Donner ground his teeth, watching through her eyes as another fall afternoon passed them by. The leaves were all changed and a formation of geese flew overhead.

“How long will I be here?” He wasn’t looking for an answer and she didn’t have one to give. “How many months will pass while I remain in the mind of a child?”

“Hey! My mind is interesting!”

Yes, it was interesting. Darker than his own he suspected and for reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom. Nothing about it made sense. Some parts rang ancient and there were those locked places, so tightly secured. He had no desire to enter them, to see what was hidden when everything else was exposed. There was a sense of dread attached to each door. They were found in unexpected places, he’d come across them suddenly and walk away as soon as he realized what he’d stumbled upon, and it was strange that she’d not mentioned them yet.

Since becoming aware of her own mind Luna wandered in search of interesting things, yet these doors eluded her. She found posed bones and empty rooms, but not those doors. Never those doors. The way he could find them so often and herself not once had gone beyond coincidental but he couldn’t think how it would be purposely done, so he tried to ignore it.

There wasn’t much else to do. Collaborating with her on the OGGG plan was a time waster that he found himself more invested in than he meant to be; he didn’t blame himself for it, her thoughts were consumed with ideas on the subject.

Honestly, he didn’t understand her intense dislike of her cousin. The girl was a porker and snobby, true, and when he thought of it he may have done the same things she was doing now so never mind, he got it, but that didn’t mean he had to join in the one-sided, childish battle so why was he giving instructions?

Returned home from school, Georgia was in her bedroom with the nail polish. She’d picked off the paint during the day so that when she returned her hands were horrific. He wasn’t one to care about appearances other than his own, but the combination of dirt, marker, and peeling on her fat fingers was nauseating.

“Spill it.”

“How?”

“Think of it happening. Picture the little jar tipping over and all the gold running onto the carpet,” because of course, she sat on the carpet. White and fluffy soon to be marred by gelling polish.

Luna required little instruction when it came to using her innate power. A brief description of the process was enough and anything else was overcomplicating.

Moments later Georgia was frantically trying to clean up the mess.

“Wow,” Luna walked into the room, eliciting a glare from her kindergarten cousin. “Gold all over the floor. Too bad. It’s good you have a lot of other gold nail polishes left.”

Compared to Georgia, Luna was a wraith. One of blonde curls and crystal blue. The other a black cat, as he found she thought of herself sometimes, eyes electric. Skinny as a stick, and if her memories of her mother, ‘Pink’, were any indication then she would never be tall.

Georgia’s sole hope was to take after her mother and more evenly distribute as she went vertical.

The point was that Georgie Porgie was bigger and stronger than Luna, so when the beast reached out and pushed, Luna tumbled for real. The chain of events was as tragic as could be. Head hit the metal frame of the bed and there they were, back on the bridge with the thing she called Snowman.

“Guess what, Snowman?”

He wasn’t surprised by their sudden appearance and smiled at the child. He preferred to behave as if her companion didn’t exist.

Donner left them as he supposed he would always do because something about that man made him uncomfortable. It felt as if he was alone in a room with a spider and his bare hands were all he had to kill it with. Logically he knew it could do no harm, but spiders were an abomination and that man was somehow worse. As he thought of it, he had similar feelings about Luna, especially in the earliest moments of capture, but even then it paled in comparison to the white-haired abhorrence. His existence was tolerated because there was nothing to be done about him.

This afterlife was a strange enough place that he could forget the presence of the other two if he walked far enough, though it seemed to require that he go further each time. It was as disturbing as Luna’s mind but for different reasons. If her mind was chaos then this was peace and he found he preferred the insanity to the unending quiet.

As far as he could tell, this wasn’t meant to be a stopping point. She thought of speaking with Snowman often enough that he understood the bridge about as well as she did, which wasn’t saying much. The thing wasn’t supposed to be open to visitors. Somehow, and he had no idea how, the three of them were able to break free of the programming that pushed the dead to walk into whatever came next and he would never say it, not even to himself, but...

The fact that he didn’t know was terrifying and he would never make that journey. He would never live in the fear of the unknown again; it was an oath taken decades ago and he would uphold it.

He was going to conquer death and rule the world.

Of course, when he thought of it like that it sounded painfully childish, but that was unavoidable. He was a child when he declared it and that single-minded determination carried him this far, brought him out of a hidden back room and into a world he had no business being in. A world that did not accept him unless he played the part they were expecting to see.

He’d learned more since then, that while fear was a weapon, especially when wielded in excess by inexperienced hands, it could also be used effectively outside the spotlight. He'd further learned fear, once cast, was a hard spell to break; it took him years to convince the old fools on the board that he was harmless, that the deaths and maiming were merely the result of an extreme release of repressed power.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

In truth, they were right to be wary and he was so close to running them out of their cushioned seats until that girl came along and ruined it all. Ruined him.

If Luna’s mind was a mess then her’s was a trap and he had to blame himself because he didn’t even stop to think before entering and he still couldn’t find a reason for that thoughtless decision. The answers she offered were one thing, yes, she had uncanny knowledge about himself and his plans, but that wasn’t enough to justify searching her head. He wasn’t even in a particularly desperate situation; things weren’t progressing as quickly as he would have liked, but he was a patient man, and rushing never did him any favors.

Why had that lesson flown out the window with her arrival? He'd known her for all of ten days and he should have been suspicious when she offered herself, yet there he was. Trust was not something to give so easily and he knew that, but he did it anyway.

