Ashes shaped like the entire rave remained in the outline of a single soaring rook. I awaited their arrival. I had known to go no further than Man's Bane. I first had to sort out the Choir. I had no choice but to choose which of them would stay and live with the animals and which ones could come with me and my talking crow Cory, back to our own world.

They had a chorus of questions, most of them difficult to answer, for they were the inquisitions of the enchanted and the insane. The gibberings of the transformed ravens, now escaped medieval asylum patients, earned the attention of the inhabitants of Man's Bane. I glanced around nervously at the various animals attempting to walk upright, some of them wearing a single article of clothing or clutching an artifact of the old world.

"We are here to sort out a few of you." I told them plainly. Many of the Choir were compulsive murderers and worse. I simply couldn't unleash them back on the world. They'd have to live among the animals.

I first pointed to Serene Sinclair. "Do you want to stay here or come with me?"

She walked over to where Cory and I were.

"Well if she's your first choice, why not all of them?" Cory squawked.

"You'll remain under my supervision, right?" I asked her.

"I just want to be helpful." She promised.

"You do? Is that right?" I stared. Cory made a grinding noise in the back of his throat that meant he found her words amusing somehow. He was laughing and said in Corvin:

"She quotes you, my Lord. Remember when you met my Winters?"

"Uh, yes." I clicked to him in annoyance. "She has magics."

"Oh. Is that all?" Cory sassed me.

We continued to argue in Corvin as I selected a few more of the Choir. I was being careful. If I picked the wrong one or wasn't careful of the commotion, I could have a riot of lunatics and beastmen. I just wanted to make it home in one piece.

"Dini Ghanat, Jessica Darling, Clide Brown." I called on several more dangerous ones, yet they were the ones that were too dangerous to leave behind. Cory clicked rapidly at me in disapproval.

"Your bird. It does not like me." Dini Ghanat said with his heavy accent. I reached into my bag and took out the little leather case with his serum inside.

"You will not operate without my oversight." I told him.

"Of course not. You are our fearless leader." Dini Ghanat grinned obsequiously. I trusted him as far as I could reach. I knew better than to leave him behind in the fertile world of unguarded labs and shuffling beastmen. He'd experiment on them and make some kind of weird animal-man realm that I would have to worry about. I wanted to leave Man's Bane behind and forget the world or time period entirely.

"Christo?" I asked the man with a different Christo in his mind. He looked at me as the Christo I could trust.

"You can come too." I told him. Then I told him he was on fire and the other Christo stared at me. I told that Christo: "Sorry. You gotta stay here. You will never have another birthday if you come with us. Here though, it is always Saturday. Tomorrow is your birthday, and you know what that means."

"I can play with Polly?" The other Christo asked. His menacing grin spread, reminding me vaguely of the cartoon of the Grinch from my childhood.

"Well, goodnight Christo." I smiled. Christo turned around and then looked at me and asked:

"Where are we going?"

"I'm going home and I am taking you with me." I promised.

"I don't think this is how this works." Cory advised me with mock cynicism.

"It was your idea!" I hissed back.

"Oh yeah." Cory made a noise that was his most mischievous.

I picked a few more before we took that final flight as ravens. I got Samual Monica, Castini Ishbaal and Father Dublin the Exorcist. We flew the rest of the way, backwards through time, as ravens. The Choir was split, I'd say those I left there became the Choir and those I took were no longer really of the Choir anymore.

The world had changed in many ways and yet it had stayed the same. What I mean, is that the disasters of the time when we struggled to close the book of evil or the time, we were in Dellfriar and the world ended, all seemed to be gone.

The effect of such horrors pressed in from the sides of the familiar world I had once known. I asked Cory:

"Am I experiencing hallucinations from the medications we were taking in Dellfriar?"

"No, my Lord. We are escaped mental hospital patients in the same world we left long ago. How is this possible?" Cory sounded amazed and spoke in English.

I looked at the assembled ex-Choir members with me. They were all somehow out-of-place if we weren't facing the post apocalyptic horrors I had expected.

"You look confused." Dini Ghanat told me.

"I thought." I stammered. "I thought things would be different out here."

"How? We escaped." Father Dublin smiled. "What did you expect?"

