After Thomas recounted his terrible story of a nightmare realm of prophetic tragedies, it was a harrowing prospect that we would be returning to the very place where he legitimately thought he had murdered us in an imaginary life. It was obvious that no one was as distraught as Thomas himself. The trauma of what he'd undergone was clear in his eyes. He was tired despite his rest, and he looked like he was somewhere else. What he could have done and what must have felt like a doomed future to him weighed heavily on the man. If it wasn't also a terrible idea to leave him alone in this state, I would have suggested he stay out of this mission.

Coraline's magic had arrested his parasite before it could overtake him, and she seemed confident that he was safe for the time being. But it was a frightening prospect that there was something inside of one of our few allies that was willing and able to destroy us, and had already displayed some capacity to alter Thomas's human body.

I considered Thomas's second dream carefully. I will admit, the idea that perhaps it would be better if he was eliminated was one of the first things I thought when he revealed just how invasive his 'infection' seemed to be. But that would come with a slew of other impractical problems we'd be worse off with. Not least of which was my compass. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that murder is wrong, no matter how practical, and I knew that if I went through with something like that, I would be crossing a threshold I had sworn I would never let myself go over, and there would be no coming back. He could be a liability, but I had to trust he could also be a powerful associate and keep himself in control.

I wondered if the dreams were all a trick of the vice inside of him, or if he subconsciously believed I was that ruthless to order Virtue to attack him. I glanced at Virtue, sitting next to me and staring directly up at me with an expectant smile. It idolized me. It may have even loved me. But would it actually follow through if I told it to kill another human being, even one compromised by the vice? I hoped it wouldn't.

It was bizarre, after that, getting ready for our day as if we were going to go off to classes. Thankfully for all our grades, it was a Saturday, but we had much more frightening plans for the day than enduring an overbearing lecturer. Still, we sat around the sitting room, which was beginning to become littered with scattered pages of her new art, scribbled across dozens of pages, many discarded bits of scrap paper, and occasionally absent-mindedly scratched into the coffee table. She was obsessed. From what she'd told me while she was magically operating on Thomas, she had to be. The 'language' had been seared into her mind, and she could no longer not see what it told her.

"It's like true naming." She mumbled to me. When I responded only with a quizzical turn of my head, she rolled her eyes. "Fucking... Okay, fine, umm... imagine this. Imagine if we were in a computer system. A computer needs to be programmed, and that programming is written in a language. Not necessarily one of human syntax and societal evolution, but one purely of structure and logic. A higher logic than is normally accessible to living things." She spoke excitedly as she referenced that strange book that started this all, nodded at it, then scribbled something else onto her stack of paper. "This is that language. It's in everything, it is reality, and these words—" She finally looked up to me as she gestured to the pages that actually slightly hurt my eyes to look at, as if some unseen force wanted me to stop trying to make sense of them. "—are that programming language. The language. The true names of everything I see, as defined by existence itself, are visible to me. I am hacking reality." She smiled widely and went right back to her work.

Thomas walked into the room with a small white package wrapped in paper towels and placed it on the table next to Coraline's notes, jarring her from her frenzy. She looked down to see the microwaved burrito he'd prepared for her. "This is all way over my head, but what I do know is, you need something in your belly. We all do. I've got another one heating up right now." He let out a relieved sigh. "I'm glad you have real food."

"Yeah, of course I do. I know I'm frail, but you seriously thought I had some fucking gross dietary restrictions? I ordered pizza while we were cleaning, remember?" She glanced at the burrito, but didn't pick it up. It was probably still too hot to eat, anyway. Or did she know that just by looking at it?

"I figured that was a special occasion sort of thing." Thomas shrugged, plopping down on the couch and looking down the collar of his shirt at the array of runes inked onto his chest.

"Nope. I eat junk constantly." She went right back to her study, but now occasionally eyeing the food when her vision crossed it.

"You said you can slow down the vice, right?" I asked. "In practical terms us mere mortals can understand, what does that mean we're doing?"

"It means creating a perimeter. A fence. It needs to be contained to the industrial park. That'll hopefully give me enough time to fucking figure this shit out." She shook her head and wrote something more carefully on her page. "And I also need to see the vice. They're probably pretty similar to Virtue, but I have to see their aspects myself if I'm going to figure out what I'm working with."

"And that's what you're trying to figure out right now? With all... this?" I gestured to the pages of what looked like something you'd see scratched into a cell in an asylum.

"No, I already have the containment spell put together. This is for you." I raised my eyebrows, my curiosity piqued, but she answered before I could ask. "Thomas is already infected, Virtue is already primarily composed of oblivion, and the same unique properties I have that allow me to express magic make me immune, which is good considering how much it manhandled me while I was unconscious. You, however, need protection. I'm trying to figure out how to shield your soul from oblivion."

