Dripping wet and underdressed, the shivering teenage boy stopped when he saw Beverly. Daiki could tell immediately something was wrong, even before he noticed the red seeping through her clothes. At first he thought something had happened to her, because her stiff, deliberate steps and the peculiar look in her eyes could have been shock.

“Bevie?” asked Daiki, because he wasn’t sure.

Sid shook Bevie’s head stiffly. “No,” he croaked, then cleared her throat. Sid spat more gunk out and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. He cracked a smile and tilted Bevie’s chin up. “I didn’t think I’d get to see you again. I missed you.”

Daiki hung back and hugged his arms, teeth chattering. “Who are you?”

Sid grinned but the blood and black vomit outlined each of Beverly’s teeth, turning the grin ghastly. The boy flinched back.

The horrid grin faded. The face Sid used to glare at Daiki twitched from a cool stare back into a sweeter smile. “It’s your boyfriend, silly. I know I don’t look like myself but, well, here I am,” Sid told him gently in a stolen voice.

“You’re not Paul,” asserted Daiki.

Sid tilted her head and squinted. “Paul?” He raised Bevie’s voice and snarled, “Who the fuck is this Paul?” Sid couldn’t access Bevie’s memories because she wasn’t sharing herself with him. He’d shoved her aside and he didn’t know her name, much less her thoughts and memories. “I’m the only boyfriend you’ve ever had, Daiki. You are mine. You will always be mine.”

It was difficult to tell from his blank affect, but Daiki looked at Bevie with concern. “Sid? Did you die?”

The horrible grin returned. “I knew you’d recognize me. Just took longer than I thought. It’s me, babe. You look like a drowned rat, but it’s always good to see you. Come here.” He beckoned and posed his puppet with open arms.

The living boy drew back. “No. Leave Bevie alone.”

“Who?” Sid tilted her head, lowered her arms, and blinked deliberately. “Is that it’s name?” He looked down at the body he possessed. “Oh. No, sorry, I need it right now.”

“You don’t,” Daiki corrected quietly.

Sid gave a twitchy attempt to mold Beverly’s face into a look of tender affection. “I love you.” He took a step toward Daiki and held out Bevie’s hand to beckon him closer.

Daiki took a step forward and raised his chin, a sharp anger redefining the blank affect. “No you don’t. I can’t enjoy blowjobs because of you.”

Sid laughed hoarsely then cleared her throat. “Say that again?”

“I can’t – I… you heard me.” Daiki’s face went hot and he looked away.

“That’s not my fault,” replied Sid. “That’s because of my mom.”

Daiki didn’t reply and just stared at Bevie. Not into her eyes; he didn’t have the energy for that, just at her. She had grown from the stick-thin creature he’d first seen through Paul’s eyes in Scott’s secret basement. Not just cleaner and livelier, but her hair looked healthier and she didn’t have such dark circles under her eyes. So it really showed when the ghost holding her strings made her look unwell. It burned him up to see her chained up again, even if the chains were invisible this time. Meanwhile, his personal business with the ghost didn’t appear to be getting anywhere.

He wondered how Sid had died.

Sid rotated her head and shoulders and shook out the tension in Bevie’s arms. He stepped closer. “We’re talking about this, then. Fine. She said it wouldn’t leave a mark, and you were too r*****ed to say anything. I didn’t even know you could talk back then,” Sidney explained. “I got it worse, anyhow.”

Daiki took a deep breath and sought out that tightwire of self control despite hearing about why he’d been their perfect choice as Sid’s costar. Speaking with difficulty, Daiki lowered his eyes and his shoulders tensed up further. “I just told you the mark it left. I can’t even think about getting a – about – without remembering the first time. I didn’t understand. I wasn’t scared, just confused why you’d want to do that.” If he just found the right words.

