Erin's heart burned in her chest as she followed Alex and Bargen through the forest. It was like her gate was yearning for more aether from the air around her, even though it remained closed. She wasn't a fool. She had already guessed what it meant. She just wasn't in a place where she could afford to go down for a day or more. Their goal was in sight. Nowhere was the place where the coordinates led to. She had to keep going for the sake of the mission.

"Be careful," Bargen said as he pushed through more brush. "There are creatures that sneak around at night on this island. No one ever sees them, but they like to steal things."

"They just steal?" Alex asked as he pushed away a branch and waited for Erin to cross under it before releasing it.

"We call them gremlins," Bargen said. "They take parts from machines and tools when people aren't looking. Every time we try to catch them, they scurry away in the dark. Those little gremlins have set back this operation for months on their own."

The forest was silent around them, but Erin took a moment to look through the brush. Moonlight shone through the leaves, giving the entire forest an eerie look. There were plenty of shadows for creatures to hide in, but even if her nerves were on edge, she couldn't see or hear anything.

"Here we are." Bargen pushed out through the last bit of brush and disappeared into the pale moonlight.

Erin followed Alex through the last bit of brush and stepped out into the clearing. The remains of a camp stretched out in front of them in a semi-circle. Several tall white buildings were unearthed in the pale moonlight, each one towering high up into the sky and casting long shadows. Some tools and machinery were left behind, most broken or in disrepair to the casual glance.

However, what was most notable to Erin was the broken statue in the center of the excavation. A person's legs rose up on a platform about half as tall as one of the nearby towers. She felt it would be as tall as one of the towers if it weren't broken off at the waist. The statue was clearly the central point of the ruins, and the excavated buildings stretched out in a semicircle around it.

"We called it the west temple while we worked here," Bargen said. "Never found anything useful, though."

"It feels...familiar," Alex said as he walked over to the statue and placed a hand against the massive stone feet. "I know I've never been here, but it feels familiar."

Erin narrowed her eyes. Alex was proving to be a bastion of different mysteries. First, he knew about island cores. Second, Doctor Ozymandius experimented on him to create an artificial curse. Third, he had accessed Roald's logbook, and the logbook had recognized him. Now, he seemed to recognize the temple. The revolution was right to want her to keep an eye on him.

"How long has it been since this place was abandoned?"

"The camp?" Bargen asked. "About a year now."

"No, the island," Erin said as she walked around the statue.

Bargen shrugged his shoulders as she looked over the stone. The problem with islands on the nightsea was that they weren't entirely integrated with one another. One island could have more advancements than another one that was close by, and so long as the people there didn't have a way across the nightsea, they would never interact. It made guessing the age of abandoned islands impossible.

"Listen," Alex said, stopping and looking around him.

All Erin could hear was her heart thumping as hard as it could in her head. Her curse wanted to grow, and her gate wanted to open. If she opened it now, she knew it would grow. She closed her eyes to force her heart to calm down.

"Not now," she whispered. "Not now."

Snap. Snap.

The sound didn't make sense. It might have been twigs snapping in the forest, but they came too quickly after each other. That wasn't it. Instead, it almost sounded like someone snapping their fingers out in the night. Erin opened her eyes and grimaced as a spike of pain ran down her arm.

"No," Bargen whispered, his eyes wide as they darted back and forth to the shadows of the trees around him. "He shouldn't be here. He should be back at camp. Why is he here?"

"Who?" Erin grimaced as she fought back against the pain.

"Mister Deadman."

Rustle. Crunch. Snap. Snap.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A group of people emerged from the trees. At the front of them was a rail-thin man dressed in a black and white pinstripe suit. He wore a fedora tilted over his eyes as he strolled forward. His right hand was held up, and he snapped his fingers with every step. He stopped when he looked over the clearing and saw the three of them.

"Well, isn't this conveniently cool," he said, looking over the drim around him. "Bargen came out to meet us at the old camp. Isn't that cool of him, boys, you hear?"

Bargen fell backward and landed on his hands. Terror was written across his face. Even his dead grey eyes were open as wide as dinner plates. Erin reached for the pouch in her cloak and began to draw at seeds. There was going to be a fight. She already knew it. She also knew she was nowhere near ready for it.

"You don't look very dead to me," Alex said, walking between Bargen and Mister Deadman with his hands in his pockets. "How do you go about getting a name like Mister Deadman?"

"Just one way of being cool is not telling you." Mister Deadman smiled, holding one hand up to his face. "Looks like your old boss betrayed us, boys. How uncool of him. It seems he's brought some intruders out to our operation. What should we do with someone who is so uncool?"

