Walker's Journal

Adam looked into a bright sky with unfamiliar stars and other verdant worlds of fields and jungles that loomed in the sky. Fields of soft grass extended unbroken toward the horizon, undulating in the breeze. Towering thickets of Illuabris Ferns, larger than he’d ever seen them grow on Earth, were pillars of black and violet  that stood stark against the rolling green. 

Vegetable Lambs grazed around the Hunter, paying him no mind as they basked in the off-color light of alien suns. Adam had been wandering for what felt like many days now, but the strange sky didn’t give much clue if that was true. Only the deterioration of his clothes, now bleached by sun and sporting tattered holes hinted that the Hunter had been hiking for far longer than he realized. He couldn’t even count how many of these barometz lambs he’d eaten to keep his strength up, the rest of the herds always just staring with dull dispassion as Adam butchered and cooked one of their number. 

He was lost, and had been so long enough for  his tactical gear to fray, fade, and make  Adam look more like a beleaguered deserter than someone who’d come here  armed to the teeth on a mission. 

The Hunter had to admit that of all the worlds he’d been to so far while trying to find Nell, Lambchops Land was definitely the most surprising with its ass-kicking at the moment, and it hadn’t even given him a scratch. 

Adam felt a flicker of a paranormal presence that definitely wasn’t another goddam lamb. He crested another hill at a slow cautious gait, raising his rifle at the…

The new music teacher?

Wait….was that her? Was he…?

Ok, so if her chest burst open and she’s been a Lamb Alien the whole time Adam was just done, so done.

“Hey ...uh..Professor Brennan,” said the sunburnt ragged soldier, “what brings you to Lambchop Land?” 

It was like something Caoimhe had seen in a picture, or dancing between the flames of the bonfires they’d light in Ireland. It was a world forever just out of reach, only as permanent as any single tendril of flame. It was beautiful, painted in hues of blue and green, all movement as the grass swayed back and forth, a patchwork quilt of stars overhead, and–

And Vegetable Lambs. Vegetable Lambs as far as the eye could see. They dotted the otherwise pristine landscape, cutting figures of cotton-fluff and fruit against the horizon. The peaceful breeze brought with it the bleating of different herds. It was by far the best portal Caoimhe had poked her head into yet: picturesque with a touch of levity.

Then the view changed with the barrel of a rifle. She followed the length of it up until she was met with ruffled hair and sun-bleached clothes, and the kind of weariness only seen in well-worn travelers who hadn’t seen home in far too long. He looked out of place, a single ragged figure painted in dusty pencil over a backdrop of vibrant oils. It was a concept, but Caoimhe wasn’t sure it quite suited him. The way his grip sat against the rifle, she thought maybe he might better fit in the climax of an old western; the twanging of the guitar builds.

“Just me.” She held her hands up for a moment before letting them fall back to her side. He looked like he’d been prepared at one point in time. This trip wasn’t an accident for him. “Would you believe me, if I told you I just stumbled in? Can’t say I expected White Crest to be so...dimensionally inclusive.”

Adam cocked his head at the music professor, features moving from confusion to frowning wariness as her lack of disorientation set off alarm bells in his brain. The Hunter could feel that she wasn’t human but didn’t narrow things down much.  

“I’d believe it,” Adam affirmed. “There have been some other folks that’ve gotten yoinked by these space rips,” the planar wanderer noted. “White Crest is in a weak spot in reality,” the apocalypse prepper claimed, not really bothering to pretend ignorance when he was gun totting on the Veggie Lamb Planet. “I just hope we can find some way to seal that shit up before everything goes to hell...like permanently y’know?”

Adam sighed. “So uh...you would have happened to have seen a portal anywhere?” 

Yes.

Caoimhe hesitated a moment. She’d pegged it right, he was prepared. Whatever had actually brought him to a planet of Vegetable Lambs, he at least had a mission now. And it seemed like the knowledge to accomplish it, if he could ever find a portal again. If she helped him find a portal again. His expression shifted, and her eyebrows lifted; curious.

He needed help, something curious in and of itself, considering. The portal she’d come through herself wasn’t too far away, obscured by the rolling hills. If he could manage to walk a straight line for more than a few minutes, he might even be able to stumble back through it without her help. But the state of him told her he’d been trying just that, to no avail. If something had him that turned around–

“I haven’t been here very long, so logically there should be one not too far away.” She kicked the grass at her feet. “If we put our heads together, we can find a way out. Don’t think either of us will be doing much good solving the portal crisis here. Any ideas what’s caused it yet?”

“I uh...can’t find my way,”  Adam admitted. The Hunter reached into his pack and pulled out a battered compass. Adam closed his eyes and placed home at the forefront of his mind, focusing on the faces of friends and the DIE fraternity house. The compass Penelope had enchanted on the eve of their last night began to spin. The sorceress’ magic sensed the intention of Adam’s heart and soon the compass needle was dutifully pointing the way to portal back White Crest. 

The only problem was, no matter how far Adam walked on these paradisiacal rolling hills in the direction of an exit, he kept circling back and retracing his way out. 

“This compass was enchanted by a witch to help me find the way,” Adam said, choosing to simplify the painful knot of emotions that came with this gift. “But no matter what happens I keep circling back.” 

Adam shook his head at the question of a bigger picture. “I know there are keys and big-ass worm boring through dimensions but I’ve got no idea how they all fit together yet.”  

“I’ve gathered.” Caoimhe grinned up at the disheveled Adam, obviously having been wandering for longer than he ever should have been. Curiosity brought her the rest of the way up the hill to stand next to him. It was a neat trick, to say the least. With a needle to point him exactly where he should go, he should have found his way out long before the sun could bleach his clothes. The hills were just redundant enough to be confusing, but not that confusing.

