A/N: The next chapter will be of Kurt's story, but here's your breather chapter... if you want to call it that. Just a warning for the religious, there will be some references to Christian doctrines. I don't mean to offend anyone of other religions, but I wrote it simply because I know it's a religion that most Jamaicans ascribe to Christianity. And Xaviel, as revealed in this chapter, is of Jamaican-American heritage. This chapter mostly comprises of Etheridge and Florence, however, fleshing out that relationship and finally splitting them up. You can expect Kurt's chapter within the week. It was originally planned to be a one-shot in a Shakespearean script, but I decided against it because I wanted to write a specific scene in great detail.

Chapter 9:

Path to the Nest of Spiders

The meandering landscapes of Brooklyn are not all crowned with shadows. Toward the west, the setting sun belies Brooklyn Bridge in bold relief against the sky. The beauty of which lies in its gift of making one feel small—a gate kindled by headlights and high beams, thousands moving the same direction, thousands kindly agreeing to the opposite; south, dark colored and rich, Flatbush watches the moon fall and the sunrise behind the surface of common culture lives a bustling downtown; and in the midst, half-hidden in vivid murals, a considerable structure, graceful, and with low cars passing overhead.

It is a restful place— one never looks for more; it is all here, all intelligible. There he lives, and there, from day to day, in the low hum of restless life. Through the long, lone night, until the last snowflake has dropped from heaven, his feet know no rest. Until the silver break of dawn, the dusky, red-eyed man of weary feet wanders from street to street. One could hear the beating footsteps of those forgotten in Flatbush when the night lets fall its veil and reveals the shapes of men who trade and deal at whim. In winter's twilight, when the red sun glows, he can see the dark figures pass between the avenues to the music of the nightlife.

The vision of living that rises before these dark eyes has in it nothing mean or selfish nor is there an air of higher resolve or more unfettered striving; the determination to realize the broadest possibilities of human activity, to seek the better and the best, to spread with their own hands the saga of sacrifice—all this is the burden of their talk and dream. Here, amid a wide desert of caste, the heart-hurting slights and jars and vagaries of a deep revulsion, lies this oasis, where hot anger cools, and the bitterness of disappointment sweetened by the springs and breezes of Turkwel.

A deep, platinum black-skinned man with fluffy hair, slipped through crowds with urgency, he halts only for instants and those junctures are to gledge at the moon, or his cell phone. He ambled into a shop, darkened by closed shades, a natural deep blue wallpaper, and an olive, rough carpet. Closing the door behind him and locking it, he knew that soon enough there would be more than two people in the room. The cell phone lit his path to a drawer, where he grabbed a lighter, illuminating part of the room with its blue warmth. He walked to a candle atop a table and leaned over it. Once the candle was lit, the room revealed itself, under the ghostly blue flame. In the center of the room was a man with a hood covering his head and a reflective bubble around him. Around them were various tomes and texts with nonsensical covers and titles.

"Xaviel Talcott Meikle, former soldier, former husband, and former father," the man spoke, sitting down with the other. Xaviel, the one with the spherical dome barrier around him, took his hood off revealing a dark bister-skinned man with various scars and short hair by a small margin above an inch in length. The man across from him stared, his eyes a pale blue, "Now, a homeless drunkard."

"What in de hell is this? Who are you?" he snapped, speaking in a Jamaican accent.

The cloaked man chose not to respond, instead, he sat down before him and reached into a dark corner of the room, revealing a black tea kettle, and placing it onto a portable stove.

"You de one who put me here, yeah?" Xaviel pushed, "You do your hoodoo magic and keep me from moving, but it won't stop me from beatin' your ass when I-"

"Be quiet, Mr. Meikle," the hoodoo man replied, "You'll only make your headache worse, and if you get too loud then I'll have to-"

"Or what? You use de magic to kill me or something? I dare you to try it! My friends will be on you quicker than you can wave your hand!" he said banging against the invisible fence.

"Silence," the hoodoo man ordered, his eyes turning black. Xaviel did exactly as told and wasn't able to talk for a few moments and slammed his fist against the obstruction repeatedly, "Even your mind is loud when it is not a direct channel to your mouth." he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, "I suppose this is to be expected when you decide to pick a drunkard off the street rather than a reasonable and likely less haunted individual."

After a while, Xaviel leaned back against the enchanted rotunda, ceasing his attacks on it and taking a breath. Wasting all your money on getting drunk on the street was talked up way too much on television. His head became heavy and he leaned down, letting out an exhausted whimper.

