Old King Hamlet, the twenty-fifth of December. Christmas Day. The day of the Witch Games. Although I was confident that I could get information on Sumire, I still couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. As Raven and I strolled into town, I couldn’t shake that uncanny feeling that something was about to go very, very wrong. The small settlement looked like a mish-mash of different time periods and cultures from my world. One minute we were passing by some very American-looking houses and the next we appeared to be in an old Japanese village. All the while, Raven gave the occasional cautious look over his shoulder as if he was on guard and ready to fight whatever came his way. It appeared to me as if all the human villagers were keeping their distance, so I told him there was no need to worry.
“It’s only a matter of time…” Raven whispered through gritted teeth.
I gave Raven a quizzical look and inquired as to what he was alluding to.
Without a word, he spread his wings out and rocketed towards one of the nearby humans before they had a chance to dodge. Raven proceeded to grab the unsuspecting villager by the collar of their shirt, forcefully pinning them to the outer wall of a coffee shop.
“It’s Sumire, isn’t it?” he growled, his face so close to the human that they may as well have been drowning in Raven’s spit. “She’s the one who’s been killing Lady Kuro’s servants, right?”
Wait, what? Did he say that Sumire had… killed Lady Kuro’s other familiars? There was just no way that could be true, was there? Lady Kuro had never once mentioned the possibility of dying here!
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the villager protested, “p-please let me go!”
“Don’t play games with me!” Raven demanded, slamming his fist into the wall next to his hostage’s face. “Every time Lady Kuro sends a familiar to scout this stupid fucking village, they never come back alive!”
“W-Well, you know the rules… n-no demons in the hamlet…” the human stammered, clearly fearful for their life.
I could feel my face turning pale, even paler than Vera’s usual ghostly white complexion. Was I really going to die on Christmas? “No,” I thought. Aside from the Cyclops that Lady Kuro had warned me about, Raven and Vera were the only demons in Old King Hamlet. There was no way that we were going to die here! All we had to do was collect intel on Lady Kuro’s enemy! Nobody had to die over this, did they? I supposed the old adage “be careful what you wish for” was true, as I watched Raven withdraw a pocketknife from his leather trousers and slit the human’s throat as everybody else in our vicinity ran away screaming in terror.
“What was that for?!” I demanded, floating over to Raven and snatching the weapon from out of his tengu talons. “You just killed that innocent civilian!”
Raven looked at me as if I were some kind of eejit. I felt Vera’s phantom blood boiling as Raven nonchalantly shrugged off my concerns. He believed it was only fair that we should be killing Old King’s inhabitants since they had apparently killed all of his comrades.
“It’s simple vengeance,” he cawed, reclaiming his knife from within my grasp, “would you not do the same to whoever was responsible for the aviation accident that claimed your mother’s life?”
I was flabbergasted. I thought Raven was cool, but I guess I should’ve known better than to trust another damned politician.
“Whoever was responsible for the negligence that caused Mum to die perished along with everybody else onboard that plane!” I barked back, trying to once again steal Raven’s blade away as he flew just out of reach.
I stopped in my tracks as I heard the sound of a branch snapping underneath someone’s foot. Raven hurriedly swung his head around in the direction of the noise – he’d heard it too. But I didn’t currently have legs, Raven was high up in the air and all the humans had run away just a few minutes ago. That could only mean one thing…
“We’re out of time,” Raven whispered, leaning in close to me and grabbing Vera’s ghostly hand. “We have to go now.”
“Not so fast!” somebody declared as I glanced over my shoulder to see who I could only assume was an enemy.
Standing in the middle of the road was a bikinied demon in a cowboy hat and boots. Based on her bovine horns and the udders on her midriff, I surmised that she was likely the minotaur Marissa Keane. An agent of the evil Sumire, as Lady Kuro had had her penned.
“Y’all are with Kuro, aren’t’cha?” Marissa asked, pointing the handle of her broom towards us.
“Vera,” Raven whispered, “do something. Go back to yesterday and put poison in the girl’s drink or something!”
I rolled my eyes. This was all just a big misunderstanding anyways. I just had to tell Marissa that we were only looking for information on Sumire and that we didn’t want any trouble. Of-course, I couldn’t speak on Raven’s behalf, especially when he seemed so eager to avenge his fallen allies. But I was sure that Marissa would probably listen to me. After all, she was apparently a cop around those parts. She just had to be reasonable, right?
“Didn’t anyone ever tell ya that this town ain’t big enough for both humans and demons?” she smirked, as a powerful blast fired from the tip of her broom’s handle, directly to the center of Raven’s chest!
Not even Raven was fast enough to out-fly that laser-beam. And just like that, he fell out of the sky, breaking into a bajillion pieces as he landed on the road below. In Raven’s place lay a corpse – a human corpse – which I highly suspected to have been Raven’s summoner.
“Yer next!” Marissa cried, pointing her broom in my direction.
“Please, wait,” I begged, “this is all just a misunderstanding! I can explain!”
“Misunderstand an’ explain this!” Marissa taunted, firing off another beam from her broom.
I shut my eyes and thought back to the day I found out about Mum’s death. If that event had never happened, I never would’ve hated Christmas. I wouldn’t have run away from Dublin. I’d still be with my family and friends celebrating the holidays… But sometimes fate can be cruel… and I just had to embrace that cruelty.

