June 24th, 2016 - 3:03 A.M. Pacific Standard Time Smoke continues to rise from Altsoba, still visible in the nearby town of Silver Falls. Pacific North University classes are suspended indefinitely after the tragedy, with some of their own faculty and students perishing in the massacre. Each news station reports it to have been a terrorist attack, hallucinogenics dispersed to the population through the water supply and religious paranoia about the apocalypse creating a self fulfilling prophecy. Anything that does not fit that narrative is ignored and dismissed.
Most of the bodies have not been collected yet. They sit in piles, scattered all over the town. Even the plants and wildlife are dying, as if the land has become so soaked with blood that nothing may ever live there again. Perhaps the name of the town is fitting, as Altsoba is a Navajo word, meaning
All are at war. It will be weeks until the bodies are collected and put to rest. It will be years until the town is rebuilt and inhabited once more. It will be decades, however, until hunters vanquish all of the supernatural forces at home in the town. Perhaps even centuries.
But Altsoba is not the only place in ruins. In another plane of dimension, hell has fallen into chaos and ruin. The established factions and leadership has crumbled since Lucifer's death, leaving a power vacuum and a subsequent scramble for the throne. A relatively young demon named Lorelei was taking advantage of the crisis, becoming the favorite to rule. The odds were in her favor.
"They say that Lucifer imprisoned you here, in a cage made of the fabric of reality itself," Mephistopheles said, down in one of the darkest corners of hell.
"I was betrayed," a voice answered simply, obscured by the darkness. The cage was all that was visible, constructed with bars that appeared to be made of moonlight. "I am kept prisoner in my own kingdom."
"They also say that you will stop at nothing for vengeance, to make the world into a paradise of your creation." "These people say many things."
"Are they true?" Mephistopheles pressed.
"Do you have that power?" The figure stepped out of the shadows, straight up to the bars of the cage. Her right side was a vision of beauty, just as her left was that of horror. Half of her was young and lovely, while the rest was decaying and molding, with bits of skin falling to the floor with each and every step. "I do. You must break my chains, demon, if you wish for your revenge."
"Why should I trust you? You're the trickster's daughter." "Trust no one, demon," the figure replied. "Trust is for children."
Can't take the fire...'Til you've fallen from grace... Beatrice screamed in pain as October extended her hands, sending a steady bath of fire towards the woman. Her clothing caught on fire and the O.M.E.N. agent dropped to the ground, unable to get Carolina out of her head or to stop the pain. It was more survival instinct than anything else that got her to drop out of the column of fire, but the woman was burning alive.
"Get out of her head!" Keenan growled once more. But with the lack of response, he quickly turned his gun and fired it towards October. October's sent out a defense line of flames, colliding into Agent Keenan, but they couldn't stop a bullet. The bullet hit October in the chest near her shoulder and stayed there, not coming out. The pyromaniac gasped as she fell to the ground once more, another piece of lead in her body. With each spasm of pain, another round of fire shot out from her, but there was no aim to it. It crashed into Agent Keenan and narrowly missed Carolina.
"One more shot and she's dead," Keenan warned, his gun pointed towards October still. "Get out--now!"
'Cause I need a man, a man who's got blood on his hands...And the truth on his face... Aloise tilted her head slightly at James. She highly doubted that he was FBI, but hunter didn't seem likely either. Hunters never were this shaken up--they'd all seen too much and at a certain point, guzzling alcohol until you forgot it all was the only thing that worked. In these days, with the supernatural so much more prominent than just a year ago, it was rare to find a hunter who couldn't be described as an alcoholic.
She could be honest and explain to the coroner and the "FBI agent" that some sort of supernatural force, likely the same one that was pulling people through that wardrobe, was preventing them from entering the circus. And let's not forget the demon waiting to kill everyone inside the tent at that very moment.
"Would you believe a biohazard inducing vivid hallucinations that can cause murderous rampages?" Aloise offered. It was the cover up that had been used for Altsoba after all. Hallucinogenics and religious paranoia--a perfectly logical lie.
"It's a similar strain to what the terrorists used in Altsoba this summer. This entire town will be infected if we don't get inside." Of course, she didn't have a logical explanation as to why they couldn't get inside of the tent. Pulling out her knife, an interesting blade made partially of silver and partially of iron, Aloise made a stabbing notion towards the air in front of her, just to see the reaction. The air crackled, as if absorbing the energy of her strike, before turning a violent shade of purple and flinging Olivia, James, and Aloise backwards. While James was lucky enough to land on an empty spot of the ground in the tent, both Aloise and Olivia flew into a pole, hitting their heads in the process.
"Definitely reacts to iron and silver then," Aloise muttered under her breath. She couldn't see what was happening to her friends and she couldn't get to them. To her, they were all frozen in place like statues. Aloise didn't realize it, but she was starring into a space of damaged time--a place where the universe could no longer preserve reality.