“You focus on the compass, then. Nowhere else, just the compass. I’ll make sure we’re not doing any circles.” Placing a gentle hand on his elbow, Caoimhe led them in the direction the compass pointed, a direction she knew would eventually yield a portal and a ticket home again. “You know, if you ignore the fact this portal has you all sorts of twisted up, it’s kind of beautiful.”

It was. Blues and greens and yellows and the gentle bleating of the Vegetables Lambs. It was rather harmless, but then, Caoimhe still knew exactly where she was standing and in which direction she needed to go. “Keys and worms. That’s...way too vague. Have there always been portals, or did I just move in at the wrong time?”

“Yeah in a Little House on the Prairie butter-churning sort of way,” Adam admitted, controlling himself enough not to flinch Caoimhe put his hand on his elbow. His Hunter senses send icy hot pinpricks through him at the paranormal woman’s touch and not in the sexy way. Adam was thankful that his time in White Crest had made the feeling of being around supernatural beings routine enough that he didn't go into fight or flight mode as much as he used to. 

“So uh, is finding your way out in the country just a superpower you’d got then,” Adam asked as they crested another hill of strange colorful plants whose tendril polyps writhing and curled in the sunshine. Outright asking ‘what’ Caoimhe was seemed a bit on the nose considering that she was in a helpful mood. 

“White Crest is in a like, dimensional weakspot,” Adam posited, seeing no reason to conceal the information considering how literally to hell everything was going. “It’s properly why there are so many demons and whatnot around, but this is definitely a huge spike in Hellmouth stuff.” 

With Adam following, Caoimhe let go and walked a few steps ahead. Her fingers curled into her palms and she spun herself through a few different answers. What she did wasn’t a superpower, though some might construe it as such. With their eyes glazed over and their hands moving over the keys of a piano, with a whole world of inspiration spreading itself in front of them. The divine muse. Caoimhe swallowed. It wasn’t a superpower. It was a mystical science at best. She wouldn’t go so far as to say a curse; she could hear her mother screaming from Ireland.

“Have you considered you might be exceptionally good at getting lost?” She cast a glance his direction, tone light. She had a feeling he wasn’t. She had a feeling he’d see right through her dancing around the point. “I’ve spent a lot of my life traveling, you tend to get good at the cardinal directions.”

She didn’t want to be seen. “Lovely. Welcome to White Crest, right? Portals and Hellmouths, and– what, what is that?”

The sun blotted out and the bleating seemed to increase in volume. Something deeper and louder broke through the din, then. Something Caoimhe could feel rattle in her chest.

“I mean...that’s fair,” Adam allowed, sunburned face breaking into a smile at Caoimhe’s counterpoint as he kept his eyes locked on the compass as they weaved their way through blossoming heaths and swaying forests of Illuabris Ferns. 

Caoimhe’s exclamation raised Adam’s gaze to the verdant valley spread out below them. 

In a cleft between four grassy hills was a circle of cairn stones. Within the cairn circle was what seemed to be a pit of pure sunlight that shone like a beacon in the sudden gloom that’d encroached across the sky.  

Beyond the sunwell was what Adam had first taken to be an enormous tree before it shambled forward on hoofed feet. It was then that the Hunter realized it was a giant Barometz, bigger than any Earthly ecosystem would’ve made possible. It’s roots were a cluster of long hooved legs and scrambled forward like a bovine millipede. Engorged clusters of Vegetable Lambs hung from its branches in the matter of grapes on a vine, their discordant cacophony of shrieking growing closer. 

“Well shit, its like a…. Megalamp King.” 

“It’s coming our way, is what it is.” And directly in their way. Caoimhe thought throwing a dog on a piano might sound better than the thing trampling its way towards them. She’d heard middle-school bands who could give it a run for its money. Which was all entirely ignoring the fact that one misplaced, vine-thick hoof could squash her. It was a beautiful place, but she really didn’t want it to be the last place she ever saw.

“We shouldn’t be too far from the portal, but…” The sound of shuffling and the increasing din of the creature moving towards them was almost too loud, “We’re going to need to get through or around that. And unlike you, I don’t have a rifle.”

Nor were her gifts particularly suited for Vegetable Kombat. Round one, fight. “Any ideas?”

Adam reached behind to his back and produced a metal sphere topped with a fuse clip and safety  to offered it to the professor. “I’ll fire at it and try to draw the Lamb Tree off the side,” he suggested as the towering Barometz began to lumber up the hill. “Run to the portal while I distract it. When you get there, pull this clip and throw this explosive at it.”

Adam doubted a handheld grenade would actually kill something this big but it’d at least buy a moment or two hopefully. “That might give me enough to run to you and we can get the hell out. Sound good?”

A bomb. He handed her a bomb. And really it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, considering the rifle with which he’d greeted her, but Caoimhe still took a moment to stare at it. Her strengths had always been a little more subtle. It was in gentle but purposeful touches, encouragement, making someone weak just for existing and creating in a space with her. Adam’s strengths appeared to be explosive weaponry.

“...Sounds better than anything I could’ve come up with.” Caoimhe took the metal sphere gingerly, like it was liable to go off if she squeezed it too hard. Okay, she knew how a grenade worked. She’d watched movies before. She was entirely prepared. She nodded, “Just make sure you don’t get lost trying to find me.”

She cast a grin over her shoulder and ran. And it was shaky at best. The kind of grin worked around a desperate joke and a heart hammering a sharp staccato against her chest, through legs that felt more like jelly than muscle and bone. The ground shook as she did her best to flank it, each thunderous footstep displacing the earth around it. A quick glance up and Caoimhe could catch wide-eyes with different clusters of Vegetable Lambs dangling off the main beast, their mouths dropped open but the cacophony too loud to pick out the individuals.