“What do you mean ‘why I’d want to.’” Sid snorted. “You seem to have fun -”

“I mean at the time!” Daiki’s throat hurt. He didn’t know why he needed Sid to understand, but he needed to be understood. “I mean – I’m telling you how – it – when I… at the time, the first time, and any time anybody...I just think about being confused and nervous and unable to speak, and the cookie, and she was watching, and I can’t let myself enjoy it.” His eyes lowered to his hands as he struggled to piece words together into something coherent. “My chest becomes...a stone...my throat hurts...I’m full of water and I don’t cry or make a noise or, I’m just still. I’m still there, then, and I’m still, I can’t move. I can’t speak. At the time I was curious and it was weird and the cookie - was too – was – I… I can’t.” The effort of putting words one after the other while he brought up the memories made tears well up in his eyes, where they clung to his lashes and hid the strange hallway in a blur. “Cold and hot and frozen and stuck. ‘No mark.’ She said that?”

Sid nodded and sighed, looking away. “Yeah. She said we would just adapt. ‘Kids adapt.’ We would just have fun because it’s fun, right? And she can make rent, and I get whatever toy I want. And you never said anything.” He sounded sad and bitter. This wasn’t a good memory for him, either. And Sid hadn’t orchestrated the secret movies; that was Sandra’s doing.

But it hadn’t ended there. It still wouldn’t end. Hell, Sidney had fucking died and he was still coming back to claim Daiki as his own. Daiki’s breathing came faster and more difficult. He didn’t say anything. If there was anything left to say, he couldn’t.

So Sid continued, speaking faster now. “She said my sister Mandy was too fat, but I was only the good one when I did that for her. Any other time I was dirt. It’s all I’m really good for. See, because I’m stupid, and trash, and steal girl’s clothes from the mall, and can’t make friends because I’m trash.” His dismissive tone had turned into sullen confession, put forth in a warped version of Bevie’s voice. Sid raised her eyes hopefully and smiled at Daiki. “But we have each other. I know what you like, and you know me like nobody else does. I love you.” Then, in warning, “Don’t say I don’t love you.”

Daiki still didn’t speak. Sidney’s anger flashed up again and the many seeping cuts on the stolen body stung hot on her thighs and arms, blood flowing feverishly through her veins. He felt thirsty and tired. One puppeted foot jerked forward, followed by another, closing the distance between them. “Don’t look away and sulk, you stupid baby. We were talking. Just fucking talk to me, you whiny little bitch! You know I love you. Say it!” Sid grabbed the sodden shirt Daiki wore and yanked him closer so he could smell the brackish water in Daiki’s hair. He softened Bevie’s voice. “Speak to me. I know you can talk. Use your words, baby,” Sid coaxed. “Come on. I love you. You know that, right? You’re mine.”

The boy tensed away, pulse tapping visibly on his neck. Heat traveled Daiki’s body and a familiar trap closed over his vocal chords and chest. The tears overflowed from his eyes.

“It wasn’t my fault!” insisted Sid. “It’s not my fault. Talk to me. Please.” He touched Bevie’s hand to Daiki’s cheek and wiped a tear away with her thumb. “No, don’t cry. I hate it when you cry. Speak to me.”

Still words stuck in Daiki’s throat. He bared his neck and looked at the opposite wall, barely breathing now.

“I hate it when you get like this,” snapped Sid. “You’re just trying to make me feel bad. But I forgive you. I love you even when you shut down into a r***** again. My stupid little idiot baby.” He smiled. “Remember the first time I found out you could talk? You stammered, ‘Givvet!’ because I took your stupid stuffy. Ten years old playing with stuffed animals like a baby.” Sid smirked and nuzzled the side of Daiki’s face. It was easier now that they were practically the same height. If anything he was, or Bevie was, a little shorter than Daiki. “You used to bark and hold your hands like this,” Sid imitated, lifting his wrists up to his chest with his hands hanging forward. “Paws. You were such a cute r*****.” He caressed Daiki’s face and nuzzled him again. “Oh, stop crying.”

Daiki sobbed and leaned into the caress. He could speak by the time he was four, but he spoke seldom enough back then that people always seemed so surprised when he did. It had been both annoying and amusing. Daiki smiled through his tears and remembered how hard it had been to carve himself into somebody even a bit more normal. Not even Winter really remembered what he’d been like before he learned to mask better and keep up in conversation reasonably well.

“Stop making that ugly noise; it’s not cute,” chided Sid.

