Introduction – How It All Began

The old brick building stood in one of the worst sections of the city. A tower four-story brownstone seemed somehow out of place, and the sign on the front advertising a used bookstore only made the image that much more surreal.

Madeline frowned at the face of the building once more and tugged hard on the door handle, expecting to find it closed, or hear the rattle of chains on the other side. Too many places were closing down anymore. Too few people took any pleasure in reading any longer.

The door swung outward with barely a squeak, throwing Madeline off balance. After a moment's surprise she darted in through the dark opening, and stopped, allowing her eyes to adjust.

The darkness receded and was replaced by a warm glow of light from overhead. She gasped as the store came into focus. It was like her own personal heaven. Miles and miles of shelves ran the length of the brownstone, with piles of books set beside them. Monstrous iron staircase wound their way around the outside of the room, ascending to even greater heights, and presumably more books.

And behind the counter was the old man who had told her about the place.

"Well hello there." His words were rote, as though the greeting were something used thousands of times. "What can I help you- It's you!"

The young girl smiled at the expression on the kooky old man's face. He was of small stature, with a long white beard and wild hair which wouldn't have looked out of place on a wizard from some of her books. "Yeah. I told you I'd find the place."

"Bags, girl! I tell hundreds of people about this place, but none of them ever show up!" He leaped to his feet and came around the corner, grabbing her hands and leaping up and down. "It's been years since anyone your age has come in here. Normally its old folks who want to look important buying lots of old books for their libraries; but a young girl, who actually wants to read! This is a great day!"

Madeline laughed. She really liked the old man.

"Come, come," he shouted over his shoulder, leading the way towards the stacks. "I'll send you home with your arms so full of books that you'll need a year to read them all!"

Madeline followed the old man closely, burdened all of a sudden by an intense fear of becoming lost among the stacks and never found again. She needn't have worried though, the old man, whose name was Zedd, trotted along at the pace of a man much younger than his apparent years, stopping here and there to point out an especially rare book, or some nifty author or another.

"Zedd," Her voice was nervous, brittle, and far too loud in such a place. "Have you read all of these books! There must be millions of them!"

Zedd stopped and looked at her as he swiveled around, his lean frame filling up much of the space between the shelves. "The last one is on my desk, I was reading it as you came in," He followed the words with a smile and sly wink. "How old are you, Madeline?"

"Fourteen."

"I've been running this bookstore since before your parents were born. For nearly fifty years, I've lived among these shelves, sheltered by the experiences of other people's characters, and other people's thoughts." He paused "I am familiar with every book in this building… I know who it was written by, and what the basic story is about, but in response to your question no, I have not read them all. It would take hundreds of years to even think of accomplishing such a feat."

"Oh.Okay" She dropped her head, a little ashamed that she hadn't thought of how long it would take to read so many books.

Zedd chucked her under the chin with his long bony fingers. "Come on, kiddo, the ones you asked me about the other day are back here."

Madeline beamed a bright smile at him. "You remembered?"

"Yes, ma'am. Of course, I did."

He led her further into the building, and up one of the cool iron staircases, following its spiral curve around a column of some kind of stone.

"Did you know that these staircases were built originally as a way to help defend castles, little one?"

"Really?" Madeline thought about it for a minute. "Did it make it easier for the soldiers to push people down them or something?"

Zedd laughed, the sound echoing up through the stacks of books. "No, no, nothing like that. You see… most swordsmen at the time were right handed. When they came up the stairs, their sword arms were against this middle column." He thumped the stone with his hand for good measure. "The men above them though were also right handed, and thus had their arms free to fight." Zedd made a grand gesture with his arm, complete with the sound effects as he sword fought with an imaginary foe. "Made it so that the men on the top would have the best advantage."

"Nifty."

"Ah, here we are." He threw his arms wide indicating an alcove of shelves nearly three times his own height. "Native American Folklore. One of the more interesting topics that I've come across in recent years. There was so much history to these people." His voice took on a reverent tone with a note of sadness. "We destroyed so much when we came to this land… we know only a fraction now of what we might have known if we had shared our land with them, rather than trying to claim what they already lived upon."

"Aww… don't be sad, Zedd. You weren't there, you didn't force them away, and you know, you can't change the past."

"You know, you're pretty bright, kiddo. Where'd you get so smart."

"Reading."

