Not far from where Gabriel and Liz had their encounter with the group, they reached an exit for the Dungeon. It was an eye-catching passage in the rock. Beyond it shined a dim light, probably not a point of access already, but one in formation.

"How did you know there was an exit here?" Gabriel asked Olivia. "Wasn't this place, unmapped? Dustille said so."

"She's connected with a Seer, genius," answered Darte, shaking his head.

"That means she knows things before they happen, not that she acts as Google Maps, right?" Gabriel answered, uncertain, turning toward Olive for confirmation.

"Actually," Olive answered, the real Olive, "I had Brill look around the place since the Dungeon shift started. We found it by luck."

"Oh," Darte exclaimed, surprised.

"See?" Gabriel said. Hohoho, take that, know-it-all of my ballsack!

"Anyway, we need the Guardian awake to burst through the shield," she added as they reached the place.

"So she had the power to break through it? We'll she be able to, though? She's quite roughed up."

"Yes, and no," Olivia answered, "She should have something with her, something that could potentially get us out of here or spread our particles on the entrance’s walls."

Both Gabriel and Darte stopped moving, together with their Spirits.

"I don't think I like that idea," Gabriel said.

"I don't think I like those chances," Darte echoed.

"Well, it's that or boiling the certainty of boiling to death, since it's pretty clear that the Dungeon is gonna clear itself from intruders through heat before it completely restarts," she explained.

Darte tsked. "Guess we have no choice. Let's wake sister Mary up," he added.

Gabriel looked at Olivia, "She has a second name?"

"I... I don't think he meant it that way, but she might…" she answered.

Darte made his panther drop the girl down. He helped in laying her with her back on the walls of the passage. Then he drew closer and, taking a big breath, he gently said…

"WAKE UP FUCKTARD!"

The girl did indeed wake up and with a startle. She tried punching him in the face, but Darte quickly moved away.

"Ahhh, good old times," he said.

"You are dishonorable, Darte…" she answered.

"Pfft! Who are you trying to trick? You scare people away by threatening to scare them with Mana Poisoning, asshole!" Darte retorted.

"Darte! There's the Herald there!" She said, slowly picking herself up.

"Yeah, and? Trying to make a good impression? Too late, I bet he already hates your guts. I mean, you could have sent him home. Instead, you left him a letter, ‘Find me at the Rapids of Mana, on the Rock of Old' " he shamelessly mimicked her, "what a dick move."

Gaia, wide-eyed, looking between Darte and Gabriel. She looked as if she didn't know what to say.

Gabriel scratched his neck, "Well, it kind of was a dick move… Anyway, I fondled your breast so; I think we're even. But you probably undressed me, back then… so, I still think you owe me one, after all."

Both Olivia and Darte couldn't help but have their jaws drop. On the other side, Gaia grew white as a sheet, then red, and finally, she started laughing. A laugh interrupted by coughing, but still captivating.

What a pretty laugh, Gabriel found himself thinking.

"This is kinda unexpected…anyway. You've got an MMP with you, don't you?" Asked Darte.

EMP?

Gaia took her time to stop laughing. When she finished, she let Crystal out, the gigantic silver wolf appeared in his magnificent figure by her side. Once again, Liz was by far the smallest among them. Even Brill had grown quite much.

Gabriel realized that Olivia must have power leveled like him. So she should be, once again, at a higher level.

"Alright, I'm ready," the girl said, "but I need you to carry me over there and bring me back once I trigger it. I swear to N'arr if you let me die, Darte… I'll torment you for the rest of your life!"

Darte sighed, "I won't alright? I won't… probably," he said, smirking.

Man, their relationship is fucked up… And there I thought I had grown as a weird kid.

Gaia turned toward Gabriel. She was a little embarrassed, "I'm sorry Gabriel Walker, this is not how we usua-"

"Let me stop you right there. First, call me Gabriel or Gabe; second, let's focus on leaving this place, please, I feel my feet melting already; and third, you don't need to show me any weird side of you to ingratiate me. I don't know any of you. I've barely known Olivia here, and it turns out there's still a lot we don't know about each other. So let's not create any fake personas, and please, oh, please… no politics. I hate it."

Darte whistled, "You've changed. What happened to you down there?"