His fears made manifest, Daiki had no will left to argue. Paul would never understand the weakness Daiki had for the boy who’d tormented him for so many years, and Daiki knew he’d lose Paul after this. The gently applied insults and sweet caresses would undo him, and he could only try to tune it out.

---

The hours worked weight on Rei’s bones, each step sharp on the bottoms of her feet, her back, her hip joints. There’d been her orthodontist work, with regular hours, followed by her second job at a clinic with a dental wing. She had on a black wool winter coat, her long black hair falling over her shoulders. Underneath she wore scrubs covered in a pattern of the cartoon bird from Peanuts over a field of cornflower blue. She stepped out of her shoes and walked into a worryingly quiet house. Had her teenagers gone to bed at a reasonable time? Unlikely. Her adult daughter at least had found an entry level job and a “roommate” in a small hovel on the other side of town, so she likely didn’t have to worry (at least for tonight) about Miyako.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich waited for her on a plate covered in plastic in the refrigerator. She knew it was for her because her son had left a sticky note on top: For Mom in his handwriting. Rei smiled and set it on the counter, lifting the plastic sheet off and crumpling it in her hand. She set her purse on the couch and held one triangular half of the sandwich in one hand as she explored her abode. Somebody did emerge from her son’s room, approximately the same height and gothic dress code but definitely not him. Rei almost shrieked, but frankly she was too tired to do more than stiffen and step back.

“Um, hi,” greeted Calvin.

“Hi,” greeted Rei. “Where is everybody else?”

“They went to go see Duria.” He scowled and leaned his shoulder against the wall, arms crossed with a sullen expression. A bit of peanut butter on the corner of his mouth remained of the sandwich he’d had earlier in the evening.

“Duria...the...who’s that again?” asked Rei.

“My sister. She’s dead,” snapped Calvin.

“Wha – when did she die?”

“When we were in middle school.”

Rei took a bite of her sandwich and opened the door to her son’s room, peering inside. A mess of laundry, books, sketchbooks, CD’s, and so forth hid the floor and the bedding, as usual, lay askew. No sign of Daiki or his boyfriend. “Well I’m sorry, but you didn’t need to bite my head off about it,” Rei told the trans boy lingering near her in the doorway.

“Sorry,” mumbled Calvin.

“So did they go to her grave?” asked Rei.

Calvin sighed, with his whole body the way teenagers will, and explained, “There was a haunted doll thing that they said Winter made with magic or whatever, then something about a cryptid animal they’ve been feeding in the woods. I don’t know what it has to do with my sister, but I thought we were gonna go see the creature or the doll or whatever. Then they said they were going to see Duria.” He scowled and muttered, “Assholes.”

Rei didn’t see the connection between visiting a gravesite and being assholes, or between that and the occult games her youngest played with her friends. “So where exactly did they go?”

Calvin ran his fingers through his hair and shrugged. “The woods? Like, um, the thing, doll, cryptid whatever was in the woods, I heard.”

“ ‘The woods.’ There are trees everywhere in Washington. You can’t look in any direction without seeing trees. Except in Seattle,” ranted Rei, losing her patience a little. She felt bad. She was tired, sure, but she didn’t want to come down too hard on this kid who clearly already wasn’t in a good head space. “Point is, which woods?”

Calvin shrugged defensively and clammed up.

Rei pushed her hair out of her face and took a breath. “Please think. Was there anything you heard about what the woods were near? A street, a neighborhood, a park? Anything?”

“Winter’s friend’s house,” mumbled Calvin.

“Thank you.” Misha lived in an apartment complex that had a park next door, but the park wasn’t anything anybody would call ‘woods.’ It was a bit marshy in places but there were just thin copses of deciduous trees and a retention pond. Josh lived in their same neighborhood. That left Adam, who lived near what could easily be called a forest. Rei fetched her address book and flipped through the pages until she found it, then wrote down the address and phone number on a three-by-five card. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” muttered Calvin.

“Don’t you have a time you need to get home by? It’s late. I need to go find my kids, but I can drop you off,” she offered.

“Oh, um, thanks. Yeah, I wanna go home,” he admitted.

