Tracy lay in bed the next night, holding Lily's gift, staring intently at is as if trying to remember something important. He was puzzled. How had the little girl known about his nightmares? Staring at this doll, he could feel something, something that was right there, just past his fingertips, still shrouded in that awful fog that had settled over his life.

He heaved another sigh and rolled over in the bed, holding the small doll in the crook of his arm. Any other night he would feel foolish for attaching any sentiment to the child's toy, but tonight, he just didn't care. He closed his eyes and let sleep wash over him, his last conscious thought being of Lily's parting words. "So they don't get you." He was only mildly amused by her antics; fear was the presiding emotion. Some of what she'd told him scared him as much as the dark. There was something not right about her imaginary world, and that too resided behind that shroud of forgetfulness.

Tracy drifted off to sleep.

The smell of burnt sugar filled the air, and he wrinkled his nose against it. Jerry was working in the back room again, and is certainly smelled like he'd been having a rough day. He greeted the senior fairy with something quick-witted and made him laugh, and began to take stock. It was one of those unlucky days when he was on stockroom duty. It wouldn't take very long; he'd be done and back in the office by three, which was ideal. He could get back to the paperwork and go home by five, or stay for Fairyoke. They seemed like equally good ideas.

He took his clipboard and stared up at the shelves of stock. Something squirmed uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach; the shelves were nearly bare. A box here or there and a few stray packets of amnesia dust or shrinking paste. Some of the shelves were dusty, a tell tale sign that they had been untouched for some time, that Fairy's budget had steadily declined, restricting the flow of equipment. They no longer stocked cat-away, but Jerry still made those nifty little mints, so it wasn't too much of a loss for the Fairies who venture to the Human plane for teeth. But they were running low and, with less and less funding, they might not be able to afford the next shipment. It might have to wait until next quarter. He scratched a note at the bottom of the inventory paper.

There was a small tremor that shook the room, causing a cluster of tooth-radar wands to shuffle off of their shelf and fall to the floor with a looked up from the stock list, barely moving a muscle. That was odd.

Everything was more or less clockwork here. He could tell down to the second when the nightshift came in; he knew exactly when the mail fairy made her rounds, dropping off memos and other miscellaneous paperwork to his office. He knew how long he would be down in the stock room, despite the lack of its clock.

His pen scratched absently across the paper as he counted the crates of invisibility spray – it was a Tooth Fairy's greatest resource, and they couldn't afford not to stock plenty of it.

He moved to the next shelf and froze again. Another tremor racked the room and the lights flickered, temporarily bathing the room in darkness. Tracy's heart hammered in his chest. Fairy ran like clockwork, and this, this eerily devious progression of events, was the metaphorical ominous kink in the cogs. "Jerry," he called, waiting for the older fairy to turn the corner before addressing his concern. "Any idea what's going on up there?" he asked.

"No," He said sounding as concerned as Tracy. This was a rare occurrence, to not be met with a snarky remark from the man. "Maybe some experi-dental project?"

And there it was. Tracy shook his head and looked back to his work. With any luck they'd sort out whatever was giving them power problems.

A third tremor shook the room, throwing both men to the floor and raining supplies down on them. The lights popped, leaving them in the dark permanently.

"No,"Tracy said slowly, "I don't think it was anything experimental."

He made his way back up the stairs carefully, wary of what was on the other side of the basement door, outside the stock room. Fairy didn't run on electricity; the lights were an extension of the magic energy that coursed throughFairyLand. The lights all over the building were out, lending an ashen tone to the once golden, glowing hallways. Something settled itself in the pit of Tracy's chest, something heavy and forbidding, and he didn't like it at all.

There was a ringing silence in the halls outside the stockroom; the air was acrid and made his insides squirm uncomfortably. Something was very, very wrong. It was a poor choice, really, to go and investigate, and he knew that as his heels clicked against the tiles with every step, the only audible sound in the hallway, but something inside him couldn't help it. The sheer curiosity, perhaps. What could possibly make the lights go out, driven by magic as they were?

