When Cory's spell was broken I saw them all there. I asked: "How long was I out?"

"About six hours." Detective Winters said.

"It was horrible." I gasped, crying.

"The crown is gone." Agent Gilbery pointed out in amazement.

"The crown is back where it belongs." Cory told Agent Gilbery, pedantically.

"I see that." Agent Gilbery was stunned to see it vanish.

"I put it on some kind of dream altar." I said reluctantly. I didn't want to speak, I was very mortified by the severity of my dream.

"So it is gone?" Agent Gilbery asked.

"Obviously." Detective Winters grinned. He was glad the treasure had left and broken a curse.

"You met with two strange ladies?" Agent Saint asked me. I nodded.

"What's that? Triad Killers?" Agent Meroë asked. He waited patiently and sternly for my response.

"Yes. Two of them. We already met the third." I outlined. I sighed.

"You look like you could use some rest, after all that sleep." Agent Nomak said.

"Yes, except they are already here. There's work to be done." I told the FBI.

I recalled only some of the dreams I had. The witches burned my childhood home to the ground and torched everyone to charcoal with their magic. Even our pets. My dreams continued until they were then killed by cats with their giant shadows that could slice through the protons of a person's body. Then the cats were all mummified by cultists, the cabal of sorcerers. Somehow it started over again with my parents from the bloodline of the sorcerers and the picket fence neighborhood had evolved from their mud huts. Man's dash from the neolithic to the modern was but the wink of a season of the massive eons of Earth's history. I had seen it in the minds of the nameless ones and knew the sensation of the Dawn.

Somehow I had always known.

As sunset came to us so did the Lilim, and their siblings. They came and took us to a world of pure nghtmares. Madness gripped all of us, shattering sanity and discarding our identities into a black sky of starless oblivion. All around us the monsters of Lilith's will growled and laughed and chanted in a language more ancient than Man.

All of us were shocked and horrified. First among us was Agent Gilbery, reversing the flow of mystery towards a singular and lethal act of defiance. Agent Gilbery took their weapon and discharged it into their head and killed themself that way. Then Agent Gilbery died bleeding.

Agent Saint had ready her knife, Detective Winters his automatic shotgun, Agent Meroë had his standard issue handgun and Agent Nomak had an automatic rifle. They aimed their weapons at the intrusion, as though the entire side of La Cucharacha had vanished into the nightmare of some desert of darkness and bubbling sands. The tar of night shifted blackness upon everything until we were enveloped in its liquid ink of midnight. Terror gripped all of them differently, the panic and confusion and horror all at the same time. While Agent Gilbery died the rest were not much better.

Agent Saint dropped her weapon and turned on me, demanding I use the evil prayer at once and then she began to cry, repeating herself. Agent Meroë fired his weapon uselessly into the ground and then dropped it and then began praying loudly. Agent Nomak put his weapon down and went to cradle the dead Agent Gilbery with a dramatic outburst. Detective Winters fired his weapon into the shadowy creatures of the Lilim horde of monsters and blew off their body parts in gouts of blue gore in the moonless darkness and flashes of gun light. When he had dropped enough of them he did not stop. He reloaded and shot apart more of them before he realized they were not attacking anyone. Only then did he finally stop shooting them.

"My bad." He spat at the wounded monsters and trembled in shock, smoke poured from the tube of his weapon. As Detective Winters watched in horror the monsters growled and shook off the damage, already regenerating from the injuries. The dead ones were eaten by the wounded and they only grew larger and nastier looking. "Oh you all are bad."

"Enough!" Serephiel demanded. She cast a spell over the startled victims of her intrusion and numbed their minds. They stood, sedated, humiliated and mirthless.

"What are we to do? I plan to use the prayer to Araek if you could protect me long enough that I could denounce it." I told Serephiel. Her sisters looked grim but Serephiel seemed to like my idea and brightened. To see such a being smile was frightening.

"Araek would destroy the world." Serephiel decided happily. "Suppose you cannot trust me and think I would betray you in this endeavor, to see the world destroyed?"

"What need would you have to do that? The world is already getting destroyed." I argued semantically. I sensed there was more to the Majara, as so far had kept happening.

"Not as fast or completely as Araek would do. They rebuild Can and Nod and Babylon. Just cities cast from rubble and populated by monsters. The Sons of Araek are gods. Araek is pure destructive power. I could never allow you to exchange them." Liminiel spoke up.

"This man can send Araek back after the Sons of Araek are destroyed." Serephiel told her sister. "We shall protect him, that is his plan."

"It is my plan." Ariel confessed.

"I would not have said that, my Lady Ariel." Cory squawked.