---

Adam’s dad answered the door. Winter hadn’t visited that day, but he’d heard about some game they’d been playing in the woods near the highway. More occult nonsense. Rei didn’t press him further because it was already quite late to be calling on somebody without warning. She thanked him and left, taking a side street that connected to the highway. Minutes later, she recognized Paul’s car parked on the shoulder and pulled up behind it. The car that had been tailgating her for taking her time on a stretch of road with a fifty mile an hour speed limit zoomed past, tail lights briefly illuminating the trees red.

Misha emerged from the shadows with a scared look on her face. She held back until she recognized Winter’s mom, then ran forward. “Oh-my-god how did you find us? They’re gone! They’re gone and I don’t know how, and we don’t have a phone, and we didn’t want to leave them there and -” She burst into tears.

Rei hugged the girl then bent to her level and looked her over. “Who’s gone?”

Misha led Rei into the trees instead of replying. Paul sat on a log, head in his hands, hyperventilating in the midst of a panic attack. Rei looked around for her kids but still didn’t see them, so she went to Paul and put a hand on his back. Her resources were wearing thin and she felt glad she’d eaten the sandwich before heading back out.

Paul jumped a bit at the contact then looked at Rei with his tear-streaked face, lit by light reflected up from the flashlight he’d left on the ground. “D-d-doc…” His rapid breathing got in the way of speaking.

Rei rubbed his back and looked back to Misha. She beckoned and the three of them all sat on the log in the dark. “Please tell me what happened,” urged Rei.

“We...we were coming to feed the thing, that thing,” Misha pointed her flashlight toward a tree and illuminated a strange shape stuck to the trunk. “Only it cocooned up, but when she, when Win went to look at it she, she just vanished. In the dark. She’s just gone.

“So then, um, her brother, he went to the cocoon thing too, and, and he’s just gone. So then I’m like, let’s stop going there; something’s wrong. Because something is wrong. But then the girl, um, Beatrice? Something? I don’t know her. But she went over like, it’s fine, right? But it’s not. Because then she’s gone, too.

“And we looked for them but they’re not anywhere and I don’t know what to do, and Paul’s just, like, you see him.” Misha gestured haplessly at the panicked boy sitting on the other side of Rei. A thought occurred to her. “If you go over there, you’ll disappear too! Please don’t disappear, Dr. Cooper, please!”

Rei took in and let out a deep breath. She patted Misha’s hand then picked up Paul’s flashlight and directed it at the tree. The shape had a pulse, and was disturbingly large for what it appeared to be. She was too tired to think what could have actually happened. There were two scared kids (or one scared kid and one technical adult who was still really a kid) and three missing kids.

“Look. Hold my hand,” instructed Rei.

Misha squeezed Rei’s hand and looked at her hopefully.

“I’m not going to disappear while we’re holding hands, right? I’m here now, you’re here, we’re not vanishing,” said Rei slowly.

“Yes,” agreed Misha. She looked a bit embarrassed.

“Okay. Now, we can walk over to that tree together. Maybe there is a pit,” theorized Rei.

“We looked. There’s no pit,” insisted Misha.

“Alright. Well. Let’s just look, okay?”

“Don’t step under the tree,” begged the girl.

Rei sighed. “I need to do something to find my kids. Sitting here on a log is not going to bring my children back to me. Giving up is not an option. Do you understand?”

Misha nodded. “I just, we don’t know what to do so -”

“I get that. I’m not mad. I’m trying to explain. Two of my children are missing. I will get them back, because I have to. There isn’t a possibility of a world in which I do not try to make sure my children are safe. Do you understand?”

Misha nodded again.

“How long has it been since they vanished?” Rei asked.

“I, um,” Misha shone her flashlight down onto her wristwatch. It was a blue digital watch, plastic. “Half an hour, I think.”

“Alright. Thank you. Now, let’s go to the tree. You hang back, but hold my hand, and I won’t disappear while you are holding my hand. Right?”