Another pair of footsteps joined his – dainty footsteps, padded by a pair of dance slippers – another fairy, coming down the hall towards him. He picked up his pace and turned the corner, nearly plowing her over. She was a tiny thing – but at his height, most people were. She rammed into his chest, bouncing back in her stupor and he caught her by the arm, waiting a beat as she steadied herself. She looked up.

"Tracy!"

"Marina, what happened to you? You're uniform's in shreds and – what – what happened to your wing?" He asked in a quiet voice, shock washing through him at her appearance. Her tutu was literally falling apart around her waist. There was a large tear in her stockings and an even larger hole in her wing, as if someone had burned right through it.

She didn't reply, but threw her arms around his middle and squeezed. "You're alive! They all thought – the office, your door was – But you're okay!"

He grabbed her by the shoulders and knelt down to her eye level. "What do you mean, 'still alive'?"

Her eyes went wide and she practically collapsed against him. "It's happening," she said, quietly. "Tracy, we have to get out, they're not listening and It's going to kill us, we have to-"

The hall chilled andMarinafroze mid sentence, eyes locking with his before he looked back towards the stock room. A black mist seeped through the ceiling. Liquefying as soon as it was free and falling into a gelatinous puddle on the floor that seemed to shift and bend as more of it and tugged on his arm, trying to snap him out of the hypnotized stupor he'd fallen into watching it, whatever it was. She dragged him through the halls, trying to get back to his office.

He wanted to ask what was going on; he wanted to know what that black, tar-like substance falling from the ceiling was and why it scared her so much. She was nearly hysterical, despite the fact that she was usually a very level-headed fairy. She was a higher-up, too, and if anyone knew what was going on it'd be her. If he could just get her to calm down long enough to explain. He broke her grip on his wrist and grabbed her arm, pulling her to a stop. She panicked immediately, begging and pleading for them to keep going, but Tracy was adamant about learning what was going on.

"Just stop, for a second and tell me what that stuff was, back there. What's going to kill us?Marina, answer me!" he snapped, shaking her, perhaps a bit too roughly.

Plop! went the sludge, falling from the ceiling and landing on her uninjured wing. She froze, her eyes going wide as he watched in horror; whatever that was ate right through the delicate material of her wing, leaving the untouched parts look as if someone had pressed a match to them. It crept onto her shoulder and she whimpered, standing stock still. He reached out a hand to wipe the gunk from her shoulder and she went positively ballistic, screaming at him not to touch It, to get away, go, go back to the office, go! He recoiled, eyeing her with concern. "Marina," he said, fighting for composure of his own voice. "What is that?"

It readily grew over her shoulder, dripping down her front and crawling up her neck. She tried to paw it away, but it only adhered itself to her hands. She managed to say something, but it was muffled by the black tar that was growing over her mouth and nose at an alarmingly fast pace.

"The Void."

Tracy thought perhaps he misheard. He had to have misheard. He grabbed her around the waist, taking extra precaution to make sure the black stuff didn't touch him. "Marina. Marina, focus, focus on me, and tell me, what is this."

The fairy's pupils constricted to pinpoints and she thrashed in his grip, clawing madly at the tar covering her airways and suddenly he understood: it was suffocating her. Her movements slowed and her eyes rolled back into her head before she went limp, falling to the floor as the tar spread like a wild fire over her body, constricting and shrinking.

It was just watched her die; he just watched her have the life sucked out of her. He staggered backwards until he hit something solid, planting a stabilizing hand on the wall he'd just backed into, looking up and seeing more of that black vapor seeping from the ceiling tiles.

He inched away, unable to take his eyes off of the scene that he still could not believe had just unfolded in front of him.

He bolted down the hall, back to his sanctuary, constantly having to side step great globs of the stuff that reached hungrily towards his legs with every step. As he moved closer to the main plaza, he could hear it, the chaos that had left Marina in such a state, the reason why everyone thought he was dead when he'd emerged from the stock room. It was a deafening tumult from just down the hall, a strange barrier between haven and Hell, and it was fading fast. He traced the familiar path without having to think very much about it – he'd walked from the stock room to his office and back so many times that he could have done it blindfolded.