Gabriel exhaled, not to answer. Why the hell does he speak like he's known me for long? Fucking children…

Gaia was instead taken aback. "You're right Gabriel Wal- Gabe. It's just that… since I was born…" she took a long breath, then let herself be supported by her overgrown dog, Crystal, "Since I was born, my mother has fed me with tales from the Book of Heralding. Growing up, I've become certain that the right hand of the Herald of which the Book speaks about was I. So, I'm a little tense right now. You might not see it. My legs are shaking," she finished looking at him straight in the eyes.

Gabriel did not know what to answer, only sex jokes came at him at the moment, but he did not find it proper for the moment… anyway, he could always recycle them.

"Well, then, I hope I'll meet your expectations. I hope you'll tell me about it about this Book you've mentioned," he answered.

"Whenever you want," she answered, then turned over to her brother, "Let's go."

She took out a luminous pearl looking thing and let Darte take her in his arms. Before hurrying over to the end of the cave, they turned to speak toward them.

"You must hide behind the walls over there, or it will kill you. The explosion, I mean. When we say, hurry inside of it, but don't inhale the air. Just jump right off. We'll think about surviving the fall once we'll be out," she said.

Surviving the fall? Oh, right! We'll be falling from the sky. "I'll fix our falling if you guys cannot fly. Just give me a Mana potion." But Olive shook her head at that.

"You've been overusing potions Gabe, I can see it from the erratic movements of the Mana around you. Potions cannot be abused, even for a Herald. They disturb your control and have long-lasting effects if abused. Purifying Mana tainted into your soul is a long and hard process, sometimes irreversible."

"Oh. That is not good news, alright then. I should make it without anyway. You guys just… try not to fight it when I cast a spell on you," he added, addressing each of them.

Darte shrugged, Gaia and Olivia nodded.

As Darte, with Gaia in his arms, ventured inside the dave leading to the would-be exit, Gabriel and Liz were left alone with Olivia and a Brill, which had just reappeared from his Spirit Fade. The salamander loved being invisible.

Liz finally went to salute his friend. Her five-foot-seven length almost reached his. If Gabriel was to judge, Brill could have grown roughly two feet and a half. However, he looked much bigger because of his bulk. The salamander was massive compared to the slender lizard.

While Gabriel instead, closed in on Olive. Sitting on the ground by her, she swiftly imitated.

"They'll be fast, right?" Gabriel asked her. For some reason, he felt awkward, and Olivia, with her nodding as an answer, seemed to be so as well.

However, he had never been awkward toward her before, so he did not understand what it was. He knew it wasn't because he had seen the Not-Olivia side of her. It was something else, something on the tip of his tongue. The reason he felt the way he did was like that. Like a flavor forgot but not new, he could taste it but not swallow it, swallow it but not digest it, or think it but not express it.

By the time he started realizing what it was, Darte came out of the cave, like lightning, and hid near the, with Gaia on his shoulder. The panther made herself visible again, and the wolf jumped out of Olivia, materializing in mid-air. Then came the mighty explosion that shook the whole side of the mountain bursting forth a violent gust of Mana particles. With his Mana sight, Gabriel could clearly visualize them.

As the debris started falling on the ground, Gaia shouted for them to hurry to the exit.

In the dark and dusted cave, the barrier was already regenerating. Darte, with Gaia on his shoulder, was the first to jump out, then came their Spirits. Olive instead stopped by the barrier, turning toward him and taking Gabriel's hand. "I won't ever let you leave my side, not like that," she said.

And yet Gabriel could see that when she uttered those words, her eyes were green.

Is she herself, or not? But, right then, Gabriel sincerely didn't care. Having someone finally hold his hand after what he had been through shattered the fragile glass wall, keeping the dam that had been welling up in him.

After that, the memories of the jump were erratic. Gabriel knew he had used Built to Fly to sustain Gaia and Olivia, too, while Liz thought about the Spirits. Darte had instead made it on his own. But overall, Gabriel couldn't remember much after that.

Between adrenalin, his shaking emotions, the memories of his months in hell, and that soft hand, finally reconnecting to his, Gabriel's head had stopped correctly functioning and was going forward in auto-pilot.

