After rescuing Marina to slake Wes’s chivalrous streak and Lara’s territorial aggression, Nicole Matthews and her friends find themselves in Freeport, in the Thousand Worlds. The town is painfully familiar to Nicole because of all the memories from her past life as Michelle “Tisk” Saint-Chant, though 500 years means it has grown quite a bit. Onuban mentally contacts Xavier, one of the Knights of Harmony he created not long after the revolution, and Xavier graciously invites everyone to stay in his manor overnight so they can wait for the High Council of Harmony to convene the next day and discuss the events surrounding Marina’s kidnapping.

Nicole, after talking to Wes about unrelated matters, decides that now might be a good time to try and process some of the 350 years’ worth of Michelle’s memories, and a sympathetic Sentinel of Freeport actually picks her up and flies to the People’s Room – a chamber carved high in the side of a mountain, where the Friendship sometimes convened to discuss strategy. The main decoration in the room is very well-made statues of the Friendship in the primes of their youth, and Nicole lets memories and tears flow freely as she lovingly says goodbye. She then sits down at the long table in the center of the room, allowing the emotion to break over her like waves.

Unfortunately, when she gave herself permission to remember things, she set herself up to get quite a bit more than she had bargained for….

---

Nicole, currently allowing her nostalgia and grieving to engulf her, suddenly realizes that it’s not nostalgia currently engulfing her. She finds herself surrounded by a blob of greenish transparent goo. It seems to force its way into her nose and down her throat. Nicole begins to hack and cough, and at one point throws up. The force of her vomiting seems to tear some of the goo from her face and at least get it out of her mouth. Though now that she is no longer in the throes of panic from choking on it, she is able to appreciate that it didn’t actually taste all that bad – it was sort of a cross between mint and maple.

As Nicole struggles to regain her wits, a kindly feminine voice drifts to her now unstopped ears. “Sorry about that. I didn’t have any quick way to help you that wouldn’t really damage the ecosystem AND save you from my children. They were bought off by the way. Can’t blame them but still…”

Nicole is finally able to force her eyelids to unstick and open, revealing that she is naked except for some metal rings and wires. Between other past-life memories and her time aboard Amelia’s spaceplace, she realizes that they are the remains of a spacesuit – which makes very little sense, since she wasn’t wearing a spacesuit in the People’s room. She also notices that she doesn’t have as much up top as she had a second ago. The floor seems to be hardwood, polished and smooth, and there is a green light all around.

Nicole’s hands fly to cover herself, and she coughs a couple more times.

“What the hell?!” she manages to cry out, turning to try and find the source of the voice.

A tall red-haired woman in a brown flightsuit with lots of pockets hands Nicole a big fluffy towel. “There are showers that way.” She points. “And more towels and clothes. It’s best to wash the sap off fast before it dries, otherwise you’ll have the smell with you for days.” She smiles at Nicole kindly.

Nicole still looks boggle-eyed at the woman, but she feels some of the goo growing drier and more sticky under her hand, and decides to argue later. She tentatively turns on the shower to make sure it really is water, then scrubs off as quickly as she can.

Nicole will then dry off, look for a set of clothes, and then look for a mirror. None to be found, but the physical differences she has already noticed give her a sneaking suspicion what has happened. Sadly, she has no such intuition about the woman in the other room.

All of the clothes are thick silk that feels wonderful on her skin. She can’t seem to find any seams on them at all. Nicole chooses some soft pants and a shirt, then returns the way she came to see the woman at a wooden table that seems to be attached to the polished wooden floor and made of the same stuff. There are two big “beanbag” chairs on either side made out of some type of fur, and the woman is sitting in one, clearly waiting for her.

“To head you off,” the strange woman says, “I am your sister Gea.”

Nicole smiles a twisted smile and shakes her head.

“Okay then…the other question is: Who am I? ‘Cause I’ve been a lotta different people lately and it’s getting hard to keep them all straight. Am I still Nicole, or am I someone else here?”