I've seen dark nights...But only the darkest light can deliver my love... With Mephistopheles dead, everyone previously pinned to the wall fell down suddenly. Without time to properly brace themselves, practically everyone ended up slamming into the ground. A few people were fortunate enough to be suspended over material that would supply cushioning--namely Folly, Cecily, Strong, Ringmaster, Millicent, Thalia, Eudora, and Darren. But Andromeda, Lilith, Katsumi, and Fairfax all felt the beginnings of deep bruises on their bottoms. Hilarious, right? Perhaps the universe has the humor of a five year old...
Daniyal and Eudora's spell, true to their word, did manage to stop the bleeding happening in Emmie internally. But it isn't the blood loss that put her life in jeopardy. No, the mic stand had gone through several major organs, causing catastrophic failure in all of them. She may not be bleeding out, but the systems inside her body are no longer functioning. It isn't long before Emmie goes limp, perhaps the shortest lived Prophet of the Lord in centuries. There had been no archangel there to protect her, a fact that Seraphina would not understand. In Seraphina's time, Sariel, the Archangel of Guidance, would have been there to watch over the prophet.
Of course, Sariel had been killed in Altsoba just months prior.
No one else in the room would awaken as a prophet once the light in Emmie's eyes went out. And if anyone should attempt to leave, a similar barrier will prevent them. It is as if the universe has quarantined them from the rest of reality. But that is not the only problem. Daniyal will collapse to the ground after the use of his magic, with his injuries now bleeding severely. He will need healing if he does not wish to share the same fate as Emmie.
"I was dead," Folly answered Lilith simply, though she was staring at Thalia with curiosity. It was as if the young girl had glimpsed something from beyond the grave that she couldn't quite understand. "And now I'm not...I heal quickly," Folly added, as if that was a suitable explanation. But truthfully, Folly didn't understand why she was alive herself. She couldn't comprehend the instant damage to time that Eudora had inflicted, how her death was rewritten and fell out of reality, resulting in her still drawing breath. Only an angel could understand what had happened.
"So we traveled through time then...If it's 2016," Cecily said, frowning. She pulled the letter from her pocket and read it over once more. Maybe its contents were not so impossible after all and were simply improbable.
"But...you don't just randomly travel through time....right? Don't you need a T.A.R.D.I.S. or something for that?" Andromeda was too busy rushing over in an attempt to help Daniyal and Emmie to answer anyone's questions. She checked Emmie for a pulse and a tear fell down her face. She had watched Emmie's mother die and now Emmie was dead as well. Seraphina was there, but Andromeda understood a little of what had happened. It wasn't the Seraphina that they knew and loved. She looked the same, but she was fundamentally different.
"She's dead," Andromeda sighed, before glancing at the cloak that had fallen on the floor.
"Eudora...If that gave Mephistopheles a boost, maybe it can help Daniyal." Fairfax, however, was more than happy to share his theories. He took out a pocket watch and held it up proudly, as if showing off his prized research. "The question is not where we are but
when we are," Fairfax explained. The watch changed its time each second, yet not in the normal way. It was rapid changes. It drastically different times, impossibly different times, changing constantly and enormously. "My name is John Fairfax and I am from the year 1929. Amiyra over there discovered one-dimensional tubes that connected my time to hers, the year 2016."
"He means wormholes," Andromeda clarified. They weren't called wormholes until the 1950's.
"These one-dimensional tubes could transport her through time and space, with Amiyra ending in one of three locations in the opposite time. We never did discover a method to predict where she would come about. And then curiously, when I myself traveled to 2016, I took ill. Only when Miss Eudora begin to mess with time did my illness evaporate, leaving me to the conclusion that time is like a stream--it will always attempt to correct its course."
"Time always will go in one pre determined direction and will stop anything that tries to mess with that," Andromeda translated.
"But then something happened that I must confess I do not understand that presented a large enough of a challenge to stop the stream, so to speak. Without the current flowing in one direction, imagine it created whirlpools, sucking you all out of your respective times and locations to deposit you here at the epicenter. The stream has now isolated this whirlpool from the rest of the current and in all other locations, time can move freely! Of course, this is only a theory but I do believe it is supported by the facts..." Fairfax finished.
"Time went crazy and you all got sucked into this mess. The damage to time is contained here, so the rest of the world is fine while this place is batshit," Andromeda explained.
"So we're trapped here then," Cecily said. Fairfax nodded in agreement. As far as he was concerned, time had contained them since it could not repair the damage to itself. Rather than allow all of reality to crumble, it selected this one spot as a ground zero. He had no knowledge of how they might be able to leave.
I've seen dark nights...But only the darkest light can deliver my soul...