Smelling the tea coming from outside the border, Xaviel craved it as he always did during a hangover headache. Hoodoo slid a cup in through the rotunda, "It is an old one, but it works," he uttered. "Listen... I am not here to abduct you, I am not here to hurt you either." he began, "You likely don't believe me, but I mean it right now. I don't have any ill will."

Xaviel, at first doubtful of Hoodoo's purpose for luring him here, but confident in his ability to discern character, internally realized that this man held no ill will by the strong scent of goodness lingering around him. Goodness was something that he hadn't sensed in such a long time, that he was unsure if it even was real. But it was true. He relied on this instinct during his time over there. That meant that he had no intention to imprison or kill him, at least in his book. He took the cup of tea.

"I am unsure if you have noticed, but I am blind," he uttered. "I am not able to parse non-living things from the air around us."

Still unable to communicate, the kidnapped guest crossed his arms and refused to consume the tea, his growing headache notwithstanding. Hoodoo didn't say anything about it instead walking slowly forward and crouching down once he was about a foot away from the dome. Xaviel wondered whether he was considering allowing him to go.

"You've been in pain for a long time, have you not?" he asked, "You were a soldier, who became a soldier to live up to his father, you returned and fell apart and abandoned your child and wife. I know that about you."

Xaviel denied him through a constant head shake, slapping his hands across his ears. That's not true that's not true shut up shut up. Then the scent returned to him and slowly, after a few minutes of silence, where the hoodoo man gathered materials in his arms and placed them beside himself, Xaviel accepted the truth, leaning against the barricade and cradling himself.

"You are not an anomaly in this country, many men have been sent to war and have come back just to be abandoned by the world. But while most accept this pain, wallow, or fight back, you abandoned the world in return. That is not something that most have the audacity to do in earnest, Mr. Meikle, it's unkind to reject nature," he spoke, "But I am not one to talk. Some years ago, I rejected my essence as well. It's how I ended up with these eyes. For the longest span, I thought it was a curse."

Xaviel listened silently now.

"But I have come to realize that rejecting nature, for people like us, is nature itself," he explained, "These things happen to us. They give us clarity that others are unable to understand, a kind of twoness. But it isn't a burden. It is a gift to be shared with others, Xaviel," his eyes turned black once again, and Xaviel regained the ability to talk. "Had you continued down the path you were on, you would not have lived to see forty. Your wife would commit suicide after having found your rotting body, and your daughter would resent you until she died. Do you understand what I am telling you?"

"I don't," he uttered, "Why am I here?"

The hoodoo man went upright, the barrier had disappeared as he walked up, "I am here to give you a chance at redemption. A very risky chance, but a prospect nonetheless."

"What do I have to do?" Meikle asked, reality suddenly feeling surreal.

His interlocutor paused, "...What religion do you identify most with, mister Meikle?" Xaviel suspected that he already knew the answer to this, he was Pentecostal Christian, though he didn't know the full theology, just practiced during his stint in the war. "What does the Christian religion believe most in? Kindness? Heaven? No, the most important part of the Christian religion, I believe is something you know deeply and have wanted for a very long while. Salvation."

That was true, it was all he wanted... that maybe in some way, there might be forgiveness for what he did to people, witnessed, and ignored. He struggled for a long stretch with it, until he just stopped. Left whatever faith he had in exchange for whatever alcoholic drinks his years as a soldier could spare.

"Life does not work that way, Xaviel. You cannot wish for happiness without being willing to suffer first for it. Sacrifice. Is that not what you people believe in most?" he asked. Xaviel fell onto his back, earthly significance weighing down now.

"No, we have to be good... and..."

"Is anyone that perfect? That they would be able to be good for years of their life? Even as children we lie, as teenagers we disregard our mothers and fathers, as adults we are taken by temptation. The only way to reach salvation is through sacrifice, Xaviel." he responded, taking him by the shoulders, "And what are you willing to sacrifice to see your daughter again? Tell me."

"Anything," he whispered, "anything."

"Even your life?"

That gave him pause, but as he began to feel tears falling down his face, he nodded.

"Then I will help you," the hoodoo man responded picking him up by the hand, Xaviel stood to his full height, his posture feeling more straight than before.

Ramming his hand into his chest, Hoodoo tore through flesh, bone, and muscle, poking his spinal cord, then tearing the swarthy limb out with no blood. Xaviel lost his balance again and tumbled.

The hoodoo man loomed over him for a moment, crouching down and expressing, "When you get to the other side, your objective is only one thing. Keep my son, Ishmael, safe. And when you return from death, you'll finally be redeemed," he said, Xaviel gasping for air. Hoodoo held him as blood seeped from his lips and orifices, shushing him as he fell unconscious - possibly into cardiac arrest.

He managed to articulate a few words, "You... bastard!"

