Watching Coraline undergo what I could only generously describe as violent demonic possession hammered home just how deep in shit we all were now. I was fighting off something inside of me, Scarlet had become deeply attached to a creature none of us could comprehend, and now through some horrible arcane ritual that almost killed her, Coraline claimed to have attained omniscience and had returned to obsessing over her book with a mad fervor. I worried that we were only fumbling further into darkness, losing more and more control of this situation and ourselves, and we hadn't even heard from the vice since we left the industrial park three days ago.

Still, even with the fate of the world on our shoulders, a few fitful naps, justified anxiety, and perilous adrenaline rushes of near-death experiences could only keep a body moving for so long. Scarlet and I needed to sleep. Coraline was once more too fixated on her book, now beginning to translate at a pace that made no sense compared to her previous day. Whatever that magic did to her, it worked, because she clearly understood something more than she used to. Or had driven her absolutely insane. It was hard to tell.

But I had no room to judge. As I lay alone in an unfamiliar, but admittedly very comfortable bed in one of Coraline's guest rooms, I couldn't help but wonder what my dreams were going to do to me. Would that thing inside of me show me more haunting things to erode my will? Would I still be me the next time I woke up? As much as I wanted to stay awake, my eyelids were becoming irresistibly heavy. I lay on top of the quilted comforter and put my head back on a fluffy pillow and stared up at the same patterned ceiling that covered most of the house. I should have told them. Why didn't I tell them? They need to know that I could be dangerous.

Tomorrow. I would tell them tomorrow.

I closed my eyes.

—

Sleep hadn't been a problem, thankfully. I'd woken up relieved. The nightmare I had the other night must have been just that. Just a nightmare. In my sleep-deprived haze, I had read far too much into something when the obvious answer was that I was just overwhelmingly stressed. That didn't make my sleep good, mind you, but it was mercifully dreamless. And when I woke up, I found that Coraline and I had a much different view of a hearty breakfast. There wasn't much food in the house because Coraline hadn't lived here long enough to make a proper grocery run, but she had made some kind of green vegetable smoothie and mumbled at me to help myself. I'd considered that she might have dietary restrictions, but I didn't think my taste buds would survive it. I thankfully didn't have much of an appetite to ruin, so I just stuck to a couple slices of toast, but if I was going to live here, I was picking up bacon and eggs at my earliest convenience.

And once breakfast had been consumed, we were off. Through the night, Coraline had worked tirelessly at translating more of the book, using whatever that spell had done to her, and she'd found exactly what we needed. A spell that would close the hole in the world we'd made. It wasn't too late. We could still fix our mistake. But it meant returning to the industrial park.

"Is this really going to work?" I asked, rubbing my bleary eyes as the four of us stood at the edge of the abandoned district. Coraline carried the book under one arm while Scarlet stood stoically beside Virtue, who had assumed its initial monstrous pseudopod form, should it need to defend us.

"Of course it's going to work. I've already seen it." Coraline declared with impatient confidence. I could see a glimmer in her eye that I couldn't before. She had a resolve I'd never seen in her before. It was encouraging for sure. I puffed my chest out slightly, emboldened by her confidence. "We need to get back to the room we started this in. If it's been expanding this whole time, it's probably swallowed up that entire building, maybe more. So this is going to be really dangerous. You'll just need to protect me once we get there. I'll do the rest."

"Alright." I gave her a skeptical glance. "And how do I protect you?" Scarlet had Virtue to command, but I didn't have magical powers or an alien companion at my disposal.

"They won't attack you, remember?" Scarlet chimed in. "All you have to do is get in the way."

Coraline nodded. "Exactly. They marked you as one of them. I'm not sure if that means you can safely attack them, but you got in their way before. Just be my bodyguard. Be my shield."

I took in a deep breath. "Okay, I think I can do this. Just play defense, body the twisted monsters if I have to. That's my job, just... get in the way."

"Big ol' wall of muscle." Coraline snorted and stepped forward. "Let's just do this."

An eerie silence punctuated the walk toward ground zero, like the world around us had become barren. The land had already been a dusty plane of dirt on our first visit, but there had been a sense that nature was at least attempting to reclaim the place, stubborn weeds growing at neglected corners of buildings, birdsong filling the air, and the hint of small rodents taking up residence in little hideaways left by abandoned construction material. But now there was only silence and abandoned building materials. The ground looked sickly and grey where it had once been the reddish brown of packed dirt and stone. The vice were draining the life from the world itself. And this was after only three days. I tried not to picture Brightcrest in a month if the vice was allowed to sap the populated area of the city.

