Both Boggs and I stand before a frozen pond, right at the center of Crossroad Park. Surrounding us are rows of exotic plants, bred and genetically modified to be capable of blooming despite the year long winter the city suffers under. Towering over us from the distance are a ring of high rise buildings, the city itself forming a protective cocoon around us. Boggs looks about briefly before nodding to herself, apparently satisfied.

"Alright, no one's here for the moment." Boggs stands arms akimbo, "Let's talk, Alex."

"I don't see why we couldn't have this conversation in your bar." I grumble, rubbing my hands together to ward off the cold.

"And risk my staff hearing about our discussion?" Boggs shakes her head, "No way. We're far better off having this chat away from other people."

"We're in a park. A public area." I point out, tapping a nearby notice board warning against skating on the frozen lake.

"This is the members only part." Boggs grins, "The posh people part. Why did you think I needed a pass card to get past the inner gate?"

"Never say you as a posh person." I grunt, "But we can't be the only people in this members only area. There were other cars in the parking lot, weren't there?"

"There's a trattoria here." Boggs explains, pointing at a drab building partially shrouded by ivy and rose bushes, "That's where everyone else is at the moment. We've got the pond to ourselves for the time being."

"A tractor?" I quirk my mouth, "I don't see any tractors."

"Trattoria, Alex." Boggs gives me a critical look, "Where people go to enjoy some fine dining. Try absorbing some culture now and then."

"Just call it a restaurant." I huff, "No need for the big, fancy words."

"A trattoria isn't' a restaurant." Boggs elaborates, going into lecture mode, "There's no menu to order from. You eat what the chef has prepared for the day, or what he decides you should be eating."

"Sounds stupid." I dismiss.

"Yes, it really is." Boggs to my surprise, agrees to this assessment, "That's why I never patronized that place with my own money."

Looking up into the sky, I click my tongue at the approaching dusk. Daylight hours are really at a premium thanks to this winter.

"So." I remark, urging Boggs to continue with that conversation we started in her bar, "About this Awake business."

"Sorry for the whole cloak and dagger thing." Boggs looks apologetic, "I strongly suspected that you might be an Awakened as well, but I needed to be certain. That's why I set a test the last time you were at my bar."

"The voucher hidden in the serviette." I snap my fingers, "You were the one who lured me to the Sensorium."

"Spot on. An Awakened would have quickly realized the voucher was somehow significant." Boggs confirms as we begin to circle the frozen lake together, "And you took the bait by rushing off to the Sensorium almost immediately."

"You were the one following me, then?" I ask, recalling what Brother Breath said about a stalker.

"So you knew I was there all along?" Boggs raises an eyebrow, "You're pretty good, Alex. Your Awakened senses must be incredibly strong."

"I knew someone was following me." I carefully conceal the fact that it was Brother Breath who detected Boggs back then, "Didn't know it was you though."

"That was the second part of the test." Boggs carries on with the explanation, "If you were Awakened, the monks would have welcomed you the moment contact was made."

"And if I wasn't an Awakened?" I ask, cold sweat dripping down my back. Getting on the bad side of those freaky ghouls was a frightening prospect to say the least.

"You would get the runaround most likely." Boggs spreads her hands, "I was honestly curious whether you were going to submit to the cattle prod therapy that monk was suggesting."

"Getting shocked with a cattle prod is not therapy, in any shape or form." I grouse, "Sorry to deprive you of your entertainment."

"I would have stepped in if things went too far." Boggs smirks again, "You were in no real danger though. The monks are not going to start trouble in the middle of their own market."

"So now you're convinced that I'm, as you put it, Awake?" I stare Boggs down.

"Yep." Boggs says approvingly, "Like I said, I was already pretty sure before, but the monks welcoming you at the sensorium is pretty much a lock in. So that's why we're having this conversation right now."

"But how could you be so sure about me in the first place?" I ask, "We've never really interacted before."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Because you've been coming to my bar off and on." Boggs punches me in the arm, "Way before you became Adam Everett, am I right?"

"You can remember my real identity." I frown, "When no one else has the slightest clue."

"Benefits of being part of the club." Boggs says as we continue our leisurely walk, "We see things others can't. Remember things that might not even be true anymore. Am I right?"

"That's pretty much how its been for me as well." I admit, "I've been seeing things, even having visions lately."

"Visions where we exist as part of a book?" Boggs looks across the lake, toward the city's skyline, "Where the plot foretells the future?"

"No, actually." I frown, "For me its as if we exist as characters in a game. Does that make sense?"

"Sounds close enough." Boggs shrugs, "It might be the way you personally interpret the visions. Let me guess, your first vision was of your own death, am I right?"

"Yeah, I saw my own death to the Primal Ape." I shudder at the memory.

"That's the trigger to Awakening, as far as I can gather." Boggs answers as we sit on a bench, "Being put into a near death situation. Or perhaps more accurately, a certain death situation. We vicariously experience our own demise, then do something different to avert it."

"What was your trigger?" I query, "Your certain death experience?"