"Sleep. You'll return here yet," he emitted, "Oh, that's right. I forgot to introduce myself," he leaned down as Xaviel gradually lost his ability to speak, "I am Kaleb Bras Cubas Dessalines."

Xaviel had gone to sleep as a drunkard and he awakened again at his birthing. He had moved through a door in 2007 and come out another one in the early renaissance. Having gone back through that door to find himself in early childhood. He had seen his birth, but could scarcely remember all the events between. The mind was spastic in time, with no control over where he was going next, and the trips weren't necessarily fun. He was in flux between situations, he was a child named Etheridge in one then a forty-plus-year-old man named Xaviel. He never knew what part he was going to have to play next or for how long.

Etheridge was born before the fortieth anniversary of Emperor Belos' rise to power, the third child of an ambassador in Kærlighed, Høhimmel. He was a small boy who became a grisly and gangly youth, long-armed, sick and shaped like a kite. Taught in Kærlighed Academy in the upper third of his class and spent afternoons and nights with his father. Being the son of a representative meant frequent moving, which was disorienting for Xaviel. During autumn, winter, and spring, he spent an hour or two reading historical and religious books, another hour studying the arts and culture, and the final few hours on biology, anatomy, and theology. With summers came travel and learning to be an ambassador like his father.

One month before the genocide, he met his mother. His mother was a prostitute, who managed to join his father and move to the Boiling Isles for a better situation. On the long ship ride there, Etheridge observed her. She was youthful and excitable, even though she was older than his father. His mother often wore long dresses with unique and exotic designs. Exceptional golds, deep lapis blues, and passionate reds. Often he went to see her, to see the similarities between him and her. She also had another child, an older daughter that he didn't know the name of. She didn't say much to him, but he felt their kinship, in some way or other. They had landed on the Boiling Isles when it all started, beginning when a shadow cast over the port and the ocean.

An airship hovered above the port town they had stopped in, with small air balloons leaving from the starboard side of the hull. The destabilizers descended upon the port, setting the ships and docks ablaze. As Etheridge reached the gates and passed through, a considerable number of citizens flooded past him thanks to local volunteers taking charge. His parents were among them, disappearing in the crowd. He was left behind. As the sun uncovered itself, Xaviel's consciousness returned. He moved around the rushing crowd, finding his father and mother as he made his way up the street. Even with the fearful frenzy, Xaviel knew there was something wrong.

"Skelpies!" Someone called out from the side. With a slight glance, Etheridge found a soldier in a cloak and mask struggling to reach him through the crowd. His hand extended out to stop him, grab him and pull him away from wherever he planned to go. Xaviel watched him with a critical eye. While his actions spoke of one thing, his gaze betrayed the fear he held when watching him. He had seen that look numerous points before but never expected to see that very same expression on this new planet.

Xaviel moved away, deeper into the crowd and into the city leaving the young coven scout behind in his struggle to stop him. Following a path by second nature, he arrived at an anti-magic temple that had become ruined over the day. Walls and windows were broken in as the debris fell from the sky, magic raining down from the heavens. He could hear the panicked screams from behind the pulpit, little children and grown adults cowering in the offices and cellar. A few older people stayed in the front, prepared to die. He ran into the cellar.

"Etheridge!" he heard someone shout. It was his sister.

It took Etheridge a few seconds to realize that it wasn't just anti-magic refugees and citizens of the port city down there. His sister was tied in ropes, along with others, including his father and mother at the feet of the coven scouts he saw above ground.

"Run!" she shouted.

This was the first moment Xaviel and Etheridge's consciousnesses had the same response, he went back topside. Escaping the temple with two scouts trailing behind him, they smashed through the door he closed, allowing Etheridge the chance needed to find a place to hide.

Hide, hide, hide… The young Etheridge thought. Xaviel took over, using this chance to take them out.

Using the broken wood as a pike and stabbing one in the artery under their armpit, then used the other scout as a shield when he blind-shot whoever attacked him. The scout was set on fire and screamed as his skin began to melt. He looked down as they began to die, heaving for a moment before he saw the shadow appear again. They were gonna firebomb the temple. Right above him. Etheridge ran off immediately, trying to make it as far as he could before it exploded. "Shit!" He blacked out as the temple and the surrounding buildings were enveloped in flame.

Three years passed since the genocide and after the Anti-Magic state fell into chaos. Belos continued using his destabilizers to force other nations to oppose themselves. Etheridge wandered across the landmasses adjacent to the Boiling Isles, having brought himself through remote countries' once principal cities, now municipalities providing asylum for stragglers. Four prominent superpowers fell during this time. The homes of the Anti-Magic witches, Noirilite, Høhimmel, and various smaller countries in the south, Ragno, a steampunk country known for their industrial revolution in the more continental temperate regions up northeast from the isles, an already warring country farther north, and the Titan Trappers, who hid their island with powerful magic.

