matter how much they might wish to.

“You were the Queen Who Has Fallen.”

“And what Queen of the Court remains to oppose me?”

“The Shadow Court has no Queen.”

“Had. The Shadow Court had no Queen.” I whispered, confident he could hear me.

“The Shadow Court needs no Queen!”

“The needs of the Court are irrelevant. All that matters is power.” I sneered. I took three long steps towards him and brought the burning scepter down towards his head. The flames within the Heart gem flared, desperate to consume the power within him.

“Bow.” I commanded, “Bow to your once and future ruler.”

Snarling, shaking and hating me to his innermost core, the Shadow Courtier dropped slowly to one knee.

“Who am I?” I demanded.

A part of me, a frighteningly large part of me, wanted him to resist. If he broke form, if he addressed me improperly I would be free to do as I wished with him. The Heart gem was ravenous. Just a little breech in decorum and I could let it slurp down his power and his immortal spirit as well. It would be delicious.

“My Queen.” he responded, head bowed in proper supplication.

I hated him. How dare he submit so easily? That was treasonous to the Shadow Court all by itself wasn’t it? I could destroy him for that couldn’t I? Of course I could.

All that mattered was power.

The scepter drifted towards his head before I clamped my hand steady. I wasn’t an Evil Queen, this was just a trick. If I tricked myself I’d lose everything.

The purple fire from the Heart gem had other ideas. It cast its light on my hidden desires. Did I really mind losing everything? What did I have that didn’t bring me pain? My Mom? I was going to lose her anyways. Better to cut the cord on my own. All kids need to grow up at some point right?

As the Queen of the Court, I would be free. I would take what I wanted and destroy any that stood against me. All the horror in the world? Everything that I tried so hard to hide from? I’d be able to embrace it, drink it, wield it like a weapon.

And what would I lose? What would I miss from the pathetic, powerless, pointless life that I’d had as Jin? Casting all that away would take no more than a flick of my wrist. Destroy this one creature that I held dominion over and I would claim the Court’s true power, not the weak illusion I wielded in its place.

I heard laughter and only knew it was my own from the way it shook my chest.

One small step. One tiny act of destruction, of a monster that had no right to live anyways. If I wanted to flee from all the confusion and sorrow I’d felt, all the pain and fear, the path was one small step away.

Behind me I heard Minnie whisper a single frightened word.

“Jin?”

It hit me like a hammer. That’s what I would lose. I would lose me. I wouldn’t be Jin anymore, I would only be the Shadow Queen.

I staggered for a moment, caught between the hunger for power and the escape it offered and the fear of losing the life that I had.

“Why would I want to be Jin?” I asked myself.

Because my life wasn’t pathetic, it was enviable. I had choices. My destiny was my own in a way that a Faerie Queen’s never could be.

My life wasn’t powerless either. I could change things, even without the powers I’d gained, I could make a difference for people. Maybe not a lot of people, but maybe enough.

Most of all though, my life wasn’t pointless. It was mine. It was all I had. Casting it aside to hide under a monster’s skin wouldn’t make me stronger. It would make me small. I’d be nothing more than one tiny part of what I could possibly be and no matter how many I ruled, I’d be alone.

The purple flame in the Heart gem began to sputter as I grasped back onto my own heart, my own center.

“Begone!” I commanded, channeling the last of the Faerie Queen illusion that I had left in me and gesturing one of the exits from the labyrinth open. I wove the path from it out to the physical world. I couldn’t afford to drop the act while the Courtier was still here, but maintaining it any longer wasn’t an option either.

Without looking up the Courtier vanished, a trail of mist marking his passage out of the labyrinth. Once I was sure he was gone, I collapsed to my knees and let the path to the physical world vanish. I was shaking so badly I couldn’t stand.

“Jin? Is that you?”, Minnie asked, rushing to my side. She’d transformed back to her human form.

“Careful. It’s me, but I’m not fully me right now.” I shuddered.

“What are you?”

“This disguise, it’s tough to pull off. Dangerous too. I need to make sure my head is clear.” I told her.

“What happened to you?”

“I played a trick on him. And you too. Sorry. There wasn’t time to explain.”

“Are you ok?”

“I will be. Let me send you back. The Courtier, he had your Dad. You need to check on him. I think he’s ok but he’s probably confused. I’ll call you later.” I said and with another wave of my hand swooshed Minnie back to the other side of the Dreamlit barrier.

I was lucky, her Dad had fallen when I separated the worlds and stunned himself. Minnie was able to disappear and reappear without history needing to change to accommodate that. I collapsed onto my butt on the floor of the labyrinth. Casting off the Queen’s role had taken more out of me than I’d expected.

Once I was sure I was back to myself, I let go and “woke up” in my bedroom in the real world. Opening bleary eyes, I looked at the clock beside my bed and discovered that it was past 2:00am. The struggle against the Shadow Courtier had taken only a couple minutes but trip through the labyrinth had taken a while.

2:00am was late though. Mom and Dad should have been home by then and whatever they found, they would have wanted to talk to me again. Something wasn’t right.

I looked out my window and saw that both cars were in the driveway. So they’d come back. None of the rest of the lights in the house looked like they were on though.

Which meant what? They’d come back and then gone quietly to sleep? That was weird. And out of character for them.

Part of me wanted to leave my room and see what was up but another part of my wanted to crawl under the covers and hide. I think the part that wanted to hide knew what was coming. To be on the safe side, I decided to do both. I crawled under my covers in the real world while projecting my Dreamlit self out once again.

In the Dreamlit world, my room was still the Faerie Queen’s boudoir and as such it stood secure and empty. As I stepped outside it through and looked down into the living room, I saw a tableau more horrific than even the Court’s red garden.

Minnie’s house had been invaded by a single Courtier. There were hundreds in mine.

At the center of them lay James, a shield on the arm across his chest and a dome of scintillating blue light around him.

Minnie’s labyrinth echoed with the growls of terrible beasts. The rough stonework was splashed with stains that suggested tremendous violence lurked around every corner. Though it was winter, the chill that hung in the air felt anything but natural. Crossing over the threshold and stepping into the labyrinth proper, only one thought came to mind.

“Looks friendlier than my bedroom.”

I wouldn’t find Minnie herself in the labyrinth of course. She wasn’t a dream walker the way I was. Somewhere in there though, I’d find the spot that corresponded to her actual bedroom and we’d be able to have a chat.

Assuming she was home.

And in her room.

It wasn’t the greatest plan admittedly, but I needed to talk to her pretty badly and it was the only place I knew I’d eventually find her.

There’s a trick to navigating mazes. Several tricks actually. As a reflection of Minnie’s persona, her Dreamlit labyrinth made some of those strategies impossible. Following one of the walls consistently to find your way through a maze only worked when the maze didn’t morph around you for example. Trails of breadcrumbs were similarly useless. I held a ball of string that I’d imagined into existence but it wasn’t going to help in that regards either.

I paused before letting myself lose sight of the labyrinth’s entrance. With my physical body, I could see my bedroom in the physical world. To an outside observer I was simply staring off aimlessly into space. If I needed to, I knew I could instantly reintegrate and “wake up”. Like, if Mom came back and wanted to talk to me.

If I ventured into the labyrinth, if my fickle and untrustworthy meta-awareness wasn’t enough to lead me through it, I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to do. Worst case I could imagine my body being stuck “daydreaming” like I was in some kind of mental breakdown state, while my Dreamlit self spent an eternity trapped in the maze.

If I didn’t speak to Minnie though, she could spoil everything. She could blow my whole “secret identity” before it even got going. That made it worth the risk, so into the labyrinth I went.

Psychics have described deep mind readings as entering a labyrinth of the other person’s psyche. It’s weird and dangerous and enlightening. Wandering into the labyrinth in Minnie’s room was all those things, except I wasn’t in her mind.

The Dreamlit labyrinth was, in it’s own way, as solid and deadly as one in the real world would have been. Possibly more so. Where a real world labyrinth could have been stocked with perils they would have been constrained by reality’s limits. Real fire jets need fuel to burn. Real scythe blades will rust over time. In the Dreamlit world however dangers persisted as long as the underlying reality cast a dangerous reflection.

My meta-awareness went into overdrive as I ventured into the labyrinth to deal with those dangers. Around the first corner I noticed splatters of dark brown that radiated out from a central line in the hall. That drew my attention to the slit in the ceiling farther down the corridor where the pendulum blade lay in wait.

It was exhilarating to feel the great gleaming blade whoosh past me as I passed down the hallway hugging the wall. Almost exhilarating enough to make me miss the pressure plates for the acid sprayers that were hidden around the next corner. Meta-awareness brought the sour smell of the acid up as an alarm though and I managed to step carefully past that trap too.

I moved forward and the sound of claws scratching on the rock above gave me warning to duck into a small alcove. I waited there as a sightless lizard the size of a pony dragged itself along the ceiling and around a corner.

As I dodged traps and hide from the lesser beasts that patrolled the corridors of the labyrinth, I came to understand what its presence meant. The labyrinth wasn’t in Minnie’s bedroom because the room was dangerous. It was there because she was dangerous and her bedroom was her sanctum. It was a reflection of her.

The Shadow Court had captured her years ago from what my meta-awareness could tell. As it guided me past more pits and pendulums, blow darts and flame traps, it filled in the details of what her story was and had been.

For Minnie, the time before her capture was fuzzy. The shift in the real world’s history had blurred her memories. What remained was that she’d been captured young and had spent years in captivity. She was my age now, physically, but it was hard to tell how old she really was since time flowed oddly in faerie worlds.

She’d been one of the children that they hadn’t been able to organize a rescue for in time. One day she was there, the next she was gone. It was only well after the fact that the police had worked out that she’d been taken by the Shadow Court and at that point she’d been gone too long for a rescue operation to be mounted.

She’d been held in the Shadow Court’s realm but, fortunately, they hadn’t interacted with her much. On the first day she’d arrived, they’d fitted her with the golden circlet I’d taken off her. From there she’d been left wandering in a labyrinth not unlike the one I was traversing.

The Shadow Court had wanted a fierce, powerful beast to act as a guard. One with human-level cunning but the kind of savagery needed to survive in their realm. In a way that was a mercy for Minnie. The Shadow Court couldn’t afford to “play with” the children that they needed in some way. The Court’s games were much too destructive on their “toys” to risk that.

Instead of having to endure the Shadow Court, Minnie had to endure the kind of loneliness usually reserved for prisoners condemned to solitary confinement. Only her confinement hadn’t been completely solitary. The circlet had called forth monsters from her psyche. She’d been hounded by the monsters of her Id so she’d learned to build her mind into a reflection of the labyrinth she was trapped in.

By hiding in her inner labyrinth, she was able to escape the Id monsters, but she also cut herself off from the outside world. When her mind withdrew into her inner labyrinth, her monsters were left in control of her slowly changing body. Eventually she would have disappeared into her inner labyrinth completely, leaving behind a beastial body and a beastial mind to guide it.

She was close to that when I found her, which was why the Shadow Court had moved her into the prison cell. Easier to feed her there. Easier to watch the progress of the change.

She was close but the transformation wasn’t complete. She wasn’t lost to the world, but she had changed in ways that left her mental scars visible for even the least observant. The Minnie who had been, the child I had never known, had been bright and gleeful. The new Minnie, the one I had “known” for a few months, was deeply introspective, but with a vicious temper when provoked.

She’d been suspended several times already and was at risk of either expulsion or repeating her freshman year due to the classes she missed. In a way none of that was her fault. She hadn’t broken a classmate’s nose who was making cracks about her height. She hadn’t sent a freshman boy to the emergency room for stitches when he tried to grab her butt. She’d been in the Shadow Court’s realm but thanks to the black fires that place had never existed. As far as our world was concerned, the Shadow Court’s realm had never been real, so history had to adjust.

I wondered why her history hadn’t switched to simply being imprisoned in one of the “new” subterranean Shadow Court realms. It was a closer fit and would have meant fewer alterations. Except that no one escaped the Shadow Court’s realms and I’d freed her and the others. So, apparently, these changes were the path of least resistance between those two fixed points in reality.

I explored my “new” memories of Minnie as I navigated closer to the center of the labyrinth.

My history had changed more significantly than I’d noticed at first. I hadn’t had many friends before. My friends from middle school had scattered to different high schools and I’d lost touch with most of them. There were a couple of girls that I hung out with a few times, but apart from having some classes together our lives didn’t parallel each others that much. I tended to bury myself in books a lot too, so I wasn’t all that aware when people were doing things.

That was the way it had been. In the new history, I had Minnie as a friend. And Nell. And Patches. And even Jessica?

I did a double take as that memory surfaced. Jessica had clearly not been my biggest fan. How had we wound up as friends in this new history? My thoughts were interrupted by the vista that lay around the next corner.

I’d reached the center of the maze and Minnie was waiting for me.

“What the hell am I?” she asked.

The room at the center of the maze was a direct reflection of Minnie’s bedroom in the physical world. Apart from being painted light pink rather than light yellow, it looked pretty similar to mine; more books and fewer stuffed animals, but otherwise the same general assortment of stuff.

Minnie sat curled up on her bed, her knees held tight to her chest. In the Dreamlit world I saw her as the minotaur-girl I’d first encountered. Probably seven feet tall or more and heavily muscled. In the real world though she was tiny. Four feet eight or so? “Mini Minnie”. That had been the name the girl in gym class had taunted her with.

In both worlds she had the same lost look in her eyes, and in both worlds she was looking directly at me.

“Minnie?” I asked. Her eyes met mine and I saw recognition there.

“Jin? What…”, she trailed off. I didn’t know how she was able to see me, or recognize me. I was still wearing Jenny’s blue goblin form, but apparently that wasn’t much of a disguise from someone who’d seen me in both forms before.

“Yeah, you called right?” I asked.

In response she lunged out of her bed and tried to grab me by the collar. Her Dreamlit minotaur form was insubstantial though and passed right through me. She wasn’t a dream walker so she didn’t have more than the wisp of a presence in the Dreamlit world.

In the physical world, she hit the floor of her room and then leaped back up to swing a fist at me. Her punch failed to connect as well though which left her sprawled back on her bed.