“Oh dear,” Gea says “Are you having past life visions? I thought that only happened to me.” She sighs. “Well, I was under the impression that I should call you Penny. But I can call you whatever if it suits you better.”

Nicole shakes her head. “At this point it doesn’t much matter. Nicole, Michelle, Penny, Violet…I think I’m just gonna be glad it’s not yet another one.”

Gea motions to the “beanbag” chair, “Have a seat. We have a little time but not all that much. And I have a lot to tell you and a lot of sisterly advice and love to get out of my system before you have to go.”

The “beanbag” chair is warm and purrs as Nicole sits on it. She cranes her neck to look warily at the “chair”, but settles in once she’s sure it isn’t going to walk away.

“Is this gonna be about the thing Amelia said is my brother?”

“OUR brother is the one that killed me…or is killing me currently depending on how you look at it,” Gea says sadly. ” I wouldn’t even mind all that much. It does get you or one of the others closer to real…redemption.” She looks sadly at the floor. “But sooo many of my children will die, I can’t even begin to save them all…”

“He caused a small black hole to be formed under me and I am being dragged into Saturn’s atmosphere. And even If I could figure a way to guard myself against the heat of re-entry, the tidal forces will kill me.”

Gea looks back at Nicole and smiles fiercely. “But he thinks you will die with me. But we’re going to fix that. You don’t fuck with a planet when she can still has orbital mechanics on her side.”

Nicole’s eyes fly open as she hears about the black hole and Saturn. She remembers Angie telling her about that. Part of her reaction is horror at the news, and the rest of it is surprise that Gea’s tale actually connects back to something she’s already experienced, instead of being completely new.

Not wanting to potentially injure her chair, Nicole plants her hands firmly on her knees, leaning forward and digging in with her fingers.

“Tell me what you need me to do.”

“I need you to find a baby,” Gea says, smiling. “But first I want to tell you about our ‘family’ and what I have found out.” She sighs. “So how much do you know already about the gene marker you and I share?”

Nicole racks her brain, then recites: “B878T45. And I know that someone had been trying to systematically kill off everyone with it. And I know that at least in my most recent life, it was this huge surprise to a lot of really powerful folks that I had it. Cruz marched me into a conference and had me show it, and seriously, everyone freaked out. And I still don’t know why. I mean, I know what I can do, and sure folks should be scared of that, but…I’m not evil, am I?” Nicole shakes her head.

“Anyway, go on.”

Gea reaches over the table and takes Nicole’s hand. “Our choices tell us whether or not we are evil. Not our bloodline or our past. It’s what we choose to do right now that matters.”

She hands over a picture about the size of a Tarot card.

“This is our grand mother. Or our great grandmother, depending rather you count all of the soul shards as ‘children’ of the great evil or not.” Gea says.

“It took me a long time and great effort to find that picture.” Gea smiles. “I want you to have it.” She leans back in her purring chair. “I do believe that she is responsible for us even being here, rather than just being destroyed. She planned all this out. Planned everything out.” Gea shakes her head. “Sometimes I am amazed by the enormity of it all. A plan to not only save a bloodline, but redeem all that are in it and turn what was evil to good. Spread across all of time and space. On multiple worlds in multiple dimensions for one reason.”

Gea looks at Nicole. “Because she loved us more than anything.”

Nicole gazes at the card while Gea speaks. “Mrs. Mychaels mentioned our grandmother,” she murmurs, “and He said that I had already been redeemed. So inasmuch as anything makes sense anymore, I guess this does.

“Do we go find the baby before or after we take down the Demon of Darkness and either restore or replace the Wheel of Fire? And if it’s before, you’re gonna have to give me a really solid reason to sell to my friends. I seriously doubt they’d let me do this alone either.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gea says. “Let me start from her” – she is pointing at the card – “and go from there.” She leans forward.

