--=-Chapter 35: Don't Play The Victim--=-

"I did what I had to!" Denis shouted. It was loud enough that it focused my mind back to the moment.

"Well, if he's right and more demons come hunting us, I hope you're as quick to volunteer to face them," Alice replied

"I was protecting you, your sister, all of you," He said, sounding dejected. "Did you even notice it was protecting a demon?"

"And was about to show us why when you decided you alone were qualified to decide what to do."

"Oh sure, I'm not a doctor, so I couldn't possibly be qualified to-"

"Don't play the victim. We all decided to give Sam a chance. You were scared and thought you could ignore how the rest of us felt."

"Nobody cares about your feelings. You can't let things like that around people you care about. It's already protecting its pets from us. What if Nia had gone in there when she was looking for you? Why are you guys ok with this? It's like you've all lost your minds."

"Stop saying you're protecting me. He protected me." Nia shouted. My eyes fluttered open, and I saw her wielding the comic at Denis like a weapon. We were back in the Surgery waiting room.

"God help me, kid, you weren't even there. You didn't see it crouching to attack," Denis said, sounding exasperated.

"Denis, Come on," Anderson said. "Don't try rewriting history; the rest of us were there. Sure, he was blocking the door, but he wasn't about to attack. Alice is right; he was just reaching for his notebook,"

"I'm so glad you can cling to your naivety at my expense," Denis grumbled bitterly.

I heard Nia softly ask, "Is he going to die?" but I didn't hear the answer before my eyes closed, and I lost track of things for a bit.

Personally, I hoped it would be soon. My limbs and chest felt heavy, and my thoughts were disjointed. The pain was still there, but that only occasionally felt important.

"I want to talk to him alone for a second." I heard Nia say after a minute.

"Nia?" Alice asked.

"He... he was there when dad died. I just need to talk to him."

"Ok, Hun," Alice said. "Just keep an eye on him; make sure he keeps breathing. If his breathing slows or stops, come and let us know right away, alright?

"Oh, come on, you're not really allowing that. You guys, that thing could be anything. You're all just accepting this sob story of this not being its real body? It's clearly part of all this."

"Give it a rest, Denis. Even if that were true, he's clearly not in a position to do anything about it now. "

Moments or hours passed, and I heard Nia crying softly and whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This is my fault."

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Aw, what a poor kid to have lost her puppy. Wait, am I her puppy? No, I was Oberon, king of – dogs or something. I knew that didn't sound right, but I was pretty out of it.

"Is the stuff in this comic really true?" she asked. My mind was too scattered to answer, even if I could speak. Even opening my eyes was too much effort. At least, I was pretty sure they were still closed.

"Thank you for saving me," she said quietly.

She was such an odd kid. She seemed different every time I turned around.

"Oberon?" Nia asked. Oops, I'd zoned out. I was feeling pretty zone-y.

"I need to know something," she said, holding up the comic I'd made. She pointed to a few panels toward the end of the booklet. "Will I really remember everything?"

One of the things Sori and I talked about while making the comic was the trauma monsters. According to Sori, Crowseph was right about how the creatures were made. Traumatic memories—such as slowly being torn to ribbons by insane crows—would splinter from a person's memory crystal, and a new being would coalesce around it. Then again, two minutes later, he said they came from another dimension, so I'd be skeptical if his word was all I had to go on. Well, more skeptical.

The fact that Crowseph was the other source shouldn't help Sori's case, considering they were a murderous lunatic, except that they had apparently succeeded in merging multiple people into their flock.

The theory also fit my own observations to an extent. At least, I knew of two monsters that had appeared in locations where traumas had occurred. Alice's patient was likely traumatized at the start of the loop—when he woke up during surgery and apparently felt everything. A giant spider spawned in the vents of the operating room at almost the same moment.

The creature in the back of the patrol car, Tickles, could easily have any number of causes. Between the near miss of the vortex, the crash and loss of Titus, the apocalypse, and especially Titus's severed arm that she'd had been clutching, Nia had any number of things to be traumatized over.

The kid had faced a lot in a brief window. We all had. If Sori and Crowseph were right about where the monsters were coming from, then that patrol car was exactly where I'd expect to find one.

Then again, it was the end of the world. Who hadn't been traumatized at this point? It could still be nothing more than correlation. If they were related to trauma, we seemed to be short more than a few monsters.

Even if traumas did spawn monsters, it didn't mean that it would be possible to reconnect with those memories, let alone that it was a good idea. It just fit Sori's theory on what happened to Crowseph.

A flock of crows—panicking from the weird vortex—knock Joe off a ledge or kill him some other way, but probably not by attacking. The next day, a creature resembling a monstrous crow or flock of crows was spawned. It killed the man and harvested his memory crystal, gaining his memories and identity. The man respawns, twisted and tormented by the experience. He decides that if he has to feel this pain, so do others. It was the only way they'd ever understand the world as he saw it. Possessed, he split his mind among that original flock of crows, merging with them. Then, he began using his swarm to terrorize and kill people. When his victims spawned trauma monsters of their own, he was able to use the memory crystals as a bridge to bring their minds into his flock.

Sori had speculated that Alice and Jessica could avoid being forced into the collective in a few ways. The first was the one that Crowseph had mentioned in our bargaining. If I found the Shadow and somehow used it to remove their memory crystals, they'd forget everything. I wanted to dismiss the memory loss as unimportant since they remembered so little. Unfortunately, the way they both acted toward me had to be because of some broken memories from past loops. They remembered some, even if it was limited and unreliable. So, if I managed it, they'd lose a portion of who they'd become.

Even with the cost, it was likely still preferable to Sori's next idea. He said Alice and Jessica could kill the demons and intentionally consume the memory crystal.

He'd said. "They just have to hold it close to their brain for a minute and not reject their own memory. If you fight your past, you'll repeat it."

"Yeah, why wouldn't they want to remember being scourged to death by beaks and talons?" I'd replied, remembering how Nia had responded when I'd tried to hand her Tickles's memory crystal. She'd panicked, and it made sense why. You don't get past trauma by wanting to or even needing to. I worried that trying to reintegrate their traumas with the rest of their memories could leave them just as trapped by their past as Crowseph wanted.

This was what Nia was asking me about. She gestured to a portion of the comic with a woman holding a crystal to her forehead while a storm raged around her and in her chest. Tears streamed down the woman's face as she knelt, trembling, lines representing shaking surrounded her. But the last panel had the woman with a thought bubble containing a tear-off calendar with '74' written on it. Scattered around her were torn-off dates with lower numbers. Her speech bubble just said, "I remember."

According to Sori, if they could accept their traumas—come to peace with that pain—they would have access to lost memories from previous loops. If the risk wasn't so high, it would be a significant prize. If Jessica and Alice's need wasn't so great, I wouldn't have even included it as an option. Not least of which was that my source was Sori.

I had zoned out again, and Nia was studying the comic. This wasn't for her, and I gently closed a paw on the comic and took the book from her hands. Then I patted her on the head, slid the comic beneath my pillow, and laid down on it. That used up the last of my strength, my eyes closed, and consciousness finally escaped me.

I wonder if that's why she had horns.