"A world in ruins and desolation. A world ruled by rampant monsters and vengeful enemies like the Folk Of The Shaded Places." I tried to explain what my expectations were. "This changes things."

"This world is coming apart at the seams. It is about to collapse. The ends of all worlds push at its sides, like a dying universe, everything dies." Serene Sinclair announced in proclamation.

"Now wait." I told her. "You sense all of that too?"

"Indeed. You have chosen a tribe of the most dangerous, and some might be too dangerous. You chose most of them not." Serene Sinclair prophesized me. "And you would know death either way. At least this way you shall know its form."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"I'm starting to like her too." Cory chirped meanly.

"Your bird doesn't like any of us, does he, Mr. Briar?" Dini Ghanat was somehow behind me. I'd taken my eye off of him for one second.

"He doesn't trust you. He's seen how dangerous you all are. I'm taking you home to my family, showing a lot of trust in all of you, despite what I too have seen you all do. However, unlike those we left behind, none of you have ever threatened me or Cory or my family. To be fair, you've never given me a reason not to trust you."

"You're speaking to all of us, then?" Clide Brown asked.

"Dude, you're a werewolf." I gestured that I was making my point anyway. He nodded and muttered:

"Good point. I see your point. Yeah."

"I couldn't leave you people behind. Over these years, stealing artifacts and everything, you all have become like this depraved, lunatic family to me. Stop drooling." I said. I was looking at Christo on my last beat. "The point is, I have another family. Can I count on all of you as I already have? I have to ask."

"You can't count on me. We don't know if the moon is full. I could kill everyone." Clide Brown had changed his discord as he spoke. His confidence always went out of him whenever anyone mentioned his other half.

"Cory, is the moon full?" I asked my talking crow. Cory called out and his crow's call was answered by another.

"Of course it is." Cory said in English.

"See?" Clide Brown started swearing.

"Relax, I am only joking. We have a few nights to get ready for your monthly puberty." Cory teased the agitated werewolf.

Clide Brown frowned but was obviously still far from any sort of anger. He had the best anger management skills.

We all got onto the back of a hay wagon with nobody driving it and rode into town. In the street outside Dr. Leidenfrost's apartment we stood, a gaggle of straight jackets and a gleaming razor sharp hook on the end of Jessica Darling's prosthetic arm. There were no other visible weapons, but I knew all of them were armed.

It was early evening and I sensed something watching us. They were in the shadows, moving along in the darkness and avoiding the streetlights as they turned on one-by-one in the gloom.

"What is it?" Father Dublin asked, fear beaded on his forehead as he realized we were being stalked.

"Folk Of The Shaded Places." I thought I saw one as a dark rod, moving in jagged animation through a patch of shade and shifting light. Somehow the Cambrian elder was like a centipede, in its general shape. They were intricate and with a hundred different limbs and their faces somehow evoked an image of all-teeth, the kind that snack on trilobites. I knew their intelligence too, an angry and ancient species, waiting for their world to return to their endless hands. It was just my imagination, but it was also reality. Folk Of the Shaded Places could travel instantly from one dark corner, into a dream, through a wall and back into another shadow. To see them in any capacity, always occurs as a partial glimpse, easy to ignore.

"What do they want?" Dini Ghanat was perplexed. He used a simple charm to look and try to see them magically. "I'd like to know them better."

"No, you wouldn't. Trust me." I assured the mad alchemist and disgraced scientist that stared after the spy from the darkness.

The spies in the darkness were gone, I could sense that they had left us.

"Daddy!" Came the voices of Persephone Briar and Penelope Leidenfrost, my daughters. They came running out to greet me.

"I knew you were coming. I've watched all of your flights." Penelope told me. Her heterochromic eyes were the most beautiful in the whole world. She blinked as she spoke to me for the first time in her life.

"Daddy, you're back. Sister told me you were here." Persephone told me.

I stared at her, unbelieving how she had grown. My mind flashed to the rampage of the giant horse, death, gemstones, all of it to serve the cats so that she would live. I had always loved her, even when she was not alive, at the beginning.

I hugged them both.

"Such a sweet reunion." Samual Monica commented. There was always a strange hint in his voice. Part of me was not happy to let him near my family, but also, he was family now too.