“Her name was Vivianne, She has a daughter Sherilyn. And Sherilyn had a daughter Benetar.” Gea pauses. “That would be us.” She notes Nicole’s confounded expression with a nod and continues.

“The three of them are known by other names as well. Vivianne was called the Crone, though she doesn’t look like a crone to me. Sherilyn is known as the Childless Queen or just the Virgin. And Benetar was known as the Fury.”

At the mention of the Childless Queen, Nicole’s hand reaches for her locket, running a thumb over its surface.

“Now the problem comes in with us,” Gea says quietly. “Benetar had a powerful mind and a strong desire to find out everything she could about how the multiverse worked. This led her to become more and more powerful herself until she had mastered 4 of the five great powers and many lesser ones.” Gea shrugs. “What is meant by great powers I have no idea. That’s just what the fragment of text says.

“Anyway, Benetar became so powerful she could not be stopped and began to overthrow universes and remake them in her image. She became convinced that it was her right and duty to rule over everything that existed.”

Gea points at the card again. “And Vivianne had a problem. As far as I can figure she must have had some type of disease or psychosis. She could not do any harm to Benetar and could not let anyone interfere with her. Benetar was her only grandchild and apparently she physically could not do anything to stop or even slow her. Sherilyn tried and was almost destroyed by Vivianne.”

Gea looks at Nicole. “There was one thing that Vivianne did. She convinced Benetar to make a clone of herself and leave it in a hidden vale. The clone was named Titania. Vivianne claimed it would be a back up in case something did manage to hurt Benetar, but really it seemed it was a way to stop Benetar from becoming Unique in all the multiverse and taking all the power into herself.

“So Benetar had vast cosmic power, and apparently Vivianne was beyond brilliant, and there seemed to be nothing to stop Benetar from being the supreme being. Except that Vivianne had made a plan to bring back her grand daughter to her senses.

“I am still figuring out what that entailed. I know it involved manipulating thousands of gods and powerful beings across all of time and space. But the end result was that Benetar’s soul was shattered and spread out here in the solar system.” She looks at Nicole again. “And the people that have the B878T45 Gene marker are the ones that have those shards of her soul.”

Nicole’s eyes had gone wide at the mention of the great powers. She listens to the rest of Gea’s story, then interjects again:

“Miss Eris, Lorellai, the Queen of Madness…she told me the five powers are Distinctness, Pattern, Tao, Logrus and Abyss.” Nicole takes a deep breath, almost afraid to trust her sister with her next words. “And she thinks I have access to them all, as long as it’s just one at a time.”

“Well that almost makes sense,” Gea says. “The idea is that when the soul shards come down to just one left or one that absorbed all the others or whatever…that all of the power Benetar had, or at least most of it, would reside in that last shard. That’s what our ‘brother’ is trying to do – kill us all so that he will have Benetar’s power. So far he’s killed the old man at the retirement asteroid, the man in the prison and me. He knows there are three left. You, Penny. The Negative woman. Her real name is Angie by the way. And someone known as the Rat Queen. She lives with the Gnawers at the edge of the system. “

Gea grins at Nicole. “Of course my plan is that he will THINK you are dead with me. AND what he doesn’t know is that I managed, at great pain, to clone myself.”

She sits back and looks rather satisfied. “That’s the baby I need you to find. I made her into a trigger. I know that the power will reside in the combined spirit of that child and the one that finds it. It can’t be Angie. She is too tortured. And it can’t be the Rat queen, though I think you need to find her and tell her that she is in danger. And I sure as hell am not going to let the ‘operative’ get his hands on her.

