---Em---

     "Bryan... can you hear me?"

     Comma's lips move, but it's Olivia's voice that comes out of them. I try to answer, but I choke on a mouthful of blood. Everything sounds muffled, as though I'm underwater, except for the sound of her voice.

     "Don't say anything," says Olivia, speaking to me through Comma somehow. "Just listen."

     There's an explosion. Lights flicker above me as two thick beams of energy ram into each other. The temple starts to come down around us.

     And the pain... it's like someone flattened me out with a rolling pin and then ran me over with an iron. But more than the pain, there's... a void. A weightlessness. Like a pumpkin, after you get through scooping all the guts out.

     "Can you—?" Olivia begins.

     "—hear me?" Comma finishes.

     For a moment, everything's clear. My vision floats around the collapsing temple, through the shower of debris. Tahj's decapitated body lies crooked on the cracked stone floor. Through a hole in the ceiling, I can see two levitating figures, their auras glowing so intensely that they light up the blackened sky. On the one end, there's the fake Comma with the blonde hair, the one who punched a hole through my chest. Clutching the zillbane with her right hand, she shoots rivulets of electrified shadows from her left. The shadows converge at a single point, swallowed up by a sphere of hot pink light. Gail, maintains the sphere, nullifying the fake Comma's magic. Gail's aura is fused together with Miu-sama's—I recognize it from when the shikigami possessed me.

     Then everything gets blurry again, and Comma's voice dissolves into Olivia's.

     "Bryan? You with me?"

     I start to tingle all over, as if my body is made out of millions of grains of sand, all of which are bumping into and rattling against each other. I can feel each grain begin to dissolve. There's no fear; I close my eyes and accept whatever's happening. But then I jerk back into my state of semi-awareness. More disjointed visions. Topher and Mya squaring off against the were-tiger. Torn up segments of Miu-sama's paper doll body floating in the wind, some of them burnt black.

     And then Olivia again...

     She keeps repeating this word, but I can't make any sense of it. Gan... Gani... Gana...? Gam...? It's no use; it all just sounds like gibberish to me.

     And then something mixes with the taste of my blood. Something thicker. There's a hint of sweetness at first, like tree sap... followed by an explosion of bitterness. My body convulses as I attempt to throw the stuff up. Comma slams be back down, pressing her wrist against my throat. It's her blood... she's feeding me her blood...

     A brick plummets from the ceiling and smacks me on the head. I black out for a moment, and when I phase back in, I could swear it's Olivia who's hunched over me.

     "Ganeden," she mouths voicelessly.

     Then I black out again, this time for good, I think...

     That'd be nice.

     But when does anything ever go my way?

     I perceive now only in snapshots. Colours, splashed together in an incoherent mess. Faces I can't recognize. No movement—just moments, isolated from the flow of time. In random sequence. Each is a mystery to me, impossible to make any sense of. I see shapes and colours, but I don't have names for them. It's like the entirety of existence has been translated into some foreign language that my brain isn't capable of processing.

     Gradually, I start to recognize things again. Make sense of the images. The moments start to cycle more rapidly as my consciousness sputters back to life.

     I've got an itch, only it's in that part of me that got scooped out, the part of me that I couldn't reach even if I clawed through to my own centre. My fingers grab for something, anything to bash my head in with. Failing that, I decide to scratch my throat until I tear it open and bleed to death. But before I can to that, Gail notices that I'm awake and kisses me. Contrary to popular belief, that doesn't fix anything; all I can concentrate on is the itch and the piece of me that's missing.

     After a while, I do get used to the itching though. And then I'm able to get a look around. Not that there's anything to see. We're back in the nothing. Right back where we started. Like some sort of sick joke. Gail lets go of me and I just hover there. We all just sort of hover there.

     "Welcome back," says Comma. Her ears—the pointy ones—twitch when she looks at me. Mental note: find out more about that later.

     "I'd prefer it if you didn't contaminate my vessel," says Gail. Her eyes look funny when she says it. Then her expression shifts to one more familiar, and she scowls. "I ain't your vessel. This is only temporary, until we find you a new body. Anyone here know origami?"

     Something claws at the back of my mind. I'm forgetting something important...

     Whatever it is, it'll have to wait. A quick scan of our current place that's not really a place tells me everyone made it out alive, except for...

     "Tahj. He—"

     Comma shakes her head. "He's gone, and that's that. We don't have the luxury of mourning the dead. Not anymore." She toys with something in her hands—her toque, only it's all shredded up.

     "Fancy finding us another rip before the glowdarks show up?" asks Mya.

     They all stare at me expectantly, as if I'm about to bust out some miracle. But all I can sense is a whole lot of nothing. Not that I'm eager to get that familiar tugging feeling in my gut; something tells me that'd be pretty damn painful right about now.

     "You can't sense them anymore, can you?" Comma crosses her arms.

     I blink, and even that hurts like hell. "What do you mean?"

     "I mean Selina sucked out a piece of your soul," she says. "She took your powers."

