White walls surrounded us at Dellfriar. We sat in a starless sea of ink in a cone of light on fold up chairs. Only our circle of sitting patients were lit and the rest of the place was midnight's veil of black.

It is where I wanted to be, instead of under the eyes of scrutiny. Cold, calculating and unforgiving. They knew my thoughts and worse, my feelings. They had my soul trapped and would not release it. Too much to chew on.

I had always thought myself sane, never realizing it was all just memory. I could not distinguish between one world and another. The panel of reflective glass eyes watched me, noting my anxiety. I wanted to be in my group therapy, I was there, but I had to be in a different place. I had to sit and get reviewed. I listened and then Dr. Aureus spoke up, talking to me for the benefit of the doctors of Dellfriar and the State. I tilted my head, listening attentively:

Dr. Aureus said: "Detective Winters never died, Lord. That was your delusion. All of it was a fantasy you invented to escape from guilt. You are a murderer, convicted and sentenced. You are here because I insist that you are not responsible. You actually believe in fairies and magic."

"I've seen magic. My crow talks." I said calmly.

"You are not well, Mr. Briar. You will remain here." Dr. Aureus said, with a god's voice.

Later, in therapy, I shared that I didn't always still believe in magic.

"My Lord is confused by all the confusion." Cory said from my shoulder, defensively. "They have drugged and conditioned the thought of the mundane."

"They told my Lord he is a cow. Moo." Ventriloquist mimicked Cory perfectly. For a second everyone thought Cory had added that part but then the clown began to laugh and gave it away. I stared at him and his grin looked exactly like the pictures of Michael Ventura smiling from the wall in the police station.

"I like icecream. Change milk into icecream, cow-jesus." Gilmore's high pitched voice was very different from the agent they resembled: Agent Gilbery. I blinked. Gilmore was a girl, but Gilbery was neither. I shrugged. Not the same person.

"I like icecream too." Jesse piped in.

"There are better desserts." Crêpe chastised. He sounded irritated. He reminded me of Agent Pyresh. He looked and behaved exactly like him except he had an accent and a murderous obsession with culinary extravagance.

"Let's talk about Jesus, instead." Nemo tried to change the subject. I blinked, realizing that Nemo was Nomak. I gasped.

"Jesus was this girl at my school." Junior muttered. He often compared the objects of the others in the group to his victims. Dr. Aureus encouraged it.

I looked around and noticed that everyone in the group had some resemblance to the characters of my fictions. I had lived in Dellfriar for so long I could never have done half the things I talked about. All of it was in my head, Dr. Aureus had said earlier. I believed I was forgetting one thing or the other. Maybe I did not actually exist, maybe I was also an invention of my wayward mind. Dr. Aureus knew me better than I knew myself. Dr. Aureus knew everything.

Sonja sat with her arms folded and stared off into space. She had killed her Siamese twin. She never had much to say. Sororicide: the murder of a sister. I feared Serephiel less, and that is who Sonja was. Clearly she was Serephiel.

Tyson stood up and shook himself violently and roared. If he wasn't a diminutive version of Heller he might be intimidating. Angry that nobody objected to his behavior, the dark dwarf sat back down. I blinked, considering that Tyson was Heller. I knew he was just a man and that unless he was to abandon his mania for height differences it really made no difference that he was four feet tall. He could be recognized for his genius or his resolutions of character. It was his own vicious nature, instead, that prevailed. He bore out the notion of a being of the deep tunnels and darkness below and of myth and as a dwarf.

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"I'm so scared." Gilmore sounded more sincere than sarcastic. Tyson could tolerate her, she really was somewhat frightened by him.

"Magic is real." Cory stated. "This business about turning it into icecream is just crazy."

"That is because you have not tried all thirty flavors." Junior eyed Crêpe.

"Thirty-one." Crêpe corrected, annoyed.

"Let's not kill each other over Rocky Road." Nemo chuckled nervously.

"I wouldn't kill someone over icecream." Crêpe breathed out slowly.

"Yeah, dairy is beneath you." Junior grinned evilly. "Just like this girl I used to know..."

"Shut up! That's sick stuff again!" Ventriloquist mimicked Gilmore.