“I gave her to a childless couple I knew was headed for a colony world. I knew when she was born it would take some time for the data to get back to the government. So their ‘operative’, our brother, doesn’t know she’s been born yet. But you do. You can find her. And if you do, you can defeat him.” She looks sadly at you. “I’m sorry this has to be a ‘last man standing’ sort of thing, I really am. But we can’t let this guy return to what we once were. Vivianne gave up everything just to let us have a chance to do good in the universe. To be rational again. I don’t want that to be in vain. I want my sister to have a chance at life and love and all that entails.” Gea’s eyes are brimming with tears.

Nicole nods grimly, then leans forward in her “chair” to embrace Gea, who begins crying.

“Why… Why do I have to die… Right when I … when I find Family…That I can .. can finally belong too?” Gea sobs. “I don’t want to say goodbye…”

Nicole is fairly new to this whole “emotion” thing, but she already knows how not to ruin the moment. She holds on to Gea, stroking her hair and just kind of rocking back and forth with her.

After it seems like Gea’s gotten through the worst of her sobbing, Nicole extricates herself just a little bit, and kisses Gea gently on the mouth.

“I’m (snif) sorry…. We don’t have time for this…” Gea says finally. “I have Angie’s current web addy. I’m afraid the best I can do with The Rat queen is a section of space. I think the best thing is to just get captured. You can bargain your escape with the knowledge that the ‘operative’ is hunting her.” She pauses. “But seriously, if you go find the baby you might not need to do that at all. You might be able to just stop him.”

She raises her arm and a small green bat the size of a larger sparrow swoops down to land/hang from it. The bat looks at Nicole. It has one red eye where its face should be, surrounded by what looks like ear in almost a “mane” around the central eye. It has fluffy green fur behind the ear.

“This is a little tracker I whipped up,” Gea says. “The baby’s folks are on Xanadu, and it’s a very new colony. So they can’t be TOO far from the landing site where the space dock is.” She pets the little hanging bat and it chirps. “This little one should be able to track them. Just be sure he gets plenty of indirect sunlight. He’ll handle watering himself as long as you leave some out.” She sort of brushes the bat off onto your shoulder where he hangs gently like a brooch.

Nicole nods, and gets the coordinates and the web address from Gea, and then hugs her one more time.

“You’re never gone as long as I remember you. And it looks like I’ll be planning to live forever here pretty shortly.”

Gea chuckles. “Nothing lasts forever and nothing ever goes away. It’s the basic koan of the universe.” Gea ushers Nicole to a green wall of Jello, saying “Step in there and go to sleep, Take a deep breath first and exhale before you step in. The next thing that you will see is your ship, the Beverly Hills. I told them I would send you to them. I just need to slingshot you there.”

She puts her hand on your shoulder and turns you around taking a long look at you. ” My Brave sister Penny. I love you.”

Nicole will open her mouth, but choke on words and instead choose to hug Gea one last time, before taking a breath and stepping into the gelatinous mass.

---

Nicole’s next concious thought is talking with Chandra Bell, which solidifies that she is currently remembering a different past life – the one of Penny Layne. Chandra says “I do NOT think it’s wise to bring along a wanted supervillain with us into a commercial space jump…I don’t care if she is your sister, and I don’t care if she’s invisible.” Both women are walking in what looks like a mall quickly toward a large set of doors. It looks like the captain of the Beverly Hills is waiting for them there.

PenNicole snaps back, “I didn’t say it was wise. I said it was important. Look, I’m sorry my superpowers don’t include some way to make us all insanely rich so that you could make this trip just as a favor to me without worrying about whether we can do something else at the same time to cover expenses. But she has to leave with us. She can’t stay, or he’ll find her, and we’re her only chance of moving. And the more of us he finds, the bigger a problem he’s going to become.”

“I’m not worried about her.” Chandra says “She took care of herself with those goons your ‘brother’ sent after us. But if we’re going to get down to the bottom of why all these people don’t want anyone to know that interstellar flight doesn’t work, we need to find out first hand and it would be great if we didn’t paint yet another big target on ourselves.”

