Al's scream pierced the darkness as the creature snatched him by the middle, limbs flailing helplessly as he was drug away.

Cas stumbled backwards, gripped by terror. The tentacle was repulsive and unnatural, color phasing blue to purple and back, laced with hooks and spines. The sight measured more than all the fear he'd grown and lived with. More than all the horrified difference the town of Blackwater gave. The thing was wrong to look, hurt to see. Yet Cas couldn't tear his eyes away from the writhing limb wrapped around his only friend.

Al fought the creature's grasp, clawed at its grip as he frantically tried to escape. Cassian blinked and Al wasn't where he was looking anymore, but three doors down.

He knew he should have been grateful for the growing distance between them, doing his part to make more, but his curiosity urged him onward. The smell was overwhelming and ever changing, a hundred different blends of rancid fighting for dominance.

Cas couldn't make sense of what he was, or wasn't, seeing. What he knew about how the world worked crumbled as Al disappeared and reappeared with every blink.

Alaric clawed frantically at the cobbled street, his nails ripping and bleeding. He thrashed and latched onto anything he could grasp - shutters, window ledges, ripping them all free from their foundations.

Al cried out, in a rage this time. The boy had found something, rock or cobblestone, and he hit at the unnatural appendage wrapped around him.

The stench turned sharp and angry as Al was hoisted up in the air. The boy hung there, weightless and wordless for a moment, before slamming down. the fight beaten out of him.

He lay in a crumpled heap, gasping weakly for breath. The creature's tentacle was still coiled tightly around his chest, constricting his breaths to short, pained wheezes. Tears streaked down his muddied and torn cloths and body.

Al had just enough strength to look up at Cas with pleading eyes, he reached out a trembling hand. "C-Cas..." he croaked, barely louder than a whisper.

The limb didn't like that. It shook the boy roughly, and when Al let out nothing more than a pained whimper, it continued dragging him.

Al's pained cries grew fainter as he was pulled around a corner into a darkened alleyway. Cassian didn't realize he was running after until he reached the alleyway himself.

He got there just in time to see Alaric had been pulled past the buildings, to the cliffs. The younger boy was weakly grasping at the edge before being pulled over the cliff and plunging into the dark waters below. Cassian heard a splash.

Cas reached the edge of the cliff. Far below, the dark waters frothed and churned, but there was no sign of his friend. Even the smell that had overwhelmed him just moments before was already beginning to dissipate, fading away into the salty sea air.

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Cassian choked, eyes stinging as he stumbled back from the cliff's edge, collapsing onto his knees.

His body convulsed, tears and snot mixing on his face as he collapsed to his knees.

Al was gone.

Waves crashed against the rocks below, drowning out his sobs.

Pain mixed with fury. At the despicable creature that had taken his friend's life without consequence. How it reveled in its power, how the whole town cowered before it.

He hated the town even more, year after year they dangled him and Al out as bait. They expected what happened tonight. Wanted it. Even after his family had been taken.

His family! They brought Cassian here and knew, had to, that something was wrong. But they were weak, pitiful, too afraid to leave. All dead now, before Cassian could even remember more than a hazy outline of who they were.

Most of all though, he was furious at his pathetic self. What had he done to stop any of this? Gut a fish and pray? He was pretending he was doing enough to save them, to make himself feel better, like he was doing something.

When the creature came at first, he'd stood there, frozen. An open invitation to take him. When it took Al, all he'd done was watch.

Al, that worthless, weak-kneed, idiot who trusted him, always did what he said, was Cassian's only friend and person he cared about in the world. He was down there, his body at least. No chance he could have survived the fall.

Cassian huffed in annoyance as Lyra's eyes drooped entirely closed and she nearly dropped her pen into her cup of tea. "Am I boring you?"

Lyra hastily wiped sleep out of her eye and stifled a yawn, "No, no, must be the gardening we did earlier taking its toll."

He wasn't convinced. "What's the problem?"

Lyra said nothing until Cassian raised an eyebrow in acquisition.

"Well, the story is about the Great Healer." She said as if she stated the obvious.

"That's who you wanted to hear about." Cassian responded with some obvious of his own.

"Yes, but we know he survives so it bleeds away some of-" he squinted at her, and she admitted, "all of the suspense."

Cassian scowled, his weathered face creasing into deep lines. "I didn't know. I Thought my best and only friend was gone. I was racked with guilt, rage, and helplessness. The moment broke who and what I was and shaped me into the man I became."

Lyra nodded, not wanting to offend the old hero. "You're right, I'm sorry. Please, continue."

He paused, gathering his thoughts. Lyra waited patronizingly, pen poised over her notebook.

Shadows stretched over the rocks and water below while chill wind stirred, clearing away the last clinging traces of that awful scent and leaving only the blend of stench that was Blackwater.

Cas stared at the spot where Al had disappeared, looking for a body and hoping he didn't see it all at once.

Then he felt it. The pins and needles sensation running up his spine he'd felt before, like something was there but might not be. Phasing, like Al had. Like the thing had that grabbed him.

And if he blinked again, he'd miss it. Or maybe see it.

Cas went to rub at his eyes, and realized he still had the gutted fish in one hand, knife in the other. A few raw scrapes down his side he didn't remember getting.

He dropped the fish, kept hold of the knife. Rubbed at his eyes with his freed hand, always keeping one open, squeezing the other shut so hard he saw spots.

There. A flicker in the fabric of space, a wrinkle that shouldn't be. He couldn't just see it, he realized, he smelled it. He took another whiff and coughed, the scent was mellow, content, still smelled a bit like rot. Rubbed at his eyes some more and the wrinkle got bigger, rippling out into the world just above the water.

He kept looking, kept smelling, and soon enough he saw it clear as day.

The Blackwater Gate.