They dropped from the sky for quite some time and found themselves in the plains of the Expanse.

Olivia took command there and led there toward the vast mountain range, which acted as a barrier between the three connecting realms of The Expanse, Vulcan, and The Core.

By the time they reached a mountain, jungle-like vegetation had opened up at its feet, and they set up camp there. Which meant that they crashed near the closest body of water they could find while Olivia set up a campfire.

Gaia crashed immediately, ending into a deep, deep sleep, Crystal using his body as a warmth dispenser around her. Darte and his panther went respectfully on the look-out and on the hunt. Brill took Lizzy to teach her hunting, and Gabriel and Olivia were left alone by the slowly building-up fire.

Gabe, reconnecting to reality a little, got closer to the girl who was warming her hands by the fire.

"So…" he started, "It's been a while, Oli. I don't know about you… but it's been almost three months of… hell." He chuckled, "Sadly, not the hell-training you gave me. I can say I thoroughly enjoyed that. No…" Gabe paused to try and figure out what he wished to say.

"I- I've been tortured, I think… for three months, almost. Though I might be wrong, I lost count of the soul days..." Gabriel's voice started breaking. He had not planned this but really had no way of stopping the flood from coming out.

He heard her ask, "Three months?" But he barely registered it.

"I- I don't know what was happening to you, and I hoped you were good and all…" he continued, "but I barely had time to think about anybody else than me, really... I was being broken down and remodeled to take the shape of a monster. I still think it's in my veins, that venom. That disgusting desire for killing, he fed me with, over, and over and over again."

"Gabriel… I don't understand. What are you talking about? Please explain it to me from the beginning!" She seemed sincere as she took hold of his shaking hands.

But Gabriel's mind started swaying from the effort, from the resentment toward the mayor, from the continuous pain, the deaths, the fears, the days over days of physical and mental torture, of having to feed only on his own body to sustain himself. What had made him retain his sanity was purely survival instincts. If he hadn't broken down already, he owed it probably only to Liz. But now, whatever he had managed to restrain before, was about to burst.

"Gabriel?" she asked.

But Gabe was in no condition to answer. He started swaying, his eyes closing, his senses cutting off. It wasn't even ten seconds later that he blacked-out, in front of a worrying and unknowing Olivia.

 

***

 

The restaurant was calm. Well, maybe because it was empty, being its closing hours.

 

Mirai had been silent for the whole day. She even sent Raina and the others home as soon as she could. Her restaurant, though called Rain Season, didn't really benefit from, well… rainy seasons, which for some reason had just started.

Fewer clients over meant less income, but right now, that as much as it hurt her business, she was thankful for the bad weather. She had other things to attend to, her personal investigation, for example.

She had been studying, connecting dots, and rebuilding history about the Reevers family… and just the previous night, she discovered something which left her befuddled. A connection.

She found a connection from the Reevers to a now decayed house of a once important Protestant Pastors' line. That connection seemed feeble but not less real. And the gut-wrenching peculiarity for her was that the declined line of priests had a family name... A way too familiar name to her, a name that, even going all the way against her parents' will, she married into. They were called the Walkers.

Nevertheless, the woman had opened her restaurant the day after that. She had a bad feeling, and something told her that she had to keep acting as she always did. However, now that it was night, she could allow herself to sit by the chair of the Royal table, with her laptop and paper folders, and return to her investigations.

She felt she was close, so close to discovering details of Gabriel's weird disappearance, that if she could, she would stay up nights and days focused only on that. No restaurant, not eating, no resting, no bathroom. She just wanted her son back.

A rare photo of Gabriel was the first thing she saw when she opened her laptop.

She had put it as the wallpaper. In the photo, Gabriel was in a green park. They had gone there during a weekend, one of her rare and few free weekends. Mirai had left him to go to the service, she had taken the disposable camera with her, and at her return, she had spotted Gabriel digging into the picnic basket they had brought with them. Gabriel was fifteen back then, a young man, already working five shifts a week to help in sustaining them. And he was looking for a beer. She knew he had promised not to drink during work or at school and that she would have let him have his first beer with her sooner or later. But, like all boys of his age, Gabe was impatient. So, he just wanted to finally drink that beer, maybe surprising his mom while she was away. Well, she had not surprised him, but she had given her the best photo of her life.