The little green bat chirps its proximity alert, and PenNicole hears Angie’s disembodied voice. “Welcome to my world,” she says in her depressed tone. “Penny, you better give me your bat. You don’t want to ‘declare’ any fruits or vegetables. Especially ones that flap around.”

PenNicole agonizes for a moment, remembering Gea’s wish that Angie not find the baby this bat was made to help track, but at the same time not wishing to have to explain that to Angie in case she doesn’t yet know. PenNicole will eventually settle for handing it over for now, and figuring out just how many unpleasant things she can do if Angie pulls anything funny.

The crew go through all sorts of Port security, which is a little nerve wracking. PenNicole spots Jack Black off in a vid-conferencing booth, “jacked in”, and she silently prays that he knows what he is doing. Surprisingly, everyone’s false identities pan out without incident, and the crew are taken to their suite, which is really just a round room with big comfortable chairs set around a low circular table. A stewardess drops in briefly, bringing cheese and wine (though she notes PenNicole is underage and does not pour her a glass). When everyone is settled in and the stewardess is not in the room, Angie becomes visible – much to the consternation of the others. Angie only remains visible long enough to return the green bat to PenNicole before she fades again.

Everything is going well. The countdown to Teleport plays over an unseen speaker. The stewardess comes back in and asks if there anyone needs anything before the ship ‘ports. When the crew all assure her that things are fine, she says “Good, I wanted you to be comfortable for your last moments – unlike how you left me on the prison asteroid!” and laughs evilly. Someone says “It’s that possessing woman!” Someone else says “I thought you killed her!” And someone else says “No, Penny desolidified her and we left her in the airlock!”

The Stewardess says “It’s a tragedy, but sometimes commercial cruisers are just lost between jumps. And if I can get all of you, the loss of a couple hundred passengers isn’t too much of a loss. I’m sure I will be paid anyway.”

“Get them out…to your dream space if nowhere else.” Angie’s voice hisses near PenNicole’s ear, and she comes visible. Her bandaged wrappings and clothes fall away, leaving her a long trailing black oily lower body, and her upper body equally black but with burnning red eyes and hair that coils and whips without wind. One long arm becomes a lashing, whipping tentacle and wraps around the stewardess, and PenNicole watches it begin to burn through the flight uniform.

“I hope you have a failsafe, because I know you can’t jump out of that body with me holding on.” Angie hisses. “If I’m going to hell, you’re coming with me.”

“NO! YOU CAN’T! LET ME GO!” screams the stewardess/possessing girl.

PenNicole begins agonizing. On the one hand, she’s pretty sure she knows what Angie is talking about – after all, Nicole remembers Penny Desolidifying the space underneath the Demon of Air, and that took both it and her out of the dream space and onto the ship. It would almost certainly work in reverse as well. On the other hand, she hadn’t been nearly as inclined to care whether the Demon got hurt in the process, and she certainly has never done it with such a large number of people.

Nicole asserts herself long enough to use her powers to scry on Jake, just to get the destination fixed in PenNicole’s mind. PenNicole then sweeps out her arms to indicate everyone and gather them to her, dragging as needed to make sure everyone is physically touching her, and hoping that will make things easier.

“Hang on!” PenNicole cries. She reaches out toward Angie as she begins to Desolidify the space under her feet. “You too, Angie!”

The next moments are a tremendous rush of wind and pain. PenNicole feels like she was able to “get” the crew safely, but she also gets a sick feeling in her stomach like everything else is simply being erased out of existence. The girl whom Angie was grabbing…PenNicole can feel her soul being erased. Angie’s voice floats through the haze into her mind: “Be good, little sister.” Then PenNicole is tumbling through the air and striking against something very hard. For a moment she sees Jake running toward her, crying out “Penny!”, but then pain and darkness overpower her senses.

---

PenNicole’s eyes eventually flutter back open, to see Jake beside her. He kisses her deeply. “Hello love. You gave me a big scare there.”

“Where’s everyone else?!”