She was going to throw up. Perhaps not right in the moment, but later, after the adrenaline fully wore off. After she had a chance to remember how tightly she’d been holding the grenade and how many times she’d almost tripped over her own feet. How the grass itself seemed to tangle around her ankles and she could only catch glimpses of Adam through the weaving roots and swaying lambs. She might even laugh, too. Since when was a lamb so horrifying?

By the time she spotted the portal, her chest burned, and it would be so easy to jump through and be done with the whole experience, but Adam. She pivoted around, pulled the pin, and lobbed the grenade as hard as she could.

Adam sprinted out of the ensuing cloud of splintered wood and sheep guts, wiping fleece and gory vines out of his eyes. He bled from an array of bites from entire clusters of ravenous sheep and burns from vine constriction. The Megalamp Tree staggered in a panicked frenzy, thrashing out wildly in the splinters and smoke. Enormous limbs carved deep furrows through the bright grass as they slammed blindly down. Adam wove back and forth among the heather as he tried to avoid the descent of column-like branches and the vegetable lambs being flung everywhere like shrieking dandelion seeds. 

Adam sprinted over to Caoimhe, plastered in bloody fleece and leaves. He looked over to the vortex swirling between the cairn stones. “Thanks! Nearly got strangled by the Bo-Peep there.” 

Caoimhe almost didn’t expect to see him come out the other side. Between the thrashing off the Megalamp Tree and Adam’s penchant for getting completely turned around, the odds were not in their favor. But he rounded the thrashing beast with a thanks and Caoimhe promptly doubled over, dry-heaving into the once-serene, swaying grass. For a moment, a thumbs up was all she could manage over pulling in one breath after another.

She was made for classrooms. For violins in bar bathrooms and crooked smiles and french horns and running from her problems. Adam was obviously built of tougher stuff. He didn’t seem much phased by red-stained fleece and sticky leaves. He had a rifle and a bomb, and something twisted in Caoimhe’s chest, but she wasn’t going to question him when he’d handed her a ticket out. He was made for something else.

“I found the portal.” She rubbed at her eyes and grinned behind the column of her forearms. She found the portal, and he fought their way out. Caoimhe supposed she should be thankful. “Wouldn’t have been much good if I had been crushed, though.”

The ground shook as clumps of lambs fell wildly onto the ground, little feet scrambling every which direction, lost. Whatever Adam was made for, she was glad she’d found him. “Thank you.” She crooked a thumb over her shoulder at the mess of a beast behind them, “That was all you. I think...I think maybe we’d both have been stuck here.”

They’d managed to find a way out of the poisoned world. It was the bare minimum Nell and Adam could have asked for, not dying via something they couldn’t even see let alone begin to fight against as their bodies had begun to deteriorate. They’d broken free of the realm, but not without its consequences. Nell’s own darkened veins had begun to spider across her skin before they’d found a way out, and her breaths were still shallow and labored, no doubt some form of lasting damage having been dealt to her lungs. Still— at least they’d found a world who’s predators were easier to avoid, even if the attacks had still been numerous. But she’d been right about the hope Adam’s presence provided, had managed to gain back the beginnings of her magic and heal over some of their more dastardly injuries with it. It was still low, but it was there, and that was far better off than she’d been before. Against all odds the smallest shred of optimism had begun to spring in Nell. She didn’t know how she’d thank Adam for all he’d done, for saving her life, but at least she knew she’d have a better chance of even getting the opportunity now that they were together.

They were walking across a seemingly endless, windless, and strangely soundless plain nestled against the side of a raging and amethyst-colored ocean when she felt it, a familiar tug in her gut. For a moment she’d thought it was her reaction to seeing a flipper the size of a skyscraper jut out from the crystalline waves of the water, but it called to her once more, and she knew she’d been right to recognize it. “Adam-” she breathed in apprehension as she reached a hand out to grip his arm, almost daring to call it excitement. “Adam- they’re doing it. They’re using the sigil- I can feel it.” Her sisters were calling her home, their magic as familiar as their voices would be. As if to confirm her words, Nell's childhood and fireproofed necklace began to shudder against Adam’s chest in its place next to the adder stone, the dolorphage bone he’d brought matching its frequency. In answer a rip began to jut out above the endless abyss of this world, a tear in the universe beginning to form no more than a centimeter wide. “Just a little longer. Just a little longer, alright?” She could practically feel Earth’s sweet air already against her skin.

Bea’s hand was cool in hers, but Luce’s magic was warm enough for the two of them. For the three of them, hopefully. This was the fourth large ritual she’d performed in the last year, but no amount of practice and preparation could ever make her feel truly secure in her understanding of how they worked. She had followed Bea’s instructions, uttered the words necessary to guide Adam home, carefully poured her magic into the ritual. Her flames obeyed her, and she thanked the stars and moon for that. If anything happened, if her magic flickered and dimmed and it cost them Nell? She didn’t know how she could live with that. Sweat was rolling down the side of her face as she kept an iron grip on her magic, controlling the flow of power. She couldn’t overload the spell, she couldn’t flood it with power. More power wouldn’t make this easier, wouldn’t make the magic work better-- she needed control, precision.

As she continued to fuel the ritual, Luce gasped as she felt something shift in the magic. A familiar presence. Nell. She could feel her sister’s magic rippling through the ritual, through the portal that was meant to guide her and Adam home. She could feel her. She could feel them both. “That’s them, that’s got to be them.” She said, breathless from the effort.