“Right.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

The aches and pains as Rei got up again from the log made her wince. She shone Paul’s flashlight on the ground just ahead of her, sweeping it to and fro, as she approached the tree. As they drew closer to the chrysalis, Misha fell farther back while still gripping Rei’s hand tightly. Rei looked over the pile of bones and moldy food scraps at the base of the tree within a ring of rough stones. The rocks had dirt on them but no moss; softball sized and lumpy, clearly pried up from the earth and arranged in a deliberate circle at the bottom of the tree. True to the teenagers’ observations, Rei did not see a pit or even a section of loose earth. She circled the tree, thinking perhaps her kids had tripped over the rocks and fallen into a ditch. The ground lay uneven and there was a log, branches, and undergrowth, all recently disturbed when Misha and Paul had searched fruitlessly for their friends. Rei sighed.

“Okay. There’s nothing here, just some rocks and carcasses,” muttered Rei. She was starting to get a headache and wished she’d grabbed a bottle of water or some coffee before she set out. “Don’t panic. I’m stepping under the tree.”

“Don’t!” pleaded Misha.

Rei was tired of coddling this girl’s unreasonable fears. She smiled tensely at the child then patted her cheek, turned, and stepped carefully over into the ring of stones. The small animal bones crunched under her feet. The cold air suppressed the smell of decay and mold. Rei turned the flashlight to the chrysalis and saw a smooth, tan, semitransparent shell stretched over what could have been a child curled into a fetal position with its back to her. The casing stretched thin over the growing form within. Rei bent for a closer look at the creature’s head. A dark, gray-blue eye blinked. Was that...a dog? No, not quite a puppy, not quite a child. Unfinished, whatever it was, with long limbs tucked in and folded close to its body. Rei tore her attention from this curiosity with some difficulty and crouched to examine the base of the tree for someplace that could have swallowed three people into it.

In the corner of her vision, Misha moved in slow motion. A yawn split Rei’s mouth open and she shut her eyes as she took in the cold, earthy night air. The breath held for a second, then she felt dizzy and her weariness closed over her as the air slid softly back out of her lungs. A tide washed the bones and filth away from under her feet, pulling away the cold and the dirt and leaving sand and damp, clean air. Rei opened her eyes and blinked, gazing at the sand where she knelt. The flashlight lay on the ground nearby, its beam died away. She’d been...but...no, this was no time to take a nap, though she wanted nothing more than to lay down in the sand and fall back asleep. Back asleep? Had she been sleeping? No? Rei rubbed her eyes and gathered herself to her feet, picking up the flashlight from beside her. Such a long night already. What time was it?

Rei passed her flashlight over a low, dark passage, then over to a lake where the cavern ceiling sloped down to the water itself in jagged, water-carved spikes. She kept turning and saw a glittering natural wall. When she walked closer, she saw around the corner to stone steps leading up to a brightly lit corridor. She glanced back at the lake and noticed tracks from the water meandered about then joined her own footsteps leading to the stairs. Rei put the unneeded flashlight into her coat pocket and mounted the steps with a hand to the wall. There was a voice ahead, somebody crying and a cajoling in words Rei couldn’t make out from here. She followed the sound.

---

Hiding inside his mind would not be easy. The smell of the nearby room, rot and shit, joined with smells of fresh blood, fresh vomit (both normal, pungent gastric acid and supernaturally foul tarry purge), as well as the salty lake water drying on his own shivering frame. The odors pressed in and made breathing all the more difficult. Then there were fevered hands touching his face, his neck, pushing up under the gross sandy wet thermal, then down…

“You haven’t been with a girl before, have you?” whispered Sid.

The attempt at disassociation gave way to a bark of laughter. Daiki looked at the body Sid spoke from and grinned back at him, fortified by mirth.

“Why did you laugh?” Sid whispered. “Don’t laugh at me.” Bevie’s eyes narrowed and Sid used her hands to roughly grip Daiki’s hips.

Daiki’s grin faded and he brushed Bevie’s hands off. He couldn’t talk right now, but he took Bevie’s face in his hands, brushed her damp hair behind her ears, and searched for her in her eyes.

“What have you been doing while I was away?” Sid demanded. He took hold of Daiki’s wrists and maneuvered him backwards, walking with him as he pushed him into a wall. “I’ve told you you belong to me. Wipe that grin off your face, you stupid shit, and tell me.”

The mirth lingered in the corners of Daiki’s mouth and in the crinkle of his eyes. His voice remained locked up inside its box, but his icy fingers came alive and walked down Bevie to probe her sides. She flinched and slapped Daiki’s hands away. Was that her, or still Sid?