And then we saw the building. We all stopped and stared in terrified awe at what we'd unleashed. The building was coated in a thick, sticky black substance not unlike what Virtue and the vice were composed of. It writhed and pumped rhythmically, like a gigantic living organ. It slowly pumped a sickening ichor directly into the ground, which splashed up and then seeped back into the massive building-organism with each pump of its alien musculature. The ground immediately around it was turning a deep black color, developing a smooth, squirming sheen like the twisting skin of these otherworldly things. The whole thing sprung directly from a science fiction horror movie.

"Jesus Christ..." muttered the voice I least expected to have a visceral reaction. Coraline and I turned to Scarlet. Even she looked shaken, so I must have seemed terrified. Virtue gave out a screech that I think was meant to bolster us, but it just made me more nervous. Could we really handle this? Scarlet took in a deep breath and narrowed her eyes, regaining her usual composure. "Virtue's right. Let's get this over with." She took the first step forward, which gave Coraline and I the nerve to walk forward as well. We approached the door, which was almost covered with the black fleshy substance.

Virtue approached it ahead of us and grew a single massive scythed limb from the center of its mass. In a single violent swipe, it ripped through the door covering and severed the doors themselves cleanly in two, opening a path through to an even more black and twisted hallway. A low rumble escaped from the structure above us. I tried to swallow down my fear. "Is this safe?" I stammered.

"Of course not." Coraline mumbled. "We're still doing this. We have to. Everyone stay close."

Virtue compressed itself to be small enough to fit inside the hall and skittered on insect legs in a circle around us, forming a perimeter of its own twisted black flesh, stopping only for a moment to nuzzle up reassuringly against Scarlet before it took up a proactive guard position circling around us.

The sensation of walking down the hall was terrifyingly eerie and disgusting. My sneakers sunk into spongy, rotting, fleshy growth with each step, like I'd just stepped in a pumpkin left out a month after Halloween. But it always sprung back when i lifted my foot, asserting itself back into shape.

We walked for what felt like hours, and then we turned and saw it. That room where it all began. But it looked different now. It was larger than before. The moment I stepped over the threshold, it felt bigger on the inside than the whole building could have contained. The room sunk in toward a gaping hole in the middle, a faintly glowing white circle surrounding a sinkhole going straight down. That circle we made, right where we left it except for the small section I'd broken.

"Here we are." Coraline droned ominously. She approached the edge of the chasm with a hand stretched to the ground and touched the magic circle. "Okay... yeah... listen up. I'm going to start sealing this. I won't be able to move for a while, so it's up to you. They're going to try to stop me once they feel what I'm doing. Keep me alive." She turned to look me in the eye. "Please... keep me alive. Okay?"

I nodded solemnly. This was terrifying. I had no idea what to expect now. I stepped close to Coraline as she closed her eyes, and the circle began to emit a comforting white glow. The central pit yawned before us. I couldn't help but stare down into the chasm. It wasn't the passage to the emptiness that I remembered seeing my first time here. The hole had a bottom, but it was dark and full of terrible writhing black skin and musculature. The vice, whatever it was, was trying so hard to break all the way through. To invade our world.

I felt a longing in the back of my mind. A call. My flesh tingled with desire to join with the rest of myself. I swallowed as I pushed the invasive thought back. This was not my place. I was not a monster. I was not going to plunge into that darkness. Taking in a deep breath, I focused instead on the entrances to the room. I didn't have time for an internal battle. Not right now. I had a witch to protect.

I didn't have to wait for very long before I heard an unholy screech reverberate through the entire chamber around me and deep into my soul, shaking the very foundation of the distorted building. It was an unbearable cry that went on and on, freezing me in place as fear overwhelmed me. And a wordless voice at the back of my head that purred with delight.

As the call faded and the room plunged back into eerie silence, I saw Coraline turn her head and spit a glob of bloody mucus onto the ground. She choked out the words "Here they come."

The black flesh began to slough in enormous clumps off of the walls, twisting themselves into independent moving shapes. Disgusting masses of squirming, pointless, empty flesh gurgling and growling as they fell out of the endless mass surrounding us one by one. In a moment, there were dozens of them. Giant piles of confused limbs flailing and searching for something to grab lurched from the darkness.