Bea, admittedly, tended to do ritual magic alone. Most of her necromantic work was best done with only her own magic supplying it, but that didn’t mean she was unfamiliar with group work. Her magic wove with Luce’s easily, their sisterhood, their bloodbond making this work easier than it would be for others. And while this was easier for them than it was for other’s, it was by no means a walk in the park. Tension held Bea’s jaw tight as she focused on how much of her magic she poured into this, she had seen what happened to her sisters and Winston when they hadn’t been careful enough. Her own gasp mirrored Luce’s as she felt the first thread of Nell’s magic join them. Each Vural had a different texture to their magic, each a distinct flavor and color. Bea knew her sisters’ magics, even at its weakest.  “He’s with her then,” After all their preparation, Adam had made it to her. They would get her back.

The eldest Vural dared to look up for a moment, staring at the car that was parked just at the edge of her vision. Nisa sat within there, waiting for her daughter to come tumbling through a portal, waiting to help them again. Bea wished they didn’t need her here. She would have to learn the art of healing to keep them safe. They might have come to an agreement of sorts here but Bea hated having to go back to her in need.

Adam reached up to clasp a hand over Nell’s. Trekking through dimension after dimension would have killed him already if not for coming in prepared with talismans from the Vurals, the best equipment his own family could provide, and cheating with mutant physiology. But wounds, toxins, and exhaustion were making him feel dangerously featherlight as nerves died and fuzzy blurs seemed to crawl across his eyes. Desperation and hope had kept him going past where his body should’ve given out, but borrowed time was running out.

He’d promised Luce he would get Nell to Earth. Adam tried to focus on that instead of the chill slithering through his veins.  

Adam tried to swallow but there was no moisture beyond the sickly taste of his own throat bleeding. “Yeah, just a little bit longer,” he affirmed in a soft rap.

They were close. They were so close, as they stood there waiting for the rift to widen, to just give them a large enough gap to slide through. Nell waited none too patiently, a disbelieving laugh of relief finding it’s way past her lips while she shot Adam a weak and shaky smile. They were gonna make it. Against all the odds in the universe- in the multiple universes they’d trekked through they were going to escape, to be free of this literally hellish existence.

The tear grew longer, stretched far enough that Nell was certain her lithe arm could fit through it. Faster. Faster, it needed to go faster so that they could return to Earth, and Nell could tote herself and Adam straight to her mother’s front door, both of them in desperate need of healing. Leading Adam by the hand she stepped closer to the portal, heart in her throat as a familiar picture came into view on the other side of it. Bea. Luce. Her sisters.

“Adam- I can see them!” The wave of Nell’s relief bubbled into a near desperate cry, the hitch in her breath having nothing to do with her straining lungs this time around. “We did it,” she breathed, and her eyes would have glazed over if her body’d had any water to spare. “You did it,” she turned back towards her hunter, the man who’d earned the title of hero a million times over only to prove once more that she’d been right to fight alongside him since the beginning. He’d deserved to be saved just as he’d saved countless others, to realize in his own time that his life was his to have, not something to be thrown under the knife for humankind or anything else unless he and he alone was making the choice.

But it wouldn’t have been a hellscape if all hell didn’t break loose, and just was Nell was taking her first step through the portal towards the rest of her home with Adam’s hand in her’s, towards her sisters, a crack brok over the plain, the dusty ground splitting into two halves where the portal had touched down. “That’s alright- that’s okay-” Nell began, refusing to let something so little steal this moment from them. “We’ll just-” Her words were eaten by the inhuman screams of something crawling it’s way out of the fissure at their feet, and suddenly the slaugh she’d thought herself free of was appearing over her shoulder.

Luce could practically feel each exhausted, weary step that Nell was taking towards them. But, as she grew closer, she could feel the energy of her little sister’s magic growing stronger and stronger. She was coming home. They were bringing her home. Adam had found her, he was bringing her back. Luce spared a glance through the rift they had created and her blood ran cold. Nell was… dragging Adam. Leading him. Not the other way around. Was something wrong? Had something happened? Maybe it was that brief lapse in focus, maybe it was just the world roiling back against the unnatural state of being connected another dimension. Whatever it was, screams ripped through the air and something dark and cursed slithered from the portal.

“Don’t you fucking touch her!” Luce shouted. She wanted to let loose the flames and let them burn the portal clean. To purge it of the horrors that lay within. But she couldn’t. She had to hold steady. She had to keep her head and heart clear, to let the magic work. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to lash out at the things that tried to keep her sister from her. But, if she did… the portal could collapse. She couldn’t put them in danger. She couldn’t risk Nell, she couldn’t risk Bea. She couldn’t risk it. “Adam, Nell, get out of there!”

Adam drew the gore-caked remains of once state-of-the-art tactical knives that’d been eroded into rusty shadows of their former selves by the atmosphere and acids of distant worlds. The Hunter slashed out at the Slaugh that’d winked into existence beside Nell, the realization settling in like lead that the only reason why they could see the cadaverous spirits of rotting sinews was the swift approach of death.

They were so close. The vertiginous flicker of hope was almost as painful as the ache of his fading body.

The ground yawned open with a sound like an oil tanker being beached on a reef. The inside of the earth wasn’t soil. Adam looked down into a widening chasm of flesh, complete with oozing subcutaneous layers, cysts of pus, and meaty strands that slithered from one side of the opening of the other. Things stirred into the fissure and began long climbs up its sides, pouring out from hollows in the organic depths like maggots dislodged from a corpse.

At the bottom of the bleeding crevice Adam mistook a pale outcropping with precisely set holes for an enormous skull until he squinted to see a keyhole of bone.

The coral key grew uncomfortably hot against his skin.