“Answer me!” insisted Sid.

Yeah, Sidney was still fixated on jealousy. The defensive posture of the body didn’t match up to the accusation etched in the face. Daiki tickled her again and she squirmed. Sid looked down at her body in disconcerted annoyance.

“It was this one, wasn’t it? You’ve known her,” Sid realized. Her head jerked to the side and grimaced, then Bevie interjected, “Fucking stop it! You know I hate that.” She shoved Daiki’s shoulder before stepping back.

Encouraged, Daiki beamed at Bevie and followed her steps to hug her fiercely around her arms. The body in his embrace spasmed and tensed. He stepped back and forced himself to look into her eyes again, searching hopefully for his friend.

“You’ve never looked at me like that,” Sid whispered. He looked down at Bevie’s body. “Was it you? Is that why he laughed at me?” He pinched her arms through the sleeves of her shirt and made the blood well up and spurt, dripping down to her fingers. “It wasn’t like this for them. Why does this body break itself trying to push me out?” He turned back to Daiki. “Why can’t you relax and just be with me, like in the dream.” Sid put Bevie’s hands over her face and muttered about tender warmth, and it was unclear whether he spoke of meat or a different flavor of tenderness.

Daiki slipped outside himself and allowed the fevered bleeding arms to cradle him, the fouled lips to kiss and whisper a mixture of jealous accusations and pleas. With a cold start he realized that from practice he’d done too good a job of disassociating and had literally projected outside himself, leaving his body limply pliant and unresponsive. Sid tried to wake him but Daiki looked instead toward the sound of footsteps on carpet. He hadn’t noticed them before. The muffled creak had a familiar pace, one he recognized from early mornings waking to the sound of footsteps followed by a knock on his door to rouse him for school.

“Hey!” shouted Rei. She rounded the corner, rushed forward, and shoved Beverly off her son. “What are you doing?”

Bevie fell on her ass and looked at the woman in stunned silence. Rei knelt over Daiki’s body and patted his cheeks. “Honey. Honey, come back to me. Not another coma.” She cursed under her breath and pushed Daiki’s eyelids open with her fingers. The face under Rei’s hands was lax and unresponsive. She fished the flashlight out of her pocket and shone it over his pupils. They dilated smaller and a waking tension spread through the muscles in Daiki’s face, closing his slack mouth. A sharp breath flared his nostrils then he gasped and looked back at his mom in confusion.

“Oh good, you’re awake. Baby, where are your clothes? You’re freezing!” Rei fretted.

Sid shook Bevie’s head. “No,” he whispered.

Rei looked over her shoulder as Daiki sat up. “Excuse me? Did you have something to add?”

“Makes me sick,” muttered Sid. He mocked in a falsetto, “ ‘Hi, Mommy, thanks for saving me from the bad man, Mommy!’ What are you even doing here? This is none of your business.”

Rei looked Bevie over with confused pity. “What is your problem?”

“Mothers,” Sid spat.

“Well keep that shit to yourself,” retorted Rei. She helped Daiki to his feet and gave him her coat. “I’m just glad I found you both. Yes, even you. I’m sure your mother will be glad to have you home, regardless of your feelings on the matter.” Rei looked around at the vomit on the ground then turned her eyes to a reeking room. “Where’s Winter?”

Daiki shook his head.

“Did something happen to her?” his mother asked. She walked over and looked into the room. First she noticed the desecrated gore, the broken television, tapes scattered all over, then she saw the chrysalides on the walls. “What the fuck?”

Her son moved to her side and shook his head again. He was having one of his mute episodes. A stuttered croak emerged when he tried to talk, and Daiki put his hand to his mouth and looked down in frustration.

Rei pointed to the corpse smeared across the floor. “That’s can’t be her. That’s not her, right? That was -” She looked again. Who ever that had been had a larger ribcage than would belong to a middle school girl. Oh, and there was a penis. Definitely not Winter. “Nope. Alright. I don’t know what to do about all of, uh, that. But I don’t think that’s my problem.” Rei’s nose wrinkled and she backed out of the doorway. “Alright, sorry to whoever that was, but I have enough on my plate already.”