The old man laughed again, an uproarious sound, cantering through the books, loud enough that Madeline felt a little uncomfortable with her own joke.

"Clever girl. Anyways, I'll leave you to look through the books here. I'll be just a few shelves away, dusting off some of King Arthur's books."

Madeline was already absorbed in the books on the shelf by the time the comment registered. "Wait, what do you mean, King Arthur's books. King Arthur is the character in the book!"

Zedd's voice drifted up from far away, out of her sight. "The books belong to the characters within them, little one. The stories they tell, the lessons they teach. They belong to them."

Madeline nodded, not quite understanding what he meant, and then returned quietly to the books around her.

Titles leapt out at her, catching her attention. Spirit of the Wild. Black-Elk Speaks. Of Wolf and Man. There were hundreds that she wanted to take with her. They called to her. Cherokee Medicine. Inuit Legends and Myths. There were too many to choose from.

That's when she saw it.

The book was on a shelf far above her head. It was bound in simple, unmarked leather, tied off with another scrip of the same material.

"Zedd!"

The old man appeared as if from nowhere next to her, his eyes wide. "Good heavens above girl, I thought something had happened to you! Don't do that!"

"Sorry." Her sheepishness passed almost instantly as she fixated upon the book in question. "What's that book up there?" She strained against gravity attempting with her pointed finger, to draw herself up to it.

Zedd squinted and focused his eyes upon the leather bound volume in question. "Well, I'll be damned."

"Zedd! Don't curse. Now what is it?"

"A book, little one-"

"Well, duh!"

Zedd shushed her with a wave of his hand. "It's a book that I thought we had lost long ago." He began slowly climbing one of the leaning ladders, sending a cascade of dust down over the lower shelves. "I lost track of this volume nearly twenty years ago. What it's doing in this section, I have no idea. It's a handwritten journal, reputed to have been written by a dead man."

"How would a dead man write a book? That seems kind of silly to me."

"Shush, child, you must understand that in the old days there were men of great power. Men and women who could manipulate the forces of the world with merely an effort of will. In such a world, does it seem so strange that a dead man could, and would, write a book?"

Madeline thought about it for a moment as Zedd continued his journey up the ladder. Dust was raining down from everywhere now, as he grabbed hold of the leather and began to pull. After a brief flash of brilliance, she backed away from the bookshelf and the tottering old man.

With a cry of triumph, Zedd pulled the book loose of its moorings and nearly toppled from the ladder.

"On Life After Death…" He chirped to himself as he climbed carefully back down. "Interesting reading material… not for the faint of heart, I think."

At the bottom of the ladder, he held out his hand, displaying a leather portfolio, filled nearly to overflowing with unbound handwritten pages. The unit was worn, the leather soft and supple, like velvet. Desire seized hold of Madeline and she reached out her hand to touch the material.

Zedd stepped back pulling the book with him. "Are you sure you want to read this, little one? Some books are not to be opened with impunity."

"Zedd." She tapped her foot as she leveled a flat stare at him. "You wouldn't have gotten it down from there if you hadn't wanted me to read the book, what's with the lecture?"

"This book… it is not something to be taken lightly." He shook it gently, and turned it over. Pause. "On the other hand, if you noticed it… I think you're supposed to read it. I just want you to be sure of what you're getting yourself into young one. Maybe wait a few years?"

"Come on, it can't be that bad. Let me see it."

The old man held his hands out and surrendered the book with a sigh. For a split second, his hair whipped around him and framing his lean body with an ancient dignity, as it the whole world had sighed along with him.

"It's yours, kiddo. Just be careful what you do with it, alright?"

Madeline looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears of happiness. She opened her mouth twice to try and thank the old man, but the words just wouldn't come out. No one had ever given her a book before… especially not one this important.

"Go on," his voice was softer now, and his expression one of a loving grandfather. "Run along with that, and don't forget to come and visit a tottering old fool in the future."

Madeline smiled as she headed back to the front door. "But… Zedd, where would I find one of those?"

He smiled again. "You're a good kid, Madeline. Take care."

Madeline trotted out of the store, clutching the portfolio of pages to her chest as if it contained all the treasures of the world.

She never heard the door lock behind her.

Some hours later, Madeline walked up the driveway to her family's home. Neither her mother nor father would be home for many hours yet, so she proceeded into the house and dropped the portfolio on the kitchen table as she made herself a cup of noodles.