Terror crept up Bea’s arms, burrowing her chest before she even had a chance to breathe in. She did not have to reach out with her magic to know what was with Nell and Adam was involved with death. She felt it, as goosebumps broke across her skin, and felt its connection to death. For a moment, she was sure she could control it, if she hadn’t been tethered to the portal. Her eyes darted back to the car and pride threatened to suffocate her, it’s greedy fingers going to drag down the words she needed to say. Bea swallowed and took a deep breath. “Nisa!” They would need her. They needed her. No matter where they were, what they were doing, it seemed that they would always need their mother.

“Mom!” She cried, hoping that the car door would open, praying that her voice carried enough. Death was creeping upon Nell again, Nisa wouldn’t let it take hold, Bea knew this. She wouldn’t let her daughters be taken again.

Nisa could feel the waves of magic coming from her daughters before she heard her eldest’s voice, and despite herself she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride. Her daughters were powerful, a force to be reckoned just as most Vural and Akçam women had been in their primes. There was no doubt about that as they ripped the world apart to save their baby sister. The proud feeling in her chest was accompanied by a spark of happiness to see her daughters working together, restoring themselves to three just as they were always meant to be, but the two positive emotions were stolen from her as she heard Bea’s voice ring out. Something was wrong.

Her car door was ripping open in the blink of an eye, and she strode towards the spell-site, the spitting picture of Beatrice Vural approaching the magic give or take the thirty years that had formed an older and more mature picture of her oldest daughter. Wordlessly, she joined her magic with Lucinda’s and Beatrice’s, sliding in as effortlessly as a puzzle piece slotting into its proper place. “I’m here, sweetie.” She could see Penelope through the portal, could also make out the picture of the man who’d gone into hell for her daughter. Adam Walker. It must be. She’d only ever spoken to him online, but he had the build of a hunter, and the look of one as well despite his ravaged state. The two of them were nearly spent, and with the eye of an experienced healer she didn’t need a slaugh to tell her as much. Their lives were flickering like candles in the wind, leaving her to wonder whether this next gust of air would be the one to blow them out. “Get out, and we’ll deal with whatever comes with you!” she commanded, as if her determination alone could pull them from certain death. She couldn’t heal them until they were here. She’d let Beatrice die while she’d been away, had missed the shattering of her daughter’s life and she wouldn’t be witness to another. She wouldn’t let the Walker boy slip through her hands, either. Not when she hadn’t even gotten to invite him for dinner as of yet.

“Come on! Come we gotta- we gotta go through!” Nell urged desperately while the slaugh hissed away from Adam’s knife, regrouping now that its surprise attack had been foiled. “We can kill it over there! I’ll close the portal and-” And they’d be safe. They’d be sound on the other side, and finally free of this place, finally free to simply exist with each other rather than be forced to fight for their lives. They were so close.

An enormous and spider-like leg clawed its way from the break in the ground, stabbing out in an attempt to impale the couple. It’s aim was true, forcing Nell to separate herself from Adam so that she might make a faulty dodge of the attack. Her bad leg gave out with the move, sending her sprawling to the ground as she scrambled to recover. It wasn’t the practiced and careful movements of the Ring fighter or bounty hunter, but the death throes of a girl desperate to live. Her movements had brought her closer to the portal, with almost a clear shot out...but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave after all the times Adam had refused to leave her. Wouldn’t have wanted to when he was as close to being her everything as she’d let a person get. “Please-” And so began the first of her begging. She couldn’t recall a time she’d ever pleaded, having never done it before when it came to her own life, not even as Montgomery had lowered his blade for the kill, but she was more than willing to beg for Adam’s.

Adam carved his way through the giant spider leg but more hungry things scrambled up over the ridge, forcing the Hunter to retreat a few spaces back as he tried to fend off the growing river of chimeric predators separating him from Nell.

A searing heat against his chest made Adam reach beneath the tattered rags of what’d once been his shirt and pulled out a key made of veiny red coral. It was shining so intensely that Adam couldn’t look at it directly. As soon as Adam’s skin had brushed the living coral, the Hunter simply knew that it was responding to the keyhole down there. It wasn't an idea he came up with, but rather an exterior certainty that seemingly dropped into his brain from the key itself.

Adam’s bloodshot brown eyes looked down into the abyss crawling with roiling hordes of demons and then back up to the portal.

Adam had promised to bring Nell back home.

Just a moment longer and this waking nightmare could finally be over. The physical therapy he’d need to recover from slogging through these Hells might take years, but Adam’d retire his blades longer than that if it meant he could just live and love with Nell.

But Adam had also sworn to protect White Crest, to keep Earth safe from the Hellmouths and the hungry things of the void. There was no way they could get this deep into the Hells a second time. Could Adam really pass this by and just let the rifts tear White Crest’s apart?

Adam glanced to the sky where storms of coruscating energy raged with nameless colors that didn’t exist on Earth. Prismatic lightning continuously arched down from the eternal storm. Each blast of primal magic warped the landscape into new bizarre terraforms, raising up mountain ranges of crystal in an instant, blinking gelatinous oceans into being, sowing tropical forests of neon webbing, and even more otherworldly forms of terrain as the entire dimension boiled in a constant state of primordial flux.

Soul deep exhaustion throbbed rawly in Adam’s bones as he longed to scream Fuck You to this final tug of duty, a last command to charge into the valley of death for the sake of people who’d never even know his name.

There was a dark thought that slithered into the back of Adam’s head unbidden. Maybe all the people who’d talked down to him as a delusional zealot and monster might have to finally get their myopic asses off the soapbox when the ravenous hordes of the abyss showed up in their backyard?