Ragno, despite existing as a cosmopolitan utopia, had major agricultural areas comparable to the Edo Period of Japan in several regards with winding strips of forest populating most of the land, how religion and culture fostered wandering personal pilgrimages, and the thousands of independent villages interspersed throughout the mainland. Placing an emphasis on the intimate experience of nature and their gods' blessings.

This was not the home of Florence.

Florence shoved her head under the blanket as she heard the heavy, hushed footsteps make their way through the sliding door, despite knowing they meant no harm to her. She whimpered, terrified of what might occur. These would be the independent lands ruled over by the local lords, craving beyond fair shares of produce and craftworks. If one couldn't pay, then the children disappeared.

Three pairs of footsteps began causing a ruckus, their footwear thumping against the hardwood floors, and the exclamation of a girl a few years older than her. They had the right to take her. Florence's parents hadn't been able to pay, hence they had to lose something of similar status. Getting used to these things — the sudden shifts in mood and hiding her natural processes — acceptance required her to abandon emotion to adapt. Florence had seen others undergo a metamorphosis, in their stares, their heat, the inflection of their voices, they became ineffably distant and fantastically present. Her parents never said anything about why her friends had disappeared, unable to verbalize anymore. Why some had abandoned their youthful courage for silent complacency, their green fields for cold, steel rails. Neither knew what to tell her.

It wouldn't be until the war landed itself in their neck of the country that she grasped what they experienced when she would escape with her parents to a steam-powered boat, moving toward the west to an outlying island. They hoped it would be one that wasn't captured by the uprising beasts, unbeknownst to them, Belos' destabilizing faction. However, the storms would divert them that thundered for weeks on end — because the Boiling Sea routed never-ending clouds northward, alongside the boundary of the coast — directing them along the coast and soon separated and marooned in the southern country. While the parents would be taken farther up the rapids, toward the highlands, Florence had been transported to the wreckage of the Anti-Magic provinces in the Isles, the Forgotten Land, the Valley of the Wretched.

As fate would have it, beneath the ever-raging fire of the hidden sun, on the grave of his comrades and brothers and sisters, this would be where Etheridge found his last life.

Lilith never opposed her superiors, but once she heard explosions down the hall, she considered fleeing to the nearest outpost near the boiling sea. Knowing who it would be didn't make it any easier and when her door came down, though, the sight of the person did shock her. Etheridge the Black was none other than the small child she had witnessed on business trips to Hexside and during the Covention. This time, his scleras were entirely black compared to the hazel brown they typically were, his face drenched in sweat and blood, maybe some tears.

Undeterred by standing still in the middle of an enclosed room, a strange torrent developed around her, thunder exploding from nowhere, wind throwing all her papers into a cyclone, and rain flooding her floor. She didn't understand how she could withstand such intimidation, nor did she know how he managed to contain the furious whirlwind enough to talk with her. "Where," he grunted.

"She is safe," Lilith uttered in her cordial tone, keeping her composure for better or worse. If she didn't it was likely that Kikimora or Belos would kill her after this all was over. "With the Emperor, of course. If you hurt me though, she won't be safe for long."

"Bullshit. You not even his number two," he responded, "He won't give a fuck if I kill you right now."

"That doesn't matter. You won't find him anytime soon if you keep trying to taunt me, so I'd watch what you say," she countered.

"What's stopping me from just evaporating your mind and finding out myself?"

Luckily, somehow, Belos had prepared for that aggressive response as well. She chuckled to mock him, "There's something that we know about your people that even you wouldn't know. You can try if you like, but it won't-"

Grabbing her forehead, his fingers leaving red marks on her skin, Etheridge tried his hardest to read her mind, but he could only read everything but what he wanted to know. It was locked behind a tremendous wall, a dam that kept his ocean of power from reading anything further. "What did you..."

She pushed him off of her, letting out a curse, "What did I tell you?" she growled, "You will not get anything out of me."

This made the torrent develop more, suddenly her legs were in pools of water, fast-growing. Etheridge raised his hands, making the river come up faster, "Where is Florence?"

"The main room," she uttered while shielding her face, between heavy winds, "The titan's heart."