As I closed my eyes and braced myself for total oblivion, I realized that I was waiting for a surprisingly long time. When Marissa had obliterated Raven, his death was almost instantaneous. Cautiously, I opened my eyes only to find the street deserted and the sky blackened. Raven’s lifeless body and Marissa were nowhere to be seen. Just like last time, I had travelled one day into the past as I thought about that winter day that my life changed forever. And also like the last time, I immediately headed to tell Lady Kuro what I had done. But this time, it wasn’t my pride fueling me as I floated towards the castle…

As I phased through the castle’s walls and into the theater room, I once again found Chloe in her human form alone on the stage.
“Oh, Erin,” she greeted me, “what doth thee wanteth?”
“I’m from tomorrow,” I explained. “Do you know that Raven’s going to enter the village with murderous intent?”
As if by some sort of magic unrelated to creating black holes, Chloe’s smiling mask instantly disappeared as her true colors surfaced. That look in her eyes… it was the same as the one Raven had when he slit that innocent person’s throat.
“Murd’r?” Chloe scoffed. “That wench Sumire and her ilk hath taken ev’rything from us!”
“I don’t care,” I retorted, “Raven’s going to kill an innocent civilian! You have to tell him now that he can’t do that!”
“And wherefore should I doeth that?” Chloe grunted. “If 't be true Sumire and the police careth so much for that hamlet, those demons wouldn't beest attending the Witch Games instead of protecting them!”
“Marissa’s going to be there,” I bluntly stated.
“Ah,” she sighed. “So Chekhov wilt beest watching ov'r the games for suspicious kinkind activity while putting that blast’d cow on duty in Old King Hamlet? I shalt giveth Raven sufficient warning to beeth on guard.”
“I don’t care why you hate Sumire,” I butted in, “if killing innocents is how you intend to combat her then I will have no part in it!”
“The bord’r…” Chloe muttered. “If thou wilt not helpeth me, then thou can just returneth to thy mis’rable life on Earth.”
“Take me back right now,” I demanded.
Chloe took a deep breath as she assumed her succubus form and laughed in my face.
“If thou wilt not doeth what I asketh of thee,” Kuro began, “then why should I taketh thee back? I show’d you where the bord’r was. Find thy own way back!”
Before storming out, I made sure to angrily give Kuro a piece of my mind.

Of-course a getaway from my least-favorite time of year in the world of my dreams would have a catch! I was foolish not to realize it sooner! As I resumed my normal form and headed toward the borderline that Kuro had shown me, I pondered how the feck I was supposed to get from the United States to Ireland without a telephone or transport. I didn’t have any relatives in America, much less in Texas specifically. And I knew that visiting Texas would just cause my mood to become even more grim. That was where Mum used to live, after-all. But, just like that, as my mind once again wandered to a time when she was still with me, I found myself transported one day into the past. And so I had used both of my time-travel trips for that day to go backwards. But that didn’t matter now, because that accidental use of my power gave me an idea. Rather than travelling two days into the future after the clock struck midnight in order to get back to the present, I would wait for the next day and once again go backwards two days. I had been granted this power! This chance! This opportunity to fix my broken life and right what was once wronged!
…
……
………
I was going to go back and save my mother!