I swallowed down the lump in my throat and took a wide stance on one side, glancing over to see Virtue and Scarlet standing at the opposite end. Scarlet looked just as shaken as I was while Coraline kept her eyes closed more tightly, focusing on whatever magic she was employing. I had no idea what was going through Virtue's head, but it looked like it was ready to fight.

I could feel my arms shaking as I held my ground, the monsters approaching from every angle, a wall of flailing tentacles closing in tight. I heard a new screech as Virtue charged forward and grew new limbs, slicing and tearing through the things on its side while Scarlet shouted directions, informing it of things closing in at different angles, while I stood my ground. Clenching my jaw, I felt my eyes welling up with tears as the creatures approached, but then drew to an imposing stop directly in front of me. They waited patiently as if in a queue while I held out my arms in an attempt to make my stance as wide as possible. But I was only one body, and there was a lot of space to cover to keep them from advancing on one entire side of the room. Sidling to the edge of the put, I tried to stop another one from advancing past me, and it obediently halted, but it left space on the other side for them to begin advancing the other way. I needed to do something else. I needed to do something drastic. Virtue was fighting. Physically. I had something in me that could fight. It wasn't a friend, but it could make me dangerous. I didn't understand how to harness it, but I needed it, or Coraline was going to die, and this would all be over. I had to do something.

I gathered what courage I could and took a few deep breaths, screwing my eyes shut for a moment, psyching myself up, then I let out a yell as loud as I could and charged the nearest beast, throwing my shoulder into it as hard as I could.

To my surprise, it reeled back with a surprised cry of its own when I hit it, and plowed through the vice behind it. I stepped back, composing my stance again and staring in surprise that I'd exerted that kind of strength into it. It was working. I'd done something to myself, but I still had clarity. I was still me. Now wasn't the time to stop and look at myself and see what had become of my body, though. I turned to the next encroaching vice and charged for it, pulling my arm back and ramming a fist through it with another primal yell, now reverberating with otherworldly sounds I knew a human being was not capable of. My fist caused it to buckle and sent it flying with a deafening crack at the point of impact.

I saw my arm had turned black. I clenched my jaw in fear that I'd succumbed to something, but at the same time, it felt good. If I was becoming a weapon, I was still pointing in the right direction. I unclenched my fist to see terrible black claws. Exactly as I'd seen in my nightmare. My vision started to sharpen and I could clearly outline each of the monsters growing closer around us, each becoming distinct rather than a single mass. I pounced one with a primal cry and my claws tore through its tainted flesh with satisfying ease. They didn't fight back. They couldn't! Something about me was untouchable to them, but they felt so fragile to me! Such easy prey!

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I picked myself up and launched from body to body, ripping them apart until they dissolved back into the fleshy floor around us, and then moving onto the next. There were so many of them, I was still losing ground, but more slowly now. We could do this! We could control their numbers long enough! I was vaguely aware of Scarlet shouting something from the other side of the room, but I couldn't make out her words in the carnage. She and Virtue would have to deal with their own side of things. Soon enough, the wall of flesh was closing in tighter and I stopped hearing her calls, her attention back on beating them away.

Behind me, I saw a blinding flash of light begin to pulse. We'd been backed into a tight space less than two meters from the chasm, but the light began to build up as if ready to do something devastating.

Then it went dark. The room went still as I felt my claws plunge deep into one more body, only this one made a heaving noise. Something was wrong. I took in a deep, heavy breath as I stared down at something that wasn't there a moment ago.

Coraline's back. The circle went dark, her concentration broken as I stared, dumbfounded, into my blood-soaked claws plunged deep through the center of her back. I felt wet flesh and bone against my skin. She let out a choking cough while my eyes went wide. What had I done? My head turned to see the slumped over body of Scarlet, still and covered in numerous deep lacerations atop a loose pool of black goop, familiar yellow eyes barely visible, scattered across the frantically squirming remains of Virtue.

The creatures had moved back slightly. I was the only one at the center of the massacre. It was me. It was all me. I gave a shallow, shuddering breath as I turned back to Coraline, wide-eyed in shock. She'd turned her head far enough to see me in her terrified eyes and let out one last weak, choking cry. "Why?"