     Selina? Oh, right, the impostor. The missing piece starts aching again. I swear I can still feel her cold fingers squeezing my heart.

     "Phantom pains?" Comma smirks. "Join the club. She drained me as well."

     Topher clears his throat. "I think I have the monopoly on phantom pains, no?"

     So where does that leave us? If I can't rip anymore... we're as good as dead. It's only a matter of time before the glowdarks catch our scent. And when they find us, we'll have nowhere left to run.

     "I'm still here, right?" I say. Barely here, sure, but still here. "She clearly didn't take all of my soul. Maybe that means I've still got some of my powers. Maybe I can still open a rip."

     "You can't open a rip if you can't find one," Comma points out. Always with the logic.

     "So you do it. Use that transmitter thingy."

     Comma's eyebrow twitches. "I don't have that transmitter thingy. You didn't give it back to me; you gave it to Selina. Who, for the record, is nothing like me. How exactly is it that you weren't able to tell the difference?"

     Here we go.

     "For one," says Comma, "I haven't got any white hairs."

     "If you're lucky," says Crawford, "you'll die before you get any."

     "Oh yeah?" Comma's forehead veins pulse. "Well if you're luck, I won't—"

     "Are we seriously doing this right now?" Mya stares at us incredulously. "It's a bloody miracle you lot have made it this far. How about instead of sitting around bickering, we come up with some sort of plan, yeah?"

     I lean back, letting my body settle into a comfortable position—I still haven't gotten used to the lack of gravity, and can't shake the feeling that I'll topple over if my posture isn't good. Truth be told, I'm sick of plans. In fact, I'm sick of surviving. Being back in the nothing really put things into perspective. Maybe the ones who don't make it are the lucky ones. And to think, I would've been one of them if it weren't for...

     "How about some answers?" I wriggle about until I'm floating upright, or at least what passes for upright in a void. I glare at Comma. "What are you? And what did you do to me? Please tell me I didn't see you feeding me your blood. That had to be me hallucinating, right?"

     Comma shrugs. "If it helps you sleep at night."

     "Does that make me... whatever you are? Am I infected now?"

     She rolls her eyes. "I'm not a vampire." We all stare at her. "All right, I get it. I'm the other now. Xenophobia time." She shakes her head. "Unbelievable. You do know that half of you would be dead right now if it weren't for me, right?"

     "What's that supposed to mean?" asks Gail—her Southern accent serving as a good distinguisher between her and Miu-sama, now that they're occupying the same body.

     "Stomach acid to the face," Comma says, pointing at Crawford. Then she points at Topher. "Blood loss from a severed limb. I fed those two my blood after the showdown with Eloise, and that's the only reason they're still breathing."

     Topher's eyes widen. "You did what?"

     "You were in bad shape, man," says Crawford.

     "Wait... you knew about this?"

     "I'm an alpen," Comma continues. "That's what we're called. Our blood is infused with our aura—a by-product of our souls, which are much more powerful than human souls. Historically, your kind used to hunt us down and kill us for our blood, because it's able to heal even life-threatening wounds in humans. Sometimes, anyway."

     "Sometimes?" asks Crawford, narrowing his eyes.

     "Well either that or it poisons you." She grins. "I took my chances."

     An alpen, huh? I wonder if that's the same thing as an elf. Close enough, I suppose. That also explains how she's able to summon her chakram out of thin air: an alpen magic trick.

     "That's nice and all," says Mya. "About that plan though..."

     "Don't worry about coming up with a plan," says Topher. "Glowdarks, incoming."

     As the black dots draw closer, they begin to morph into distinguishable shapes. These glowdarks appear to be less of an amorphous mess than the ones we've encountered so far; their outlines are almost... humanoid. Their glow is also less pronounced; the patchy blend of light and darkness makes me want to wretch. They're dripping black slime. Decomposing.

     Gail's eyes start to glow as Miu-sama takes over, but even the shikigami's confidence seems to be wavering. I glance at Comma. She sighs. Grabs my wrist, ready to drag me with her this time when she flees.

     But then we hear what I can only describe as a laser blast. A round neon sphere plants itself in one of the glowdarks' torsos, releasing jolts of electricity. The glowdark doesn't budge; it's paralyzed. The other glowdarks—I count ten of them, maybe more—all stop to look at the injured one.

     Another figure comes skating towards us. A male, late teens, bald. Wearing a hoodie, sweatpants, and... an arm cannon? And on his back: a female, about my age, similarly dressed, but unarmed. She hops off a few metres away from our current non-location and tears open a rip.

     The male gives a low whistle. "How'd we manage to miss a group big as yours?" The female clears her throat. He nods. "Let's make this quick. The name's Ace, and I just saved your asses. See that little plasma ball?" He points at the injured glowdark. "That'll only keep 'em busy for as long as it takes you to piss your pants. So you best get your asses through that rip."

Author's Note:

Em's alive! But let's not forget about Tahj; he will be missed. Next chapter begins a brand new story arc. So, is Ace a friend or a foe?

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