As expected the foyer was shadowy, unnatural, and veiny, almost like the center of a computer, full of flowing lines, dark red vessels, and sinews pulling toward the nucleus and away from some alien entity. The glowing pupils within a golden, horned mask, Belos seated in the center of it all, on the stone throne. Etheridge wasn't surprised by his audacity to sit above everyone. Nobody else was in the chambers of the titan's heart but Etheridge, Belos, and the feverish Florence held within a blue spheroid shield. She was hyperventilating and sweaty, appearing like his, Xaviel's, daughter before he left. Reaching little fingers for him, holding onto his leg for comfort, she was confused and hurt somehow that this situation came about, hoping that the end of July would never come. Like his mother before death, with her wasted burning skin, body, in its loose brown clothes, emanating an odor of resin and rosewood, her breath, muted, censorious, a faint fragrance of wetted ashes.

Etheridge could hear the grin in his deep voice, "I won't dilly-dally with you, little one. I'll give you a choice," he bellowed throughout the hall, Etheridge knew for sure his bloodcurdling, highfalutin voice was grinning beneath that mask, "Either you devote your life to me, be my second in command in the shadows and I let her go, or you take your sister's place and I will have you executed."

"How about I execute you right here and now?" Despite his bravado, Etheridge felt a chill run up his spine. He knew that he wouldn't win this fight, Belos had survived too long, lived too well, to not have something hidden. Someone like Etheridge couldn't do anything but try to hurt him as much as possible before this upper hand could be taken.

Etheridge summoned the seas once more, this time letting drop all at once, mist rising from the droplets surging up. The veins kept pumping around him and the titan's heartbeat and his own fell into a panicked sync, the mist, the fast-forming ice crystals, and the water conjoined in midair to create anchor-shaped clouds. "If you go any further, I will make the choice for you, Xaviel," Belos boomed. "You won't win more than a scratch."

"Die!" he screamed, ignoring his uttering Etheridge's true name.

The cumulonimbus clouds fired lightning spears toward Belos, arcing through the hall and onto the ground at his feet, the emperor holding up a hand, stopping the bolt. "I'm in no mood for games, boy," he said. "This will be the last time you converse with her if you keep this up."

But the gears were already turning in his head for the next attack, that didn't work, if my best won't work, then I'll use everything I've got! he thought. However, the truth was that hardly anything would work versus the Emperor. Belos would stop everything as Etheridge prepared the next, the ground lit up in white light, blinding him.

"Your magic has no effect on me," he said.

The first day advanced, he took her across the empty graveyard and hid her somewhere safe, a cave close to the shoreline. He killed some non-sapient creatures and cooked them into a broth; she had a fever when he picked her up and hoped a cooler site and nutriment would help. Instantly, he recognized she was from Ragno, the steampunk country. It was a racist assumption but based on the wreckage and her appearance he assumed he would be correct. He cleaned up her wounds for what wounds he could see. Some part of him was too scared to take off her clothes and see what scars she had from the recent uprising.

By the time she had roused, the clouds had dispersed on their own. And the sun glittered on her bronze skin, warm and rousing, pulling her away from the lucid state of waking reality. The panic hit her, "Mom! D-Dad?!"

She rushed out of the cave as Etheridge transfixed his eye on the despaired girl in hushed sadness. A long while passed before she realized she was alone, there would be no one on the horizon, only the vast sea beside her, and more expanse spread to the other side. It didn't take long for her to notice him upon her return, standing in the shadow of the cave, the darkness eclipsing his once bright face.

"Hey," he said in a light tone. During his time as Xaviel, he always had enough range in his voice to articulate in his mixed register, but now he sounded as if he were always in distress.

Florence was older than him by only a couple of years, and he supposed she wouldn't know the difference. The young girl stood, a shade of quietude washing over her.

Her wordlessness angered him, would she be silent in his presence? Thanks for saving my life? Where am I? Anything?

The girl stiffened at his rise in volume, eyes glossed with tears preparing to fall, her hands gripped at the air, yearning for maternal touch, hugs, kisses, and caresses, a reminder that no harm would come to her. Wanting her father to prop her on his shoulders and say the world was hers, that the ocean, the skies, and the earth beneath their feet was her domain. Now those words held no meaning to her, as she sobbed pelago's worth. What was she to do here, without her mother or father? And Etheridge looked up at her, a guilty pang surging, a shameful feeling overpowering him.

Taking her apart like that and stopping in his tracks like this. What did the times here do to him? There was no helping it though, she reminded him of something ancient to him now, something he couldn't place, "Hey, hey, let's not do that now-" he uttered, walking closer to her, black mantle dragging along the ground, "Don't- don't cry."

"Mom-" she wailed, her knees failing her.