"Of course it is. I love your plan." Serephiel agreed with startling enthusiasm.

"I do not agree to this plan. I have little choice unless I oppose you. If I do not help I might end up against Araek alone." Liminiel changed her position. She had agreed to come this far, making it clear she was against the whole thing.

"We must go to Araek's Temple." Cory told everyone.

"This is the heart of it." Liminiel gestured all around. "When the world was young and our brethren ran around in the night. All of them are gathered and the humans huddle with their fires. This place is where Araek was first born and where Araek might be born again."

A goat of all white with a black head and legs came trotting among us and knelt on the bubbling sands of ink. It ruptured and a chrysalis of bleeding and pulsing flesh bubbled out and swelled until it split. There was a man curled up inside it and he bit his own umbilical cord and tied the knot. He belted out a mighty scream and his lungs expanded and he coughed out chunks of life juice. Then he rubbed his eyes and winced and looked around staring blurry eyed. We beheld a vision of the birth of Araek as a man. It is the same way he would arrive again and again, used by Sercil to destroy castles and armies and to build stone bridges, until one day all of the sorcerers were gone. The power of Araek could not be harnessed and there was no piece of the god left to use for summoning its powers. We had lived in such a time.

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"Say your prayer." Serephiel told me. I stared at the witch with suspicion and then began to speak, with help from my crow. We both knew the words from Sercil's writings. Obviously we two were the only ones that believed in the divinity of Araek, causing the god to have a presence. Opening the door for it.

"Wait." The high pitched voice of a feline told us. Mister Melt had surprised everyone and shown himself suddenly. "Do not pray to Araek. It would be too much of a risk." Mister Melt held everyone's attention, refusing to look away and possibly to see its black giant and be destroyed on a whim.

"What do you seek here, cat-sorcerer?" Liminiel asked, preparing to incinerate the cat with magic.

"Only to reason with you. Araek must not be summoned. There is no using the Majara's destructive power up on something as annoying as that thing." Mister Melt protested.

"You don't have the Majara." Serephiel told the cat. "Go home and stop bluffing."

"We have assembled all of the components to duplicate the effect of the device." Mister Melt claimed. "And we are not afraid to use it."

"Then use it." Cory challenged the cat. "Be our ally on this day and use it to destroy our common enemy on this battlefield."

"I make no such arrangement. The device will be used if we decide to use it and on whoever we decide to use it on. You have no fear of me, I contain my shadow. I am Mr. Melty Cheeses, Good Lovin' Jesus, Mittens." Mister Melt told us. The FBI were not looking at him intently, having no idea they should. It was evidence enough that he would do no harm if they did not behold him.

"I stand here and do my will, cat. Make no mistake." Liminiel responded mockingly. She, the pillar of the magic of water, seemed to have an aversion to cats. I wondered at the legendary aversion of cats to water that it might not be the other way around all along.

Cory and I began again to say the prayer and then Araek began to grow before us for the second time. Nobody had lost their revulsion, indeed the anticipation of his second arrival bore a dread and grim determination among all of those who watched it. He stood before us and the Lilim had to protect Cory and me from the flow of power that emanated from the god. All around us the world withered in rapid time, aging into dust. We were only spared in the circle of death by the power of the witches, who had survived such circles of aging death before.

Then shrieking horribly and flying upon wings of his magical powers the god was gone from us. He had turned into a creature that looked like Thu, a tentacled abomination with its many eyes and mouths opening and closing upon it. Much of its power was missing to its Sons of Araek. The thieves would be the first thing to be destroyed, as predicted.

We could see its acts in our own world where we stood in that nightmare landscape. All the deeds of Araek were like a moment to us, although many days were spent from our homes. The usefulness of such twisted time, distorted and perverted by the magic of Araek, were not something I had anticipated. It was only in the chapter that follows that I learned the true horror I had unleashed. Araek was merely a means to a much darker and deadlier device. The plot had not yet begun to unravel, but had I observed with more care, the departure of the cat or the change upon Serephiel's face I might have known. Had the clues that passed before me unnoticed in my previous adventures warned me, I might have done things differently. I could not see past the sacrifice I had made of so many lives in the path of Araek's destructive powers. I could not have known that it made no difference whether I sacrificed a few for the many, or if all of them were to die anyway. I could only stand in mortified dread and shaking in guilty horror of the annihilation I had caused with the words of an evil prayer.

Everything around Araek died. It went from place to place spreading death and madness along the path it took. When it reached a Son of Araek it destroyed it. When all of them were dead and so many more people than I could bear to witness, we could call it back to us and denounce it. That is when everything went horribly wrong.