Noodles in hand she did a quick check of the locks on the doors, making sure all of them were in place, and then proceeded upstairs to her bedroom. Throwing on a pair of loose fitting sweats, she lay down on her bed, noodles in one hand, and began to sort through the free floating pages in front of her.

Neatly printed dates and times in the upper corner of each entry made her job easier. For nearly three-quarters of an hour Madeline combined, shuffled and stacked the papers, maneuvering herself around the bed in order to keep them in a rough chronological order. Some days had several entries, and at other points there were weeks, even entire months missing from the timeline. All in all she guessed that it covered a period of roughly seven years worth of entries. Some of the pages were worn and cracked with age, others yellowed and barely readable, but even with, or perhaps in spite of these facts, Madeline could hardly believe that such a treasure had come into her possession.

When the task was finally finished, Madeline hefted the first set worth of papers and settled back against her bed pillows.

On Life After Death
Tristan Olivera

Madeline set the last of her noodles aside, and wrapped a blanket about her waist and shoulders as a chill descended on the room. She checked the clock by her bedside, and prepared herself to dive into a world which had long since passed her by.

- end chapter -

My name is Tristan Olivera.

I died on July 23rd, 2005.

What follows, is a recounting, as best I can remember, of the events following my death. But first, there is something that I need to say.

To my dearest friends and loved ones.

Sam.

Mimi.

Margo.

Harmony.

I love you all.

Please forgive me.

In the beginning, I could still hear the sounds.

The sound of a young woman, crying, begging and pleading for her brother to come back to her.

The sound of someone screaming her heart out, venting her fury at the world. A fury so strong that the world quivered and trembled at her wrath.

The sound of a queen, somewhere far away, weeping on her throne at the unfairness of it all. At the pain of trading one loss for another.

And then, even that was taken from me as I fell through the never-ending blackness.

It was some time later that I noticed the wind and the noise below me. Time passed again, though whether it was an instant or an eternity, I couldn't tell. Then all of a sudden I found myself plunged into an icy cold river. There was nothing but blackness above or below the surface, and I could feel it carrying him, further into whatever nightmare this darkness embodied.

Part of me wondered if it would really be so bad, to give in and let the waters carry me beyond the blackness to a better place. Surely there would be a better place for me… and I was so very tired of fighting. It would be nice to stop fighting.

Yet something inside of me raged at the idea. I could feel my blood boiling and my hands moving of their own accord, dragging along the bottom of the cold river until finally they caught upon something solid enough to hold me against the onslaught of running water. Rational thought was thrown out the window as fury took over and I began to fight harder and harder against the current.

Inch by inch I dragged myself along the river bottom, water flowing all around, begging me, beckoning me to give in to its sweet, sweet voice. When that failed, it began to threaten me, but the words were empty and there was no turning back now. The cold faded away to nothingness, the water ceased to be anything more than an annoyance, and soon I felt it.

In the distance, far beyond the range of my normal senses, there was a light in the blackness. There was something there; a place where he could escape both the river and the blackness that plagued me so.

I let loose a roar of fury as the river redoubled its efforts to push me back. I shoved my face back under the water and dug my hands in, following the river bottom straight towards my escape.

Towards life.

- end chapter –


First Entry
Date and Time Unknown

At some point over the last few days, I made a conscious decision to write all of this down. It seems unbelievable, even to me, who spent the last few years of my life living amongst the most extraordinary people in the world.

Tristan looked down at the sheet of loose paper in front of him, and at the thick, black furred hands that scribed his thoughts upon it. How long had it been that he thought that this body of his was gone for good?

Though I don't yet understand the nature of this place, I can sense that in some ways it is similar to the world that I am used to. Time seems to flow in roughly the same fashion, and measurements appear to be roughly equivalent, though I've had no one to confirm or deny these suspicions for me. It seems once more, I am all alone.

Visions flashed before his eyes of the fight that had sprung up during the last danger room scenario. Too many people were hurt and that thing, whatever it was, just didn't seem to taking enough damage. The scene took over his mind's eye and he found himself forced to watch Mimi fall to her knees, hit by a blast from its midsection.

He reached for the pen but his hands shook too much and his eyes wouldn't focus well enough. He knocked it to the floor.