I couldn't move. My arms were stuck, plunged inside of my friend and our only hope, extinguished. What had I just done? She went limp and slumped forward, sliding off of my limbs with ease. She tumbled forward into the chasm, and it was too late that I remembered about her blood. Her mutilated corpse impacted the ground with a wet smack, and in an instant, everything went dark.

It went dark everywhere. Whatever the vice were, they didn't hesitate this time. They erupted forth, and they swallowed everything. The city. The world. The sun. The stars. Everything collapsed into nothing.

And at the center of it all, I sat, rejoined to my true self. Part of that glorious emptiness.

I'd done a very, very good job.

—

I opened my eyes.

I screamed out in horror, my will overridden by that awful thing inside me that doomed everyone and everything. But I was back in control. I panted heavily, my screams dying down to a pathetic whimper as I took in the surrounding bedroom. The old wooden walls, the popcorn ceiling, the sensible framed landscape paintings on the walls, and the well-crafted furniture throughout the room.

Dream. It was just a dream. I panted heavily, trying to convince myself it was over. I hadn't killed my friends with my bare mutated hands. I hadn't ended the world. It was okay. Just a dream. A nightmare.

I screwed my eyes shut and clenched my jaw. Not just a nightmare! This was more than a nightmare! This was serious! I wasn't in control of myself, not really. Something in me could actually make me do that. I could snap and just become some kind of human vice thing and I could kill my friends! I began to hyperventilate, sitting up and looking down at my ordinary hands, obsessively scanning for any signs of black skin or sharpness. Nothing.

My bedroom door flew open, and both Scarlet and Coraline stood, looking ready to attack. Scarlet had a kitchen knife in hand. I scrambled back away from the door, panting harder as I shouted at them. "Stay back! I-I'm-I don't know what I'll do!" I shouted in warning before I tumbled off the other side of the bed, dragging a web of blankets down to the floor with me.

There was a short pause. "Uhh... okay." Coraline muttered uncertainly, the air of implied violence shrinking from their side of the room. "I take it you had another bad dream?"

I scrambled up onto my feet, my whole body shaking as I checked my hands again. Normal. I looked back up at the two, slowly entering the room. "It's not just a dream." I told them. "I-I turned into a monster and I lost control of myself and I killed you." the whole truth spilled out of me in a flurry of stammered words. "And I've got this thing in me, and it's too dangerous! And I don't want to hurt you! I don't want this! I don't want to-" I sat down on the bed and stared at my hands, facing away from the two. "You have to-to-to... I don't know, chain me down, figure out some way to get this thing out of me! I need to be contained! We need to make sure that doesn't happen! I can't let this thing in me doom everyone!"

The room was silent except for my panting and broken sobs. I just continued staring at my hands, expecting them to burst into shadow and gore at any moment. I eventually caught my breath and turned to look at the pair, only to see them standing, glaring at me with shock and hatred. At some point, Virtue, in its monstrous form, had joined next to them, a blade-like limb already formed above it like a scorpion's tail poised to strike. "Do you think you can't be contained?" Coraline asked seriously.

I paused and swallowed. "I don't... I don't know. I don't understand what's happening to me. I'm dangerous, though. I-I have to be restrained somehow. Magic. Something magical. Coraline, help me. You have to help me get it out of me."

"And what if I can't get it out of you, Thomas?" Coraline swallowed for herself, shaky resolve in her voice.

I gave a few more heavy breaths, looking back and forth at each of my friends, then down at my hands again. "Then... Th-Then you have to... to..."

"We have to kill him." Scarlet finished my sentence.

With that horrifying and sobering thought, I lowered my head and stared at my hands, letting out a whimpering sob and breaking down into tears. There it was. If there was no way to free me from this thing, I would have to be euthanized for everyone's safety. I hadn't cried in front of anyone like that in years, but it couldn't wait until I was alone this time. I was so scared, I couldn't contain myself.

I couldn't see what was happening beside me through my tears, but I heard them approaching me. I tried to scoot away, not wanting to be near them in case I did something I didn't want to, but they came closer. Reaching up to wipe my tears away, I began to object when I was met face to face with the black blade-limb coming off of Virtue, pointing straight at me. I gave a terrified whimper. "W-Wait! There's... There's still a chance, right?! A chance we can do something about it!" I cried out. No, it was too soon. I had to at least try to fix this. I couldn't just accept a merciful death already.