Adam snorted at the clumsy attempt at telepathic influence. He spun around and sank both knives deep into a dragonfly-winged nautilus covered in multi-tongued mouths that’d apparently thought Adam was in low enough place to just let his homeworld get invaded out of petulance. “Yeah fuck off nice try,” the Hunter spat before tearing both blades outward in a waterfall of gory purple ichor.

Everyone back home deserved to be safe from this, even if they never knew they’d ever been in danger. That’s what made a true Hunter different, they didn’t make the hard choices so they could get praised in the headlines. A Hunter's reward was newspapers blissfully complaining about trivial things and “just another day” with no idea of how close everything had come to ruin.

Everything in Adam wanted to reject the call to be a Hunter one last time, but how could he live in peace with Nell after denying that safety to everyone else?

“Nell,” Adam said as he lifted up the incandescent key on its string like a lantern, its ruby light answered by a similar glow from the bottom of the swarming demon pit. “I ...have to help close the Rifts in town,” he said slowly, eyes beseeching her understanding as he asked for yet another unfair demand.

“I’m sorry.”

Adam had warned Nell that this day would come. Had made sure the witch had known it well the moment she’d chastised him for being reckless and shoving his arm down the maw of a lamia. So she’d known there was no avoiding it. But even an end that was inevitable was one that could seldom be prepared for. Just because she’d known that his duty might one day claim his life, it didn’t mean facing that day was any easier. This was what she’d agreed to all those months ago. Maybe she’d told herself that they had time to put it off, time to figure out how to prevent this before Adam had to make the choice to forfeit his own life for the ones in White Crest or more. A part of her had always been well aware that it was a silly thought. Adam didn’t solely save people because it was his duty, he did it because it was the right thing to do, because he didn’t know how to turn his back on the people that needed him. She knew it— had known it from the day he’d helped free the tortured souls in the Ring despite half of them being what he’d considered to be monsters. He wouldn’t have been the man she’d grown to love if he’d done anything else as he readied the key.

Nell looked from the glow of the key to the matching light in the depths of the fissure, and things began to click into place. Today was the day. They were out of time. Her bottom lip quivered despite her desire to stay strong, to not make this any harder for Adam than it needed to be, unable to fully muster her iron-clad determination when the hellscape had nearly stripped her of it. “It’s okay, Adam,” she barely managed to say, wondering if he could even hear the words over the whipping winds of the portal and gnashing of the hell-creature’s teeth. “But I’m going with you. I’m not- I can’t let you do it alone.” She knew what it was to lose someone, had learned it intimately when Bea had died, and if there was any single thing she could do to prevent another death she wouldn’t hesitate to take the chance. “Just let me- I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”

So she fought her way back to the side of the drop off, one last surge of adrenaline barely managing to get her to the edge of the crevasse as she hacked through prying tentacles and claws. It looked hungry. That was all she could think as she reached for the fragile magic she’d managed to recharge. Taking his hand in hers she couldn’t help but remember the last time they’d done magic together, sitting under the full moon and wondering what their future would hold after they’d been bitten by the wolf with gold eyes. She used the very tip of her knife to spill what little was left of their precious blood, letting their life run together for another time as she poured pure love and her desperate desire to still have Adam into her spell— letting herself feel the feeble energy of his life- the life that’d been the brighter part of her last year and a half before letting it go.

A glowing thread appeared between their chests, no wider than a hair but refusing to give way as she gave it a hearty tug. “That’ll hold you.” She would hold him as he dived into the depths. There was no more time. The creatures were still tripping over one another in an attempt to have whatever part of delicious human flesh they could manage to get a hold of. Again she found herself saying the words like a prayer, not knowing how to say an actual goodbye. “I love you, Adam.” She was speaking them for only a second time, and even her first declaration of them hadn’t been given in joy so much as desperation, though both utterings of the three words were just as sincere as if they’d been said to him while he was walking through the door after a successful hunt with Nell greeting him back into a home they shared, a dream Nell hadn’t even let herself hope for all that often, but hoped for nonetheless.

She wouldn’t ask him to come back. Not this time.

“No matter what happens,” Adam promised as she wove the binding magic. “I will always love you Nell.” He drew Nell close, drinking the last comfort of her human touch before the predators bearing down forced them to part or get impaled.

Two rusted knives and two pistols with very little ammo left. Adam grimaced at the irony of having first entered the Hells loaded with enough equipment to fight a guerilla war, only to be caught poorly prepared in the final stretch that could’ve used overwhelming firepower the most. World by world, Adam’s state of the art rifles, armor, explosives, and alloyed blades had been eroded and been spent in the toxic alien environments. Until now he was looking down into a chasm full of writhing masses of hungry with armaments he wouldn't even trust on graveyard patrol.

Well, thems the breaks.

Adam looked back at Nell one last time, bruised and bloody face breaking to a sunshine grin as if they were simply flirting across the college commons, just letting her fill his vision and thoughts for every second that Hell allowed.

Time ran out. Adam reloaded his pistols, gripped the lucent key and sprinted towards the great chasm’s edge, launching himself down into the hell pit.

Adam plummeted down into the horde of maws and tendrils like a thunderbolt of bullets and blades, the key’s scarlet brilliance evoking a red comet hurling into a dark sea.

That bright red star seemed to cut a swath through the hungry ocean of oily aberrant things, growing steadily smaller as Adam descended ever deeper into the canyon whose fleshy walls quavered with rasping breaths and bled black ichor. Soon that spotlight of red had become just a distant pinpoint as Adam carved and shot his way too far down into the abyssal murk for sight to follow.

But the tide of otherworldly predators just kept crawling and squirming out of the canyon like a corpse disgorging worms from its rotting meat. The masses slithering over each other in a ravenous frenzy toward the siren call of a mortal soul. The pinprick of ruby light at the canyon’s nadir began to flicker as living tidal waves of eldritch things broke against the perimeter of Adam’s circle of death.