The air rushed by him as he charged the Apocalypse-creature. A roar of fury chased all fear from his heart as he leapt at the thing, claws extended to tear that light spewing mid-section to pieces.

And then it had opened.

After that there was the blackness, and then the wires were everywhere. It was like he had blinked and they had all suddenly materialized in front of him. In some small part of his brain, Tristan realized that they were part of its core; something that could cause it true and undeniable pain.

Another roar ripped through his lungs and out into the negative space as he began to rip and tear at the wires. He poured every last ounce of energy into destroying everything in sight.

Right before the blackness reclaimed him, Tristan heard the creature roar in pain.

His last thought echoed throughout the dark.

"Good."

When Tristan's eyesight cleared he found himself lying with his head upon the side of the overturned paper roller that he had been using as a desk, his fur sticky with the ink he had spilled. Cursing, he sat up and right the bottle quickly, thankful that he had lost only half of its contents due to his clumsiness.

To experience your own death… and to find yourself on the other side, still able to remember it, seems very strange to me. I can not believe that this lonely, desolate landscape is Heaven, nor am I willing to accept that the grace of my actions has landed my within the pits of Hell, and so I am forced to pursue another answer.

This is the point where Cassidy would tell me to use my brain, and the gifted senses that I'd been born with, which is what I have been trying to do. The place I woke up seems to be an old abandoned factory. I harvested these inks with a combination of oil and rust filtered through water. It is weak, but it is all I have.

Tristan raised his head again and looked around, scribing some of the details as he did. He knew he was on his own here, knew he needed to use his head in order to survive and maybe, if he was lucky, get back to the life he had once led. But he still wished that Mimi were here… she made a great sounding board for ideas, and often helped him keep his thoughts in order.

He put his pen back to the paper, transferring his thoughts.

I miss the others. I miss Mimi, and her hints, her thoughts and her congratulations on a job well done. I miss Sam, my kid sister by choice if not by blood. I can't help but worry about her, even though I know she can take care of herself. Margo, the Queen of Fairie. I had not seen much of her before the end, but I miss her as well. She was always there with a kind smile, a friendly face, and cookies. Lots and lots of cookies.

And Harmony. My love, my life. We were meant for each other, in some ways, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards for us. She feared betrayal at the hands of those she loved, and I was incapable of such a betrayal. We were a team, and a near perfect match. I will always miss her.

Tears fell freely from his eyes now, blurring the still wet words on the page. His heart ached for the people he had left behind, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he might still be able to see them again.

What I write now are the events that follow my death. In hopes that someday it will help me to sort this entire mess out or that maybe, just maybe, it will reach the hands of those I loved.

I woke up on the cold stone floor of an abandoned factory. Machinery was everywhere along with the heavy scent of old blood and sweat, oil and scarred metal. There were no lights, only the fading daylight in the sky outside. Now that I look back on it, I remember hearing gunfire…

The shots sounded as though the came from a pretty decent distance, but in the shadow of twilight, the flash of a muzzle flare was pretty distinct.

"A hundred, maybe two hundred yards away…" He thought to himself.

Tristan sprinted the length of the factory to look out one of the broken windows. The muzzle flashes showed him exactly where to look.

Four men chased one through the skeletal remains of what had once been a large city. The man being chased dodged this way and that, trying to find a path with which to make his escape, but from up here, Tristan could tell that it was hopeless. If he couldn't stand and fight the men, he was going to be run down and killed.

He slipped out onto the windowsill before he even realized that the decision had been made, and leapt out into the night. When he landed, his enhanced vision picked up the running man easily enough. His long black hair was a tangle of blood and sweat, and stuck to his face as he tried to make his way through the remains of the city.

He flew by Tristan without so much as a glance, running full tilt towards the abandoned factory which Tristan had just left, his scent wafting through the air like perfume.

The stink of fear pervaded it.

As soon as the man was past, Tristan dashed across the pathway in front of his four pursuers, startling them all to a halt.

All four of them raised their guns and pointed them in the direction that Tristan had just passed. "What the hell was that thing?"

The man in the back, who appeared to be the leader, spoke in a low voice to the others. "It is nothing, only a trick, something to distract us from our quarry this evening." His words seemed to relax the others, who lowered their weapons slightly. "Continue onward. That creature will not escape us this time."