The image depicted the young man gulping down the dark triple malt and choke on it. Mirai had taken the picture at the perfect time. His eyes were closed tight, and beer was sprouting out of his nose. It made her day, and it did every time she looked at that photo.

Even now, her eyes got wet from both, amusement and sadness of not having him nearby.

"My little man…" she muttered, caressing the screen.

She didn't know how long she stared at the screen, but it was probably enough time to let the wallpaper pop-out.

Instead, the wallpaper presented a collage of photos; photos of Gabriel, Sarah, her deceased daughter, and Michael, her late husband.

If Gabriel looked like her, Sarah had instead taken from her father. Her platinum hair couldn't come from her side of the family. It was a rare thing for someone of mixed blood, but she had always been special. She had taken an eye from Mirai's side of the family, a beautiful, deep brown; the other was instead of an intense red which would put albinos people to shame. And that, she had taken from her father. Michael.

Michael was seemingly born with albinism, or at least so he told her, but other than his eyes and hair, his skin was that of a regular fair caucasian. She had accepted his truth as it was; after all, mother nature or Wakan Tanka, as her parents would say, could dispense and take away as she/he wanted.

Barely as tall as her, but much thinner, the physical prowess he was capable of put hers to shame. Really, she had never met someone else capable of doing the things she and her parents did. Only Michael could. But he, like her parents, had no secrets to tell. He had always been like this, he said, ever since he was born.

"What were you hiding, Mickey? Were you really hiding something from me? Is that why you and Sarah… you and Sarah…" Mirai sniffed.

I need something to drink, she decided. Though she would shed whatever hangover she got in less than half the time a regular person would, letting herself go in those memories, she had started going through a slippery slope.

I'm investigating about my dead husband… it's almost unre-

Like a dog, her head snapped to the side. She had heard something. It was clearly there. Something had gotten into Rain Season, ;t came from the second entrance, from the kitchen. Only one person had the keys to the kitchen and always tried to enter without making any sound not to disturb her. Yes, it was useless because she heard it all the same, but at least he made an effort.

Mirai snorted. She got up and headed over there, "Antonio, did you forget your phone again?"

As she opened the batwing doors, though, something ran past her, something so fast that she barely managed to register it. Only as she turned over where the shadow had stopped did the air displacement incur.

A man stood in her restaurant, a man with a black cassock, fair skin, and blond-platinum hair. Her body shivered. And as the man turned, for a second, just for a second, she felt a jolt of pain in her chest, her heart rate exploding before starting to slow down once again.

A slim man with pale blond hair and burning red eyes stood in front of her, his smile one of wickedness. She could have sworn she saw her late husband in him for a moment. But though very similar, the man was too tall for being Michael, his nose too austere, long and sharp to be him.

"What- what are you doing here this late in the night, shepherd?" She asked quite a bit defensively.

"Oh, I'm sorry for the time," answered the man, after a useless little chuckle, "I have jet lag. I'm still a little bit confused about the time. But let's not worry about it, shall we? Mrs. Mirai. Because as things stand, we really," the man raised a hand toward her, "really need to talk."

Mirai looked at him straight in the eyes, "Get out of my restaurant," she stated.

The man looked taken aback, but he quickly exploded into laughter, actually doubling up from it.

When he had finished laughing, the man wiped tears from his eyes.

"That- that was hilarious!" He said, "The way you said it! Hahahaha, unforgettable!"

He's crazy...

"Get out right no-" Mirai found herself slammed on the counter, a hand clenching her neck. She barely understood what had happened and started struggling right away, obtaining nothing, nothing at all. The man's hand was like an iron grip. Kicking him hurt her legs.

"This won't do, Mrs. Walker. We need to fix this attitude of yours; it's too wild for my likings. I like my women tame. So if you behave, you might not end up as the second woman whose head I detach from her body today."

Mirai's eyes opened wide for terror.

"So, what do you say? Will you come with me like the obedient bitch you are? Or should I start ripping off your limbs first? I hear being carried from your hair is unpleasant…"

The last thing Mirai remembered, was nodding to the man's requests, and after she got into a black car with tinted windows, she was made unconscious.