"Sh. It's okay. It's okay," he didn't know what to do. He was considerably tinier than her and worried she might attract trouble. He took his cloak off and placed it on her shoulders, leaving him in a white, tied, shirt and baggy black trousers. It took him a moment to gather himself and speak like a parent again, "Listen, I'm sorry for yelling at you. I just..." he sighed as she continued screaming for two people who were way further up the coast. "C'mon, stop crying... I just wanna talk."

Her sobs slowed as he spoke in his soothing voice.

"It's alright," he expressed, placing a hand on his heart while holding one on her shoulder, "I'm... I'm alone out here, too."

The staunch and unmoving burden encroached as the passing remark exited his mouth, the void close enough to kiss him on the forehead with madness. A reminder of foregone epochs. The people who raised him from nothing but a mite in a liquid and airy vacuum where existence was unfamiliar to him, to become self-sufficient, active thinking, and sapient. Noticed every little mannerism and every greater idiosyncrasy about him, and understood his peculiarities and absurd cues. He left them in the other world. Then the people who loved him and noticed these things again in this macrocosm, a miracle of quantum scale, dead under a pile of rubble. During his years-long sabbatical from the mission he set himself on, to find Ishmael and accomplish what was asked of him, he searched for the last remnant of his origin in this new childish body: His sister. Yes, he was alone, but in a literal sense, that was not the case anymore. Here before him was someone truly alone, who didn't have the hope of rebirth waiting for them.

Florence's wails became stifled, calming to sniffles as he continued ameliorating his early reaction. He stepped away from her, once again feeling sheepish for allowing his paternal instinct to kick in, "What's your name?"

She looked at him, realizing that all this time, she had been crying in front of a kid not even two years younger than her. "I'm Florence."

He smiled, as genuinely as he could manage, "I'm Etheridge."

"Are you done now?" Belos' sonorous voice thundered along with the clearing storm winds. Nothing more ornamented the pale mask and long robe drapes than that of a light drizzle, the glint in his eyes no less bright than before. Sweat spilled from Etheridge as he prepared another gale of wind. "Your childish rage is inconsequential in the scheme of the Titan's will. All you Anti-magic creatures are the same, arrogant and foolhardy, ready to throw yourself at enterprises of chaotic agents without thinking of the consequences. Did you think this mindless struggle would reward you somehow?"

Etheridge settled into allowing himself to catch his breath, listening to Belos' derogatory rant.

"Your sister has been a great asset to this country, Etheridge. I hear of her incredible potential from Lilith and Odalia, many of the aristocrats that visit this castle talk of her ability like my coven leaders. I am loath to do this to her," he continued, stepping down from the same spot he'd been standing the entire brawl, "Do you understand? You are the only thing keeping her down, Xaviel."

It had been a long time since Xaviel felt like he'd dragged someone down. Body slumped against the weight of his words, and musings wandered around his mind about whether anything he said actually held any water. In his moment of weakness, Belos chortled, "Now the time has come for me to end your life, little one. Do not resent me for this, for it is the Titan's will that it all ends today. Rejoice! it is by my hand that you die, come the next life you will repent and reach salvation."

Xaviel fell still, attempting to move in rejection of his feet becoming clay, breaking apart at the seams. Demanding to move, igniting all his passion at once, he cried out to move, yet was continually frozen like a statue. Belos watched him struggle with amusement while Florence was witness to it all, abject horror painted over her features. His head was of heavy gold, his chest, and arms of silver, his belly, and thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet of clay. Were the sky to cave in on him now, Belos to smite him with power from the heavens, the wind would carry them away, that no place was found for them: and the man that smote the frozen statue of Etheridge would become a great mountain and fill the whole world.

"Etheridge?"

Strange things occurred whenever Etheridge was around.

Danger would be nonexistent if he was nearby. Never did she question why, but, it meant it would be a good idea to stick together with him while she searched for her parents. Other than that, there had been no benefit to walking around the common villages with him. They were amicable with each other, and he followed her, despite various comments about having to continue a search.

Nothing ever went awry, but in the incidents when her observations were inaccurate or they pushed someone too far, he always managed to turn it around for the better. Watching him do this with great humility or rather a banality, likely made him resistant to chatting about it. Through this wise, almost sagacious quality about him, she learned to respect him and grew to love him as she did her sister.

All that became frivolous in comparison to what had occurred behind her back. Unaware that his travels had given him time to learn the way of adults, but not plain adults, rather the sorts that placed faith foremost in the barbarous and boorish practices of thieves and radicals. The times bestowed an epithet in trade for his last name, The Black. And these months too had passed her the furtive epithet The Cherubim.

She wouldn't see his namesake in action until a few months after they joined each other, once a group of local thugs tried to kill them in their sleep. A bad move on their part, and one that proved lethal.