"I cannot let anyone interfere. I am sorry to end so many friendships at once." Serephiel said quickly. She had tears burning like droplets of fire as she spoke. Both of her sisters were paralyzed while she did her work.

Detective Winters was the first to respond to her treachery as he raised Streetsweeper and took his second attempt to kill her. Again she made his weapon fall into pieces uselessly and she flung him aside like a rag doll. I thought he had died again.

Serephiel was concentrating on holding her sisters in place for one second while using her magic in that second and was unresponsive to Agent Saint's attack. The knife cleaved the witch's finger that she pointed at Agent Meroë, casting another spell. The witch then reached for Agent Saint and froze her in place, posing for another strike. Her pulsing power made Agent Nomak and Agent Meroë double over in pain. She took the knife from Agent Saint and threw it unerringly into Agent Nomak's heart. Laughing witchily she vanished before her sisters could move again.

"I can save him." Liminiel took the blade out of Agent Nomak and restored his lifeblood so that he did not die. I looked and saw that Detective Winters was also still alive.

"That was her escape. She just wanted to make it clear she was not for your plan. Our sister is known for her treachery." Ariel sounded apologetic. I could forget that she was an immortal serial killer that the FBI could never catch.

There was then a change in the presence of Liminiel, as water may freeze and flow and become as a mist. My hand would have ached if she were not as a woman of flesh and blood. I saw her different again and knew she too would not remain our ally for even a moment longer.

"I am not going to help either." Liminiel faded from our presence. I looked for the cat and saw he had never stood with us, gone as soon as everyone had looked away.

"Thank you." Agent Nomak called after her, reaching for the one who had saved his life.

"What about Araek?" I worried. The god was coming. The air shimmered darkly and was as thin as a veil, with the monstrosity of vile images on the other side. It was the writhing embodiment of chaos and dread, Thu, an alien god as the form of a monster shaped like a man. Thu split and dissolved into the form of Araek that was the man. Before Ariel could say anything he was among us.

Ariel used her magic to hold him while we stuttered on the words of the prayer. As Araek broke free he withered her into dust with his own magic. I could see her crown where she was before, in an instant of magic before it was gone from sight. The second pillar had fallen and from there it would be a cascade of endings. This much I believed from the Book of Sercil and the coming apocalypse.

The starry particles of her magic lingered for just a few seconds after her death before her magic was gone completely and those last thoughts were enough to preserve us from the void that instantly killed all who saw and stood before Araek. It was in those brief seconds that we waged battle against a god. Surprisingly I did survive to tell the story of how it all happened and what came next.

"We must fight!" Agent Meroë went for his gun, eyes wide and white upon his basalt features and sweat spurting in terrible courage from his brow. He might have fumbled but his hands had practiced a thousand times to reload that weapon and to aim and fire it.

Bursts of lead and energy blasted from the rifle of Agent Nomak, who had already reloaded and begun shooting as soon as Ariel had died. With each flash of gunfire from the surviving FBI agent the god was like the tentacled horror and then as a man. In the dire seconds that followed it was Agent Nomak's turn to take up the battle against the writhing god where it stood upon the air before us.

Agent Nomak fired his assault rifle at Araek. The bullets were rendered harmless by his magic. Araek laughed and where the man had stood before the god there were only ashes that crumbled and drifted away in a puff of air.

Agent Saint went for her knife while Agent Meroë shot Araek. Most of his bullets were deflected and some were caught in the paradox of Thu's tendrils. Somehow one of his bullets hit the god and spurt of ichor surprised both us and him. He sank to the ground from where he floated and seemed to be recoiling in agony from the wound.

"To die!" Araek swore in the most ancient language.

Cory and I spoke our words of denouncement over him and he collapsed. There was no more energy or magic or life. His breath had ceased, although his body was not entirely exterminated. There was still a spark of living cells and his divine blood was still circulating and bleeding with slow pumps of his arrested heart. He seemed dead, trembling mortally and unresponsive. Agent Meroë walked over to him and said:

"Just a man worn by a dead god." And Agent Meroë shot him in the head. Araek, a god, was dead.

With Ariel's death and the departure of her sisters there was nothing to keep us in the world of their memories. Such an ancient time was not ours and we were as we had stood in that landscape again in the lobby of La Cucharacha. I frowned miserably to see that our friends had not survived. Nothing remained of them but dust and ashes that blew away as their ghosts were demolished by Araek's evil powers.

I collapsed onto a couch and felt tears furrow the dirt of my cheeks. Cory flew to my side and sat on the back of the couch behind me. Cory said "Was that the way, the best way, we could have ended the reign of the Sons of Araek?" to which I said:

"That was it. We did it."