"Wakey wakey, eggs are bakey!" The boy's eyes immediately shot open, filled with the early panic of a mind rife with the discombobulated confusion of having been suddenly awoken. His newly unlidded eyes were greeted by that vast empty night sky and a new addition to his early waking routines: a chipper excitable voice. "Well, that's a lie. There aren't any eggs being baked. I mean, obviously, if I had some eggs, I certainly would be baking them, but… you know, we're here. Turns out chickens don't really go through the same thing we humans do." It was only now truly settling in what he had succumbed himself to by choosing to follow this glib woman those many hours ago.

The Wine, that self-proclaimed 'Cassidy' continued with an ever-present fervour that the boy was certain only she could possibly have. And even though her voice could singularly carry five conversations simultaneously on her lonesome, she eventually did silence when the boy's expected scoff and snarky remark never came.

The boy, still resting in the same position he had awoken in, stared up at that daunting black above, that eternal all-consuming void, and then a fat, blubbering walrus head interjected into his sight. "Hey Kid, you alright?" Once again, the boy didn't respond, didn't so much as flinch or adjust a single muscle. The only indicator that he wasn't dead were those wide still panicked eyes. "Hey, Kid, you're starting to freak me out. Are you still alive? You didn't die again, did you?" The Wine gave the resting boy an uncertain, curious poke, and as soon as those fat fleshy fingers pressed into the boy's side, he immediately jolted upright. The sudden intense movement called a yell out from the Wine, who jumped back from the sudden action "Jesus Kid! Don't scare me like that. What the hell!?"

The boy quickly scanned his environment, and upon seeing nothing more than his travel companion and the vastness of the rolling desert dunes, he brought his attention back to that previously mentioned companion with a scowl. "Sleep paralysis." As expected at this point, the boy's answer was curt, unemotive, and severe.

The Wine on her part morphed into a concerned curiosity. "That's a real thing? I thought that was just a gimmick for like horror movies and stuff." The boy didn't deign to supply the Wine's question with a response; he simply stood upright and began patting away the bone sands that clung to his clothes. She continued to watch the boy perform his routine, a little worry still colouring her visage. "Is that something that happens a lot?"

Once more, the boy did not answer, "We should probably get going." Without another word, the boy gripped his chain with both hands, looped it above his shoulder and began the slow, arduous process of dragging his chained mass across the desert.

The Wine was quick to accept the dismissal for what it was and happily followed step with the child, "Good idea! We don't want to be losing precious daylight!"

The boy gave an exhaustive sigh; he hadn't been awake long enough to deal with this nonsense. "There's no such thing as daylight." He readily responded without glancing at his companion. For the most part, the boy kept his focus entirely forward, only the barest of attention given to the Wine and the rest entirely dedicated to that next step. His muscles were still aching in protest of the heavy burden, agonizing over the sharp chain that dug into his shoulder with every pull, but none of that struggle made it to his face, which was as flat and stalwart as always.

"There you go disbelieving again. If there was no such thing as daylight, then how do you explain this!" Suddenly a small familiar photograph of a happy family was shoved into his face. It hadn't really been a detail he took in the first time he saw it, but the photo was, in fact, taken in the day.

The boy remained unconvinced. "That photo wasn't taken here, though, now was it?"

The Wine was unaffected by the boy's combative pessimism, and she cheerily pushed forward. "Well, no, but it's proof that there is in fact daylight somewhere out there, and we wouldn't want to be losing it." She then laughed a little to herself, "Especially if it is as elusively rare as this. Imagine how many people must have wasted precious daylight for us to get a night as long as this! There's no daylight left!"

The statement was so nonsensically outrageous that it actually drew a small disbelieving snort from the typically mirthless child. "Whatever you say Wine."

The Wine quickly corrected with the ease of practice borne of this familiar charade "Cassidy."

Once again, the boy could do naught more than return an exhaustive sigh. "You can't just make up a random name for yourself."

"First of all, I most certainly can make up a random name for myself. Secondly, it's not a random name; it's my name. It's right there on the photograph!" Once again, that simple square of laminate paper was shoved into the boy's face.