“Outside,” Jake answers her calmly. “Quite the menagerie you brought with you. Where are they all from?”

PenNicole scrambles to gather her wits. “I had to save them…she was going to destroy a whole ship full of people just to make sure she got us too, and then Angie….Angie!”

PenNicole rushes to the door, looking out to find everyone, and yet already knowing that she won’t find everyone. She turns and buries her face in Jake’s chest.

“Angie told me to get everyone to safety…to here if I had to. And so I did it. I Desolidified the space under my feet, and we all fell through, and here we are. Except for Angie.” PenNicole clenches her fists, bringing them up to her shoulders and then flinging them downward fiercely, and just clings silently to Jake for a few moments.

Finally she says “I’m sorry. I didn’t really answer you. They’re my friends. They’re from that ship. The Beverly Hills.”

Then Nicole sees a pitch-black human female form move in front of the opening of the tepee she and Jake were in. It looks remarkably like Angie, but more completely formed. Though perhaps ‘formed’ is not the right word – she is more like a black void, a female-shaped hole in the air.

“Is this the one?” she says to the others outside, pointing to the tepee. She then turns to face PenNicole. “Your name is Penny? Do you know a Nicole from freeport?” the faux-Angie says.

PenNicole’s eyes go wide. “Yes, I do,” she answers. She angles her body to where only Angie would see, then mouth the words “I am her”.

“Um…” faux-Angie says, “I’m Constable Sam from Freeport and I’m wondering how I got here and why I look like this? Can YOU help me out with that?”

PenNicole sighs, and her shoulders slump. “I wish I could. I know how the rest of them got here, but they were somewhere else. And I don’t know how you ended up looking like that, except that I know it’s happened to others before when they’ve been flung into other places. The bad part is that if I just try and send you back someplace, it’ll be in that body.” PenNicole lolls her head to stretch her neck. “Usually I travel in and out of this place by dreaming. So maybe that’s what you’ll need to do as well.”

“You mean all I have to do is…fall asleep?” says Constable/Angie incredulously. This prompts the others to begin clamoring: “Penny! What is all this? Where are we? Do we have to fall asleep too?”

Jake leans close and whispers “Who is that?” into PenNicole’s ear, and points beyond the black female figure of the constable to a few tens of yards away. She follows his finger to see Mr. Mychael McBaine / Death standing and looking at them.

“Do you see him?” whispers Jake. “No one else does…”

Death beckons, and PenNicole nods. “I see him. I know him.”

PenNicole waves everyone to quiet. “The falling asleep is my best guess. I normally show up here in my dreams.” She squeezes Jake. “Which literally makes Jake here the man of my dreams.” She kisses him on the nose, then lets go, shrugging. “I got us out of that deathtrap ship by Desolidifying the space under our feet, and thankfully it brought us here into liminal space, instead of dumping us into empty space. But I’ve never done that before, so I have no idea what would happen if I did it again. And in some cases” – she indicates Constable/Angie with a thumb – “I expect this dream-space is more like a nightmare, and everyone knows you escape nightmares by waking up.

“Now if you’ll excuse me a second, it appears I’ve got a vision quest to go on.” PenNicole walks over to Death, standing perfectly still once she reaches him.

The others begin to clamor again: “Liminal space!” “What is she talking about?” “Never done that before?!” But PenNicole hears Jake talking, trying to calm people, and she does not move or turn away from Death.

“Well, you’re just gettin’ all up in my face, aren’t you?” Death says, not unkindly. “You must be reliving past lives…which means I’ll have to be reliving them too.” He sighs heavily, looking very sad. “How are you feeling?”

PenNicole slumps. “Overwhelmed. Like…like it doesn’t matter who I am. Like I could completely forget which lives are past and which one is present and it wouldn’t make any difference. It doesn’t help that Michelle lived so long – she totally wins at the ‘who takes up more of my brain’ game.” Then she remembers something else from long ago, and reaches out to take Mychael’s hand, kissing his knuckles. “And I’m so sorry you’re having to go through all of it with me. Are you all right?”