He killed them in silence such that Florence was able to keep sleeping and so many that when she awoke, they were sitting in a landslide of bodies. This child, young enough that he would still be learning to live away from his parents, who should be enjoying elementary school and recess and lunchtime, sat atop this pile of bodies with a grin plastered on his swarthy visage. "Yes?"

"Did-Did you do this?" her voice trembled.

He glanced around and scratched his nape, feeling sheepish he was too lazy to bury the bodies, figuring that after everything she would not flinch or react too badly to charnels. "Yeah, my bad." He explained the situation without rejecting the idea that he killed someone, all in a matter-of-fact tone.

As Florence heard him stop, she embraced him, leaving him staring at her back, "Etheridge," she said between deep breaths, "You've been trying to protect me this entire time. Is that right?"

She sounded resolved, so he answered with honesty, "Yes. I-I have."

Looking at the bodies he left around them, her eyes furrowed, "Don't. You hear me?" she clasped his shoulders, a strained gasp escaping her. She would not cry in front of him. "Don't. All this time you've been doing everything by yourself, fighting and killing. Well, now you have me."

Etheridge didn't say anything, he was confused by this.

"We can rely on each other, Etheridge," she stared into his eyes, knowing that she was giving the impression of beseeching then, but overwhelming passion exploded through her as she gazed into his resolved brown stare, "We should never fight for the other ever, when we fight, it should be like this:" she crossed her index and middle fingers, "Together."

Etheridge's reaction was despondent observation of the sun in the sky beside her, partially covered by plunging hills and flattened plateaus formed by the intense firebombing; they were once great institutions and establishments, oases razed, children burned into heaps of ash and dust, the renowned conurbations now monuments to mass killing.

Since when did he have anyone to rely on?

"Sure," he replied half-heartedly.

"Nope," she crossed her arms.

"Nope?"

Florence tipped toward him, "You have to promise me."

In the brief moments before what would be his end, the moment he continued to fight against with a forceful, yet pathetic shriek, Etheridge turned to see the fear in her eyes, pressing that the man she looked up to, that every child in the Boiling Isles looked up to, end the fight immediately. "Stop! Stop! He's been through enough, stop!"

She didn't know who she was speaking to, Etheridge never told her his real name or anything about his time alone in the valley of the wretched, so for a moment this stunned her. Belos coaxed everything out of her, tearing things out of her mind with Oracle magic if she gave a half-answer or didn't know. From there all fell apart - he'd managed a memory that she couldn't recall, found the secret to something that could beat Etheridge, a weakness. Etheridge or Xaviel as she now knew, returned. This man she did not recognize, that kept secrets from her - stormed the Castle with rage in his eyes. Scared of this new person, the stranger galavanting as her adopted sibling, she averted her eyes from the ensuing battle but for some reason she felt pain at every hit, wincing and reeling from the strain on the child's face.

This person she didn't recognize, the one she once called Etheridge, no matter the name, despite the newfound abilities in Anti-magic, despite all the lies and facades he might have put on for her, doubt never entered her mind about who his priorities lay with, or for. Etheridge, as always was the case ever since he met her, dropped everything for her and wouldn't think twice about challenging the most powerful and dangerous man on the planet. No, he hadn't dragged her down. He lifted her up — high enough to see what was promised to her, the skies, seas, ground, everything — he was the only reason she could see anything at all.

Florence screamed, "Don't stop now, Etheridge! You promised we'd never abandon each other! You told me when we were nearly killed!"

"Quiet, girl." Belos forced the spheroid to shrink with only a single wave of his free hand.

Why had he come all this way? Everything, everything would have been pointless, he would fail Ishmael, unable to complete his task there was no hope for him. The fate of the Boiling Isles would be left to a bumbling idiot who bent under the slightest of pressure and a grieving shell of a man, blind to everything but the hardest path to his goal. The world's only hope was Luz, the all-loving kind girl who didn't give in to peer pressure when he left her to the twins. But Florence.

Florence resisted the barrier and shouted for Etheridge to escape his reverie. "I promised I'd never let you fight for me ever again, and I'm sorry you had to come all this way!" Her hands turned violet and she spun a circle of the same deep purple, the bubble shaking under whatever spell she used. The Emperor turned his attention to her as she launched a counterspell, rejecting the magical spherule and cracking it. "But we're going home, Etheridge! By the end of this, I swear-! I'll carry you on my back!" Etheridge could see from the furthest away that when his shell dome spell shattered, Belos tripped over himself. That counterspell she cast was never taught in Hexside, nor was it seen anywhere in the Boiling Isles. Even Etheridge understood it wasn't of anti-magic origin either.