"We can't take that chance," Coraline muttered, sounding sad, but resolved.

"Right." Scarlet nodded in agreement.

I glanced between them and then at Virtue, who glared and gave a growl back at me. I swallowed hard. "Please. R-Restrain me, keep me locked up! There's gotta be a way out of this! Please!" I backed away from Virtue, into the wall, and I clenched my hand against the wood, feeling something puncture straight through the wood. With a terrified hesitance, I turned my head to see my blackened hand gripping straight through the panels on the wall.

"Do it, Virtue!" I heard Scarlet shout, and then a crushing pain echoed through the center of my chest.

—

I opened my eyes.

I sat straight up in bed, gasping for air. My hands went to my chest. It was solid. My friend's pet monster hadn't impaled me. I panted and heaved, tears streaming down my face. I couldn't tell them. I couldn't let them know what was happening inside of me. They would kill me. I was alone. I had to figure this out on my own. I had to find some way to purge this thing from me without them knowing, or they'll just get rid of me. I couldn't trust them. I couldn't trust myself.

"Then just give in." My heart stopped as a rasping voice called out from the bed next to me. I turned to see... me? A black writhing clawed shape like a mirror from another world, crouched down to eye level with me on top of the mattress, a wide, manic smile on its face. It reached for my neck and choke slammed me back down flat against the bed, leaving me a panicked, choking and flailing body beneath it. "You know what you are now." It rasped, holding its other clawed hand up threateningly. "Stop fighting. You've already lost." And with one swift motion, it plunged that claw deep into my stomach, tearing upward until my vision went black.

—

I O P E N E D M Y E Y E S.

The same room again. The same house. The same day.

This time, I felt an unnatural calm through my body. My muscles didn't respond when I tried to scream or lift my arms to my head in terrified realization that I was stuck in some hellish nightmare loop. I felt like I was completely paralyzed.

"Are you awake this time?" I heard Coraline's voice call impatiently. A faint glow came from my bedside, toward her voice, but I couldn't turn my head to see what she was doing. She let out a wet cough and suddenly, I felt my muscles wake up. I turned to see Coraline doubling over a bed half-filled with paper, crazed scribbling in what I couldn't define as a written language scattered across numerous pages. Some symbols were emitting a faint glow that faded quickly as I regained bodily control.

She shuddered and sniffled, raising her head to reveal a face caked with traces of coagulated blood, a line of fresh red dripping from her left nostril. She sniffed it up and glared at me. "Fucking finally." She sighed, sounding tired and sick. "Guess I did something right that time."

I stared at her in abject horror. "W-What did you do...?" I mumbled, too stunned to jump to any conclusions. I habitually glanced down at my hands and immediately felt like I was going to throw up. My hands had gone pale, and the tips of each of my fingertips were blackened, like a frostbite victim, their nails growing into sharp, rounded tips.

"Pretty sure I saved your goddamn life." She pulled a tissue from a box at the bedside table and made a gross snorting inhale before hocking up a glob of red into it, then coughing again. "I think. I did something, anyway, if you're awake."

"You screamed in your sleep." I jumped a little at the second voice and turned around to see Scarlet staring at me from the other side of the bed, Virtue sitting next to her in its weird little humanoid form. "We came to check on you, but you kept screaming and you wouldn't wake up. Coraline insisted you were 'losing' and started drawing these things all over you and everything else she could get her hands on. Then you went still and she kept doing her thing. She keeps trying to explain it, but none of it makes sense to me."

On me? I looked down at my chest and saw my shirt had been removed, and there was marker ink all over my chest and belly, in even more of those strange symbols. "Wh-What?" I mumbled, fixating back on my partially changed hands. I couldn't comprehend what was happening. I'd been dreaming, and then I'd been dreaming, and then I'd been dreaming, and then...

I swallowed. "Am I awake?" I asked uncertainly.

Coraline raised an eyebrow at me. "It'd be really fucking weird if you weren't, somehow. What?"

"Coraline, the last three times I woke up, I was in another dream." I explained sharply. "Prove to me I'm awake! Do something that proves I'm awake, please!"

I felt a sudden sharp sting against the opposite side of my head as a loud clap echoed through the room. I turned my head slowly to see Scarlet holding her hand just past where she'd slapped me across the face. I opened my mouth slowly to hiss out, "Ow...?"

