Coraline had changed since I first met her. When I first saw her being dragged away by my brethren, still and weak while the other humans rushed to her aid, I thought that she was helpless. She must have been someone to be protected, and she had little to offer in matters of strength herself. But ever since she moved the world for the first time, with her strange symbols and her stubborn immersion into things that alarmed the others, I began to realize that maybe there was more than one way to be strong.

My Scarlet had conviction and a powerful understanding of those around her. The tainted Thomas human had physical prowess, and though he lacked the surety of spirit that the other two showed and harbored my dark kin within him, he had a caring heart. But Coraline had something special of her own. She pushed others away, and she was frail. But she harbored a powerful will, and a belief that she could accomplish anything. And ever since she touched that symbol and began to change the world in ways that were fantastic even to the other humans, I began to feel like she truly could.

All of the humans had different ways in which they were powerful beyond the scope of the other humans. I wondered if this wonderful uniqueness of power extended to every human being there was.

And so Coraline had put everything she had and everything she was into protecting this wonderful, unique world. And then she was dragged away into the dark. Into what should have been my domain, but now felt so foreign. As the two other humans I'd grown to know reached out and called her name in a vain attempt to call her back, I too stared into the darkness in despair. I understood enough to know what this meant. I knew that Coraline was the key to opening this world to the influence of the dark. I knew that it would flood this world. It would greedily swallow it up and make everything unique and wonderful about it uniform. It would make this place into nothing.

And to try to go after her into that all-consuming darkness would be to lose everything you are and to embrace oblivion.

I stared into the shadow, watching the stunned expressions of my human companions as they shook and shivered, unable to find their strength for dealing with such an impossible barrier. But I was oblivion. I could.

But could I really be strong, too?

I had to be.

Without wasting another moment, I reared back on as many legs as I could, bending them to launch myself, and I too plunged my whole form directly into the depths of that dark invasion, my Scarlet's voice echoing around me as she shouted my name as well. This was a place she could not follow. From here on, I had only my own strength to rely on.

The black ate away at me. It wanted the precious life and the knowledge and the pain and the joy that I'd gathered. It wanted everything. But I protected that part of myself that I'd constructed and learned to love in my short time in the material world, holding it deep inside of me, so it would have to chew through my own darkness first.

I could see Coraline. She was moving through the dark, protected by a sinister force, but drawn forward to her inevitable doom by the grasping claws of my brethren. As I flew closer and closer, however, I felt something else.

A call of my own. It was a comfortable, wordless voice. Words were not the domain of my kind.

It offered comfort. Security. Familiarity.

I listened.

No pain. No uncertainty. No more feeling out of place. No more not knowing what I am.

I reached my own tendril toward Coraline, and I almost reached her. But I hesitated.

I could return to the darkness. It did not blame me for going astray. It would not punish me for its actions. I could return to that blissful, comfortable emptiness. No more thought. No more self. No more fighting. It would be so easy.

This world was doomed. The end had already begun. Oblivion was too strong. So why not rejoin the darkness now? Why not save myself the pain of being devoured slowly? Of watching everything I was growing to love be brought to its inevitable conclusion? Of death?

Coraline began to slip away, and I felt myself losing my grip on those precious bits of myself. Death...? I wondered to myself. I did not expect to learn from the darkness, but it somehow offered me that singular bit of information.

Death. The inevitable conclusion to all life. The dissolution of self that came for all things that lived. It was inescapable. It was inevitable. And there was no point in fighting it. Within the darkness, we had no life, and we were spared the pain of its conclusion. In the end, life was pointless, after all. The darkness I came from was not my enemy. It was simply getting it over with. It offered a comforting numbness. I would never have to face death. Or pain. Or worry.

It was best to just surrender and let what will happen, happen.

I stopped moving. I closed my eyes. I let it in.

But... that was wrong.

Something inside bolstered my form, rejected it and kept those precious things I'd gathered pure in my moment of weakness, my body reforming itself into armored flesh as I found footing and launched myself through the dark to catch up to Coraline again. Something inside of me told me that despite the logic of the darkness, there was something more important that made it wrong.

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Compass. It reminded me of what was right. And it was a gift from my Scarlet. I trusted it.

The voice called out again, desperately, but I wasn't listening anymore. No more thought. No more joy. No more relief. No more days and nights. No more learning. No more comfort. No more hugs. No more laughing. No more Thomas. No more Coraline. NO MORE OF MY SCARLET! No more life, in all its imperfection and transience! All the thoughts of everything that would no longer be if I failed only made my conviction burn brighter in the depths of oblivion, reignited by that reminder that this was the right thing to do.

I passed right by Coraline and raised a claw, as large as I could manage. Wielding my righteous anger solidified, I cleaved down across the claw holding her, severing it from the human woman and breaking her out of that fateful pull.

The voice stopped. I knew in that moment that I'd been cast out. That I was no longer welcome in the dark. That I was an enemy of oblivion forever more. And that made me feel so alive. It made Compass shine with pride. I enveloped Coraline in my own shape, and turned on the spot, rocketing through the darkness as it tried to form itself around me and chase me down. It would capture me and hold me, consume me in whole, and take Coraline back.

But I was strong.