Then I looked up and saw the love of my life, after being away for so long. She stood there, every aspect of her was dark, as she stood in the shaft of light from her home. A fairy flitted from her shoulder back to the sanctuary of indoors.

"Heidi?" I stared and stood and trembled. My legs forgot their strength when I tried to walk towards her. Clide and Christo were there to hold me up.

"I can walk." I said softly and I did. I walked to Dr. Leidenfrost.

"Welcome home, Lord." Dr. Leidenfrost stared at me. I wondered if she still loved me too. I noticed Isidore approaching me. She hugged me and then stepped back next to Dr. Leidenfrost.

"Who are all of these people?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked me.

"These people are my new family members." I told her.

"A gang of murderers that have escaped from Dellfriar with you?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked strangely.

"Well - I mean -when you put it in that way." I argued against her wording.

"I've missed you so much!" Dr. Leidenfrost nearly jumped me in the parking lot.

"You all have to stay out here." Isidore told the escaped insane asylum patients. "Girls, come inside, now."

And our daughters obeyed and I went inside with my family and Cory flew on in ahead of me and landed on the back of the couch.

"Right now." Dr. Leidenfrost wanted to rekindle our marriage immediately. I went with her and did so. When we were rekindled we found it was almost morning already.

"Your friends are keeping quiet out there." Isidore told me, over breakfast.

"What is going on? You're the only people we've seen." I ate.

"There's a massive evacuation going on." Dr. Leidenfrost explained. "But Agent Saint called and told us to stay right here. She said it would be safe until she gets here."

"Why?" I asked.

"Supposedly there is to be a tsunami. That was more than two days ago." Dr. Leidenfrost nodded sagely. "It was all a lie."

"I see." I gulped. "We gotta feed them. No low blood sugar for our crazy people."

"I already fed them. I didn't want to stay in the apartment while you two, you know." Isidore blushed.

"Did you want some of him? He's still yours too." Dr. Leidenfrost teased her.

"Stop, Heidi." Isidore looked at me and our eyes met briefly. I wondered if she had ever loved me. It didn't matter, she loved me as a friend, which was fair enough. I hadn't felt particularly crazy about her, after-all.

Dr. Leidenfrost watched our gazes repulse each other like opposing magnets and made a clicking sound with her tongue. Cory appreciated the word and translated, hopping up and down with excitement:

"My Matron calls you both cowards!" Cory exclaimed in English.

"You are both cowards." Dr. Leidenfrost confirmed. "That's why I am the head of this family."

"Fair enough." I muttered. Isidore said nothing.

"I don't agree." The soft and melodious voice of our resident fairy spoke up. "Lord has shown courage when he fears for another's sake. I've seen him stand against wrongdoing with no guarantee he could survive."

I looked over and spotted Silver Bell alight upon Dr. Leidenfrost's shoulder. I smiled and greeted her:

"Hello Sylvia." I recalled her earthbound name and used it instead of her Faerie name.

"I've waited a long time to go home." Silver Bell was glowing. "Penelope has drawn my key, but she is not strong enough to conjure. She needs her father for that."

"What?" I asked.

"You stole the way for such a key to be crafted. In Faerie, it was your theft that removed the one who would have touched the gold to craft it into what we needed. No new key can be made, without the hand of a smith. Do you remember?" Silver Bell explained. In her voice she sounded tired, there was no resentment.

"I rescued a child from your queen." I recalled. "Is that the consequence?"

"There is a horror upon your world. If we do not reverse the ways of magic, Man will fall. Nothing good will rise in your place. I have learned of all these things while trapped in your realm. I must report to my queen that Faerie cannot stand and do nothing or we will be obliterated next. What happens to one part of the body affects the whole." Silver Bell spoke slowly and we all listened.

"What horror?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked, her voice hushed.

"Lord knows of it. That is why I know he will help me. Your daughter has drawn my key. Now her father will forge it for me. It must be done." Silver Bell demanded.

Dr. Leidenfrost stood up and went to her desk. She opened a drawer that contained a stack of drawings made by the girls that hadn't made it to the gallery on the refrigerator.

After a silent shuffling she found a drawing of a key. She stared at it and then her eyes watered. She hadn't known what it was.

I got up and walked over to her and said quietly:

"She is like me. She is also like you."

"I know Lord, that's what scares me."