The boy rolled his eyes at the woman's flamboyant protests. "And how do you know that's your name? By your logic, any of the names there could be you. How do you know your name isn't Henry?"

The Wine laughed at the joke, but then she saw how stone serious the Kid's face was. The question came from him with absolute seriousness. The question appeared to have been asked with the utmost innocence of child-like curiosity, which seemed very odd coming from the child despite the fact that he was precisely that.

"Because Cassidy is the only girl's name there, obviously."

The boy simply deadpanned back. "Maybe your parents were trying to break trends."

The Wine was actually halted in her tracks at that response. The boy looked at the Wine with blank curious eyes, seemingly genuinely believing his theory. She was momentarily stunned until she saw his lip's ever so faintly quirk. "Oh, my God! Did you just make a joke!? I knew you were warming up to me." The boy didn't respond, but his smirk fully settled in, and the two returned to their marching.

The two continued on with their agonizingly slow and painfully long trek through the desert. The whole time continuously filled with the Wine's endless chatter, and as they travelled on longer, the boy too slowly interjected with his own thoughts more and more often.

Eventually, the Wine couldn't take it anymore. "Okay, seriously! I thought I was supposed to be the fat, out-of-weight old lady! Aren't you a spry young kid? Aren't you supposed to be filled with boundless energy?! Why are we walking so slow!?"

At first, the boy didn't answer, slowly heaving a few more painful steps forward, each time pulling against the heavy tension of his chain, tugging him back. "Let's… see you… drag…. Around… a fifty-eight… pound weight… wrapped in… like… forty pounds… of chain." Each word was painfully exhaled in line with each pull of his unbearable burden. The boy didn't wait for a response and simply continued on, dedicating most of his attention to that one next step; he just needed to focus on one more step.

The Wine, on her part, thought over what the boy had said. She watched him for a little while, slowly eke out a couple more inches forward, slowly trudging along. Then she finally came to a decision, simply replying "Okay."

Before he even knew it, the boy was summarily plucked up off the ground and thrown over the Wine so that both his legs were hanging around her either shoulder. As he was yanked up, the boy had let a high-pitched squeak, and he cried out, "What are you doing!?"

The Wine steadied the boy by holding his legs with one of her large blubbery mitts and moving over to pick up his heavy chained mass with the other. "It's called a piggyback ride."

"But why!?" The boy protested, his voice squeaky and young; any vestige of the pessimistic grizzled fighter was nowhere to be seen.

"You wanted to see if I could do better carrying all this weight, well here you go!" and with that, she broke off into a great thunderous sprint. Each powerful bound of her thick legs carried the two into a miniature flight before crashing down to the sands and jumping again. The boy tried to protest but to no avail as he clung tightly around the woman's head to stop himself from falling. Though his small arms pressed against her nose awkwardly and partially covered her eyes from sight, she did not slow down; in fact, she merely picked up her pace, shooting across the desert.

The loose bit of chain connecting the child to his burden was flapping wildly in their self-created wind and occasionally slammed harshly against his shins until his leg was battered raw "Stop! Stop! Cassidy stop!" Cassidy immediately stopped dead in her tracks. "It hurts."

Only then did Cassidy notice the loose chain resting comfortably against his leg, the pant there shorn apart. Still stunned by what she heard, Cassidy could only answer mutely, "Oh, sorry Kid." She let the boy down and stared at him idly before a massive face-splitting grin carved through her swollen head.

The boy scowled at Cassidy, never happy when she was smiling. "What?"

Cassidy simply smiled wider "Nothing. Nothing at all." Cassidy looked down at her arm, still holding on to the chained mass, before turning back to the boy. "You can walk on your own, but I should hold on to this. We'll make way more progress that way."

The boy deepened his scowl as he thought through her proposal and then let out an annoyed grunt. "Fine, but you have to drop it before we get to a town."

Cassidy looked down at her sour travel companion and swore that if he still had the blood to do it, he would have been profusely blushing. "Sure thing, Kid."