Inch by deadly inch that that red radiance was eclipsed by roiling shadows as the sheer weight of bodies bore down.

The depths darkened as that light snuffed out. There was only the sound of the walls breathing and prismatic cracking overhead.

Minutes dragged until there was a mechanical whisper that was soft, but yet drowned out of the storm with the sound of a key turning in a lock.

The ground shuddered and groaned in tectonic agony as if some colossal machinery had been set in motion. A choir of unearthly shrieks wailed from the pit as a wellspring of vermilion light erupted from the depths. The nameless colors of the storm paled and were downed out in a red dawn that bloomed like a wildfire across the sky.

Nell’s own smile had no choice but to answer Adam’s, doing her best to pretend like he wasn’t diving to his nearly assured death, like they were simply parting for an evening or so, and that she’d see that smile again when he rose from the depths of this final mission. Because after years of fighting for their lives, of fighting to be together, they at least deserved a split moment of pretending like they’d win those fights. That all of this had been for something, and they’d be granted the peace they needed. She held him until the world forced them apart, hell and its compatriots caring little for something as inconsequential and mundanely human as borrowed time. He leapt into the abyss, and a part of Nell went with him, already knowing she’d never get the piece of her that Adam held back. It was hers to give, and his to keep.

Nell saw the flash of red grow so bright that she could barely stand to look at it any longer, but she forced her burning eyes to watch Adam as far as her gaze would go, too afraid to look away, to accept what a part of her already knew was coming. Then it disappeared altogether. There was no seeing him anymore unless she too launched herself into the darkness below, and he was going where she couldn’t follow.

The red broke over the horizon, and the hellbeasts scattered. Nell didn’t see the slaugh anymore. Her lips began to whisper the second half of her spell of their own accord, reeling the line that connected her to Adam in like a fishing wire, wondering if the bait on the end of it had been taken or if…

He came back over the edge with a revolting thump, his body sliding across the dirt like a ragdoll while Nell’s breaths threatened to overtake her, coming fast and shallow. She’d done her best to be brave, done all she could to take this in stride, and she couldn’t lose it now. They still needed to get back to Earth. Adam had to make good one his promise to bring Nell back, too.

In a move that was sickeningly familiar she used her limited magic to bring a blanket into existence before rolling Adam onto it, knowing there was no hope of carrying him. Nell didn’t have enough magic to carry him back. She hadn’t been able to carry Bea, either. But she remembered the way Nic had switched Bea’s tarp for a blanket, something warm and soft and as a last gift. Adam deserved a blanket, too. More than that he’d deserved to live.

The journey to the portal was made of nothing but sheer determination, Nell’s grunts and gasps of pain the soundtrack to their homecoming, Adam’s labored and barely there breathing providing the downbeat. She stumbled through the tear in the world, her back turned on her family as she dragged him along. Familiar arms reached around her, and for a quick moment she thought about pushing them off, some strange part of her thinking that Adam’s last embrace would be erased by this new one, as if it would wash away her last pieces of him.

Nisa’s voice broke through the silence, and with it chaos began anew. “I’ve got you, baby,” the matriarch grunted as she tugged her daughter from the hells, and Nell tugged Adam, and Adam made it all possible by saving Nell in the first place, by saving them all. She laid them alongside one another, her hands already bursting with magic as she hovered over the pair of them, knowing there was only so much she could do.

Nell’s begging began anew, too. She’d tried to convince herself that she was ready for Adam to go, that she was in control of this choice as he was. But no human could ever be truly ready for death. “Please- please mom-” her broken and childlike cries made her shoulders shake. “Please save him, mommy- please.”

Nisa’s hands began work on her daughter, selfishly beginning on Nell’s more fatal injuries as she ignored her daughter’s pleas. “I can’t honey- I can’t- I’m sorry.” Her own voice broke, wondering if this was how Bea had looked when she’d been dying. She wouldn’t let another daughter die. Nell was certain it was one of the only times she’d heard her mother apologize, and she refused to accept it. “No!” she yelled, shifting to place her own hands on Adam’s body that was more blood than flesh. “I’ll do it- I’ll fix it.” She poured her magic into him, knowing too late that she couldn’t do this, couldn’t face the loss of another. The witch pushed past the point of her meager magic reservoir, pouring what little was left of her own life into the hunter.

“Penelope!” Nisa jerked her daughter out of the magic, already knowing how this would pan out if she was allowed to have her way. “You can’t, darling. You can’t save him. He’s gone, honey- there’s not enough life in you or me to save him.” She’d seen it countless times before as a healer, the one’s whose lives were already lost despite the breath they still held.

Nell’s hands came up to cradle her hunter’s face, pressing her forehead to his as she reminded herself that she’d been strong for Adam, that she wanted to make this as painless as possible, let his last moments be the peace he wouldn’t get. “I love him,” she told her mom, told the universe as if she were hoping it might hear her words and take pity. “I love him- I love you.” The world closed in on just her and Adam as the portal faded from existence, as all the portals in town did. “You saved me. You closed the portals- you did it. You can rest. You can rest now, alright?”

The spark of transferred life opened Adam’s eyes. His gaze was unfocused as dark spots and flares of light swam in his vision. They drifted over the Vural family and the familiar signs of Earth. Amongst them were other faces. Whether the dearly departed were merely hallucinations evocative as neural currents ceased or spirits who’d become visible as he teetered at the veil’s edge, Adam was well beyond the point worrying about. His bloodstained lips broke into a smile for Bea, Luce, Winn, James, Celeste, and Nisa.

Everyone was here, Nell assured him. Safe. Finally. 