He stumbled to the relative safety of his office and closed the door. This was not good. A weight settled itself in his chest as the severity of the situation dawned on him. God, he never actually thought this would happen. His breath caught in his throat and his heart pounded in his ears. He couldn't go out there, he couldn't watch that destruction. He collapsed against his desk, his thoughts restless, making it difficult to concentrate on anything and causing his vision to swim in and out. He was going to die, they all were. The last of fairy kind was about to be Disenchanted. The thought made his stomach churn and, combined with the smell of burning feathers that had wafted down the hall, he retched into the waste bin behind his desk, all embarrassment forgotten in the terror of the moment as he sat there with his head between his knees, trying to compose himself.

It was a long, slow process, Disenchanting. The electric sting of magic hung in the air as braver fairies rushed into the midst of things, trying to dispel the bogeymen and The Void. It was a waste, he thought numbly. A waste of magic that could have been used to get everyone to safety. His lips trembled as he tried to form words, trying to drown out the sounds of chaos outside his office door, but it was too loud. It was like something out of a cheaply made horror film, but so much realer. He heard them, out there; one screamed, and he squeezed his eyes shut. It was a ringing noise that cut through him like a knife, slicing a fine line of fear from his heart to the bottom of his stomach.

He held himself tighter as the scream stopped. It was worse.

This was not happening. How could this have happened? Sure, he thought distantly, they were a little low on faith, but they'd been managing. They'd always met the set quotas, even if it was just the low end, and they'd always been safe. Now,FairyLandwas literally collapsing around him, being eaten by the fluid black mass that was The Void. How many children had been disenchanted today, told by their parents that his world didn't exist? Too many, an impossible number, because the lack of faith had allowed The Void to come and clean up. The idea of faith is that you need people to believe. If no one believes, what's the point in existing? Never mind that It was taking the lives of millions of Fairies in Its tirade.

The room grew cold, and Tracy gave out a whimper, reduced to an utterly helpless tangle of limbs on the floor as It sought his magic. He could feel it seeping through the door, clawing Its way across the floor.

Something banged against his office door and It gave a hideous, other worldly hiss. The insurmountable feeling of dread that had lodged itself in his chest withdrew along with the bogeyman, releasing Its grip on him and allowing him to move again. He sprung up from behind his desk, terrified and elated and nervous all at once, to find that the bogeyman had recoiled, seeping back out the door to collect in a writhing heap on the floor, encasing a fallen fairy in Its folds.

It was a moment of sheer stupidity that could very well get him killed, but he supposed he was going to die either way. What was there to lose? He took great bounding strides to the door and threw it open with every ounce of force his shaking limbs could exert, slamming the half-shrunken heap of bogeyman back against the wall and shattering the glass pane in the door. He only stood there momentarily as he watched the thing reform after the sudden assault, like a sponge that had been squeezed too tightly. It bubbled and pushed outward, oily tendrils searching for his ankles.

Tracy took off like a shot down the hall.

He'd always been taught to go down with his ship, he mused, heart thrumming against his ribcage, but this ship was going to bring about the extinction of a species. There was no point in staying; anyone who did was as good as dead. He vaguely registered the shouts of other fairies, fairies with wands who were asking what he was doing in the plaza, telling him to get back to the stockroom, it's safer there. But Tracy knew that 'safety' was a thing of the past. Everything was a blur of pastels and an ashen gray, a deep black fog that simply didn't belong in this sanctuary of belief, and even the sounds were woven together after a moment. He had to tune it all out. If he truly let himself tune into the horror around him, he'd go mad.

There was a wet thwip! and a crushing pressure on Tracy's chest that knocked him backwards, landing hard on the tiled floor, sprawled out and stock still. With his head tilted backwards to take in the reality-skewing scene above him, with fairies lifting themselves from the ground in hopes of gaining more time, trying to subdue The Void, he felt something creep up his neck. He didn't move; even breathing was difficult, with that thing on him, siphoning the magic from him like a leech drank blood. It was endlessly hungry, a small part of the whole, and it worked its way up his body. He felt the icy black tendrils on his jaw, shifting and expanding to spread across his cheek and lips. It covered his mouth and nose and he suddenly panicked. That was it. He felt it sucking the very breath from him, trying to drain him of his magic, to coat and decompose his body. He thrashed, the will for self preservation stronger than ever as he realized that he was dying.