“A ghost. She’s a ghost. Now I’m, haunted too.”, she half cried, half giggled.

“Minnie, I’m sorry, I’m not a ghost. This was just the only way I could see you tonight.” I explained.

“What the hell are you then?”, she turned eyes filled with tears and rage to me.

“I’m…” I stopped. What could I say? That I was as human as she was? Given her minotaur side, that didn’t strike me as being particularly comforting for her.

“I’m your friend.” I said, only understanding as I said it how much I wanted that to be true. With the new memories came a deeper understanding of who she was. I’d been lucky to meet her in the Shadow Court’s prison, but I’d been luckier that the new world hadn’t scattered us to the wind.

Underneath the pain and the rage and the scars, Minnie was an amazing girl. We’d bonded in school not because I’d seen how much she’d needed a friend but because she’d seen how much I needed one. I’d been feeling lost and empty in the new school, missing something important, and Minnie had been the one to start talking to me.

Mistrust and insecurity was the legacy of her time with the Shadow Court and it had translated into the present as problems that she could find no cause for. Despite that, she’d been the one to reach out to me for no more reason than that she saw that she was needed.

“My friend? My friend’s not a little blue monster. She’s not a ghost. She’s just a normal girl. She’s just Jin.”

Her world rolled over me and I heard them echoing in my Mom’s voice. It hadn’t occurred to me to be worried about Minnie feeling the same way.

Quietly, I merged the Dreamlit world and the physical world. As I did I let Jenny’s form melt away to Jin’s. I wasn’t going to lose Minnie either and I knew what was said next needed to be real in every sense of the word.

“I’ve never been ‘just Jin’.”, I told her, “But a lot of this…”, I spun and changed to Jenny again and then Molly, “…is new.”

“You’re a faerie, aren’t you?”, she said, her expression shifting from anger to confusion to wariness.

“No. Not a faerie, although I did get tricked into being a Faerie Queen.”

“Tricked?”

“Yeah, I thought I could outsmart one, and she stuck me with her title so she wouldn’t get in trouble for breaking out of jail.”

“So, wait, I remember that! That wasn’t just a weird dream?”

“No.”

“So, I’m not going crazy? I really am a minotaur?”

“You’re really you.”

“And I’m a monster. I can see it. When I look in the mirror. Sometimes I can see what I really look like.”

“You’re not a monster.”

“How do you know? Do you know the kind of things I want to do? Do you know what the voices I hear sound like? I’m either crazy or those memories are real and I shouldn’t be here.”

She wasn’t giving me much context for what she was saying, so I turned to my meta-awareness to sort it out.

“The voices that you hear? Those are the whispers of the Shadow Court. The rage you feel? The way you want to lash out and destroy things? With what you’ve been through you’d be crazy not to feel that way.” I told her.

“But…”

“No.”, I cut her off, “There’s no ‘but’. You’re not a monster. You have power and a lot to work through, but you’re a fantastic person. And you’re my friend.”

“I don’t want it. The power I mean. I remember the place that burned. I remember what they did to me. I don’t want anything to do with them.”

“I’m the last person in the world who will tell you that you have to use your powers, but there is something you should know about them. They’re yours. The Shadow Court didn’t give you your strength or toughness or any of that. They stole you because they saw what you were going to grow up to be. What you could do.” I explained.

“I don’t care.”

“That’s ok. You can be as normal as you want to be. You’re not going to change under the light of the full moon or anything like that.”

“So what about the mirrors? Someone’s going to see what I really look like.”

“It’s not that easy. You can see yourself because you can see through your own glamours.”

“My what?”

As much as she frightened by what she was and what she could do, Minnie was still eager to understand it, to know who and what she was. I flashed back to talking with Pen. Was this what it had been like for him when he was answering my questions? If so I appreciated the difficulty he’d been under a little more.

Minnie was listening to me, which meant on some level she trusted what I was saying. I didn’t want to overwhelm her and I didn’t want to mislead her. Finding the balance between those was harder than it sounded, even with meta-awareness to help guide the way.

“Your spells basically. One of the things you can do is manipulate ‘glamour’. It’s the stuff that faeries make their magics from. You do it on an unconscious level but its something you could learn greater control over.”

“Is that why I look human now?” she asked.

“Yes, but don’t think that you’re a minotaur hiding under an illusion or anything. The truth is you’re both, each form is ‘really’ you. You just use glamour to change from one to the other.”

“So that’s how you change what you look like too?”

“Not exactly. My powers are weirder than that. I’m kind of still figuring them out.”

“How do you know all this?” Minniie asked.

“That was the first ‘gift’ I got. Remember what I told Jessica? She’s got fire, you’ve got physical power? I’ve got the cheat sheet for how things work. Only I’m missing like half the pages.”

“So you could be wrong about me then?”

“Maybe. I can make mistakes like anyone else.” I admitted. I didn’t want to, but I felt like had to stick with the truth to keep my meta-awareness on track.

“Right.” she said. She’d curled back up on herself. If I was wrong about her, if she really was a monster, all the wishful thinking in the world wasn’t going to do anything to prevent a horrible tragedy from occurring.

I couldn’t see the future. I couldn’t tell her that everything would definitely be ok and even if I could, I don’t think she could have believed me. Not after what she’d been through.

The only way I could see to convince her was to take the long, hard road of being there with her as her wounds healed and she adjusted to the new life she had. It wasn’t quick, or certain, but that was life.

“You wanted to ask me something.” she said, looking at me with fatigue and wariness.

“What do you mean?” I asked, perplexed by the non-sequitur.

“You wanted something from me right? That’s why you did this, came to see me this way.”

“Oh yeah. Well not something. I just wanted to ask you to keep my secret.” It sounded so stupid when I said it that way.

“Or else what?”

“Or else? Or else my Mom…”, I couldn’t say it outloud, I couldn’t make even the possibility of losing her that real, “Or else I’ll get really hurt. Seriously. It would be really bad.”

“I guess we’re even then. We’ve both got secrets that can’t get out right? We’ve both got family to protect.”

“Right.” I agreed.

That’s when the Shadow Courtier walked into Minnie’s bedroom.

Sometimes people can be what lifts us up. Other times they can be what drags us down. The times to watch for are when both of those happen at once. Those are the times that can tear us apart.

“Want me to tell her you’re not feeling well if she calls back?” James asked, seeing my ambivalence at the news of Minnie’s call.

I didn’t know.

If Minnie called back, it would be because she was desperate. I could almost see how the journey back to the physical world had gone for her and the others. One moment they were adrift in interplanar space, the next they were back “home”, but not to a home they’d ever known. New memories of a life where they’d never been abducted by the Shadow Court would have fought with the memories of what they’d suffered at the Shadow Court’s hands. I had my meta-awareness to help me sort it out. They would have been left thinking they were going crazy. I knew the feeling.

James interrupted my thoughts with a racking cough from out of nowhere. When I looked over he’d clutched onto the doorframe for support but was recovering quickly.

“Wait, how are you doing?”, I asked. He hadn’t been coughing earlier. He hardly ever got sick in fact.

“I’m fine.”, he said, clearing his throat forcefully. “Just sucked in a bit of dust or something. I’ll go load up on vitamin C though. Can’t miss the meet this weekend.”

In addition to football, James was on the Track and Field team, which was probably why he managed to stay so healthy. He was always watching what he ate and getting enough sleep and exercise. I loved him, but I hated him as brothers and sisters do too since he was a hard act to follow. Jerk even got better grades than me.

“If Mom and Dad need to talk to us when they get back let me know ok?” I asked before he left. I needed to make things right with them, needed that down to the marrow of my bones, but I didn’t know how I could manage it.

“Sure. With all that’s going on, they probably won’t get back till pretty late, so they’ll probably want to talk tomorrow.” he said.

That was the worst of both worlds in some ways. To have that conversation looming over me, while having plenty of time to worry about it. I was going to stew in anxiety all evening and get nothing even remotely resembling a wink of sleep.

I flopped over onto my back after James left and tried to think about something else. Anything else.

Food was unappealing, but I knew I should eat something. Maybe later. Maybe when Mom got back? It occurred to me, far too late to do any good, that I’d once again refused food in exactly the same way an evil faerie trying to dodge the Laws of Hospitality would. I was so brilliant. That wasn’t a healthy train of thought though so I looked for something else.

School? I might have had a test coming up, but I honestly couldn’t remember anymore. Even assuming I did, I couldn’t find enough functioning grey cells to care about it. I’d always tried to get good grades. Mom valued education and had always made time to help me with my homework when I needed it, so it was important to me too.

I pictured her not being there to help me with a math problem, the way Dad wasn’t there anymore. That brought me back to the edge of screaming.

I had to tell her. I had to show her. To make her believe.

I could see her face if I did though. I could see that careful, brittle, calm expression finally shattering and revealing the horror she felt underneath. She’d know I wasn’t daughter. That I was something different.

She couldn’t know what I was. Ever. I couldn’t let her see that. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I didn’t want to lose her a whole lot more.

Pen had said I couldn’t give up the powers that I had. I could chose not to use them though. If that’s what it took to keep her, I could pretend that I was the same girl I’d been before I’d left in the morning.

I flipped over onto my stomach.

And when the weirdness comes? What will you do then? I asked myself.

When Minnie came over tomorrow to see how I was doing? When she said things in front of my Mom about what we’d seen together?

I could talk to Minnie. She wouldn’t blow my secrets open if she knew. None of them would.

Even the former Queen?

I could deal with her. I’d been unwilling to bring the police in the burning station over to the Dreamlit world for fear of what it might do to them. I couldn’t have that fear with the former Queen. If she was a danger still, I would have to deal with her.

Deal with her.

The thought shocked me. I was thinking in euphemisms. I meant kill her.

I flipped onto my back again.

Could I really kill her? Did I even want to think that way? Did I have a choice? I wanted her to be redeemable, but did she want to be redeemed? She’d been a monster. She’d hurt and destroyed people. Children. Helpless children. Did she even deserve a chance at redemption?

I flipped over again.

What about the others? What if they wouldn’t play along with me? Would I “deal with them” too?

Even asking the question sickened me.

One more flip, onto my back, and I was staring at the ceiling.

No, I wouldn’t “deal with” them. And I wouldn’t “deal with” the former Queen either. Not like that.

I glanced over at my phone.

So what was I going to do about Minnie then?

Talk to her. I had to. Whatever my Mom might think, I couldn’t abandon someone who needed me that much. I couldn’t become someone my Mom would be ashamed of in order to win her approval.

A thought occurred to me. I remembered James mentioning Aegis.

Aegis had only operated in Brassport for a few years but he already had developed a good reputation. He’d saved Heartbeat from an early mishap when a group of metahuman terrorists had turned out to actually be a group of bloodless robots. They been sent to cause mayhem as part of a pointlessly convoluted real estate scheme but they’d almost succeeded in taking out our cities fledgling super heroines on one of her first solo outtings.

Since then he’d showed up a number of times, defending people from harm and saving the day when the official heroes were tied up elsewhere. There were reports that he worked with the police sometimes and that he’d actively busted up a few groups before they had a chance to enact any of their plans.

Despite all that, no one knew who he was, apart from “a solidly build, reasonably tall guy”, and even that could have been a trick with the way his (or even her I suppose) superpowers worked.

I turned that thought around in my head.

I couldn’t be a hero. Even if Agent Haffrun checked out, Mom wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t be able to live with the fear of what might happen to me or what I might become. Even if I got certified by the FBMA as fully trained and safe to be around, seeing me would mean acknowledging the violence and danger in the world. I’d become a symbol, rather than a girl, or a daughter.

If I became a Mask though nothing would have to change. I could hide who I was, but still be me inside. That idea was terribly attractive. With the way my powers worked it would be all too easy to pull off. I could have my family and my friends. I could help Way and deal with the Oblivion Knight. It would mean leading two different lives but, as I’d seen with Jenny and Molly, I was already leading a lot more than that.

I breathed in and out in slow repetitions. It felt wrong, but I didn’t have any other answers. I couldn’t lose my Mom and I couldn’t hide from what I knew, or what I could do. Becoming a Mask meant living a lie, but the truth looked like it would destroy me.

“So what do I tell Mom?” I wondered to myself. The answer was simple, even if I didn’t like it. For her I was Jin, so I’d tell her the truth as it applied to Jin. I’d left the police station before the fire. I’d never been in any danger. Whoever was responsible wasn’t targeting a normal girl like me.

If she didn’t believe me then whatever security measures she wanted to take were fine. I’d sleep on a bed of iron nails if that’s what it took. For her, I’d be as normal as I’d ever been.

“And Minnie?”

I’d go visit her, but not as Jin. She really knew me as Jenny anyways so it made more sense to go as a goblin, though I suppose she had the same new memories that I did of meeting on the first day of high school and hanging out together with the other “misfits”. That’s why she my phone number. I had hers too, but I talking to her in the real world about the kind of stuff we had to discuss seemed terrifying. I just knew someone would overhear us if we did that. Fortunately I had another option available.

I projected myself out to the Dreamlit world as Jenny and was stunned for a long moment. My house was a castle! Or at least my room belonged in one.

My room in the real world was a plain little space with yellow painted walls and shelves filled with all the stuffed animals, books, dolls, toys and various clutter that I’d accumulated over the years.

In the Dreamlit world on the other hand, my room was enormous and decorated in the kind of rusted iron plating and open rock facings that would have looked appropriate for a sword and sorcery villain’s lair.

My Dreamlit bed was lusciously outfitted with red silks and white lace. That was the only color I could see in the room. Everything else was black and foreboding. The default accessory for the walls and ceiling seemed to be “spikes” with an occasional accent of “chains” to keep it properly dungeon-esque.

I blinked trying to understand how this could possibly be the nearest reflection of the comfy little space I called my room. Meta-awareness directed my attention down to my left hand where a burnt out gem the size of a large marble lay.

The Heart of the Shadow Court’s realm.

I’d brought it with me.

Because I was one of their Queens.

I screamed, only in the Dreamlit world fortunately, and flung it away from me. Dead or not, the artifact was unbelievably dangerous.