"I didn't say that. But don't say that. Ew!" Gilmore chimed in, sounding less like herself than Ventriloquist's perfect throw.

"We have a new friend today, everyone." Dr. Aureus told us. "This is Castini."

"Hello everyone. Hello Lord." Castini smiled, looking healthy and content. I blinked at him.

"Castini Ishbaal?" I stared.

"Yes." He agreed. "You remember me?"

"You were in the papers." I sat back and slowed down. I winked at him. He was about to remind me that we had met when I put my finger in my nose and picked it for a second. He hesitated and then said:

"So were you."

"So were all of us." Crêpe pointed out. "What's up with that, Doc?"

"It is a small world." Dr. Aureus smiled. "You are all important at this time."

"We are?" Gilmore asked.

"Oh, of course. I am going to cure all of you of your delusions. All of you think your obsessions are real, you have killed for them. None of it is real. All of you can be cured, and when you see that your worlds are the same world, that none of it is real, then you will be harmless, no more murder."

"And then we can get icecream?" Gilmore asked.

"You still don't see what I am talking about." Dr. Aureus looked at Gilmore and sent a chill down my spine, fearing the insistent grin: "There is no icecream, there never was."

"I would like to talk about what I did." Castini offered.

"No." Dr. Aureus said. "That isn't what we do here."

After Dr. Aureus had said that everyone began to giggle and chuckle and snicker and smirk. Even Cory found the suspense amusing. Castini was new to our therapy and thought we just talked and said none of it was real. Castini didn't know how much fun we had.

Or so I was getting, from the excitement from everyone. I sat up, wondering what I had missed. I looked at Castini and at Dr. Aureus. Then Dr. Aureus said:

"Next time Castini, Lord. I have both of you scheduled for some therapy. The rest of you will be there also. As support." Dr. Aureus told the group.

We sat together in the sea of ink all around, skies and floor of pitch black. We were in a shaft of light, a cone, a pyramid down on us. We sat on the fold up chairs. We sat and smiled at each other, high on the chemicals they fed us. We sat and knew we would do some kind of adventure. I sensed it from the others and so did Castini.

After the session I went to the office of Dr. Aureus and sat there while Dr. Aureus spoke to me. I listened:

"I'm putting a team together, a very special team, I want you to join it, the team, the special team." Dr. Aureus said.

"Like a soccer team?" I asked strangely. I wondered at my own insolence. Why was I resisting Dr. Aureus?

"Magic, Lord. I need yours." Dr. Aureus stated.

"There is no such thing as magic. It isn't real." I heard myself exhaust the words.

"That is superstition, isn't it? By definition, believing that magic is not real is actually superstition. Ironic." Dr. Aureus sounded amused and argumentative. I was tired.

"Logic says magic isn't real." I sighed.

"Logic?" Dr. Aureus took the word. I regretted bringing logic into it. "Is it logical to believe that magic, the gods, prophecies are all myth? How long have scientists existed as an institution? What came before, throughout the countless ages, except myth?"

"Eight-legged gerbils." I thought about tarantulas and hamsters making a hybrid, while looking at the godless pattern of swirls and geometric blossoms on the rug. I couldn't focus on Dr. Aureus, even if the words made sense or didn't, mattered not.

"Humans have always believed in magic and it is only recently that our beliefs have become scientific instead. Logic makes me maintain that magic, at least in its ages of influence over the selection of humans, if not more profoundly, is absolutely real." Dr. Aureus decided.

"By that logic, natural selection would make every species more and more lucky with each generation, as the luckiest prevail. Only contradicted by so many extinctions." Cory sassed Dr. Aureus.

"Luck runs out. Magic too, is limited in some ways. It seems that only the gods can bestow magic; that spells and prayers are very similar. For now: it seems that enchantments and miracles and technology all belong in the realm of the gods. Without the gods there really is no magic." Dr. Aureus pondered ponderously. There was a long silence before Dr. Aureus added: "Nobody believes in the gods anymore. That is where magic has gone."

"I think some of the gods are still believed in." I told Dr. Aureus.

"I know you do. You've seen things." Dr. Aureus said. "You will lead this special magic team. You and your talking crow."