"That's quite a sentence." Thomas muttered. "You stopped using that dictionary on your phone... can you just read that book now?"

She shook her head. "It's more like I'm reading it differently. I'm reading the intent of it rather than trying to translate the literal meaning of the words, and reverse engineering it. I'm using it as a reference to figure out how to use aspects together. This book is way, WAY beyond me, though. It's several magnitudes of complexity above what I'm doing. So no, I still have no idea what's actually written in this book. But I know what it means on a fundamental level. Does that make sense?"

"Absolutely not." Thomas shook his head. There was the faint sound of a microwave beeping over in the kitchen and he forced himself back up to his feet with a grunt and stepped back out of the room.

I looked after him until I was sure he was occupied in the other room. I had to be sure about how risky having him around was, and this might be my only opportunity. I asked Coraline, "How long does he have?"

Coraline stopped writing immediately, her pen coming to a sudden halt. She let out a heavy breath of air. "It depends on him. If nothing changes... a few months. My little bit of tinkering can only do so much. If he gets worse, maybe a little sooner. If he can strengthen his resolve, he can beat it for good."

I gave an impatient hum. "You're speaking in riddles again."

"Sorry." She shook her head. "I keep forgetting you can't see what I see. Thomas is weak-willed. He doesn't have a strong sense of identity like you and I. It leaves room for something like what's inside him to breed. I didn't want to say it in front of him yet, but I doubt he'll ever be completely free from that thing. He's already essentially no longer human. But if he does it right, he can control it and make it his own."

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I stared at her for a moment. "Identity?" I hadn't expected her to define me that way. Then I realized what she'd said earlier. She could define everything as it truly was, simply through sight. I went stiff. Did she know? "Coraline, can you tell—"

"I can't read all the deeper meanings behind it. Not yet." She interrupted, reaching for the burrito on the table and tapping it experimentally with her finger before she lifted it up. "I know the alphabet, but I'm still learning the language. I'm still figuring it all out. But I can tell that you already have a very good idea of who you are. You've been through some real shit already, and it's obvious you came out the other side strong. I can tell. I'm the same way. I mean, I'm obviously facing a whole new thing right now, but I've already fought for something. Thomas hasn't." She bit down into the burrito and mumbled with a mouthful of food. "Quit looking so nervous. You can tell me when you're ready. Not gonna out you. I have bad experiences with that, myself."

I slowly relaxed my shoulders and glanced down. I'd sort of had the impression that Coraline had been a bit spoiled and was as callous as she was from a sense of self-righteous contempt. Perhaps I'd been wrong about that. She was more introspective than she seemed. And she had her own demons. "So you're saying Thomas has had an easy life?" I asked.

She shook her head, swallowing this time before she spoke again. "I never said that. I'm just saying he's never fought for something."

It was hard to imagine what she meant by that, but she went right back to eating, turning back to her book and taking care not to let the food near it. Was there some nuance between a difficult life and fighting against it that I was missing? It certainly wouldn't be the first time. I was hardly suited to compare human experiences.

I felt a soft touch against my arm and turned to see Virtue leaning into me. It wasn't staring at me anymore, though, its eyes fixed in the middle distance and its expression neutral. It was lost in thought as well. I wondered if it understood much of that with its limited experience. I wondered if it had had hardships before we met, in whatever form that could possibly take for it. Was there even anything that could have been defined as a social structure it could have had difficulty with in its world? Was it even truly a free-thinking being before it had been severed from the vice? Was it an individual at all there?

Thomas walked back into the sitting room a few moments later, this time carrying two greasy wrapped packages, and handed one to me. I was hungry, so I took it, but I couldn't help but look at his malformed hand as he passed it to me. It didn't look like the same kind of shaped flesh like the vice had, but it still looked inhuman. I left the food to cool on my knee while Thomas sat down on Virtue's other side, keeping a bit more space between himself and the alien child than I did. "Are we going to be able to go safely tonight, then?" He asked quietly, hesitation and doubt clear in his tone.

"Yes, yes. The sooner we do this, the more space we'll have to work with, so we should do this tonight. It's as safe as we can get it this quick." Coraline waved him off, taking another bite from her meal, setting it down and wiping her hands before she pulled over a new page and began drawing more runes, much more carefully than before. She swallowed and continued. "I have a spell, I'm just trying to figure out the physical arrangement. It won't stand up to prolonged exposure, but I can keep Scarlet safe. We won't be going further in than we have to, anyway. If I'm right about how it spreads, the vice may have already swallowed up some of the park, so we won't even be able to get back to the circle without walking into elemental oblivion. "

"Elemental oblivion?" Thomas sounded frightened as he slowly repeated the words.