I was faster than it. I knew I was! I had the conviction to push myself! I was alive!

I burst back into the material, flying high up above where I had entered, and the darkness made one last desperate grasp at me before it recoiled. The material world rejected it, and its grasping claws shriveled and pulled back into the well of shadows. It would have to form armor here. It would have to become like me. It would have to become vice. And that would take it time. I had escaped, and I had stolen its prize from inside it.

I plummeted down to the ground, far past my Scarlet and Thomas, who came running, shouting my name as I landed with a thud and left cracks in the ground. My name! I had a name, and it was Virtue, and it was wonderful, and I was alive! I made happy noises at them and released Coraline gently from within my flesh, down onto the ground so as not to hurt her. They shouted her name as well, and I continued crying out in joy, excitedly sliding back and forth across the ground before I barreled into my Scarlet, wrapping my flesh tight around her in a hug while she and Thomas expressed obvious relief.

"Holy shit! Virtue!" Thomas laughed. He patted my side. "I can't believe it! I'm sorry for ever doubting you! You are amazing! Haha! Woo!" He cheered loudly, then took off his pack and knelt down to Coraline. "She's breathing! Thank God!"

Even my Scarlet was unusually expressive, smiling widely at me. "Good job, Virtue!" She called, laughing more sensibly and wrapping her arms around me as I hugged her. "You did such a good job!" I let out happy sounds and leaned hard into her, overjoyed to hear her praise.

This was worth it. Even if there were inevitabilities like death, this was all worth breaking away from oblivion.

We all froze in our celebration, however, when we heard a loud rumbling from behind us. The three of us looked back toward the well of oblivion, now pushing at the bounds of the magical sphere Coraline had constructed. It pushed out right to its limits, but it was contained. That opening would not be getting any bigger. Not any time soon, according to Coraline's words. But it didn't sound happy.

"Shit." My Scarlet spat.

"What? We won!" Thomas gave a cautious smile.

"If it can't expand anymore, it's going to put its energy into something else," My Scarlet explained. "Vice."

"Oh." Thomas mumbled, donning his pack again and leaning down to carry Coraline's limp, sleeping form. "We should leave."

My Scarlet nodded. She gave a slight smile to me again and gave me another pat on the head. "I'm introducing you to ice cream when we get home." She told me. I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like a reward. I gave her an excited yap, and started to condense myself down again as we moved, eventually jumping back up into Scarlet's shirt.

We didn't see the Vice in that area again on our way out. Before long, the sky was turning orange again, and we had made it back to the city. Thomas cleaned up Coraline, so there was no more blood, while we waited for the moving room. A bus, I learned along the ride when my Scarlet managed to let me touch a new human man. They couldn't talk about what we'd accomplished around that other human, but Thomas could barely contain his excitement.

"She okay?" The older man asked, gesturing to Coraline leaning up against Thomas in the bus seat next to him.

"Cram session." Scarlet sighed, sounding annoyed. "I told her she needs to study more, but she always does this right before the test and passes out later."

The man gave a small laugh and shook his head. "You kids always think you're invincible."

Thomas shook his head and laughed himself. "You'd be surprised..."

"Nn...?" Coraline let out a weak groan and one eye fluttered open slowly. She didn't move anything else, though. I wasn't sure if she could. She tried to say something, but it came out as an incoherent slur.

"Easy, Coraline." My Scarlet told her. "Just sleep already. You earned it."

Her eye darted around sluggishly a few times before she took in a deep breath and closed her eyes again, quickly drifting back to sleep. The older man laughed.

I wondered what it was like to sleep. It must be restful. Except for Thomas. He always seemed upset by sleep. Maybe I shouldn't try it.

The bus pulled up to the stop by the house, and we all stepped out, Coraline once again draped peacefully across Thomas's outstretched arms. "Well..." Thomas started. "We saved the world. For now. Now what?"

"Now Coraline recovers, and then we figure out a way to save it for real." My Scarlet sighed. "And how to defend ourselves when the Vice inevitably come knocking on our door."

"... I should probably go back to class on Monday." Thomas mumbled, glancing down uncertainly at his wrapped hands around Coraline's body. "I know everything that's at stake here, but... this is going to take a while, right? And I can't afford to just drop out, you know?"

My Scarlet hummed. "I suppose we should probably try to maintain some kind of illusion of normalcy. It's not a terrible idea to look like we're busy with normal lives. We're just some friends who decided to live together off campus, right?"

Thomas nodded. "Got it."

"And I'll see if I can teach Virtue to pass as human." I chirped happily to my Scarlet. I wouldn't mind disguising myself as human.

"You did a really good job today, Virtue." Thomas said, as we turned the corner to walk up to the house. But they both froze in place when we entered the yard, their expressions turning to surprised concern. I peeked out to see what had them so shocked, and I froze as well.

On the path leading up to the front door, planted upright firmly in the ground, was a gnarled and twisted wooden staff, topped with a small dangling cage in which a burning blue-green light glowed eerily. And tied to the top of the shaft with red string was a folded paper note. My Scarlet approached with caution and read aloud from the back of the note without touching it. "To Coraline Eld..." She looked back to Thomas and shared a look of bewildered concern.