“Not really, if what I’m thinking is going to come up.” Death smiles at PenNicole, still holding her hand. “And so you know. YOU are Nicole. And that matters very much to me.” He chuckles. “I guess Mardhur was right to give you the locket after all. Damn him.” Death shakes his head. “He is a manipulative bastard and I will never forgive him for … for killing my wife. But since he put away Predation here all his plotting seems to be an attempt at redemption.” He smiles at you again. “You’ll need to know all this sooner or later if your going to survive.”

He looks back at the crew of the Beverly Hills. “Penny took them all back once they found out they couldn’t just fall asleep and wake up back home,” he says. “So you have a night here. You could talk to the Old Wolf about his prophecies, I guess.”

“And she saved Angie.. sort of.” Death finishes, nodding to the constable/black figure.

“How do you mean, sort of? Is he stuck like that, like Leonard was until Onuban was able to go in and undo those changes?” Nicole runs her tongue nervously over her lips and uses her free hand to toy with some of her hair.

“And…” Nicole pauses for several seconds, her eyes glancing around rapidly. “Is there gonna be something I’ll need to learn about Violet?” She looks at Michael uncomfortably, questions already obvious behind her eyes, though it takes another several seconds before she finally asks. Her voice is low. “When I was her, and I was…yours… was I a part of that exploding evil then too? And was Michelle? Or is it something I’ve only needed to be sometimes ‘cause of the lessons it had to teach, since that’s the reason I’ve always heard for reincarnation?”

Death looks pained as Nicole mentions Violet. “At the time…at the time Violet and I were hunting down the shards of the soul of Benetar, I thought, mistakenly, that I could …. hurry along the process.” He pauses looking off into the distance. “Vi at the end understood more than I. I think when she lay dying she had a glimpse of Vivianne’s… Your, well your soul’s garndmother. I think she had a glimpse of her overall plan.”

Death looks back at Nicole, his eyes glistening. “She merged her soul with one of the shards of Benetar so you would have at least a chance to see things from her perspective. Penny had a lot of her in her. So did Michelle.”

Death sighs. “When Michelle died, her husband asked to move her soul. I let him. I assumed he would take the much more powerful, and at that time no longer a shard of, Benetar’s soul and move it to someplace good. I didn’t expect him to steal Violet’s soul as well.” He looks away. “And frankly it’s none of my business where it is. I know it hasn’t died yet. I suppose I shall find it someday. There are only a finite number of living things here.” he chuckles drily.

“As for Angie, I’m sure you will find her tomorrow morning. She died as Penny was bringing her into the dreamworld here. And she had no place to go back to so Penny couldn’t take her BACK . But souls in the Dreaming can stay as they are as long as someone remembers them. Even if it’s only other dreamers.”

“Of course that doesn’t help Sam. He was sucked into your dream right as Angie died. And if you die in the dreaming, you die in the waking world as well. Same with the stewardess. Tanna got sucked in when she found you lying in the the peoples’ chamber as well. It’s quite the sight. You’re sitting in a chair with darkness swirling all around you.” He looks at you. “When you wake up again, I would find them. You are kind of responsible for them now.” He smiles at Nicole again. “You get that when you take over my job and move souls about.”

Nicole’s eyes flare defiantly, and she starts to open her mouth, but does not actually speak. She flexes her fingers a couple of times and relaxes again.

“So I can send them all back the same way I brought them here?” She tilts her head impishly. “Or is that the whole reason you’re here – my trying that will kill them?” Nicole holds up her hand to forestall any sort of argument. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t serious. But I do need to know. It’s not like I can just rely on the fact that it already happened to know that I’ll know how to do it right.”