The most reasonable explanation was that she’d cast a spell of her own and whenever he found her again she would pay for all of it, but before that, he had to get out of Luna’s mind and into a body and he had no idea if his own would be usable but they would find out one way or another.

His simpleton followers, no doubt dithering and dispersing in his absence, would leave the body where it lay and run for the hills, assuming they knew he'd died. They were no crack team of investigators, most of them muscle and the others funding, each power-hungry and too stupid to realize they would never have the ability to hold onto it even if they somehow achieved it.

He knew their thoughts, how they silently planned to overthrow him at the first sign of weakness, but now he was dead and they would fall apart. Without a leader they were nothing. The rich ones would go back to using their money for petty favors and the dense strength would return to mediocre desk jobs with no cool club meetings in the evening to look forward to.

Imbecils.

The revolution was not built on the intelligence of the few, rather the stupidity of the several and the laziness of the majority. A central leader with no qualms about breaking promises and he kept the ranks small, separated for compartmentalization purposes. No group knew what the rest were doing, small tasks were assigned as he deemed fit and when the puzzle pieces came together the result was spectacular.

Or it would have been if he’d not made the biggest mistake of his life which he now had to find a way to rectify, but with each passing day, he grew more resigned to the reality of his situation. There was little he could do. Information was severely limited and he had no plan. His best bet was Necromancy, but even when she was attending Nyx and Aether there was small chance she'd have access to such knowledge. It was perhaps the most feared art and therefore restricted beyond normal measures. He doubted there were even any books on the subject within the school. Even if there were, she was four. There were eight years to wait before she was even admitted. Best case scenario she had so much power they sent out an advisor to begin harnessing her magic.

He scoffed at the notion. What they did was screw a lid on the jar. Government-trained, and believing in their righteousness, advisors were utilized in situations that saw children requiring, by mandated estimations, guidance. They were often recent graduates and a condition of employment was an extreme loyalty to the Ideals.

What they were doing was taking control. Brainwashing. They used images of carnage and the scorched earth of millennia past to scare the children into voluntarily giving up power. Power that was then used to keep society stagnated.

“Horrible accidents,” his advisor said to him. “Like the one you experienced can be avoided if we put the good of all in the forefront of our minds.”

He wasn’t stupid even then. He knew what the man was doing, but he also knew how to regain what he gave, something lost to the collective knowledge of the government and its employees. The entirety of society, in fact, was dull to the power of the past.

His learning was accidental, he found a way to increase by siphoning what he supposed was the life force of other objects. Beings, yes. When his so-called family died, he gained more than ever before and after he gave it all away it was a pain to get it back. Took him the better part of his school career to do it, hiding it all the while. Pretending to be a bit better than his inept peers. Good enough to be rewarded and praised, but nothing to be afraid of.

A few, he knew, suspected him regardless, but they had no proof of anything and they caused a few headaches yet were never able to accuse or get in the way.

He did wonder about some. If they, too, were practicing the mind arts.

Even so, he was confident that his plans were secure. Caution was his modus operandi. He kept the followers separate to the point that not even they knew exactly who was among the ranks, and none of them knew the ultimate goal or how he planned to achieve it. He allowed all their assumptions to stand and didn't care when they spread rumors among themselves, the way they did in school.

Life did not alter much from one day to the next, nor one year or one decade. The gossip chain remained, the junior-grade dramatics continued, and he had to live with it. Even when he succeeded in creating and leading a New World Order they would be there. Unfortunate, inescapable facts of life that were better off ignored, he’d long since stopped seeking to uproot them.

It was the natural tendency of humanity to make shit up and it was as prevalent among adults as it was teenagers.

It didn’t help that the whole of magical society was structured to facilitate it. He doubted that was part of the intent, but it was a byproduct. By continuing to uphold the ways of the past which saw nobility and other class distinctions, they brought upon themselves the jealousy and attempts at ruination that came with it.

When he first realized that he was not one of a kind, the single person of power in existence, he was both upset and relieved. To be truly unique in all the world is a lonely thing, but he was willing to accept it if it meant he could take over. With the existence of others, it made his dream more difficult, yet he was willing to work through it all to see it become reality and he was excited to think that he would enter this secret society within society. Hidden and mysterious. Open to the chosen few.

He didn’t understand that they didn’t want it to be open to him either.

He was a poor orphan, given a place at one school, and then Nyx and Aether because they could not ignore his ability and needed to control him. They placed him as low as they could justify on the totem pole and perhaps that was their second mistake. If he’d been treated as an equal, he may not have built such resentment. Instead, he was regulated to the common areas, doted on in secret by ridiculous girls who liked his face, and he had to suck it up and play along.

He learned early on, during his time with an advisor, that fighting the system to its face was a surefire way to lose.

The past, however, was not something he liked to dwell on. There was no changing it, after all, and he had other things to be concerned about. Like the way this world reeked of life and death and yet stood empty of both. Nothing here was real. The newly visible sidewalk, the buildings that immediately gave way to countryside. It was all randomly generated, he felt sure of it, and he hated not knowing who, or what created it.

How was it maintained?

A set of train tracks crossed his path now, down a dirt road that he didn’t feel like continuing to travel. It would go on and on. This place was never ending and that disquieted him because he didn’t know how he knew that, yet he tried not to think about it. He just happened to be here and this was... What it was.

“Don’t think about it,” he muttered as he backtracked.

For some reason that felt imperative.