On the plus side, I knew why my room looked so strange. For Jin it didn’t fit at all, but for a Queen of the Shadow Court it felt, if anything, a little too drab. Some part of me knew that to be a proper Shadow Court bedroom it needed more red. Liquid, warm red. Preferably with plenty of screaming.

My Mom was right to be scared of me.

I jumped out of my window and took to the skies. In the open air it was easier to gain some perspective. I carried the Queen’s title, but I’d never been a member of the Shadow Court. If anything I’d been an instrument of their destruction. I’d feared them, but with what I learned I could do I knew they had every reason to fear me as well. If they didn’t…if they didn’t I’d be more than willing to “deal with” them.

I tucked that thought away though and focused on finding Minnie. There were a lot of options for dealing with the Shadow Court and some time before they regained enough strength to be a threat. Minnie needed me immediately.

From my new memories I found where her home was. On the outside it looked like mine; a normal small family home on a quiet side street. Given what was inside mine, I wasn’t surprised when I looked in the window to Minnie’s bedroom to see that it looked just a bit out of place too.

Her bedroom was the entrance to a labyrinth. From within it came the roaring of great beasts.

Of course. Nothing could be simple after all.

It would have been a lot easier to just pick up the phone and call her, but I couldn’t do that. It was the labyrinth or nothing.

I knocked on the window and it swung open invitingly. Minnie hadn’t consciously opened it but she did want to talk to me so the Dreamlit world reflected that. That made me wonder what the labyrinth meant.

If only Pen were here.

Stealing from mythology, I imagined a ball of yarn in my hands and felt its soft weight squish under my fingers. Suitably armed I entered the labyrinth.

Breaking down in tears in front of your parents can give them the idea that something may possibly have gone wrong with your day. Something that, maybe, they need to look into. I love my parents, but the thought of them trying to unravel what had happened to me left me chilled.

Meta-awareness was all too happy to show me how that might play out. The easiest path would be the one where they didn’t believe me. That would hurt, and the lack of trust would drive a wedge between us but it would keep them safe. The alternative? Where they became fully involved? That was horrifying. Rationally, I could handle the concept of paying for my own mistakes. Putting either of them in a situation where they had to deal with things like the Shadow Court, or the Oblivion Knight though? That was simply unthinkable.

So I didn’t weep with relief when I made it home. As much as I wanted to, I managed to avoid it. Yesterday I couldn’t have.  Yesterday, I would tried to hold back the tears and they would have exploded out in wracking sobs anyways. I paused, just inside the threshold, trying to figure out what the difference was, why I was more in control then it seemed like I should be. James caught up to me at the same time that the answer did.

Molly. And Jenny. And so many others.

I’d dreamed of being older and wiser, of being stronger and more experienced. Just as Molly and Jenny had become real for me, so too had their nature’s blended with Jin’s. I had their maturity, their experience, their strength to draw on. I wasn’t who I’d been anymore, I was becoming who I imagined myself to be. Some part of me wondered if that wasn’t true for everyone, all the time though.

“Where have you been? You’re late for dinner!”, my Mom scolded us, looking up from the technical papers that were scattered in front of her.

“We ummm…”, I couldn’t decide where to begin. I couldn’t tell her the truth, and even the most reasonable lies wouldn’t make sense.

“We were at the police station.”, James said. I winced. That wasn’t the foot I’d wanted to start the conversation on. On the other hand it was better than stunned silence, so James was going above and beyond the call there, given that we’d agreed I’d be the one to speak to Mom.

“We’re not in trouble or anything.”, he assured her quickly, “They just had some questions for us because we saw something we thought was villian related.”

Mom’s expression went from annoyed at us for being late, to concerned, to straight up afraid. “Villain-related” hit a sensitive nerve for both of us.

“What do you mean? What did you see?”, she asked addressing James with the first question and me with the second.

“The Shadow Court. They were trying to abduct someone.” I said. There was no point hiding that part.

Mom went as still as a frozen pond and as silent as a ghost. Or more silent than a ghost. Heather had been fairly communicative after all. After a long moment, she finally spoke.

“What happened.”

“I was at the library. I saw the signs, so I hid. When James got there, we called the police and they sent a team over, and then there was a lady at the police station who questioned us.” I said, covering the points it seemed safest to talk about.

“You were at the police station?” James’ Dad asked. He’d come downstairs and only picked up the tail end of what I was saying.

“Yeah, it’s ok though, they let us go before the fire.” James said. I winced again. That was definitely not the way for the conversation to go. My Mom’s eyes were burrowing into mine.

“They let you go? What did you do?” James father asked. He wasn’t mad, just concerned.

“It was me, they wanted to question me because I saw some stuff at the library. Villain stuff.” I said. I felt awkward and exposed. The more I tried to hide things, the sharper Mom’s expression got.

“Was anybody hurt?”

“No. Or, yes. I mean, no one was hurt at the library but when the police station got attacked some people got hurt there.” I said, fumbling still.

“How bad was it?” James’ Dad, my Dad now, was concerned. He could see something was messed up in me. Everyone could.

“There was a fire. Some of them died.” I said. Admitting that hurt. It revealed just how serious things had been. I felt the echo of losing my Dad. Other people had lost their loved ones tonight too. I looked at my Mom and saw the same pain reflected in her eyes.

Unwelcome meta-awareness showed me things I didn’t want to see. She’d lost her first husband, my father, to violence that had sprung from nowhere. She loved James’ Dad but she’d never stopped loving my father either, or aching from his loss. This moment was bringing all that back to her. The pain that had never really left was rising like a screaming maelstrom in her, fueled by the thought of the deaths that had occurred. She was looking at me and feeling certain that she was going to lose me too.

She held herself still to keep from coming apart inside. She wanted to scream at me, she wanted to comfort me, to hold me close and to run away from it all. Anything to escape that pain.

I’d been scared up till now, but I’d also been able to do something, to fight back against what was going on. For my Mom there was no fighting back. Life had taken things from her before and here it was poised to take from her again, and there was nothing she could have done then or now that would change that.

I was supposed to have been safe, but I hadn’t been. I wasn’t telling her everything, and she knew it. Why would I try to hide something, she had to wonder, if everything was ok with me?

I walked over to her. I wasn’t planning or thinking, I was just acting, reaching out to make her see that she hadn’t lost me. That I was still here. I went to hug her and she very gently held me away at arm’s length.

“What did the police say about the Shadow Court? Why was there a fire?” she asked. Her voice was calm, but I could see how she cracked when she said those words. They were little fractures, little sharp shards of personality. She couldn’t let me close, not while she was like this.

“Someone attacked the police station. They demolished it.” I said trying to be brave and strong for her sake. Neither Molly, Jenny, nor Jin really had the strength for that.

“Do you know who it was?” she asked, her calm lending an unnatural air to her words. I saw the cracks in her split wide open. Her fear for me, became fear of me with one thought that rose to her mind. We’d mentioned the Shadow Court. The evil faeries that left behind changelings. One thought, at just the wrong time, cut her to the core. It was a simple question; “What if I wasn’t her daughter”.

Her daughter wouldn’t know who it was. Her daughter was just a normal girl. Her daughter stayed away from anything to do with superheroes. Her daughter knew, better than anyone, how dangerous the world could really be. Her daughter wouldn’t have been involved in something like that. Her daughter…

I couldn’t read her mind. I didn’t know what she was thinking as she turned to look me straight in the eyes, quietly waiting for my answer. I froze. What could I possibly tell her? The truth? Exceptional claims required exceptional proof and nothing that I’d seen was real, not anymore. If I lied though, how could she not see it? And when she did how could she ever believe me again.

“The news people thought it could be the Shadow Court, but the cops don’t think so. Someone shot at the place while we were checking in and then came back with some explosives or something. That’s not the way the Shadow Court works.”, James said, and then added, “At least that’s what the cop who gave me a ride said.”

“I heard one of the news guys say that the Shadow Court was gone.” I blurted out, finding a “truth” that was safe enough to share.

“They got away?” James’ Dad asked. Mom was still watching me silently. She’d noticed my hesitation in answering her question. She was looking for the “seam” in my disguise, something that could confirm that I wasn’t what I was pretending to be. That I wasn’t her daughter.

“No, they said they’re dead. The tip we gave…they were able to find a good trail.” I couldn’t say anymore. She didn’t believe me. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t see it and I couldn’t lie to her.

“They called together a Rapid Response Task Force. Professor Platinum, Invertrix, Red Shadow, Aegis and a bunch of others.” James explained, naming the high powered heroes that had been called in. Heroes and, strangely, a Mask. Aegis wasn’t an official hero, but apparently for something like a raid on the Shadow Court’s home realm, the FBMA would take anyone who had a good track record and was willing to take the risks involved.

“I thought you couldn’t kill the Shadow Court? Isn’t that why they’ve never been stopped?” James’ Dad asked. He believed us, but even he could tell there were parts of the story that he wasn’t getting.

“That’s what I thought too.” James lied. Partially. He knew something he wasn’t saying. Something big was hiding there. Something I needed to know. I didn’t care though. I couldn’t. Not with my Mom slipping away from me.

“Maybe the newsguy was wrong?” I suggested, wriggling to find the right words, to say whatever it would take to bring her back. I’d stepped back, giving her space and distance to quiet her fears. She had to see that I was still me.

But was I?

If she looked at me who would she really see? Jin? Molly? Jenny? A stranger?

Her daughter was a normal girl. Whatever I was, I wasn’t normal anymore. Her daughter stayed away from superheroes. I hadn’t. Several times, I hadn’t. I’d had choices where I could have turned away from what I was becoming, but I hadn’t. Her daughter wouldn’t have gotten involved. But I was.

For the moment, I wasn’t thinking about who Agent Haffrun really was. I wasn’t thinking about where the Shadow Court really was. Or what had happened to the heroes. Or the Oblivion Knight. I wasn’t even thinking of how I was going to find Way again, but I knew I would find her.

All those things? None of them were going to go away, and even if they could, I wasn’t going to let them. Agent Haffrun knew about me, I had to find out the truth about her. The Shadow Court was more dangerous now than they ever had been, and the heroes who’d fought them were in greater peril than they could imagine. No one but me knew about that. No one but me could do anything about it.

And then there was the Oblivion Knight. I had no idea what I could do about him. I couldn’t imagine a way even the best of the world’s heroes could stop him. He had Pen though, which meant he had one of the keys to ending the world, so it didn’t matter whether I could stop him or not. It was try or accept annihilation.

And Way. The thought of her all alone, or, worse, trapped again, caught me like a sword through the chest. I didn’t want that. That couldn’t be her fate.

“I need to work on my homework, if that’s ok.” I said. I couldn’t stay, couldn’t bear any more questions, any more lies of silence. I started moving away.

“Don’t you want to have dinner?” James’ Dad asked.

“No. They fed me at the police station.” Another lie, sort of. I’d had donuts. Those counted.

I fled upstairs before any more questions could come out. James could answer them. He wouldn’t be lying. Maybe he could make Mom see that everything was ok. I knew that wasn’t true, meta-awareness made it impossible for me not to see that, but it was all I had so I clung to it.

I closed the door to my room, but didn’t lock it. I imagined them walking in and wanted to hide, but the thought of my Mom trying to come to me and turning away because the door was locked was unbearable too.

“Maybe I should have stayed in the police station.” I whispered. I wasn’t serious. I definitely didn’t want to go back there or have to face the fire like that again, except for maybe the part of me that did.

It was easy to imagine giving up. The fire would have hurt, but that would have been an outside hurt. I could have projected myself away from it, maybe. The pain I’d seen in my mother though? The pain I felt seeing her start to turn away from me? That felt like it was never going to go away. Like I couldn’t let it go away or I’d lose what little chance I still had with her.

I lay on my bed, pretending to read a random chapter from my History book, for I-don’t-know-how-long before I heard one of our cars startup and drive away. No one usually went out that late on a weeknight. I’d almost worked up my courage to go downstairs and see what had happened when James knocked on my door.

“Come in!” I called out after quickly drying my eyes.

“Hey, you ok?” he asked.

“No.” I told him. No lies. I didn’t have the strength to carry even one more.

“Pretty scary with stuff at the police station?”, he guessed.

“Yeah.” I wanted to say ‘and with Mom’, but it felt like if I said that outloud it would make it impossible to forget later and I’d never get her back.

“I don’t blame you. But you’re safe here, you know?”, he wanted to say more too, to convince me that his words were true, but the secrets between us were in the way.

“Yep.” I agreed, nodding. I really did feel safer with him around. His Dad was only sorta my Dad. I’d call him ‘Dad’ sometimes because we were close and he clearly loved my Mom and took great care of her. In some ways though he was still ‘James’ Dad’.

James on the other hand was my big brother, regardless of what DNA said. We fought like brother and sister, and we trusted each other like brother and sister. If anyone was going to save me from the rift I felt separating me from my Mom, he’d be one I’d believe could do it.

“Where’d they go?” I asked, guessing that if James was here, our parents had gone out together.

“They’re going to talk to the police too. Mom wanted to find out what sort things they needed to do to keep our names out of the paper. And what extra security measures they should take.” he said.

She wanted to know what the chance was that I was going to turn on them, and what she was supposed to do if I did. That wasn’t the worst case that I’d been fearing, but it still made me feel sick. She hadn’t run away though. I took comfort in that. There was time for her to see that I was still me. If I could just act normal for a while.

I laughed. Had I ever been normal?

“What’s funny?” James asked.

“I’m weird.” I said, terrified that I’d never be able to pass as normal enough to win Mom’s trust again.

“Yes you are, but you’re pretty cool too.” he said, punching me on the arm clumsily, “Of course, if you tell anyone I said so, I will deny everything.”

“Of course.” I smiled, a real smile that bubbled through the anxiety.

“Anyways, I just came to tell you, there’s some food left if you’re still hungry.”

“Thanks. I might grab a bite.” I said. My stomach felt like hell, but part of that was that I’d eaten almost nothing since breakfast.

“Oh and Minnie called.” James said as he turned to leave my room.

“Minnie?” I asked, blanking on who that might be.

“Yeah, your friend from school? She said she needed to talk to you.”