Their journey pushed on much faster after that point, easily covering twice as much ground in half the time. That still left the two trapped alone in an empty desert with only each other for companionship for an uncountable amount of time. Though, as time is always wont to do, it eventually came to an end, and the two found themselves at yet another derelict town of impossible obsidian architecture. Though this town was noticeably different. The usual barricaded doors and windows had all been blown apart, shattered glass particulates glimmered across the sandy roads. Even through these ruined conglomerations of ancient buildings, old and crumbling as they were, it was easy to see that this place had been utterly ravaged by far more than just time. The buildings sunken and crumbled; they were more glorified piles of detritus than any sort of identifiable construct. There were certainly no lights and, even more concerningly, no glimmers of those stalking eyes from betwixt cracked foundations. This town, if it could even still be called such a thing, was wholly desolate. Even strangest of all were the roads. There was no sand; instead, the entire town was carpeted in a thick ebony black glass.

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The boy was on guard, his hand gripped tightly around his watering can, ready for combat at a moment's notice. The ever-frivolous Cassidy seemed totally unaffected by the suspenseful atmosphere "Whelp." She nonchalantly proclaimed with a heavy pop on the p, "I guess we're not going to find any clues around here."

There was a brief desire to stay in the town, to search through the desired rubble, to wait at its center for a denizen to reveal itself from behind a shadowed alley. It was a universally accepted fact that if there were four sets of connected walls, then at least one morose denizen surrendering themselves to eternal stagnation would hide within it. It was so expected that to come across a set of ruins which did not hide the eyes of the sullen and depressed was paradoxically more worrying than not. It, too, was quite the odd sensation to arrive in a town, a community, a place of gathering, and for the only viable reaction was to just continue on as you were because the place truly had absolutely nothing to offer. It had been turned into a long-abandoned warzone; until now, it was just another part of the empty desert.

With nothing better to do, the two could only follow their last given heading and keep moving northwest until they found another hopefully livelier town, relatively lively at least. So onwards they marched. No day ever came, but they had to stop for rest several times to recoup their worn bodies and spirits, or at least the boy's spirit; Cassidy seemed unshakable no matter how far out the horizon stretched.

When they finally arrived at another town, they were very worryingly met once again with razed desolation, met once again with the familiar desert sand replaced by that hard blackened glass. It seemed clearer somehow to see the violence implied in the wake of what once was. The destroyed walls and shattered glass were clearly not happenstantial. Craters littered all about the place. It looked almost as if the hand of God descended to rip this town's residents out of their homes, taken to some unknowable somewhere.

With nothing to give, the two could do nothing but abandon the ebony waste and march on once more, hopefully, the next town would stand stronger. Clearly, this was a mistake, as these lands are no place for hope.

Many cycles of endless marching and rest passed, and finally, finally, they arrived at their next town. The buildings had been desecrated into oblivion, just like the two before, but this town was not empty. The people here still lived, no matter how fleeting that fact was. The entire town's population had been gathered and corralled to the open square plaza. Each animalistically corrupt denizen knelt side by side with thick cotton bags over their heads. At the end of the line, a creature stood. It appeared as a man emaciated and weak, its ribs easily countable, and its skin leathery and pitch black. The creature's head was near impossible to see as seven heavenly white wings rose out of its cranium like a massive blossoming corona. Just below those wings was a simple white blindfold, the cloth of which was ripped apart to allow an angry red eye to peer through.

The creature, the Judge, for what else could it be, casually walked along the filed line of pitiable victims dragging its frail hand through their bodies. The Judge's hand moved straight, undeterred by the physicality of flesh in its way. With each person passed, the hand would appear heavier with the added weight of some little grey ethereal thing. With each person passed, that person's chain would be unceremoniously severed, and they would drop to the unforgiving sands. Those limp bodies would rest for but a few seconds before the bleached sands would begin to writhe and shake with a hungry life that slowly sank the lifeless forms deep into the desert's bowels. The whole thing was a silent affair, the Judge did not speak, and the blinded victims did not protest. The entire process was smooth and clean with the ease of habitual, refined repetition.

