I understand why Kikito had a hard time describing these experiences: it mirrors a certain psychedelic experience Mirana and I shared in college. Drugs like that are impossible to find but she had her ways. Well, has, still.

Kikito shows the sights he's seen and I know I'm lucky not having to see this alone. "Is this happening right now?" I ask.

He shrugs and says, "Who can say but I'd say probably. I have the worst feeling that we're not seeing into any past or future here."

"Then come on. If there's a hope of cleaning up this mess this is it."

We wander to the Smithsonian. I'm able to reach out from within our dimension and draw the energy out. It releases its tether to the gemstone and comes to me, a bright light against the backdrop of all the red fire. It embraces me like a hot shower over the skin, sinking in and rejoicing with the rest of us. It changes me and doesn't as the rest of the remains. We find Inbetween in each spot, drawing the remains out to me.

By the time we reach the last one in the desert I'm torn between devasting heartbreak and an apathy settling in from somewhere. Inbetween? Me? The difference blurs. I can't tell which of us is sad and which is going through the motions to get this over with. I procedurally fuse with this piece while Kikito stares off into the carnage.

"Why is no one doing anything about this?" Kikito asks. "The gods, not the people, obviously."

"Mirana said Death is trying to slow it down."

"What about the others? Dark mentioned at least a few others and where are they? Wouldn't the celeste intervening be worth it?"

"It's not our place," I say and Kikito shoots a bewildered gaze to me, "I don't know where that came from."

He looks at me for a minute and says, "If you're done we should be going. I don't want to look at this anymore."

I can't think of anything to say so I nod. What I said didn't make sense to me either. Sounds exactly to me like it is something that's their place to do something about. We didn't kill anyone.

We make our way back to the home rip. I see tethers linking us to us, bright blue and warm. We return to the physical bodies that never left to Mirana and Dark, linked closely in conversation until they notice us.

"That was fast. Did you find them all?" Mirana asks. Dark looks at me like he already knows. His fur bristles and I have a apprehension of him I hadn't possessed before. Mirana casually steps in between us, beckoning Kikito to join her.

Stolen novel; please report.

"Yeah we didn't have any problems," I say.

"It's okay Mirana," Dark says with a careful tenderness. She looks at him pointedly before stepping away to his side.

Dark comes close to tower above me, antlers reaching high into the air in a gnarled spider's web of fractals not unlike the wormholes we were running around in. From a centered point in the fractals a light emerges, catching like blue fire, and growing bigger and brighter than any of the other pieces. My eyes burn the longer I look.

"We get few choices in existence, fewer the more power you hold. I'm sorry my choice took away any you have, Kelvin," Dark says, but the name doesn't feel right. Neither does my deadname, nor Inbetween or Life. I've looked for identity my whole life but at least I always felt like I had one.

I reach out to the light when the Kobus run out of the cave. Smiles wiped from their faces, they drift high and frantic into the trees with the alarmed birds as Dark jerks his head to look up at them. They don’t leave like the flighted creatures do, instead hovering above as their Queen comes back out, looking to Dark with a comical frown. The ground lightly trembles but it’s getting louder by the second.

“Maybe we should have let you rush us, Kik,” I joke.

“You’re not saying it’s your cave critter?” Mirana asks.

“I don’t know if it’d be worse to be wrong or right.”

The light in Dark’s antlers brightens. He brushes past us towards the direction of the turbulence. “Go on to Underearth. If we can’t kill it we can hold it off,” Dark says.

“No way,” Mirana says, rushing towards him, “how would leaving you work for any of us? We can’t navigate without you!”

“That’s not true. Kelvin will always know where to go. The Kobus and I can handle ourselves, but that job is harder when I need to worry about you.”

They stare at each other for a minute, the rumbling getting wilder, Kobus linking together glowing green chains of binding light, and then she finally turns to us. She leaves Dark without another word.

“How will we find each other?” I ask him.

"I'll find you. Inbetween keeps us linked." The blue light in his antlers twitches in response. The entrance to the Grove overlooking us darkens, a shadowed mounds rises over the hill. A much larger form stands behind it on three shadowed legs. Both emit a cacaphony of clicks.

The smaller mound breaks apart revealing that it's comprised of small creatures piled on top of each other. They rush down the hills, provoking more animals into the air with hurried cries.

We need to leave, but I hesitate with the rest, watching the Kobus flank in front of their corner of the Grove. The Queen is amongst them lost in the sea of fungal green lights. They break the treeline, revealing to be a bunch of tiny versions of the cave critter's original form: tiny millipede-like animals with small thick tongues flopping around the place, pale yellow and eyeless. One's tongue finds a Kobu and wraps around its body, crushing it into two pieces of green fleshy goop in a moment. It greedily laps at the remains until nothing is left and moves on to another. Others are meeting the same fate while other Kobus float above to miss them and head for the large mound on the hill. Some are still swatted out of the air like flies to a frog's tongue, swallowed whole in an instant.

The Queen hops onto Dark's back and they burst past the fight to get ahead. Mirana grabs my arm to pull me back to them and cups my face. I realize I have tears.

"We have to go," she says.

"I know, I just..."

"It's not our place," Kikito says. He seems to regret the stab but doesn't apologize. With a bit of focus I open up a spot that feels like Underearth and pull us through it to the other side.