And I remembered Minnie. The friend I hadn’t had before tonight. In my new memories of the world as it was after our return, I saw the minotaur girl who didn’t look like a minotaur anymore. The changeling.

I stared at my phone. I couldn’t talk to a changeling. I couldn’t even be near a changeling or I’d lose my Mom in an instant. But if I denied Minnie, if I rejected her for being a changeling, it would destroy her. Her whole life had changed. She needed me.

But I couldn’t be there for her.

We all have our own secrets, the little details of our inner lives that no one else can see. Exposing those can be terrifying. Often it takes planning and courage and picking just the right audience. Or you can wander up to the first random superhero you see and blurt out something cryptic. Cause that’s sure to work great.

“What?” Heartbeat asked, more shocked at my offer to help than I would have expected.

“I’m sorry, I’m new to this, but I can see things. I know exactly where everyone who’s trapped is and I can see the paths to get to them. It’s part of the powers I got tonight.” I explained. I had a hard time believing I was saying those things, and, from the looks on their faces, Heartbeat and Fire Chief Stackhaus were having trouble believing it too. Maybe if I had a costume or a mask I would have been more believable?

“Look, I appreciate the offer, but even if you have powers, you’re untrained and unlicensed so you could be more dangerous to us than the fire.” Stackhaus said.

“There are thirteen people still in the building, plus three dead. If you don’t let me help you’re not going to get any of them out of their alive. If Heartbeat and I work together we can save all of them before the building collapses in twenty minutes.” I told him.

“You’re a precog?” Heartbeat asked.

“No. I can just see things. Twenty minutes is a guess, but it’s based on the building having a layer of Durasteel sheeting that the technomagic wards were embossed onto inside the inner walls.” I said, allowing meta-awareness to fill in the details as I spoke.

“Your father work for the police? Is that how you know about the building?” Stackhaus asked looking more skeptical.

“No!” I ground my teeth in frustration. I understood why Stackhaus was being an obstruction. He saw me as a crazy star struck teenager who was hungry to do “something cool” with a famous heroine like Heartbeat. He resented her, a little, for getting the kind of good publicity that the media often doesn’t bother with for firefighters. He’d worked for thirty years through some really bad situations but people just expected it of him because that’s what firefighters do.

Where his resentment of Heartbeat was mild though, his resentment of me was much sharper. I was an unknown and unknowns at a fire scene cost lives. It was as simple as that. He didn’t trust me and what he didn’t trust he assumed would get him killed. That attitude was why he’d survived thirty years of bad situations.

So I had to show him what I could do.

“Chief, you don’t have to take my word for this. There someone…Officer Dan Khale…who’s trapped in the room adjacent to the main entryway. Your crews have to clear the entryway anyways and Heartbeat can easily extract him. He’s not badly hurt, just knocked out and buried under some ceiling tiles.”

“Dan’s in there?” Stackhaus stammered. Dan had been the best man at his second wedding.

“I don’t care if J… if she’s untrained. We can’t let a dozen cops burn up. I’m going in there.” Heartbeat said and turned to leave.

Heartbeat was a biomancer. Most people thought of that as meaning a blood controller. Kind of an icky power, but Heartbeat knew ways to use it that made it seem almost pleasant. When she fought someone for instance, they just went peacefully to sleep with a smile on their face and were easily roused later. No brutal fisticuffs or shattered bodies.

The other application of her power that she tended to show off was the way it allowed her to command her own body to greater physical capabilities than it should have possessed.

Super strength, super dexterity and super quickness weren’t uncommon abilities by any stretch of the imagination but Heartbeat’s variety had such a natural fluidity that it was hard not to be impressed with her sheer grace.

She didn’t stroll or run into the building therefore, she glided. A single long leap, like her body was as light as a feather, carried her through the shattered remains of the bulletproof door that had been cracked earlier.

Her costume was a white leotard with red armored sections on the torso, arms, and legs. That helped her stand out against the flames for a moment but after that I lost sight of her in the thick smoke that was billowing out the door.

“She should have waited for you to hose down that section. She’s going to get a lungful of smoke.” I said.

Stackhaus just glared at me silently, torn between hoping that I was legitimate and worried that I wasn’t and he was going to lose the city’s only official super heroine because of it.

“Do you have oxygen? She’ll need it when she gets out and Officer Khale will too.” I asked.

That was something he had no problem believing. He turned to collect the oxygen tanks from the paramedic wagon we were standing near leaving me alone for a moment. I sagged slightly in relief. I didn’t have the full trust of either Stackhaus or Heartbeat yet, but there were so many worse ways things could have gone.

“She was right!”, Heartbeat yelled as she emerged from the building carrying Officer Khale. She choked and coughed a few times, but her power was already counteracting the effect of the smoke inhalation she’d suffered.

Stackhaus had oxygen waiting for both Heartbeat and Officer Khale by the time she touched down near us. Heartbeat laid the unconscious police officer down on a waiting stretcher and let Stackhaus check him out while she used the oxygen he’d collected to speed the purging of her lungs.

“Where are the others?” Heartbeat asked as she got her breath fully back.

“All on the ground floor.”, I said, “If we’re going to get them in time, we’ll need to go in together though. I can’t describe the places one by one fast enough.”

“Are you fireproof?” Heartbeat asked.

“No and I’ll need to take some breathing gear too.” I said.

“No time for that, I’ve got you covered.” she laid a hand on my lips and I felt my body change under her touch. It wasn’t painful but it was really freaky to be shapeshifted like that. She’d adapted both our lungs to handle toxic gases and had morphed my skin into a heat resistant shell. Maintaining the shapeshift took energy and concentration that she had in only limited quantities which was why she hadn’t bothered doing it for herself on her first trip in. It was easier for her to heal up afterwards than prevent injuries in most cases.

“This is still my scene. I’m not authorizing you two to go in there alone.” Stackhaus said as he hefted his gear and checked his breathing apparatus. Technically, he did outrank Heartbeat in the present circumstances and she was required to follow his orders. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing for him to put to the test though.

“We’re going to lose people if we wait.” she said.

“We’re not waiting. I’m going in with you. We don’t work this sort of situation without a partner, and taking a rookie with you doesn’t count as having a viable backup.” Stackhaus explained. His gear was in place so he started marching into the building without waiting for us.

With the way the fire and smoke was pouring out of the building I wasn’t opposed to having someone who knew what they were doing along. Meta-awareness told me a lot of things but I’d already seen how it didn’t always fill in all the blanks I needed to know about.

“We’ll cover more ground if we split up.” Heartbeat suggested as we entered the lobby of the police station. The fire was mostly on the upper floor which meant the ground floor was still survivable. That didn’t mean it was pleasant though. The heat from the flames above had turned the first floor into an oven. There was a steady breeze that was fanning the flames above us to greater heights and making the firefighting efforts more difficult. On the positive side though it was also carrying off a decent portion of the dangerous gases that the fire was producing.

“We can’t afford to be separated. Stick together. You and I can take them out two at a time if the victims are close enough to each other.” Stackhaus directed Heartbeat. He wasn’t wrong to count me out of that equation. Heartbeat could haul a grown man (or two) due to her superhuman strength. I didn’t have that particular advantage.

I considered trying to pull the trapped police out through the Dreamlit world but, with effort that I’d had to exert to carry myself across the barrier, I knew that  was more than I could manage. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to carry myself across a second time without tearing open a rift between the physical world and the Dreamlit one. Trying to carry someone else over was just too dangerous till I had a chance to rest.

“There’s two in the interrogation room over there, third door on the right.” I said, gesturing down the smoke filled hall to our left. It was the same hallway I’d fled down in the Dreamlit world to escape Way’s beast. Without my meta-awareness I wouldn’t have recognized it. The fire and smoke made it look like something out of a movie.

Chief Stackhaus let Heartbeat take the lead. Even with the shapeshifting she’d given me and his protective gear she was still the most resilient of the three of us.

“Be careful of the door. The frame is cracked. We need to brace it or the roof will come down  when we open it.” I said.

“There’s a floor joist just above your head Heartbeat. See if its loose.” Stackhaus instructed. He still mistrusted me on principal but in practice as long as I was getting results and people were being rescued he’d be able to work with me.

I watched in both the real world and the Dreamlit world as Heartbeat buttressed the door frame. In the real world it was a simple construction task of arranging some additional supports. In the Dreamlit world, the doorframe was transformed.

The broken frame had been leering at us like a gargoyle ready to snap its mouth shut the moment we opened the door. As Heartbeat worked on it though it changed and became a solid, armored arch with knights reaching up the sides to keep us from harm.

The iconography should have been soothing but the knight imagery brought a question to my mind that made my blood run cold.

Where was the Oblivion Knight?

He’d been the one who destroyed this place in his giant form. He’d only stopped because I’d lured him away. As far as I could see, he was more than capable of coming back to finish the job. But he hadn’t. Was it because he’d changed his mind or because he couldn’t come back though?

I was pretty sure the Oblivion Knight wasn’t the kind of guy who would have a change of heart. From what I knew of him, he was the sort to have his picture beside both “monomanical” and  “megalomanical” in the dictionary. If he’d changed his mind it was because he’d changed his plans, which meant he had a new and more horrible scheme than erasing his enemies with black fire.

The other possibility, that he couldn’t come back, seemed even less likely. Unless he’d been changed in some fundamental way when he destroyed the Shadow Court’s realm? I could imagine that, but I couldn’t guess how likely it was to be true.

I needed Way. She might be able to at least make a guess what he was up to.

“I found them!”, Heartbeat yelled. I was so lost in thought that I thought Heartbeat was referring to Way and my other companions from the Shadow Court’s realm. Then I saw that she was moving a section of ceiling that had fallen and was sheltering the two downed police officers we’d been searching for. That snapped me back to the present.

While Heartbeat and Chief Stackhaus carried the fallen officers out of the building, I projected myself into the Dreamlit world again. I copied over the shapeshift that Heartbeat had given my physical body (mostly so I could see what it looked like) and noticed that she’d done me another favor as well; I looked nothing like myself thanks to the modifications she’d made. Heartbeat and Chief Stackhaus would know what I really looked like but anyone else would think I was some kind of humanoid lizard.

The fire was enough scary motivation that I was able to zombie shuffle after the two of them in the physical world as we worked our way out of the building. In the Dreamlit world I followed up on what meta-awareness was telling me and searched out the remaining victims.

That’s how I noticed the fire getting closer to the fuel tanks for the buildings backup generators.

“We’ve got trouble.” I told Heartbeat and the Fire Chief as I reintegrated. “The wall around the room for the backup generator split and the fire suppression system cracked with it. The coolant drained into the basement.”

Stackhaus understood what that meant immediately.

“Has the fire entered the fuel room yet?”

“No” I answered.

“What’s the temperature in there?”

“I don’t know exactly. About as hot as the room we found these two in.” I said, indicating the police officers they were transferring to stretchers.

“Let me go solo” Heartbeat suggested “I can move a lot faster. I can get them all out in time.”

“Did you see that the door frame was weak?” Stackhaus asked her.

“No, but I could have braced it when it started to fall.”

“Would have been too late. The whole roof would have come down. You don’t take shortcuts, not like that anyways.”, he explained and then tapped his helmet to activate the comm unit there for secure band broadcast, “I need team 2 and team 3 on the south side of the building now. The generator’s heating up, keep it cool boys. Team 4, you’re with me now, lock in environmental gear, we have some people to get out of there.”

And just like that the fire teams moved into action. With eleven people left to rescue and four rescuers to get them out we beat the twenty minute deadline easily. Standing in a burning building, directing traffic should have been either terrifying or exciting but instead I just felt calm. I wasn’t safe but I had people who I could depend on and who were depending on me.

Afterwards, actually as soon as we had the last person out of the building, Heartbeat took my arm and turned to Chief Stackhaus.

“I need to get her debriefed, can you guys handle the rest here?” she asked Stackhaus.

“Assuming she’s right and there’s no one else in there, yeah.” he replied.

“Good. I’ll have someone call tomorrow in case there’s any paperwork you need me to fill out.” Heartbeat said and then rose into the air, carrying me with her. She wasn’t lifting me by the arm, though she kept her grip on me. She was floating me by directly manipulating the blood in my body. Again, kinda creepy but in practice it felt very gentle.

We settled down on a rooftop a few blocks away and I raised an eyebrow. This was not exactly an official FBMA debriefing room.

“Thank you for back there!” she said and she released the shapeshifting effect she’d placed on me.

“You and the Chief did all the real work.” I replied, thinking of how little I could have managed there on my own.

“Pfff, he never would have let me in there without you.”

“He was worried about you.”

“Yeah, cause I’m still young. So I’ve got to be a sidekick, no matter how good I am with my powers.”

“It was helpful having him there though right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyways that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?”

“You’re a new superhero you said right? I mean you said you just got your clairvoyance or whatever it is.”

“Yeah.” I admitted.

“Ok. In theory then I’m supposed to bring you into my handler at the Bureau. But that’s if you want to go.”

“And if I don’t?” I asked.

“Then you’re free to go. I’m supposed to drop you off wherever you like (within reason, no trips to Hawai). And you don’t have to answer any questions, my handler’s really insistent that we not drive anyone away. ‘Super heroes are such shy types’.” she said finishing in a voice that sounded exactly like Agent Haffrun. Super mimickry by way of manipulating her own voice box. She really did have a lot of clever tricks worked out.

“Sounds like your handler is fairly easy going.” I offered.

“Yeah, she’s pretty cool. I think her idea is the Bureau offers such a nice package that there’s no reason to go for the strong arm approach like they did in the past.”

“That makes sense. I…I might need time to think it over though.”

“That’s fine. There’s a special number I can give you and I can get in touch with you later too if you like. To answer anymore questions.”

“I think I’d like to do that.” I said remembering that I still had one giant, unanswered question to resolve about Agent Haffrun. The whole “was she really an alien” thing.

“That’s ok.” Heartbeat said. She sounded happy with my decision but she looked a little disappointed. “Would you…could I ask you a question though?”

“I guess, sure.”