He let out a muffled scream and tore the thing from his mouth, feeling its dead weight in his arms as it wrapped itself around his hands. It was hard to shake a bogeyman and it was hard to do much of anything with one sucking the life from you, but He threw it to the ground with a great jerk of his arms, being careful not to step in it as he took off, trying to get to the other side of the plaza. He stumbled and tripped over his own feet as he ran, blindly ignoring shouts from the other fairies. He had one thing on his mind: a working wand.

The magic generator buttons wouldn't supply enough to pull the stunt he was planning – The Void had drained his world of too much magic for that to work, but the real wands, the hand crafted wands that used essence of magic, they worked even in the most dire of circumstances. Fairies fell all around him, wings singed through by the acid touch of the bogeymen – wings were too delicate, they disintegrated upon contact with the tendrils, and for once in his life, Tracy was grateful for fairy evolution.

The wands were in Lily's office. It felt so wrong, to break in and take from her emergency store, but he was a wingless fairy, and wingless fairies were not issued wands, ever. He had no choice.

He threw the large oak doors open and was greeted by the same hissing, gurgling noise he'd heard out in the plaza; the bogeymen were here, too. His breath quickened as he scanned the room. Where was It? God, he could hear It, but It was no where to be found. That was terrifying, he thought, suddenly moved on, though still wary of the bogeyman. If he could find the wands quickly he might not even have to worry about It.

His stomach churned again, presenting him with a fresh wave of nausea at the thought of what he was doing, but he was stable, for now. There wasn't anything left in his stomach for him to vomit, he realized dryly.

He snatched one out of the case, having broken it open with a paperweight from Lily's desk. What was he doing, vandalizing her office, stealing her equipment? He was saving himself, he justified, he was doing the smart thing, because all those other fairies out there were as good as dead; their tenacity, their bull-headed belief that they could fight It off is what sealed their fates. Tracy prayed that he wasn't alone. If there was one thing he didn't want to be, it was the last living fairy. A small part of him wished that he was more able, more confident that he would be able to salvage his species, if there were any left other than himself. Another part couldn't help but burn at the back of his mind; coward.

He gives it a little flick and a small sputter of magic trickles half-heartedly from the tip, falling to the floor and dying like fallen embers at his feet. He closes his eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath, the wet noises of the reforming bogeyman somewhere in the room growing louder, more persistent and undeniably closer.

Tracy knew that this was a ditch effort. FairyLandwas so far gone, not even the magic of the wands was reliable anymore. The bogeyman had leeched him of so much magic, and an unsettling fatigue was beginning to creep its way into his bones. He had one shot at this, and perhaps just enough magic left in his body to pull it off. He channeled it all into the wand, feeling utterly drained, empty and tired. He reached a trembling hand out and grabbed something off of Lily's desk. She'd obviously left in a hurry. His hand closed around the child's tooth, scooping it off the desk as the magic came to a boil in the wand, accepting of his energy and allowing him to use it. He would need that tooth, he knew, because where he was going wasn't a kind place. It wasn't somewhere he could survive without faith, and there was so little in that place already. His own faith was dwindling fast, disintegrating along with the rest of his home as the magic swirled about him in silken ribbons of color, a beautiful whirlwind that would provide his escape.

The pavement was hard under his palms as he landed roughly on his hands and knees, collapsing immediately into a pathetic trembling heap, biting back sobs that he was sure would ring through the calm night.

Tracy woke up with a shuddering gasp, his cheek pressed hard into the carpet of the bedroom floor. His hands were clenched in loose fists over his head and his face was wet, breath hitching awkwardly in his throat. He rolled into a more comfortable fetal position, drawing his knees up to his chest and covering his face with his hands. The nightmares wouldn't stop, because he couldn't remember who he was, where he'd come from or why there was this looming dread that constantly ate away at him.

Lily's doll lay on the bed, half dangling off the edge and looking down at him, forgotten in the vulnerability of the moment.

The alarm sounded from his night table, an ear splitting dry buzz of electrocution that only worsened the pain in his head.

It was time for work.