Taking a deep breath, Tristan dashed across in front of them, claws flashing silver in the light of the muzzle flashes. It took only a second or two for the gun barrels to fall away, sheared about halfway up the stock by something that none of those men had ever seen before.

"Did you see that! What the hell was that beast? I've ranged through the old city for a near five years, I ain't never seen nothing like that? Look at what it did to my gun!"

Tristan was nearby, watching and listening as the men ranted and raved over their ruined weapons. They were old, he noted, rifles of some kind. Not a single shot, but certainly not much more advanced than that.

Still, a gun was a gun, and bullets hurt. He was glad that the fools had been too busy panicking to line up a real shot on him.

"…still out there?"

"I don't know!" The leader's voice was nowhere near as calm now that he knew there was a real threat near by. "Find it and kill it!"

"I shot it twice, point blank, and it never even flinched! It sliced the barrel of my gun clean in half!" The fear smell filled the area. "How the hell are we supposed to kill it without our guns?"

He smiled, a feral grin that never touched his eyes.

The men never really stood a chance.

He rushed from the darkness on silent feet. Four quick, precise strikes later, the four men lay on the ground, unconscious.

Moving quickly, so as not to spend any more time around the fallen men than necessary, I rifled through their pockets. Old habits die hard, I guess. No wallets, no identification, just a handful of extra ammunition and a couple of hunting knives.

Footsteps sounded in the background, alerting me to the presence of someone else approaching. Leaving the men where they were, I slipped behind the crumbling remains of what looked like it might once have been the corner of a stone building.

"It's not possible!"

"Of course it's possible, you fuckin moron, it's right there in front of you, plain as the nose on yer face."

Two men stood over the four unconscious men. They carried archaic weapons, a large hammer of some kind for the one, and some sort of large sword for the other.

"I told you! I saw something come out of that factory!"

"Dammit, Richter, how friggin dumb are you anyways? You think whatever the hell it was you saw comin out that factory took down four of these clowns, who was fully armed?"

"Sure, why the hell not!"

"Because you dumbass! This was obviously more than one friggin guy!"

Tristan listened intently, wondering who these two were and what their purpose in this whole adventure was to begin with.

"So what'dya think we oughta do?" The unnamed man asked.

Tristan could almost hear the man named Richter shrug, and look down at the four men. "May as well leave them here. Law's not gonna do anything about them… and I'm not looking to just flat kill 'em, ya know?"

"Yeah, I hear that."

Tristan started to ease himself forward, around the rock to get a look at the two of them, but stopped short when he heard another pair of footsteps come sprinting down from the direction of the factory.

"Jak!" The two men both cried out in greeting and stepped over the unconscious bodies.

The other man stumbled up and stopped. Tristan guessed he was leaning on the other two for support. His voice was raspy and wheezing; the long run he'd been put through obviously having its effect upon him. "…the fuck took you so long?"

"Easy, Jak. These four was down when we got here… we were trying to figure out what it was when you came back just now. Richter thinks it's something that came out of the factory."

"Out of the factory… fucking hell… what was it last time, half a dozen Rangers came flying out of there and tore what's left of this place up for a month before we could get anyone down here to take care of it?"

"Yeah." Richter again. "S'about right. What do you think we ought do, Nick?"

"Burn the freakin place to the ground for all the trouble it causes us."

A silence followed before the same man, Nick, spoke again. "I'm just joking you morons, I know the place still has valuable supplies in it, but it doesn't change the fact that too much bad shit comes out of there."

"We'll get a crew together tomorrow and go check it out." Jak said, his voice starting to recover a little bit. "In the meantime, let's get the hell out of here. Feels weird, like summins watching us."

The three men trod away towards the skeletal city, leaving Tristan to his own musings. It was a good ten minutes before they passed completely out of the range of his hearing, given the silence of the night surrounding them. Even then, he waited a few more minutes before he moved.

Trotting slowly up the path towards the old factory, he couldn't help but wonder what sort of supplies the men had been referring to. Or why things kept popping out of this particular place.

Was it a dimensional rift that had opened once and simply never managed to close completely? Or maybe something like a nexus point, where several dimensional boundaries meet at the same point, and the walls are weakened there? I don't know enough about dimensional geography to know for certain, but I think tomorrow, I'll see what I can find… before that search party comes to shake things up again.

- end chapter -