From the mouth of the town, Cassidy and the boy watched the scene unfurl before them with absolute horror. For the first time since the two met, Cassidy dared not to utter a word, too fear stricken of being noticed. Cassidy slowly backed away, fighting between her want to run as fast as possible and to be as still and unnoticeable as possible. As she backed away, the boy stood frozen at the sight before him, pondering deeply over its horrors. The boy steeled his will, took his chained mass out of Cassidy's arms, and slowly unravelled the chain. Cassidy stared wide-eyed at the boy and whispered harshly with a seething panic. "What are you doing Kid!"

The boy did not slow or stir from his task of unravelling his chain. "Those people might know where I can find some water. I'm not going to wait for a fourth town. I'm not afraid of one measly Judge."

Cassidy's eyes blew up to hysteric saucers. "Are you insane! That thing isn't just some Judge; it has seven wings. It's damning people in droves. And look at them! They're not even resisting; they've totally given up!"

The boy did not answer until he had fully unravelled his chain that dropped loosely to the ground. The boy now held gingerly in his embrace a pallid corpse. It was a seemingly identical clone of himself, its eyes glassy, skin frigid, and its chest punctured by that incredibly long chain. "Then you can run away if you want." The boy gently let the corpse down, resting it peacefully on the desert floor. He carefully shuffled his chains out of the way of the corpse and reverently swept any dust and sand off of the still body. The boy rose up and gave a moment to gaze at his mirror corpse. He held a moment of silence and then tightened his hold of his watering can. "You call yourself a dreamer, but that's all it will ever be if you aren't willing to fight for that thing you believe in." The boy turned around, not even waiting for a response, and went deeper into the town.

Any thoughts of a surprise ambush were immediately thrown away when the Judge stopped in its tracks and jolted its head up to the boy before he even started getting close. Its ravenous red eye narrowed at the weight of the boy's can and the length of his chain. The Judge took a step forward and focused on the boy leaving his line of executions unfinished "Have thou come for judgment?"

The boy tightened his hold on his watering can, his knuckles almost whitening. "I'm looking for water."

The Judge smiled at the young boy. "There are many a great thing one can find past the pearl gates of heaven, though only those who are good and right may be granted to douse thine eyes in its glory." The Judge threw its arm out in a wide embrace. "Be thankful, child, for the blessing of God has descended upon thee tonight. I have been sent down from the pure clouds to take the hands of the good and kind in my own and walk them back into heaven's embrace with me." The Judge slowly walked toward the boy at a sedate pace, and he, too, approached the Judge. "Come to me. Let this angel share your love, and we all shall rapture into purity."

The two now stood directly before one another, and Angel presented his hand, open palm to the sky. The boy answered the Judge's silent askance and clasped his free hand upon the creature. As they held hands, Angel's one visible eye furrowed in confusion. "You… are not a good child. I'm afraid I must deem thee inadequate for the milk and honey of God. "I will not take thee to heaven."

The boy tightened his grip on Angel and pulled him closer. "Then go to hell." He shoved his watering can into the chest of the Judge, and a torrential geyser of inky liquid exploded into and through it.

The blast was so powerful and unerring in its path that it did not even push Angel back; it merely carved straight through. The Judge numbly glanced down at the gaping wound in its chest. "Ah, you have attacked me." It could not find any better words at first. Angel's hand was still amicably held in the boy's, and it stared in bafflement at its open wound. "God is perfect and loving in all things, and he bore me as a vassal of that love." Angel then looked up so that its one demonic red eye gazed into that of the boy. "But God too is a parent, and though it pains him, he must occasionally punish his children for how else shall they learn to love as he loves." Angel held firm to the boy's hand. "As his beacon, his voice of purity, I must echo his teachings." The boy winced as Angel held so tightly to his hand that he began to hear the cracking of bone. "Please keep in mind that I do this to you out of love. But I must teach the impudent child. An eye for an eye, a hand for a hand, and so shall there be a sin for a sin."

The Judge yanked its hand back, and the boy's arm easily came with it, shearing off at the shoulder. Before the pain could even register through his mind, Angel kicked the boy squarely in the chest, and he was sent rocketing backwards straight through a pile of ebony rubble. Angel did not wait for the sinful child to rise and immediately launched towards the fallen foe but instead crashed into a miraculous white wall that sprouted from nowhere.