“You said your power is that you know things? How does that work? What kind of things do you know?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out. The only way I can describe it is that it’s like I’m reading a script of what’s happening and getting the stage directions and stuff. The actors can ad lib or do whatever they want but as long as things go the way they’re supposed to I have this extra awareness of what’s going on.”

“Wow! And you just got that tonight? How?”

I was worried about telling her that Pen gave me that power but then I remembered his protesting that it hadn’t been him.

“I don’t know. I’m still working on that too. For having a power that let’s me know things, I’m still really in the dark.” I said. Heartbeat smiled at the inherent irony of the statement.

“Ok. I shouldn’t push too much. So, where should I drop you off?”

I thought about asking her to take me home, and then kicked myself before the words got out. She’d seen what I looked like but that didn’t mean she had any idea who I was. No point giving up that part of my secret identity if I didn’t have to. Also James was still heading back to pick me up. He’d freak if he found the building collapsed and me nowhere around.

“I need to wait for someone at the parking lot, I guess where all the people are gathered? Could you put me down somewhere they wouldn’t see me and I can walk over there?”

“No problem.” she said and floated me down to the ground.

“Here’s a card with my number. Give me a call ok.”, she said before flying away. She was headed back to Agent Haffrun to report in. They had a lot to talk about with all that had happened tonight but I knew I’d be topic number one up for discussion.

Alone once again, I walked the short distance to the tiny crowd that was gathering around the burning police station. James wasn’t there yet, which was a relief, so I spent the time just watching what was going on like everyone else.

The news crews had arrived, what few that hadn’t been covering the fires in the abandoned buildings in the South End. The others would be arriving soon as well, a police station was more interesting than an old factory, but until then it was the second string teams that got the spotlight and the less enviable job of reporting on a situation where they had almost no solid information.

I almost wanted to step forward and fill them in on what had really been happening but thankfully my subconscious didn’t make that decision for me.

As it became clear that whatever had attacked the police station wasn’t continuing to destroy anything, the size of the crowd began to swell. Desperate for news, the reporters began to work out plausible sounding theories to talk about since the facts weren’t instantly forthcoming.

Someone reported on the hero task force that had been organized after a tip came in about a Shadow Court abduction. Another reporter ran with that and presumed that this must be a pre-emptive strike to ward off the task force. When a third reporter learned that the hero task force was reporting success on their objective already, the story changed to the police station being burned as a retaliatory strike. Then someone leaked a report that the Shadow Court had all been killed in the raid and no one knew what to make of things.

By the time James finally showed up, I’d spent far too much time listening to far too many different wild theories. I’d been involved in a lot of what had happened, I had my meta-awareness feeding me incredible amounts of information and I still couldn’t keep the crazy ideas they were coming up with straight.

“Jin! What happened! You’re alright! You’re alright right?” James had been pushing his way through the crowds for about five minutes calling my name before we noticed each other. He was out of breath, and, as I’d expected, nearly freaking out.

“Yeah, you know, I used to think I was crazy, but I’m starting to wonder if there’s anyone who’s not.” I said, watching one of the junior newsmen trying to connect the attack on the police station to the work of residual aliens. I mean, sure he was actually right that there’d been an alien in the building a half hour before it was destroyed but I was pretty sure Agent Haffrun hadn’t had anything to do with it and she certainly hadn’t done it to strike a blow against the Neighborhood Techno-Watch program that was under consideration for funding in Congress.

“What?”, James asked, happy to find me safe, but annoyed that he’d been afraid for nothing.

“Sorry, just been listening to the news guys too long. Umm, yeah, I’m fine. I was out here waiting for you when the fire started.” I wasn’t exactly lying, not as far as the physical world was concerned anymore. I still felt bad not telling him the “real” truth, but not so much that I wanted to even begin explaining what had happened.

“Damn. You have no idea. I heard there was a fire at the police station and…”

“And you figured I’d gone on a pyromaniac spree?” I laughed. It felt good to have him around. It felt good to laugh too since the alternative was to break down in tears at how afraid I’d been that I’d never see my family again.

“Yeah, exactly.” he said. My laughter was infectious and let him relax too. When he found me he could see that nothing was wrong, hearing me laugh helped him believe it.

We drove home and were getting out of the car when it finally occurred to me to ask what had taken him so long. My chat with Pen had taken a lot longer in real world time than I’d thought, so it hadn’t occurred to me just how much time it had taken him to get the car.

“Oh, uh, I was talking with the cops for a bit, and they had to finish checking out the car.” he replied just a little too smoothly. He’d been practicing that answer.

Meta-awareness told me that the car had been ready when they got there. James had driven in after the Court was gone so there hadn’t been much to check for. I wanted to press him on the issue but I couldn’t imagine how without revealing a lot more about my own secrets than I wanted to.

Burying away both my own secrets and my desire to know what James’ were, I opened our front door and stepped inside. I felt exhaustion hit me as I did, followed by a profound sense of relief.

I’d made it.

I was home.

The strangest part of being buried under a building that was burning down around me was watching the bright orange and yellows of the flames and feeling tears of joy welling up in my eyes.

The visit to the Shadow Court’s realm had taken a lot out of me and I hadn’t had much to begin with. The simple flicker of real flames, even ones that weren’t all that far away from burning me alive was comforting in a way I couldn’t easily explain. Maybe it was just that I was home.

I’d been determined to make it back but some part of me hadn’t believed I could. No one ever did. Minnie hadn’t and she was way stronger than me. Patches hadn’t and he was much cooler. Even Way hadn’t managed to escape them on her own and she was immensely more powerful than I was.

Thinking about them, I felt loneliness stab through my heart. Which was crazy. I was about to burn to death. If I didn’t bleed out first. Plus I’d only known them for, what, an hour? At most?

Maybe it was repressed pain and fear, maybe I’d just lost my marbles, but I missed them. Even Jessica.

“At least I’ll get to see Heather soon.” I giggled to myself. Cause she was a ghost. And I was about to be char broiled. It seemed funny at the time.

I wasn’t sure how ghosts worked but I was willing to bet that Heather was exceptional. If most people left behind ghosts when they died there wouldn’t be a building with four walls and a roof that wouldn’t be “haunted”.

Being a ghost seemed like a bum deal too. No more chocolate. No more warm baths on cold days. No more birthday cake. No more birthdays.

“I like being alive.” I told myself and started crying. I was definitely losing it. I couldn’t move and I didn’t want to die, but this was the real world and I really couldn’t do anything about it.

I tried to scream but my lungs were full of dust and smoke and I could barely choke out a whispered “Help”. No one could hear me. No one was coming to save me.

I felt the heat of the fire drawing nearer as bits of flaming debris dropped from the destroyed roof and kindled new blazes in the wreckage that lay on top of me.

“I got the others back.” I told myself, trying to imagine that was sufficient. I’d done some good, maybe that was all I needed from this life?

“No. That’s not enough.”

Sometimes we have to accept our fates. Sometimes nothing can change what’s to come. Facing those moments with grace and dignity takes more courage than I can imagine. The mistake is believing that acceptance is always the answer. Somethings we have to change. Somethings we need to fight. No matter how impossible it seems.

“You’re impossible”, I heard the echo of Way’s gentle voice and it opened my eyes.

“I am…I am!”, I tried to shout it out but my lungs had other ideas. That didn’t matter though. I had an idea.

Pen had said that the barrier between the Dreamlit world and the physical world was no more real than the Dreamlit world itself. I hadn’t understood what he’d meant at the time, but the flight from the Shadow Court’s realm had given me the clue I needed.

It hadn’t been the Shadow Court, or Samantha, or Way who’d merged the Dreamlit world with the physical world when the Court had first appeared. It had been me!

Looking back on the frenzied run, I remembered falling hard on my face and then getting up like it was nothing. I’d run across the park and all the way to Samantha’s house carrying someone at least half my weight. I’d even been frozen to the core by a mistman. Yet, I hadn’t felt any lingering pain from the fall, I’d never run out of breath and I hadn’t died of hypothermia.

The implications of that gave me a moment of vertigo. The implications of what I was thinking to try next were even scarier though.

Almost shyly, I projected myself into the Dreamlit world again. The building was even more ruined there than it was in physical world, but there were no fire. The black flames that had scoured the building’s top floor had simply annihilated whatever they hit.

“This will be easier with a little muscle.” I commented, again to myself. I was feeling a little better but, given what I was contemplating, obviously nowhere near sane yet.

I had so many options, but most of them felt distant, so I chose to be Jenny Nine Stitches instead of Jin for the task ahead. Jenny was only real in her own worlds, but here nothing was completely real so, since she was a part of me, I could be her as easily as I could be Jin.

Goblin strength wasn’t superhuman enough for me to lift up a building, but it certainly helped in clearing away debris. With my vision split in two and meta-awareness warning me of weak spots in the rubble, I was able to clear a path to the spot in the Dreamlit world that matched where I was lying in the physical world.

“Thanks Jenny.” I said with my physical body. It felt like thanking my right hand for a job well done when I was brushing my teeth, but I needed that kind of silliness. As Jenny, I bowed in the Dreamlit world to my physical self, acknowledging of the thanks.

I hesitated for a moment, changing back to Jin in the process. If I was wrong, I wouldn’t get a second chance to fix things. This was an all or nothing plan.

Tentatively, I reached out and touched my Dreamlit hands to my physical ones. In the physical world they were crushed under the fallen building. In the Dreamlit world the patch was clear though. Closing my eyes, I lifted my physical self’s hands up and, with every ounce of strength I had, pulled myself fully across the barrier into Dreamlit World.

I wasn’t real any longer. My physical body remembered it’s reality, my leg was still broken and my arms still crushed, but as far as the real world was concerned, there had never been a Jin, and certainly never been a girl trapped in the rubble of building where I was.

As easily as I’d changed from Jin to Jenny, I touched my leg and my arms and guided them back to full health. Smoke filled lungs and soot smeared eyes, scratches and punctures, all of those disappeared as I imagine my body being the way it had been when I’d walked into the police station.

It was tempting to “improve” on things, but my meta-awareness made it clear how dangerous that was. The more I changed in myself, the more the real world would have to change to accommodate me back into it. I was taking a terrible risk as it was, but under the circumstances it was definitely preferable to being burned alive.

Together with myself, Dreamlit Jin and physical Jin picked a path out of wreckage of the police station. In the Dreamlit world the streets around the destroyed building were deserted. Peeking back into the physical world though showed that a crowd of rescue workers had shown up.

I picked a spot out of sight and stepped back into the physical world.

Coming back into the real world was easier than leaving it had been. My physical body was attuned to the real world. Returning to it gave me the impression of stepping back into the vacuum my absence had created.

As I crossed the barrier back into the physical world, I felt my memories bifurcate again. I hadn’t been in the police station when it collapsed. I’d gone out to parking lot to wait for James after the interview with Agent Haffrun. I’d seen the building collapse from the outside rather than the inside in this new reality, which was why my body was nice and whole rather than badly mauled and under a ton of rubble.

“I have the perfect disguise.” I whispered to myself, astounded at the unexpected side benefit.

I could leave here and there’d be no evidence that I had any powers at all. I could go back home and be safe. Every crazy thing I’d encountered? I could leave it all behind me!

I was starting to walk away when I saw the superheroine Heartbeat touch down across the street from me. My first thought was that I’d been caught and she was going to take me away but then I saw her walking over to the fire crews. I almost cheered out loud. The professionals had arrived! Someone else would take care of everything!

Except…

Except I knew that wasn’t true.

I didn’t want to see what my meta-awareness was showing me, but I knew I couldn’t deny it. There were other people still trapped in the building. I’d been there. I knew how close the fire was to reaching them. The firefighters would get it under control, but not before more of the building fell. Not before more poisonous gases were released.

“How many are left in there?” Heartbeat asked the Fire Chief who was directing the ladder truck crews.

“We don’t know. We can’t get in there yet.” he answered. They’d know in the morning. When they counted the bodies.

“What can I do to help?” Heartbeat asked. I could hear the urgency in her voice. She had an amazing array of powers, being helpless in spite of them sucked.

“Nothing yet. We don’t know where it’s safe to go in or what’s safe to move.” the Fire Chief answered and then added “Miss I’m going to have to ask you to get back”.

He was speaking to me.

I’d been walking up to them without being consciously aware of it, but I knew why. I wanted to go home. I wanted to pretend none of this happened, that all of the scary, painful, and deadly things had happened to someone else. All I had to do was walk away and I could hide from them and be safe but I’d already made my decision.

“I can tell you.” I said. “I can tell you where the people inside are and how to get to them.”

Dorothy only had click her heels together to get home. Piloting a World Gate proved to be just a little more challenging than that.

“No more escapes. This ends.”, the armored figure commanded. He didn’t move like Way did. Apparently ultra speed was a gift she’d been specially designed for. That meant, when he charged me, he was moving slowly enough that I got to see him bounce off the pink radiance that was blasting out of World Gate in the Dreamlit world. The fading power of the Shadow Court’s Realm Heart hadn’t been enough to hold him back but apparently the light of an active World Gate could manage it.

If I had the time I’m sure that would have given me some great ideas to use against him. Unfortunately, he knew not to give me even a spare instant to work with. Instead of hammering on the the protective field around the World Gate, he raised his arms up and called on the black flames.

In the Heart’s chamber the flames roared with added ferocity. The Heart struggled to hold them back, radiating sheer agony that dropped everyone in the room to their knees. We couldn’t survive even a second in that environment, but fortunately we didn’t have to.

Faerie World Gates are designed to move things between physical worlds (like the one I came from) and faerie realms like the Shadow Court’s world. When the heroes from Agent Haffrun’s task force had assaulted the Shadow Court’s realm they’d forced open the existing Hedge Gate since that was the weakest spot in the realm for transdimensional travel.  What I was doing was a variation of that, except instead of finding a weak spot in the realm, I was making one. Given the state of the Shadow Court’s realm that wasn’t as hard as it sounded.

In one sense, what I did next was as simple as passing the World Gate from one hand (Jin’s) to another (Jenny’s). It felt very similar to refocusing my vision down to a single world. The effect on the Shadow Court’s realm was far from simple though.