Using the opportunity of confusion, Etheridge launched forward in one final assault, conjured icicles and hail, and pointed them at Belos. The Emperor threw his charged attack at the young anti-magic user. But beside him, Florence had thrown off his aim with a tackle. "No!" someone shouted, Etheridge couldn't hear from his left side after the ball of light slipped past his head.

Frozen mist exploded upward as they hit the ground. Florence shielded herself from the rain of iced particles with her mysterious magic. As it cleared up, she searched for her brother among the dismal silhouettes. She saw someone standing. Instinctively she spoke, "Etheridge?!"

"No," the creature stood up higher than her, more lean and jagged than Belos. He lifted up her unconscious brother by one arm, "your savior."

Lilith escaped the ensuing earthquakes on her palisman, as pale as her and the creature on top shaped like a vulture, turning back from the sky to see thunderclouds forming above. The humidity around her was siphoned out, permitting waterless cool to settle in, even the sweat from her skin sapped by the time a monumental mesocyclone had surrounded the castle. Etheridge's nightmarish capabilities appeared to have no limit or cap to how tremendous the natural occurrence was, somehow including something that the climates they never saw or didn't believe could actually happen.

It died down after a while, the supercell dying down to simple rain, not acidic or boiling. Once she returned to the castle, it was flooded. Pools up to her ankles filled each room, ash marks designed the walls and icy remnants floated in the puddles, Lilith attempted to wade through to the stipulated rendezvous until she found the dead bodies. Charred and mangled, some had icicles poking out of their ribs, necks, and heads. She recognized the faces of most, but many more were indistinct, young people who had joined up as fodder, pawns in a chess game.

"How horrible," someone spoke. She glanced up. It was Zadie. "I can't believe this is the work of my people."

"No," she lamented. Her eyes became wet. "This was my fault."

Zadie turned her head to her pensive and teary-eyed mentor, grieving the casualties and losses of trying to take on such a notable vagabond as the Black. "I'm sorry," she uttered. "I should have..."

"Zadie." Lilith responded sharply, "Not now. I will talk with you later, I just..." her voice cracked at the tail-end. "Leave me be, for a while."

The young anti-magic witch looked at her, knee-deep in rainwater, her eyes damp and body shivering in cold. "Okay," she bemoaned. "I'll go."

"Are you sure about this?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty damn sure."

"Once you walk in there, you have no choice," Zadie uttered. "You'll have to rely on Florence from then on."

"There are some things that I know about these people that you don't," Etheridge riposted, "One, Belos doesn't want me dead or imprisoned. He wants to dominate me and take my power for his own. If there's anything that his puritanical cult wants, it's to do what I do, which is to kill indiscriminately. Two..."

They were standing in Florence's empty room. It took a short time for Etheridge to calm down and think critically about the situation. He supposed it was something that Florence would do if he had been kidnapped by someone powerful and inclined to violence.

Zadie had been the one to put her in the situation, which had been the surprising bit. He hadn't expected her to be a spy ingratiating herself just to lure Etheridge into a rage. The Emperor wanted him to be a social pariah to justify locking him up, killing him, anything he wanted. He wanted to reignite the hatred of Anti-magic, likely because of the return of the Harbinger.

"I might not survive this one," he uttered with his deathly grin.

He'd forgiven Zadie. Maybe because of the sudden worldly weight crushing him once again, just like the time when he died, possibly because he needed someone to rely on, or since she had such a change of heart that she was willing to risk exposing herself to death by Belos and death by Etheridge to help Florence. It had nothing to do with any verity that she might have appeared like the last living member of his family, or that quite possibly might be.

"There's only one thing left for me after this," he spoke. "And there's only one thing I can think of to save Florence and myself."

"What is it?"

"Promise me that when you think one of us will die, place your trust in me." Florence proclaimed, "and if you do that, I'll call you my brother. And you can call me your big sister. And... we can help save each other when we're in trouble."

Etheridge placed his hands in front of his head, whimpering. "God, I don't wanna go. But, worst come to worst, he won't kill me."

"What's your plan?"

It took a few moments before he realized how long he waited to hear those words from someone, and how much he wanted to be that person to the two distant loves of his previous life, he said the words, thrusting his hand out, "If you got me, then I got you."

Florence smiled, "I got you."

Etheridge's tenor echoed throughout the castle, the narrows and passageways of the heart of the titan. As Zadie snuck the catatonic Florence past the few remaining checkpoints, they headed toward Bonesborough what would be their final hope of staying alive.

A while ago when I was young

I heard a song and heard it sung

Bye, bye, blackbird

I don't know why it makes me sad

A happy song should make me glad

Bye, bye, blackbird