He tried to thank Bea and Luce for everything they'd done, for treating him like family with their love and power, knowing how much those bonds meant to them. But only a soft sigh could leave his lips and a nod was all Adam could manage to the women who made this final mercy possible.

A tawny-haired man with a killer’s scarred muscularity but gentle brown eyes stepped unseen from among those gathered. He seemed suffused with the pure radiance of the hallowed dead, a single dog-tag hanging from his neck. Uri Walker took a knee beside Nell and his son.

Adam clung to Nell with what feeble strength remained in his shredded body, but pain was giving way to numbness. The agony of anything he’d suffered in the abyss yielded to a sepulchral peace that was worse than the suffering. Adam felt featherlight and his fingers lost the strength to grasp Nell’s hand. All Adam wanted was to stay here with Nell just a little while longer, but the undertow of quietus seemed to be ripping him away from her.

At last Adam looked up into father’s face and mouthed a question to empty air.  

Uri’s answering grin was like a sunset, a moment of radiance that beckoned toward darkness. He nodded. “You did good kid,” he affirmed gently, “mission’s over, everybody’s home.”

Adam nodded to no one and looked back into Nell’s eyes. He drew close with that last flicker of strength in him to whisper in her ear.

They were private words Adam wished he had a lifetime to show Nell day by day, but a moment was all they had.

The departed Hunter placed a firm hand on Adam’s bloody shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Time to go, son.”  

Adam grasped his father’s hand and let himself get pulled up to his feet and into Uri’s embrace.

Adam Walker’s eyes closed.

While Bea was connected to death, she had never seen it up close like this. Experiencing her own had not been as intense in the moment. It had finished in a moment, a glint of metal before she was gone. This was longer, if only by a few moments. Adam had done so much for her and her family in the last year. He had helped her defeat the Fext, yes, but his actions past that were far more impactful. It didn’t take a genius to look at her sister and know she had experienced love. That this man before her would do whatever he could to grant Nell happiness. He had done whatever he did for her sister. Adam Walker in so many ways was an honorable man, but here in this moment, he was the best man she had ever met. He had become something of a younger sibling to her. She looked forward to his messages, as random and strange as they could be. There would be no more messages.

Grief she had found, with herself, was as if someone sold the house they had always lived in and moved away. You could pass by that house everyday, but it would never be the same. You could have memorized every corner and hidden spot in that house, but that did not mean you could access them any longer. All you had were memories of who lived there and a wish that they were back. How would Nell survive that? She had too many people who lost their lives in front of her.

“Mom, Luce, take Nell.” Her voice cracked. “I’ll take care of Adam.” She would make sure he went home. Just like Nell had with her.

The portals had closed, Adam and Nell had returned to the world-- if life was a fairytale, it would have ended there. The monsters having been defeated and portals having been shut, would have thrown in the towel. Her sister would not be clinging to the lifeless body of the young man who had given everything to this undeserving town. Luce would not be watching the light fade from his eyes and his bloodied, weary limbs go limp into that final slumber. If life was a storybook, Adam and Nell would cheat death. They would defy the odds. They would get a cliche happily ever after.

But life in White Crest was no fairytale. And there was no cheating death this time.

Luce sank to her knees next to her sister, joining Nisa at Nell’s side. What could she possibly say? What could she possibly do? If she could have turned back time, if she could have strengthened the enchantments, if she could have created more wards-- If. If. If. But the reality of the world lay in front of her. And there was nothing any of them could do about it. Adam was gone. Adam was dead. The stupid, jock-y frat boy who had done nothing but serve the town, who had done nothing but save the undeserving people of this fucking town, was dead. She put a hand gently on Nell’s shoulder, hoping to provide some… tiny amount of comfort. A reminder that she wasn’t alone. “Nellie, we need to get you healed up. Bea, she’ll take care of him. She’ll be here with him.” She said quietly, her voice as even as she could make it. “I’m sorry, Nell. I’m so sorry.” Her voice broke and she shook her head.

The glowing thread of magic still connecting Nell to the man she loved faded from sight, and with it went Adam. She felt his life wink from existence as their blood magic died, felt whatever soul or spirit that had been inhabiting his body go with it, and she was left with only a body. Adam was gone, and it meant that she didn’t have to hold herself together anymore, she didn’t have to pretend like death was peaceful and beautiful and that the living weren’t left to pick up their broken pieces. “No,” she managed to croak in response to her sisters, the word beginning to turn into a sob. She wouldn’t leave him, couldn’t leave him even when he was no longer here. “It should be me- I want to-” Let her take care of him, let taking care of his loved ones be the last gift she gave to Adam, the last action of love she could make.

“I have to- I’m going to help.” With another ricochet of pain making its way through her chest she realized there was nothing left to fix, nothing to distract her from her new reality. After losing Bea, after getting her back...it had taken Nell more than a year to learn that some things couldn’t be fixed. Some things would always be cracked and broken and surprise you with anger or tears when you least expected it. This would be one of those things. And though the holes the departed left couldn’t be filled, they could at least be managed, and their darkness didn’t diminish the thousand shining lights of the happier memories. “I don’t want to leave him- I can’t.”

Nell wasn’t sure the words were actually discernible through the wetness on her cheeks, the blackness that was also beginning to close in on her own vision. Her mother laid a hand over her eyes, shushing her with quiet words that she couldn’t make out as the blanket of Nisa’s magic wrapped around her, putting her into a sleep that was long overdue. The last thing she saw before the darkness enveloped her was the smile Adam had shot her before he’d dived to his death, blurring into the one he’d given her as they joked and memed outside her greenhouse about semi-satanic rituals, readying to finish the amulet that would be the keystone of their first mission together— the blueprint to everything that would come after.