Passing the Dreamlit World Gate into the reality of the Shadow Court’s realm shattered what was left of the barrier between the real and the unreal there. The two realms merged, driven together by the rent in the barrier that I’d made and the surging power of the gate that the Heart was pumping energy into.

The black flames from both worlds joined and swept over everything. We would have vanished into nothingness the instant they did except for our united desire to escape and the gate’s power to make that happen.

Against the gate’s power and purpose stood  the armored figure. For a single, unmoving moment, he bent his will against the gate’s power and held it in place.

“You will not impede us abomination.” he whispered, malice seething from the omnipresent flames that carried his will.

I was too beat up, too far past my limits to laugh at the notion of a world destroyer calling me an abomination, but some part of my barely functioning brain filed that away for later consideration.

“Looks like I already have.” Jenny shot back. Irritating the omnicidal maniac probably wasn’t the best move I could have made, but it felt good in a kind of stupid way.

Frustration lent the armored figure greater intensity and I watched as the pink aura the gate was blasting out shrank under his assault. We were frozen in time, so if his power was enough to overcome the Heart and the Gate together we would be gone before the others had a chance to notice it. That meant I had to do something, anything, to break the deadlock in our favor.

I studied the armored figure in the stillness of that moment. My meta-awareness didn’t see him at all, but regular observation gave me some clues as to what he was.

The armor, though filled with emptiness, spoke of him being a warrior. His explanations for why he was bent on absolute destruction painted him as a champion for annihilation. From his actions it was as though the oblivion he sought needed an active force to promote its existence.

I considered the paradox that I’d seen in Way. The form of emptiness. A being of unbeing. Logically he was an impossibility, but on some level his existence made a kind of sense.

Beyond the Dreamlit world, was the impossible and the unreal. The Dreamlit world was a barrier between the two, but it wasn’t perfect. If someone from one of the real worlds had managed to find their way beyond the Dreamlit world into the depths of the Unreal that lay beyond it, I could imagine them becoming “unreal” themselves.

I tried to imagine what would push someone to the point of utterly destroying themselves and then beyond that to where their hatred superseded their own destruction and returned to the real worlds carrying that corrosive unreality with them. Whatever it was and however motivated they were, I couldn’t imagine that there were many people who would be able to do make that journey. If anything, it was probably something that would only happen once. If Oblivion’s Knight wielded as much power as I’d seen then only one champion would be ever be needed.

“I’m going to take Pen back from you.” I told the Oblivion Knight. “I’m going to take him back, and I’m going to cast you back beyond the Dreamlit world.”

I made the statements without any idea how I would make those words become true. The Oblivion Knight was someone I could barely flee from, much less fight, but that didn’t matter, I knew I needed to make both pronouncements real.

“I will never leave this reality. Not until its last building block has been cast down into the void and a new world can be crafted.” the Oblivion Knight declared. That was it. We’d drawn our battle lines.

Grasping the gate tighter, I focused on home. The Heart’s power was balanced perfectly against the Oblivion Knight’s, so I lent the gate what little strength I had left.

Former Faerie Queen, changelings, demon spawn, the Heart of Power, whatever Way was and whatever I’d become, we were all joined to the gate when it folded in on itself and vanished out of the Shadow Court’s realm. An instant later the realm ceased to be. Or more precisely it ceased to ever have been. As the flames consumed the last of the realm I experienced a new bifurcation, not of vision this time but of memory.

New information poured into my mind. The Shadow Court had never had a realm. They didn’t hide in the far reaches of Faerie. They were predators native to my world and always had been. When they captured someone, they dragged them down into the depths of earth. The lucky ones were simply driven mad, turned into monsters and released back on the surface to cause havoc. The less fortunate ones were crafted into gardens for the Shadow Court’s delight.

I knew this had always been the case, but I also knew that it hadn’t. My mind warred with itself trying to reconcile those two understandings until my meta-awareness kicked in and gave me a perspective to work from.

I’d always thought of time as a river, flowing from the past to the future. Instead, my meta-awareness suggested the model of a cut gem. No past, no future, just the present. A present which held the record of the past and the possibilities of the future. Change the present, put a different cut into the gem, and you changed the past and the future as well.

For anyone who was a part of the real world, the change was imperceptible. The present was different, but so was the past, which meant from their point of view things had always been that way.

In my case, I was part of the real world, but I was outside it as well. That was how I could hold two conflicting memories of the past. I knew both my own past and the past of the world I was a part of.

Remembering two different pasts was weird and I knew the “cut gem” metaphor was incomplete, but it helped me grasp what was happening well enough that I decided to live with it until a better metaphor came along.

Also I had more immediate problems to deal with.

“Where are we?” Minnie asked.

We were falling through a sky full of stars, no sun and no Earth visible anywhere. It was beautiful, seductively so. An endless peaceful night that we could sleep in for all eternity, drifting forever outwards to the stars.

“We’re out of the Shadow Court’s realm and on our way home.” I told her.

“Who are you? And what happened to Blue?” Jessica asked.

I looked at myself and noticed that when we’d reintegrated, I’d defaulted to Jin rather than Jenny Nine Stitches. I could feel Jenny the same way as I could feel Molly, but outside of their worlds, both seemed to be slumbering in me. That felt fair. I’d been Jenny pretty deeply throughout my time in the Shadow Court’s realm. I liked being her, but I liked being Jin too and the Dreamlit world was Jin’s domain.

“I’m her. I look different in different places.” It was true, but not the answer Jessica wanted to hear.

“Whatever. How are we getting home. I’m lost.” Minnie growled. Meta-awareness filled me in again. The Shadow Court had made her into a minotaur. Minotaurs don’t get lost. Ever.

I looked at the Gate that joined us together. It should have transported us back to the physical world, but instead were were drifting out past the far edge of the Dreamlit world. Had I botched the activation? Did the Heart not have enough power to get all of us back?

The glyphs were right. The radiant glow that sheltered us said that the gate had enough power left. I came up blank for what else could be responsible until I looked around the gate at my companions.

I’d declared we were going home. Each of us was holding the gate. So each of us was trying to get to our own homes.

“We need to let go.” I told the others “The gate’s trying to send us to our homes, but it can’t go to all the different places at once.”

“Right, so we let go and spin off into space never to be seen again.” Jessica protested.

“No, we’re already heading in the right direction, the gate’s just anchoring us here. We don’t need it any longer.”

“Then you let go first.” Jessica demanded. I shrugged and was about to do it when meta-awareness showed me what the result would be.

“I can’t. I brought the gate here, when I let go it’ll head back to where the Shadow Court’s realm was but that’s been swallowed by those black flames.”

“NO! We can’t go back there!” Way exclaimed, rousing instantly at the mention of the black flames. Before I could stop her, before anyone could stop her, she summoned her golden fire and sent it coursing through the threads of the World Gate.

The last thing I saw in that starry expanse was all of us being blown apart by the explosion of the World Gate and streaking outwards like individual shooting stars.

Darkness claimed me, but only for what felt like the briefest moment. The pain that followed certainly wasn’t mild, but after being exposed to the Shadow Court’s Heart of Power I had a new scale to measure things like that against.

I opened my eyes to see the scattered illumination from halogen lights shining in through a hole in the floor above me. I was back in my physical body in the police station and I was trapped. Over my head, the roof was ablaze with fire.

I’d returned just in time to be burned alive.

Binding the physical world to an ethereal world of nightmare faerie magic is the kind of thing that they’d probably insist I avoid doing if I decided to join the FBMA. So, in a way, it was good that I was entirely untrained at the task before me.

“What are you doing?” Nell asked.

“Getting the pieces for the World Gate together.”

“It’s helping”, she said. I could see the tears had stopped and she was standing up straighter.

In destroying the statue that served as the guardian of the Shadow Court’s Heart of Power, Way had weakened the Heart itself. Then I had started ripping it apart for material to work with and that had weakened it further. So, in comparison to how it had appeared previously, the room was looking almost cheerful. I might even have been able to work in it for a full ten seconds if Nell stopped supporting me.

“Here’s where it gets difficult again.” I told her. As far as I knew most of the difficulty would be on me for the next phase, but I had no idea what Nell’s limits where or how much backlash she would receive if I got blasted by the forces Jenny would be knitting together.

“The flames are getting closer.” Heather called out from the doorway. I looked at the collection of threads that I’d cut from the Heart of Power. It wasn’t enough. I needed a hundred times the material to work with and a thousand times the knowledge. I didn’t have either though, so I picked up two of the threads and got to knitting.

As I brought the threads together my vision broke apart. The Dreamlit world’s reflection of the Shadow Court’s realm had been horrifying the first time I saw it. Glimpsing it from within the Heart chamber was terrifying in a different way. The eldritch terrorscape that I’d seen earlier was simply gone. What little remained was the space around us, the edges of which were shrinking inwards as the black flames devoured them.

The Shadow Court hadn’t abandoned their bodies and taken over the heroes out of malice. Malice was a side benefit. They’d been fleeing for their existence.

Beyond the edge of the flames I heard a vast roaring. Something knew they’d escaped. Something that sounded a lot like the nameless giant.

“Got to work faster.” I told myself in the Dreamlit world.

I looked at the outline of threads that Jenny’s fingers were spinning together. In the Dreamlit world I saw the shape of the final gate like a ghostly outline overlaying the work that Jenny was doing. Pieces of the outline filled in as I focused and tried to imagine what each of the glyphs and whirls might mean. Meta-awareness helped, providing insight into the importance of each element that I studied. Rather than letting me complete the task faster though, the added knowledge only made it clear how far off the mark I was.

Jenny could spin a glyph in about a minute, working at a breakneck pace and trusting to meta-awareness to guide the way. That would cover about an inch of a doorway that needed to be at least ten feet high and eight feet wide. We had five minutes on the outside before the last scrap of the Shadow Court’s realm burned up.

“We’re not going to make it.” I admitted to myself.

“No. You won’t.”

Something stepped out of the fire at the edge of the world. A suit of empty armor, burning with the black flames that surrounded it. It had the same dying galaxies for eyes that the nameless giant had and it spoke in the same voice.

“What do you want here?” I asked, hoping to stop it with words since I didn’t think anything else I could do would work.

“Nothing.”

The armored figure stopped at the edge of the flames. It traced a hand through the air revealing a shield that was resisting the advance of the black fire.

“Then why are you here?” I demanded.

“You misunderstand. Our desire is for nothing.”

“That’s why you’re burning this place up?”

“It is an atrocity.”

It was true. If ever a place deserved to be lost to the black flames it was the Shadow Court’s realm. I’d wanted to burn it myself and had set Jessica and Nell to do just that. Something about the black flames made the way they were destroying this place seem wrong though.

“Ok. But you tried to burn up the police station too.” I protested

“Again you misunderstand. It is all atrocity.”

“What? Everything? Why? What’s so bad about the real world?”

“This world is as real as the physical realm we last met in.”

“It’s a faerie land founded on the principal of pain and loss. That’s not what the real world is like.”

“It is corrupt. In no atom of its essence can the touch of a benevolent creator be found. It is an aberration of chaos, a fundamentally flawed conception that can only end in suffering. It is exactly the same as your world and all other worlds in this reality.”  The armored figure’s voice was low and intense. It echoed from every flame that surrounded the dying remnant of the Shadow Court’s realm.

Standing inside the influence of the Shadow Court’s Heart of Power it was difficult to argue with him. Nell’s support made the pain the Heart broadcast bearable but even so it colored my thinking. I knew I wasn’t going to give up on getting back home but forming complex counter arguments for a philosophical debate was more than I had the brain power left for.

“So you’re going to destroy everything that is then?” I asked.

“Only from the void can a new reality be crafted.”

I wanted to tell the figure he was insane. Trying to destroy everything, ever, was so over the top it practically defined “megalomaniacal super villain”. Usually that type of threat wasn’t much to worry about from what I’d read. Villains that went that insane didn’t tend to retain enough coherence to tie their own shoes much less pose an actual danger to the world.

This one had annihilated 99% of a realm that had stymied the most powerful heroes on Earth for decades though. And I was the only one who was around to stand against him.

I wanted to run.

Pen was way more knowledgeable than I was about the Dreamlit world and everything that was going on and he hadn’t lasted more than a minute against this guy. Way was vastly more powerful than I could hope to be and she’d been cast out as useless to him. I knew the Shadow Court’s Heart was still influencing me, but I couldn’t see how I was supposed to stop a universe destroyer.

“Is everything ok?” Nell asked.

In the Shadow Court’s realm, I was crying my eyes out. As Jenny, I wanted to live too.

“No.” I admitted. Nell was trying harder than anyone else and I hated telling her the truth, but I couldn’t lie to her either. She deserved better than that. All of them did.

“We’re out of time here Blue!” Jessica called from the alcove they were huddled in at the bottom of the stairs. The passage leading up, just behind Patches, was gone, or rather engulfed in the black flames. They were going to be forced into the room and the Heart was still strong enough to rip their minds to pieces.

Way was down, slumped into Minnie’s arms. Jessica and Heather were looking like the Heart was already getting to them and even the former Queen had a look on her face that I could only read as trepidation. There was no choice left. They had to enter the Heart’s chamber.

“Can you help them?” I asked Nell.

“Yes. Now I can.” she said and tried to pull me towards the others. With the weakening of the Heart’s power she could afford to protect more than just one of us at a time.

“I’m staying here. The gate’s not ready yet.” I told her.

“You can’t. I can’t protect you if we’re not together.”

“I know. It’s ok.” I wasn’t planning to throw my sanity away. I figured I could escape to the Dreamlit world if the pain grew too intense. That was a bit of overestimation on my part.

I knew roughly how bad the pain would be when Nell let go. My meta-awareness was all too happy to give me that warning. What it failed to mention was the effect that would have on Jenny’s body.

Jenny was tougher than Jin, but she had her limits too. I felt my crochet hooked fingers spasm and curl inwards as the pain hit. I nodded for Nell to go to the others as the pain continued to build. She was halfway across the small room when the tremors started.

The glyph that I was working on weaving together ripped apart. I had to draw my hands away from the partial outline of the gate that I’d woven before I destroyed anymore of it. I couldn’t continue on the glyphs and I knew in a few moments I wouldn’t even be able to stand. Then I’d barely be able to writhe. Then I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Then, one way or another, by pain or by flame, I simply wouldn’t be at all anymore.