Death pauses. “Look, I’m sorry if I bothered you. I just thought you might want to know about the two folks that inadvertently died. Tomorrow if you unmake the area that you and they are in, you will turn off this dream and move on. Sam and Tanna will be SOMEwhere in the dreaming. I figure you can find them. They’re good folks.” He slumps his shoulders. “Sorry to have bothered you…” and he turns and begins to walk off.

Nicole barely manages to squeak out something, possibly “no”, possibly the start of some other word, before Mychael hears her thump against the ground.

Nicole vaguely remembers that she hadn’t actually traveled far away from the tepee or the other people, but she chooses to not care. She sits on the ground, legs sprawled. The heels of her hands are pressed against her eyes, and she breathes rapidly for a minute or so before willing herself to slow it down.

“I always knew it,” Nicole mumbles. “Always knew I was something bad. Evil. ‘nd all I wanted was to not hurt anyone. But it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what I do, no matter what I was hoping for, someone gets hurt or killed or worse. And nobody believes me. They won’t let me lock myself away to save ‘em.”

Both Jake and Death run to her, but Death gets there first. He takes Nicole’s hands and moves them away from her eyes.

“Look at me,” he commands. “Look. At. Me.” Nicole then finds herself transfixed by his eyes. Death speaks, and his words ring past Nicole’s ears into every hollow of her being.

Do you honestly think, after all the time we have known each other, that I could DO this if I wasn’t absolutely convinced that Death was NOT evil? Do you honestly think I am evil? Nicole, listen to me.
I END nothing.
Death is just a marker of time.
YOU end nothing.
Nothing EVER goes away.
It is a deep law of the universe.
Matter can not be created or destroyed.
Neither can souls.
And over the course of eternity everyone hurts.
And all you can do is say sorry,
And try not to do it again.
The ONLY thing evil about you is that you want to believe you are evil.
You.
are.
NOT.
I am a force of the way things work in the universe.
You are too.
Get used to it.
You are part of the way things ought to be.
Do you honestly think you would exist if that wasn’t the case?
Are you going to hurt folks?
Of course.
Are you going to try and make it right?
Of course.
And you NEED to believe me when I say, Death is NOT an ending.
You claim to have faith.
Use it.
Do you not believe that there is a plan?
Find it.
Because you are part of it.
You will become the Symbol.
The amalgam of the pinnacle of the powers of all creation.
OF course things will die as you move by.
Of course things will spring into existence.
Why do you not believe that
This.
Is.
Good?!
What?
You want no responsibility for others?
Too late.
You have it.
You always have had it.
Now you just need to take it.
Will they mourn?
Of course.
Comfort them.
They have no concept of eternity.
But they ARE eternal.
Just like you.
Just like me.
The only difference is that WE can see it.
And that’s what is happening to you Nicole.
The door is open for you now.
The locket is open.
You can SEE eternity.
You can feel the winds of time.
And let me tell you,
It’s not bad out here.
Things make sense out here.
But you HAVE to open your eyes to see it.
Nothing ever goes away.
It just changes.
And you are PART of the way things are.
Could it be that you are PART of a plan?
Could it be that the universe is just waiting for you to open your eyes to eternity?
To be able to say, “Yes, I’ll take part”?
Stand up.
You have purpose.
You need to stop being selfish.
And think of the others that you impact.
You need to be a big girl now.
You have a gift.
You know what it is?
It’s not your access to the powers.
That entirely secondary.
Your gift is that you can SEE.
And that you can CARE.
Take responsibility to use that gift.

Nicole goes three shades of pale as Death speaks, and even after his words cease and his “spell” breaks, it takes a while for her to swim out of those eyes.

Nicole stiffly unclenches her fingers from where they’d dug into Death’s hands, then curl her legs underneath her, closing her eyes. She breathes softly for a few seconds, then shifts her weight and push herself into a standing position, trusting the rest of the universe to help her find her path. A few moments later, she opens her eyes.