"Do you have a death wish Kid!?"Cassidy angrily shouted to the boy, who freed himself from the rubble. In between her ivory tusk, Cassidy held the cork to her chained bottle of wine, and she quickly waved the tool about to splash over the child and heal his wounds.

The boy looked over at his rapidly regrowing arm and flexed his muscles to test the new limb. "It's a little stronger than I was expecting."

Cassidy poured a generous amount of white wine into the barrier holding back their enemy, and shouted back, "You think?"

Angel gave a few testing strikes at the white barrier but, with no apparent progress, stopped. Then the wings atop his head flexed upwards and began to shine in a holy light. Suddenly the night was eclipsed into brilliant light as a ball of pure iridescent energy coalesced at the tip of the Judge's wings. Cassidy gulped heavily. "Can we run now?" The Judge flapped its wings, and the ball of cruel divinity exploded forward, piercing straight through the white barrier. Both Cassidy and the child leapt as far out of the way as possible. Still, when the ball struck the ground, its concussive eruption effortlessly encapsulated them, smashing them harshly against the ground. Instead of falling into a soft cushioning dune, the two collided painfully into a boiling glass floor. The incredible heat of the liquid land immediately grafted it onto the two victims wailing in agony.

Cassidy immediately leapt away and back onto the sand, dousing herself in white healing light and throwing an equal share towards her partner. The boy stood his ground and fired out a giant tidal wave of black liquid that cooled the glass and hardened it into solid ground. The wave shot towards the Judge, but with the simple flap of a pair of glowing wings, the liquid evaporated into a scorching steam.

Angel leapt towards the boy with such incredible speed he hardly even saw it happen. Cassidy just about managed to spawn another snowy shield, but Angel's glowing wing still cut through it like butter and chopped the boy clean at the knees. An instant healing wave from Cassidy regrew his legs, and he kicked off just in time to dodge the other swinging wing. Cassidy layered multiple walls of white wine just to give the two a slight reprieve. "Try not to lose too many limbs! Those things aren't cheap you know!"

"I'm trying my best!" The usually stoic child couldn't hold back the waver of panic in his voice. He poured out half his watering can, and a veritable ocean flooded from the nothingness. The angry waves of inky darkness ploughed forth with unrelenting force; the black glass was torn from the ground, the rubble of the desecrated ruins was lifted as if paper and an inky river of bad karma carved itself into the geography of this world. The boy did not stop; fueled by rage and fear, he poured more karma into the assault, increasing the wrathful current of the river. Nothing could be heard except for the screeching current of crashing waves. Cassidy took the reprieve to run over to her companion and held him tightly, though still, he did not relent in fueling his attack. He doubled down even more in his attack, and the boy let loose every last drop of his karma into this explosive attack. Then, the river was split in two.

Angel stood dry and unmarred as the river parted before it. Every ounce of potential power that the boy could muster didn't leave so much as a scratch on the seven-winged Judge. The Judge slowly walked through the alley formed by the parting sea, and then the boy knew fear. He found himself paralyzed in terror by his enemy's sheer scale of power; he didn't even know that sort of power was possible.

The boy was broken out of his paralysis when he was shaken by Cassidy. She took a small plastic funnel from her dress pockets and aggressively poured her good karma into the boy's watering can. "You need to run. You got that Kid? Don't look back, don't think about anything but getting the hell out of here as fast as you can!"

The boy stiffly looked up to his friend "Cassidy… no."

Once she finished emptying her wine bottle, she hugged the child as tightly as she could. "Sorry Kid." She kissed him on the temple and started walking to her doom.

The boy stood frozen, unable to act. He watched as Cassidy marched to her own funeral. He looked down at his watering can filled to the brim with good karma and pondered fighting the unstoppable Judge. If he and Cassidy worked together, they could push back Angel, they could create just enough of a distraction to escape. It would be risky, but it would be worth it. He just needed to be brave enough to dive into that unknown.

He ran away.