But I had a few moments.

As Jin in the Dreamlit world, I reach out and put my arms around Jenny. I’d hoped that by sharing the pain with both of my selves I’d lessen the effect on Jenny’s body. The good news was that worked. The bad news was that as Jin I had even less resistance to the pain than I did as Jenny.

“I will face the dark flames.” I heard the former Queen state as Nell tried to draw her into the room.

“No.” I croaked out. I needed to get her home too or the others wouldn’t believe they could be accepted. The idea was a little crazy I admit but, in my defense, I was on thin ice in the sanity department as it was so clinging to a few crazy ideas was somewhat inevitable.

“You would command me still? What is there left of you to pretend to royalty?” the Queen demanded as the flames began to lick away the the glamour she was wearing.

“While there is breath in this body, I remain who I am.” Jenny said, rising to her feet defiantly.

Without a word, Patches reached down, hoisted the former Queen in his arms and carried her across the threshold into the Heart’s chamber. She could easily have stopped him, or killed him for the affront, but apparently my words had gotten through to her.

As she entered the room, I saw what she had been afraid of. The moment she crossed the threshold, her skin burst aflame with the purple fire that we’d seen throughout the Shadow Courts realm. Rather than rising upwards however the flames were drawn towards the center of the room. They fragmented into sparks and were caught in a kind of whirlwind that drew them right into the Heart.

Meta-awareness filled me in immediately. Despite being deposed, the former Queen was still a vessel for the Shadow Court’s power. The Heart was desperate to resist the black flames and was calling back all its power. That was another reason the Shadow Court hadn’t stayed to fight for their domain.

The added power sustained the Heart for only an instant. For all her frightful speed and strength, the former Queen carried only the smallest measure of the Court’s power. The encroaching flames were pushed back a few feet and then surged forward as the Heart exhausted the extra force it had gained.

“We’re all going to die here.” Jessica mumbled in numb denial as we watched the flames enter the Heart’s chamber at last.

“There wasn’t enough time to make the gate.” Heather said. She looked crestfallen and it occurred to me to wonder what would happen to her. Could the flames affect a ghost? Would she burn here too, or would she be left floating alone in the void?

I slammed my hand against the floor and screamed in the Dreamlit world.

“Give yourself to the flames. Join with us. Become nothing and be the architect of everything in the pure world to follow.” the armored figure commanded.

“Why?” I asked struggling to buy even another second for us.

“Because this imperfect world must end.”

“No. You misunderstand me. Why are you asking?”

I forced myself to my feet in the Dreamlit world.

“Why would you ask when you’re going to destroy me either way?” I asked the armored figure who had gone strangely still. Even the flames weren’t flickering.

“Why have me give up? Unless there was some chance, some way that we could escape and you wanted to make sure I don’t notice it.”

My gaze fell on the Dreamlit world’s version of the World Gate. In my meta-awareness fueled imagination, it was complete. A perfect template of the gate that Jenny had been frantically working to build.

Jenny couldn’t weave anymore. Her tremors were too intense. There was one thing she could do though.

“Everyone! Touch the gate! We’re leaving!” I said to my companions. There was no argument, they all grabbed onto the few thin threads that made up the physical version of the World Gate. Jenny then stepped forward and with shaking hands grabbed hold of the Heart directly.

In the Dreamlit world, Jin held onto Jenny tightly with one hand and with the other grabbed hold of the Dreamlit World Gate.

The power of the Heart surged into Jenny and then into Jin. Feeling the pain in stereo almost obliterated my consciousness, but my gamble paid off before that could happen. From Jin, all of the pain and power from the Heart flowed into the Dreamlit World Gate which exploded with a brilliant pink light.

There was a howl of incoherent rage from everywhere around the remnants of the world. The armored figure smashed the shield that held back the flames like it was made of paper thin ice and began to charge the World Gate.

He was too late though. I had control of the gate, and I knew where I wanted to send us.

Home.

I was far from home. Farther than I’d ever been. Seeing the Earth hanging in a starry sky through the Shadow Court’s Hedge Gate I wanted to rush back to it as fast as my feet would carry me, but I knew I couldn’t. The winding path that led out from the gate, the path the Shadow Court had left open, offered only death to those who tried to follow them.

“How hot can you make it in here?” I asked Jessica.

“Hot enough.”

“Good. Burn this place then. Don’t leave anything for them here. They’ll be able to remake everything, even their bodies, but it’ll take a long time if they only have ash to start from.” Disgust and horror at the contents of the red garden mingled with my fears over what the Shadow Court would do with the heroes that had come here. I wanted to deny that anything truly bad could happen, but everywhere I looked all I could see were pots filled with proof to the contrary.

“Should we get to the Gate first?” Heather asked.

“No. We can’t take that way.” I said.

“It is a most fatal lure.” Patches agreed.

“How do you know all this?” Jessica demanded.

“Your gift is fire. This is mine.” I told her.

“Then I definitely don’t trust you.” she replied. I couldn’t understand why until I caught the barest whiff of brimstone and my meta-awareness filled in the details. Her powers were inherited, but they weren’t due to a mutation. No, her fire was more supernatural in origin. I’d mistaken her for a human, but that was only partially true. Her mother had been something else entirely.

That was something she kept hidden away from almost everyone. If I pursued it, I suspected she wouldn’t be happy and would express that unhappiness in a very hot and painful way. That meant if I wanted her trust I had to earn it the old fashioned way. By deeds not words.

“You don’t have to, but this place needs to burn.”

“Are we to burn with it?” Patches asked.

“No. We’re going to get home safely.” I said it with force, trying to will it to be true despite the nature of the realm we were in conspiring against the very concept of safety.

“Some of us are already home.” the former Queen said. She could only have been speaking of herself but her gaze swept over Patches, Nell and Minnie as well.

I saw them look to me for confirmation of what she was suggesting. That the time they’d spent in the clutches of the Shadow Court had changed them beyond recovery. That they weren’t human anymore and could never really go home.

Without my meta-awareness I might have wondered that too. I’d read too many stories of children being “saved” from the Shadow Court and other fell faeries only to be revealed later as monsters in disguise. The common wisdom was that beyond a certain point you were unrecoverable because the faeries would have twisted all of the humanity out of you.

Jessica and Heather were still within the “safe” period, but Nell, Patches and especially Minnie had been lost to the Shadow Court for far longer than anyone would believe they could have survived. If I’d met them yesterday, or any time before I gained my meta-awareness, I would have assumed the children they’d been were long lost and all that remained were monsters biding their time to strike.

Looking at them in the red garden though I could see the truth so clearly. They were still people and they always would be. Whatever they looked like on the outside, however they were changed by their experiences among the faeries, at their core they were human and they deserved to be treated as such.

“This isn’t where you belong.” I fixed my gaze on the former Queen and fixed my thoughts on one thing. She’d been human once too.

The former Queen was a monster. She looked eerily perfect, but that was only because of the glamour she wore. Underneath it, her form was the same grey, inhuman horror as any of the Shadow Courtiers that lay “dead” in the red garden. My meta-awareness could see through her magics easily enough, but even with that it was hard for me to see her as anything other than a destroyer of children. By all rights she should have burned with the garden, but I knew that would be wrong too.

No matter what she looked like, no matter how she’d been changed by her experiences, she was still human.

She looked confused and annoyed by my claim but I could see the others kind of got what I was saying. If even the former Queen didn’t belong here, then they certainly deserved to go home too. I wasn’t sure they believe me of course, but at least they knew where I stood on the matter.

“Fine. Get back then.” Jessica said, calling up flames in both her hands. I would have had Way help her again but I could tell the poison had done too much damage. Way looked like she could barely stand anymore. If she was going to make it, we desperately needed to escape the Shadow Court’s realm soon.

Nell stepped up behind Jessica without being directed to this time and placed both her hands on Jessica’s right arm. Together they unleashed a storm of hellfire on the garden that set wide swathes of it ablaze. In response to the threat to their realm, the bodies of the Shadow Courtiers began to rise, slow and ungainly.

“The spirits have fled but duty still compels.” Patches observed. He turned to one of the nearer pots and drew a thorn as long as his arm out of the body that was pincushioned there.

“Minnie can you help him?” I asked. The magic that animated the Shadow Courtiers without their spirits left them as slow as a shambling zombie but far more difficult to destroy. Fire would do the trick, but it would take more time to render them to ash than we had.

“I think so.” the minotaur girl said. She was feeling the compulsion of duty as well, but unlike the lifeless Courtier zombies, she could choose to resist it.

“What can I do?” Heather asked. As a ghost she wasn’t in any danger from the zombies but she also wasn’t in a position to help hold them back either.

“You’re with me.” I answered. “You know how to look for weak points in the briars. Help me find ones that lead to the room below this one.”

“What’s below this room?”, she asked.

“The Heart.” the former Queen answered.

“The Hedge Gate is the Shadow Court’s connection to other worlds and other parts of Faerie, but it takes a lot of power to control. The Heart is what provides that power.”

“How does that help us?”

“The Shadow Court has the Hedge Gate locked open to Earth, but it’s lined with spells so that only they can pass through it. If we disconnect the Heart, I can try to weave us another Gate that will take us out of here safely.”

“You can weave World Gates?” the former Queen asked suspiciously. The truth was Jenny had some vague ideas of how they worked and the broad framework of how she might piece together the outlines of one. It was similar to tasking someone with making a wedding gown because they knew to start with white cloth and a pair of scissors.

“Watch and see.” I replied.

Heather slipped into the floor of the garden and we repeated the trick we had performed with carving a path through the briars to reach the garden. The Heart was defended by the best wards the Shadow Court possessed. It was the dark center of their power. Unfortunately for them they weren’t home, and in leaving they’d taken a huge amount of their power with them. That left all sorts of weaknesses in their defenses.

Heather and I ripped through the ground of the garden, detonating threads of magic at one weak point after another. After the struggle through the briars it was almost effortless.

“Can we leave yet, something weird is happening here!” Jessica called out as I carved another ten steps down for the spiraling staircase that I’d cut into the red garden’s floor.

“We’re almost there!” Heather called back.

“What do you mean weird?” I added. We were in a garden of horrors in a realm of evil faeries being attacked by zombies. I was both curious and certain I didn’t what to know what might qualify as “weird” under those circumstances.

“The fire’s starting to burn black.”, Jessica called back.

My blood turned to ice. I reached out with my meta-awareness and, predictably, didn’t notice anything amiss. Sprinting back up the stairs though I saw that Jessica was telling the truth. At the edges of the garden, the fires Jessica and Nell had been replaced with an all too familiar black flame. Something else was destroying the Shadow Court’s realm.

I turned to ask Way if she could sense their source and had to choke back a cry. She was laying collapsed against one of the pots, eyes closed and terribly still.

I ran over to her and felt my heart start beating again when she stirred at my touch.

“I’m ok.” she said without opening her eyes.

“Of course you are. Stay with me though. I might need a hand.” I told her, helping her up and putting her left arm over my shoulders to support her while she walked.

“Ok. We’re leaving. Everyone, follow me down the stairs.” I called out.

“Be with you in a minute!” Minnie called back as she smashed a trio of burning zombies. The impact of her blow knocked them off the feet and flung them a dozen paces backwards into the fires that were rapidly closing in on us.

Patches staked a zombie into one of the garden sculptures and casually dusted himself off before turning to follow us, making sure that the former Queen, Jessica and Nell were ahead of him, in that order.

“Just find us the fastest way down.” I told Heather, no longer concerned with setting off any alarms or traps. If my guess was right what was behind us was far worse than anything that Shadow Court could have left for us.

The path that I carved down to the Heart wasn’t pretty, or stable, or easy to move along, but it got us to the Heart’s chamber ahead of the black flames which was all that mattered.

The chamber was a surprisingly simple affair with a surprisingly simple defense. The nature of the Shadow Court was the pain of loss and the fear of helplessness. There was no way to set foot into the room without experiencing the raw, undeniable truth of that.

I flinched back as I breeched the final outer wall of the chamber and brushed against the power coursing through the room. I would have collapsed entirely except that Way caught me in time.

“This is bad. There’s still too much power here. I can’t work through it.” I said. A mere brush against the Heart’s power had almost incapacitated me, prolonged exposure would leave me a crippled wreck.

“I can help.” Nell offered quietly.

“Are you sure?” I caught a glimpse of what aiding me would cost her and could tell it wouldn’t be pretty. Neither would burning in the black flames though.

She nodded silently and took my free arm in her hands.

“Wait here, unless you see the black flames come down the stairs.” I told the others.

“What do we do then?” Jessica asked.

“Choose the manner of horrible death we prefer.” Patches suggested.

I didn’t have a better alternative to offer, so I just shrugged and turned with Nell to enter the Heart’s chamber.

The overwhelming feeling of loss and helplessness ripped my breath away as we stepped over the threshold of the chamber but I was able to stay on my feet. I’d expected Nell to cry out or collapse in my place but she only grasped my arm slightly tighter as we moved into the room.

The Heart rested above what looked at first to be a burned out tree stump. I would have said that it was a dark purple jewel, except that is pulsed with life and there was a sheen of wetness that suggested a far more organic nature.

As we walked closer, I saw that what I had taken to be a tree stump was a sculpture of a woman. It was so gnarled and bent that her resemblance to humanity was only barely visible. Her empty, twisting arms reached upwards, towards the Heart but forever falling short of it.

From the base of the sculpture, thick roots lead off into the walls, carrying the Hearts power out to the rest of the realm. The root leading to the Hedge Gate was easy enough to guess, it was one of the thickest ones.

“Now where’s my white cloth and scissors.” I muttered as I looked around for some material to begin weaving the new gate from.

There wasn’t any. The room was empty except for the Heart. I’d lead everyone to their doom. Nell’s strength couldn’t hold out much longer and then the Heart would blast our minds apart. My companions would be consumed by the black flames, except maybe for Way who would either die from the poison or drift alone for eternity.

Nell gripped my arm tighter and the Heart’s influence subsided. She was crying freely now, but she was still by my side. We weren’t lost yet.