"Literally nothing." Coraline declared dramatically. "It won't be anything like your dream, Thomas. The vice won't have that shape in their own domain. There's nothing for them to be there, what we saw the other day is a desperate adaptation to a reality where things can be material. Like, we're not talking the vacuum of space, I mean nothing. No air, no objects, no matter, no time or space. Conceptual fucking nothingness. The only thing that's probably left in that room is the circle. That's protected by the spell itself, and if there's a will behind the vice, it wants that circle intact."

"Didn't I break it, though?" Thomas asked.

"No, you disrupted it." Coraline corrected as she lifted her pen and inspected the new page she'd made. It was a much more elaborate arrangement of symbols, connected by square brackets into a diamond shape. "The physical components of the spell stopped being important the moment it was cast. You moving through the circle was what closed it. The circle is still there, metaphysically. And the vice could be holding onto it for when they get their hands on living witch blood again. Which would be... well, game over."

"Don't say it like that." Thomas mumbled. "So we can't get to the circle. Do we need it?"

"I wouldn't know what to do with it yet... but probably, yeah. It would make sense to... reverse it, maybe? I definitely don't know how to get there, anyway. We shouldn't be able to exist in literal fucking nothingness. Not to mention that oblivion and souls are antithetical." She kept mumbling to herself for a moment, then shook her head. "That's a problem for another day, don't worry about the circle for now."

I took in a deep breath. "Alright. So the plan is to go there and you plant a bunch more magic to make a cage, right?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Coraline nodded. "Much like the aspects written on Thomas, they will only last for so long, but they should hold it for a long time. The advantage of working against elemental oblivion is that it's simple by definition. It isn't hard to predict. It can't evolve or adapt. All it'll be able to do is slowly erode the magic."

"And to make sure nothing comes out and does the same thing to me as it's doing to Thomas, you have to do something to me?" I asked.

She stood up, holding her paper out in front of her with one hand, and took in a deep breath. "Yes. I need to test it first, though. I promise, this shouldn't hurt. Are you ready?"

"Wait." Thomas held his hand up and we both turned to him. He aimed a concerned look at Coraline. "Will it hurt you? Every time you've done anything with magic, you've ended up leaking blood everywhere. Your health..." He shook his head. "Be careful with this stuff."

Coraline looked like she was about to say something, but then bit her lip. She nodded slowly. "I guess... I have been pushing myself." She mumbled. "Fuck. This can't wait, though. We can't afford to sit around and wait by my bedside while I hope I get better!" She grit her teeth. She had a complicated history with her illness, that was certain. "I have to push through this. Invoking aspects like this takes a portion of my vitality, yes, but I haven't hit my limit yet. I have plenty to give."

"How many times do you have to cast the containment spell?" I asked.

Coraline turned back to me and then looked down in thought. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone to check the GPS app. After a few moments, she shook her head. "Umm... it depends on how far it's advanced already. I doubt it's been that quick, but if I had to surround the entire industrial park? Twelve."

I leaned forward and took in a deep breath. "And using your sight on yourself, can you tell how much 'vitality' you're going to have to expend to cast that spell twelve times?"

She creased her brow and lowered her gaze, glancing at herself again and letting out a quiet whimper. "I... probably couldn't."

"You'd faint again?" Thomas asked.

She closed her eyes and groaned in barely a whisper. "I'd... die."

There was a long silence between all of us. I closed my own eyes as well. I had to make a decision here. My compass made the answer obvious, though. "Then I suppose I'll do without. You'll have more to give into the spells that actually need to be cast that way. I'll just be careful. Virtue can protect me if we get attacked. Right?"

I looked down at the little creature, and it turned to face me with its tiny smile, nodding and letting out an enthusiastic cry.

"W-Wait, hold on!" Coraline started. "You know if you even get touched by one of those things, you could be..." She swallowed, side-eyeing Thomas "You know what I said about this infection." That it was permanent. That if I was tagged by them, I could end up undergoing the same transformation and parasitic dark influence as Thomas. I understood that. But my safety was secondary here.

"And if you don't have the strength to finish that fence, you said it yourself." I put a hand down on Virtue's head to pet it, and it gave out a delighted squeal. "Game over. I trust Virtue to keep me safe. Your magic can be put to better use elsewhere."

Coraline looked uncertain, but she glanced down and lowered the paper, giving a solemn nod. "Alright. I guess that's how it has to be, then."

"You said you could already... die just doing this..." Thomas mumbled. "You say that like you already accepted it."

"It won't have spread that far yet." She mumbled. "I'm guessing five. Maybe six. I can handle that. I might need some help getting home, but I can handle it."

"I'm packing first aid," Thomas mumbled, taking a bite into his burrito and standing up again.

Coraline watched him leave and turned back to me again "You're sure about this?" She asked again.

I shrugged, standing up and stretching out my arms, Virtue following my motions. "Do we have a choice?"