“Not much left to my leftovers for your plate, anyway,” Sid remarked.

Rei squinted at Bevie and frowned. “Your leftovers?”

“Nothing,” mumbled Sid. He shrugged and smirked, not meeting the woman’s stare.

With the blood on the girl’s mouth and clothes, Rei speculated about connections between Bevie and the nearest corpse in the room. She gave Bevie a suspicious, guarded look and started guiding Daiki back the way they’d come. Sid followed, keeping a few paces back and glaring at the back of Rei’s head.

Back in the cave, Rei took the flashlight back out and looked around. She looked up at the ceiling, then over at the broad, low hole leading down into the dark. “How do we...hmm.” She put an arm around Daiki and noticed his friend held her son’s wrist in lieu of holding hands. Rei remembered the first aid kit in her car and decided she’d need to get a closer look at where all that blood was coming from if or when they got back. She closed her eyes and tried to think. Another hand held hers to her left. The cold air washed over her along with a wave of vertigo, and when she opened her eyes she remembered she’d still been holding Misha’s hand. Of course. And she couldn’t disappear if she was holding Misha’s hand.

There was hardly room for the three of them under the tree. Rei, Daiki, and Bevie picked their way out of the stone circle and joined Misha back out in the freezing cold night above ground. Paul looked up from where he sat on the log and almost tripped in his hurry to get to his boyfriend. Daiki’s bare legs stuck out from under the coat he borrowed from his mom, and dirt and leaves stuck to his bare feet. He stepped carefully and winced as each step managed to find something sharp to poke the bottoms of his feet. Paul kissed Daiki’s face and lifted him up in a hug.

“What happened to you?” Misha asked Bevie.

Iżyłowski Iżyłowski is a rather serious, yet curious man. He sees magic not as something to master, but more as something to understand. He's always been quite the curious one. His appointment as the new Sage of the Sanctuary of Xoai is an incredibly controversial one. Yet what Mortimer says about his magical abilities is true. One might assume that Iżyłowski would use this opportunity to boast, yet this is not the case, as he sees boasting as in inefficient use of his time. Time that is better spent serving the Sanctuary of Xoai.

Mortimer Douglas He is the ex-Sage of the Sanctuary of Xoai. He is very cool and calm even in dire situations, something that has proven to be incredibly useful time and time again. While he inherited the position from his own father, Mortimer made a judgement that his son, Alvarro wasn't the right choice for this position. Though he does acknowledge that Alvarro is a talented magician.

Alvarro Douglas A man who has a rather suave attitude, that certainly has charmed others, so much that he is seen as rather charismatic. Yet he is somewhat arrogant and had a desire not only to carry on the tradition but also desired to use this position to bolster his reputation. However, don't mistake his rather shallow motivations, as proof of his incompetence, for you shall be proven wrong.

Caroline Douglas A rather polite woman who is very pleasant to interact with, even becoming a cleric in order to bolster her own magic in order to help others. Something that she hoped that the Sanctuary of Xoai would be able to assist her with. She is rather aggrieved by the appointment of Iżyłowski as the new sage; thus, she seeks to continue this goal but will actively avoid the sanctuary for the time being. For she questions the judgement of Mortimer and Iżyłowski.

Beverly Douglas Like her mother Caroline, Beverly too is a very kind woman. She may not have taken the same path as her mother, yet she uses her magic to help others in ways that even her parents have never done. She isn't too familiar with the Sanctuary of Xoai, as this topic was more inherently relevant to her father, Alvarro. This isn't to say she loathes the Sanctuary of Xoai, however the sanctuary just wasn't something she thought about often. When someone her age becomes the new Sage, she does become rather interested, as in the little reading she's done, there has never been a sage that young. As she is conflicted with the appointment of Iżyłowski as the new sage, yet she holds no ill will and wishes to speak to Iżyłowski. Perhaps to seek guidance, as she feels admittedly rather unaccomplished when compared to Iżyłowski...

Copyrights:

Iżyłowski and The Sanctuary of Xoai (c) @daidek

Mortimer Douglas and Alvarro Douglas (c) blazikenpwnsyou and @daidek

Caroline Douglas (c) maximusgrowler and @daidek