If the only thing in the room was the Heart and I needed something to build a new gate out of then I knew what I had to do.

“This is going to really hurt.” I warned Nell and glanced from her to the Heart. She nodded her agreement so I got to work.

Scratching threads off of the Heart made my head swim. Even with Nell pressing her whole body against mine and lending me all of her strength I could only stand to touch the Heart for a few seconds at a time.

I thought it was the pain and the disorientation that made it seem like the sculpture under the Heart was bending and shifting towards us. As I scraped away more threads though the sculpture began to move more quickly.

I stepped back, pulling Nell with me, just in time to see the sculpture unfurl and stand on it’s misshapen legs. There was nothing human in the sculpture. There never had been. It was a tribute to humanity though, a monument to the first mother driven mad by the loss of her young.

I stared up at the living statue as it drew a blade of thorns out of its chest. Driven by the Heart’s power, the thornblade was singularly deadly here. Its touch held the agony that fed the Shadow Court and the statue would be able strike as fast as they could once it was fully awake.

Defending against that sort of assault, while the Heart leeched away at our strength, would be all but impossible. I wasn’t that fast at the best of times and while Nell’s power was able to shield me from the Heart’s influence on my mind, I knew she wouldn’t be able to ward off something as solid as the thornblade.

I backed away from the statue, trying to find a chink in it’s form, someway that Jenny’s quick fingers could unweave it. I wasn’t sure I could find the center of its power though. I wasn’t a mother. I’d never lost a child. There was something intensely private and at the same time undeniable about the pain that drove the statue.

I flinched as the statue drew back the thornblade to deliver its single fatal blow. The blow never landed though. Before it could, a bolt of golden light speared through the room. It blasted a hole through the statue and disintegrated its blade.  Way stood in the entrance I’d carved into the room with Minnie supporting her and Jessica’s fire driving back the Heart’s light. As the statue toppled over I found the chink I was looking for.

I wasn’t a mother and I’d never lost a child but I knew what it was like to lose someone I loved.

I thought of my Dad. I’d lost him during the last invasion. The heroes hadn’t been able to save him. That hurt worse than anything else I’d ever known, but looking back on it, I wouldn’t give up a bit of knowing him. Not even stacked against all the pain his loss. Not one single second.

The pain of losing someone doesn’t make the love we feel for them any less precious.

I thought of Mom, and James, and even James’ Dad. I had people who loved me. I might lose them, but I would never regret knowing them. They’d helped me more than I could ever say. What words might not be able to convey, actions might though.

We were getting home.

The worst thing about the way that I think is how my first reaction after feeling the surge of hope that the heroes had arrived was to immediately starts imagining all of the things that might go wrong.

In this case it didn’t take that deep an imagination. In the heart of their domain, the Shadow Court had all of their powers and allies to draw on. Unless the hero task force had brought a lot of metahumans along they could easily be overwhelmed. Worse, even if they did win, they wouldn’t necessarily be on our side.

Faerie magics are powerful and well adapted to concealing identity. From the heroes’ point of view, we were more likely to be allies of the court or even Courtiers in disguise than legitimately in need of help.

Then there was the issue of my companions. Minnie, Nell, Patches and Jessica could all go back with the heroes pretty easily in theory. In practice, a minotaur, a lightning shaper, a cat boy and a fire elemental were going to encounter some trust issues if they were found in this realm.

The ghost, oddly, would probably encounter less of that prejudice, but would be more likely to be barred from returning to the living world by her very nature. Maybe. I wasn’t really sure how that worked.

The former Faerie Queen on the other hand was exactly the kind of thing the heroes would be right to be worried about. She really was a Courtier in disguise, and she really wasn’t a nice person. Sending her back back to Earth seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. The only reason  I was even considering it was that leaving her here seemed like an even worse one.

Then there was Way.

I’d named her and that had almost destroyed her. I had no idea what to do with her either, but I knew I couldn’t abandon her.

None of that was going to matter though if we couldn’t make it to the Hedge Gate.

“Come on folks, I know a shortcut.” I said and turned to the briars that walled off the path.

“Famous last words if ever there were ones.” Patches commented brightly.

Meta-awareness had suggested the spot that I chose but it was Jenny’s knowledge of spinning that helped me pick out the weave of brambles that needed to be cut away. The Shadow Court are too chaotic to have uniformly solid wards throughout their realm. Two snips on a weak branch set off a chain reaction that opened the beginnings of a new path through the briars.

“We’re leaving the path?” the former Queen asked.

“Paths are for wimps. We make our own.” Jenny answered her, using my voice.

Generally, leaving the path in Faerie is a catastrophically bad idea. Path’s represent order and safety, both of which are fleeting commodities in Faerie. In the Shadow Court’s realm though the normal rules are inverted.

There is no safety there, only easier ways for the Court to play their games. Conforming to their wishes, moving along their paths, was about as far from safety as you could get.

Through my meta-awareness I could sense them moving, en masse, all heading towards the beachhead the heroes had carved into their realm. If we stayed on the paths the Shadow Court favored we wouldn’t stand a chance at avoiding them, and if we encountered many more we wouldn’t stand a chance at getting home. So cutting holes through their walls was the best course of action. Plus, having burned down one of their prisons, I found I kind of liked destroying their stuff.

The others filed past me into newly carved path with Way coming through last before I twisted a trio of branches back together to seal the new path away from the old.

“How are you feeling?”, I asked her, noticing that I’d also sealed away from the golden light of the burning prison.

“Cold.” she admitted. The exertion of fighting the Shadow Courtier had accelerated the poison’s effect on her.

“We’ll be out of here soon.”, I promised. She nodded, but whether that because she believed what I said or just agreed that it was a nice idea, I couldn’t tell.

I slipped past the others to get to the front of group. As I passed Jessica an idea occurred to me.

“Can you make some light, this purple glow isn’t healthy.” I asked her. In response she held up her right hand and it burst into flame like a torch. A very hot torch. The brilliant light was worth the searing heat though. None of the purple shadows lingered in its presence.

I backed away and turned to open the next section of path. It was slower going moving like that, but I wasn’t the only one who could sense the necessity of it.

“They’re moving.” Minnie said. Her voice was clipped and tight. “They’re calling to me.”

“Me too.” Nell nearly whispered.

“They’re calling for all their little pets.” the former Queen chuckled.

“You. Are. Not. Their. Pets.” I insisted.

“Ah, so you would claim their vassalage?” the former Queen asked?

“They are no one’s vassals. They own themselves.” I shot back.

“So you would free us all then?”

“No. Not you.” I told the former Queen.

“You’re her bitch.” Patches added in.

I’d back talked the former Queen because I was mindful of the requirements of the role I was playing over her. I hadn’t lost the sense of how deadly she was though. Even with that awareness keenly in mind, I was still surprised  by how quickly she turned on Patches. There was no movement. One moment he was smiling behind her, the next he was dangling from her raised hand, his feet at least two feet off the ground and his throat caught tight in her grasp.

“As am I.” he squeaked out through the chokehold she held on him.

I had no idea why he would name himself my vassal, but the mere fact that he could had saved his life. The only response to an insult the former Queen could make was swift and deadly but it wasn’t her place to destroy a toy her liege might desire and so her wrath was held in check. She would never forgive him of course, but then she would never forgive any of us for seeing her in her current state.

“Let him go.” I instructed her calmly.  Behind the former Queen I saw Way watching us carefully. I wasn’t sure how she would react if the former Queen tried to turn on me, but I knew it would be over quickly one way or the other.

I turned away and heard the former Queen drop Patches to the ground unceremoniously. With no audience to play for, or at least not one she cared about, she had no need for any further theatrics.

Finding weak spots in the briar became more difficult the closer we got to the Hedge Gate’s room. With the twists and turns we were forced to take it took all of Jenny’s experience and all of my meta-awareness to guide the path in the right direction. Even with that I had to fight to keep my vision focused on what I was doing, otherwise I would catch flashes and glimpses of the Dreamlit world and the unreal horrors that mirrored the Shadow Court’s realm.

Way had said earlier than I could be impossible. Pen had mentioned something similar too. As I hurried ever faster to unweave the briars and forge us a path through I began to question if that wasn’t literally true.

The Shadow Court was on their most alert, most aggressive, footing but even so they couldn’t sense that we were penetrating the heart of their domain. They couldn’t conceive of someone making it to the Hedge Gate through all of their wards without them knowing of it. They knew their realm. They knew that doing so would be impossible. Looking back at our progress, at the traps and tricks that I was disarming in seconds, I had to wonder if they weren’t correct.

Jenny had never worked at the fever pitch that I was working at, on spells of the complexity that confronted me. My meta-awareness was amazing, but it had been misleading before. It didn’t make sense that I was guessing so much of what I was doing, or leaning so heavily on knowledge that I was at best only partially in touch with, and somehow not making the kind of mistakes that would seal us in the briars forever. There had to be something else at work.

I knew whatever it was it would be important but the need to escape drove me on.

If only Pen were here, I thought. I suspected whatever was happening to me was the kind of thing he’d be very reticent to talk about but it would still be comforting to know he had my back. Thinking of him did help me focus though. For as unbelievable as it was given that I was trapped on an alien world and pursued by a race of homicidal inhuman monsters, I had bigger things to worry about.

The nameless giant might think I was erased or whatever, but he had Pen and Pen held the key to the extinction of life on Earth. So however much it sucked, while the nameless giant might be willing to leave me alone, I couldn’t afford to extend him the same courtesy.

“Where are you taking us?”, Jessica demanded when the next section of path curved away at a ninety degree angle from the direction we’d been traveling.

“She’s taking us to the Hedge Gate. And past all the guards.”, Patches replied.

“What the hell is taking so long then? Why do we keep going the wrong way?”, Jessica’s fire got brighter and hotter.

“Sorry, I’m picking the most direct weak points, but the wards around the heart are very strong.” I said.

“Why don’t we just burn our way through then?”, Jessica approached with both hands aflame.

“We can’t. That will trigger the defenses they have set up.”

“So what?”

“They’ll flood the briars. If they were in a good mood they’d use water. Given the day they’re having though they’d probably use nerve poison.”

“They can do that?” Jessica asked, backing away from the briars.

“They can do worse.” Nell said. We turned to look at her but she shrunk back away from the conversation.

“I could check ahead if that would help?” our friendly ghost offered.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I didn’t have any meta-awareness sense of what her capabilities were.

“No problem! I just need to know what to look for.” she replied.

“I’m not sure I can describe it.”

“That’s not problem. Just gimme a sec, and don’t freak out ok?” she said before she stepped into me.

For a split second we were joined together and we could see glimpses of each other’s whole lives (and afterlife as it turned out). Her name was Heather. She was excellent at math. She was going to skip a grade and enter high school a year early but she’d been killed in a bus accident when she was twelve.  She’d worked out how to possess people in order to save her best friend from the Shadow Court. Being a ghost wasn’t as bad she’d been afraid it would be. Almost inviting even. Before I had a chance to “freak out” or even understand what was happening we were blown apart and both landed on the ground stunned.

“What…what are you?”, Heather asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to pull my head together yet again.

“You’re not really a goblin.”

“Of course not. She’s the Queen.” Patches cut in.

“What did she do to you?”, Jessica asked Heather. Apparently a ghost looked more trustworthy than a goblin. Objectively I could kind of see her point, but it was still a bit irritating.

“We don’t have time for this now. Did you get what you needed?” I asked Heather.

“I think so.”

“Good. See if you can find a breakthrough spot into the Hedge Gate’s garden then. Maybe if we work from both ends we can get there faster.”

“Right!” she agreed and stepped into the briars.

I’d only unraveled another ten feet before Heather returned.

“We’ve got a problem. They’re dead!” she said.

“Who? The heroes?” I asked, feeling my stomach sink.

“Heroes?” Jessica asked.

“No. The Shadow Court! Hundreds of them!”

“What do you mean heroes?”, Jessica demanded.

“Superheroes, agents of the FBMA, there was a task force being put together. That bell we heard a few minutes ago was them arriving. Except, I don’t think they could have killed that many Shadow Courtiers that quickly. Something’s not right here.”

“Cut a path through this way and you’ll be able to see. It’s only another twenty feet I think.” Heather said, stepping partially into the briars and indicating the weak point I should focus on.

Twenty feet later, the briars gave way at last to a vast open area that was bathed in red light rather than purple for a change. Where plants should have stood though there were pots filled with things that I could only hope had never been human.

Jenny saved me from vomiting. She had never seen anything like it either, but she was tougher than Jin by a country mile. Instead of focusing on anything in the garden of the Shadow Court’s delights, she watched my companions.

Minnie, Jessica and Heather looked as horrified as I felt. Nell looked horrified too, but not surprised. She’d spent time here already. She already carried this horror with her.

Patches didn’t show any horror at the garden, but he wasn’t looking at it either, whereas the former Queen simply looked bored.

Way had her eyes closed, but it wasn’t because of the garden. The poison was sapping away too much of her strength, too quickly, since we were so close to the center of the Shadow Court’s power.

That galvanized me to face the garden and the Shadow Court. If there was any relief from the tableau of the red garden, it was that those responsible for it were scattered all over it.

Laying across every patch of floor, drapped over every wall and surface, were the bodies of the Shadow Court. At first glance it looked like cosmic justice had caught up with them all in one terrible instant but I could tell something was wrong with that assessment.

The bodies were still and lifeless but none of the ones I could see showed any sign of trauma.

I thought of Way’s battles with the Shadow Courtier’s we’d encountered. I thought of the black flames the nameless giant had wielded against me. I thought of the Shadow Courtier dissolving when the former Queen had slammed it into the briar thorns.

If the heroes of Agent Haffrun’s task force had done this, they would have needed to possess more power than Way, the nameless giant or the former Queen. That or there was a much more chilling possibility.

They hadn’t beaten the Shadow Court at all.

“When the Shadow Court travels to Earth do they take their bodies with them?” I asked.

“Only if there are no Earthly bodies available for them to ride along in.” Patches replied.

I looked at the Hedge Gate. It was still open, and beyond it I could see a pathway leading off to a blue and white planet hanging in a starry sky.