The drim around him hesitated. They were dressed in much the same way as the crew aboard the Flying Dutchman, and Erin didn't have to stress to guess that they were Bargen's men. There was a little hope there. Maybe she wouldn't need to fight if they turned on Mister Deadman.

"Oh, are you hesitating? How uncool," Mister Deadman said, pointing a finger at one of the drim. "Bone Shot."

From his finger, a long white bullet shot out, piercing through the drim's head and sending him tumbling to the ground, unmoving. Silence rose like cold from the ground as the remaining drim looked between each other.

"Sorry, boss." One of the drim turned to Bargen. "Nothing personal."

The drim advanced on the three of them, each one carrying a pick or shovel. Erin clenched her teeth. How far could she push her gate and not collapse? How long would it take for her to get to the next level? She didn't know the answers, and she didn't know if Alex could take on Mister Deadman alone.

"Now, we can't have that," Alex said, reaching out one hand. "Force Wave."

It was like a ripple in the air. In a wide arc, with just that motion, the shovels and picks rattled in the hands of the drim. Alex grunted, and the wave crashed forward. With a hard yank, the shovels and picks were thrown from the drim's hands and out into the night.

Thump. Clatter.

The drim had a moment to look at their hands and then back to Alex. They had a choice to make, and Erin could see the indecision on their ghostly pale faces. They could stand and fight a man who had just thrown their weapons away or face their boss as failures.

"Run!"

The first drim broke and ran through the brush and out into the surrounding forests. The other three immediately followed. They would rather run than face off against the two men.

"Now, that is very uncool," Mister Deadman said, snapping his fingers. "Bone Yard."

Snap.

Crunch. Squelch.

"Ahh-!" the screams of the three men were cut off in the night, and Erin's breath caught in her chest as the sounds of whatever happened to them carried to the clearing.

Whatever it was, it sounded like a horrible way to go.

"Now, I'm at an impasse," Mister Deadman said. "I don't have any men left, but I still have an intruder to deal with. I'm not supposed to be the one getting my hands dirty, you hear? That is just so very uncool."

As Alex walked toward Mister Deadman, Erin pulled the three seeds out of her pocket. She was debating how far she could push herself before she would go down. She would have to wait for the right moment if she wanted to affect the fight.

"I think killing your subordinates isn't cool," Alex said, smirking. "What do you say to that?"

"Bone Shot."

"Steel Disks."

Ting.

Faster than she could see, Mister Deadman had pointed his finger at Alex and released another one of his bony bullets. At the same moment, Alex's electricity flashed in front of him, and his two steel disks appeared, one of them catching the bone bullet and sending it ricocheting off into the night. Erin reminded herself to breathe as she kept her eyes on Mister Deadman.

"Oh, you have some cool abilities there," Mister Deadman said, reaching up and adjusting his fedora. "You want to test yourself against me?"

"That's something, coming from some two-bit thug," Alex said, taking one of his hands out of his pocket.

"He's insane," Bargen whispered from near Erin. "There's no way he can take on Mister Deadman. Look at what he did to my men."

Tears ran down his eyes, but it took a moment for Erin to see that the liquid was dark and not clear. She didn't know much about drim, so she didn't know if it was unusual. Erin took a deep breath to try to control the burning sensation spreading out from her heart.

"That's just Alex," she said. "You give him a wall, and he'll bust his head open to break through it. Don't worry, though. He's strong."

"No one's that strong," Bargen said. "Why did I think that we could get away? Why was I so stupid?"

Erin walked over to him, and every step was an unsteady gamble. She felt like she would fall over at the slightest breeze. Her head was wrapped in a haze, and everything in her was going far too slow. Soon, she knew she would collapse, and her curse would change. Every moment she fought to stay conscious was to continue the mission.

Slap.

She reached back and hit Bargen as hard as she could across the face with her open hand. Pinpricks of nails lit up across her hand, but she clenched her teeth past it. A hammer tried to hit her in the side of her skull as she pulled her aching and red hand back from the slap and looked down on Bargen.

"He'll handle it," Erin said. "Come on. We need to get out of the way."

When she first met Alex, she hadn't trusted him. She wouldn't say he was a friend yet, but she knew he would handle the fight. Even if he had to come out missing an arm or a leg, he'd beat down Mister Deadman and his curse. She should have known that the best thing she could do in her state was to get out of the way, but Bargen gave her the excuse.

Together, they walked over to cover, leaving Alex to fight the battle. Once they were behind a wall, Erin collapsed to the ground and rested her head against the cool stone. She could still see the fight, even if it was blurry.

"Take him down, Alex," she said as she closed her eyes to darkness.