"Same as yours actually. Primal Ape." Boggs laughs, "Small world isn't it? That was also when I met the old fool."

"You sound less and less respectful about the original Grandmaster." I note drily.

"Delacroix wouldn't mind, especially since its among family." Boggs laughs, "He was part of the club too. Before the old fool disappeared into the ether."

"Why did you want to contact me in the first place?" I ask, coming back to the original question.

"That, well, its kind of embarrassing really." Boggs makes a difficult expression, "I suppose because you're the first Awakened I've ever met other than the old fool?"

"Yeah. I get it." I agree solemnly, understanding the alienation Boggs had to be feeling.

"With the old fool gone, I couldn't talk about any of this stuff with anyone else." Boggs makes a helpless gesture, "And its just nice to know that I'm not the last one of our kind left."

"What about the monks at the sensorium?" I point out.

"Them? The old fool might have entertained an obsession about the monks and their rituals, but they're not like us." Boggs scoffs, "They never faced death like us."

"That's -" I mutter before stopping myself. Boggs's information has been consistent with my own experiences so far, but she's dead wrong on this point. The monks "ascend" by deliberately facing a certain death experience. The tribulation lightning, or more prosaically, the electric chair.

"Have you ever entered the Sensorium's Cathedral?" I ask, wanting to confirm something.

"No. Has anyone other than a monk ever done so?" Boggs asks rhetorically, "Delacroix kept trying to negotiate access, but the monks always turned him down. They did entertain the old fool with some of their treatises on the cosmos, or whatever they called it. So the liaison wasn't a complete waste of time."

So Boggs was never allowed to enter the Cathedral? No wonder she didn't know the true nature of the monks. So why was I allowed in? What had changed since Boggs's last visit to the Sensorium?

"Power of the cosmos." I keep my face neutral to avoid tipping Boggs off to my knowledge, "Yeah, the monk who escorted me kept yammering about something similar."

"It sounds stupid," Boggs drops her voice to a whisper, "but that knowledge is the real deal. Its the power to use different, clashing class abilities together. The monks are powerful Alex, don't underestimate them."

"I know." I murmur back, as both of us huddle together like conspirators, "My guide demonstrated by using Warrior, Gunslinger and Sorcerer class skills simultaneously."

I sigh in relief as the spell Breath laid on me doesn't trigger. Apparently as long as I don't go into the whole electric chair, tribulation lightning ritual, Breath doesn't mind me talking about our time together.

"It goes further then that." Boggs grows even more serious, "They can even mix advanced class skills together. Those teachings were the foundation of the old fool's strength."

No shit. A geas like the one I've been saddled with is well into Warlock territory.

"So why did the monks bother teaching the original Grandmaster in the first place?" I question.

"That I don't know." Boggs sighs, "I was struggling with my own issues at that time and didn't pay much attention. Though I suppose because of our condition, we are connected to the cosmos somehow? That's what Delacroix told me, at any rate."

"You don't seem to be the type not to have your shit together." I wryly remark.

"I wasn't always Cynthia Boggs." Boggs smiles sadly, "Just as you were not always Adam Everett."

"Oh." I say, the implications of that admission settling in.

"It was for the best I suppose," Boggs perks up with forced cheer, "Cynthia Boggs is far more reliable than the original me ever could be."

"Right." I look away, not feeling comfortable with the direction the conversation is taking.

"I even got a husband out of it!" Boggs punches me playfully, but there's a strained note to her voice now.

"Its fine. Really, its fine." I reassure, keeping my own expression level.

"Yes. Everything is fine." Boggs looks down and exhales a long pent up breath.

"So Grandmaster Delacroix studied under the monks," I delicately turn the conversation to something less sensitive, "and began his rise to fame and fortune. That's how this secret history went down?"

"Not exactly." Boggs stretches her legs, "Like I said earlier, the old fool wanted a quiet life. Its just that, his Awakened condition grew worse, I suppose?"

"Grew worse?" I frown in confusion, "Don't quite understand."

"You know how we can sense danger?" Boggs begins to speak more animatedly now, "That creeping feeling of doom that something out there wants to do us in?"

"Yeah. I know the feeling alright." I reply with a dour expression.

"Like us, the old fool would experience spells of that doom sense as well." Boggs shuts her eyes, thinking back, "But as time passed, the feeling became different for him."

"Different. How?" I lean forward in interest.

"Like, when I sense danger, I can always find a possible way out." Boggs folds her arms, "I could use the knowledge the visions provide me to escape. Or maybe I get an early warning that allows me to survive, that sort of thing."

"Same here." I confirm, thinking back to the ambush in Winter Rift.

"But for the old fool, he saw, or maybe experienced something in a Rift that caused his doom sense to change." Boggs now looks sad, "Delacroix became convinced that he would die on a certain day, during certain very specific events. And that conviction broke him."

"I see." my heart begins palpitating at this news. Whatever happened to Grandmaster Delacroix is also happening to me. A Rift granted me foreknowledge of my own death.

"The old fool never wanted fame and fortune." Boggs shakes her head sorrowfully.

"He just wanted to be strong enough to survive."