"You're awake." She declared with an almost impatient certainty. Virtue glanced quickly between me and Scarlet, giving a perplexed trill of its inhuman voice.

Coraline cleared her throat. "Yes, well... I'm guessing you've been through a lot. There was a lot happening under your dream aspect. Like, a fuckton of dream activity."

I took in a deep breath. I had to trust them. "Okay. Listen. I'm having these dreams. Something's inside me, and-"

"Yes, I know, oblivion." Coraline nodded dismissively. "Look, I can see... things, and there's this massive oblivion aspect inside of you, it's a... really big conflict inside you."

I wasn't even sure what to say to how casual she sounded about that. "Well, get it out of me!"

She gave a weak chortle. "No, you really don't want me to get it out of you."

I desperately raised my voice. "I assure you, I want this thing the fuck out of me!"

"I mean, I can. In your state, it would be more elementary than what I did with this." She gestured to the collection of magical runes all over me and the bed. "But oblivion is the complementary aspect to your soul. If I remove one wholesale, I have to remove the other."

I could only half-follow what she was saying, but the message was clear. I swallowed my saliva and stuttered out "S-So I'd die...?"

Coraline pursed her lips. "Well, no, you could survive without a soul, but you wouldn't really be 'you' anymore, or anyone else for that matter, so kind of?"

"Well, that's not horrifying." Scarlet mumbled.

"There might be more complex magic that could pull it off, but much as I understand how this works on a basic level now, it's absurdly complicated, and I know for sure there are other ways to manipulate the aether, so it might be possible." Coraline kept rambling about something to do with aspects for a minute, listing off pieces of... me, I guess? I couldn't fathom what must have been happening in her head by now, but she seemed excited.

I shook my head and swallowed again, afraid what her response might be when I told her the truth of it. "Okay, slow down. Coraline, listen. This thing, it's violent. It... It wants to kill you. It wants to spill your blood back into the circle and open the portal again. It's our enemy, okay? We need to do something about it."

"Oh." She stopped silent, her eyebrows shooting up in surprise. I suppose she couldn't see everything after all. She leaned forward and squinted her eyes at me and hummed quietly to herself. "Well... that explains some of the things I'm seeing, I guess. Not all of them, but some of them. Anyway, you should be okay now. Your soul is still weak, but I've managed to seal the oblivion aspect for now. You have to strengthen your resolve before I'll be able to remove it."

"Okay, in English this time?" I muttered impatiently. "What does that mean? What do I have to do?"

Coraline gave a frustrated huff and leaned forward, poking my abdomen in a few places. "These four sigils, in these exact positions, they're sealing away the oblivion aspect for now. Keep those right where they are and it can't do any- okay, no, that's not exactly correct, umm... well, it won't be able to consume your soul anymore. For now."

I felt sick. That was far from reassuring. I motioned with my hands held out "A-And this?"

She drew in a deep breath and glanced to the side, mumbling quietly, "I could order you some gloves...?"

"You can't fix it." I took in a deep breath myself to try to calm down. At least they didn't look like the alien claws I saw in my dreams, but they still made me look like some kind of twisted mutant.

She got quiet and gestured toward me apologetically. "I have... slowed it."

I let out a whimper. This wouldn't be the end of the effects I'd have to endure. "This is still happening, then?" I asked.

She nodded slowly. "If you can find some natural way to strengthen your soul, you could fight it off yourself, like an infection, but that might be impossible now. I promise you, as soon as we've dealt with the vice, I will do everything I can to figure out how to keep you human, maybe even reverse this. But what I've already done has given you a lot more time. You will not be turning into some kind of monster. Not any time soon."

"I'm gonna be sick." I muttered, putting my strange hand up to my head and holding my forehead. My fingertips felt cold. I hated this. I was going to slowly become something horrible.

Scarlet let out a grunt as she pushed up to her feet. "Being a monster isn't all bad." Coraline and I turned to give her matching quizzical stares before she stepped around the bed and continued. "Are we still going back there tonight, Coraline?"

'Back there'. I somehow knew exactly what she meant by that and I gave a terrified look to Coraline, speaking hoarsely. "I swear, if you say that we're going back to seal the portal..."

"What? No. Hell no. I still haven't even figured out what the fuck I did in the first place. Are you kidding?" I let out a sigh of relief. I would not be able to endure anything like the dream I'd had. Then she continued. "But we are going to go there to slow it down."