"I was here with my friend..." Anne starts, "We just graduated college, Math majors, we went backpacking through Spain, she wanted to go to Paris next but I insisted on Morocco. I felt like I was supposed to be here. We were having lunch at a cafe and this man passed us. He was wearing a robe, he didn't seem friendly, now that I think about it I hate myself for approaching him, what an idiot I was."
Belle scoops the sugar from the table and pours spoon after spoon into her drink. "Why did you approach him?" She asks while stirring.
"I'm not sure, it was like I had to. I saw him and it was like... This, this is why you're here. I was always told to ignore my gift, I'd see things, feel things, my mother just said to shut it out. But now I was free, out on my own for the first time. A college graduate. So I went to him but when I touched him I saw all the things he wanted, all the things he believed in. The world they want to create and everything that has to happen for it to come true, I threw up right there on the street. He knew what I was just as soon as he looked at me, he took me. They kept me, asked me questions, I saw you, all of you, through them, through the things they'd taken from you, they made me touch the objects and tell what I saw."
"I knew someone stole my socks!" Crash bursts out excited.
"No one stole your socks you idiot." Belle sighs.
"Actually they did have socks, men's socks. Smelly socks."
"Aha!.." He yells pointing to Belle, "Oh and sorry." He says quietly Anne laughs.
Belle touches Anne's eye, a bruise, barely visible but still there. "They hurt you." She says. Anne loses her smile. Crash jumps in. "It's okay we don't need to talk about it anymore. We're just glad you found your way to us."
"Me too." Anne says meekly.
"Now if we could only figure out where to go from here." Crash ponders.
"I need your bag." Jane stands demanding over Belle as she sits sipping her hot coco. "Sorry?" Belle says startled.
"Weapons." Jane says. Belle stands and gets the backpack from the corner of the room. She unlocks the small padlock she installed.
"What are you doing?" Crash asks. Jane opens the bag, she takes out a knife, a small axe and a cross bow which she straps around her shoulder. "I'm getting Nathan back."
"Whoa hold on-" Crash jumps up standing in her way. "You're just going to go? They have the numbers not to mention the power, you'll just be handing yourself over-"
"He'd do it for me." She walks past him.
"Yeah because his mission in life is to keep you safe, what do you think he'd say about you going out there like this? And now that we know what the prophecy says, you're just going to-
"Well it's inevitable isn't it!? So why let him suffer in the meantime?"
"But we don't even know where he is..."
Anne stands gripping her mug, she uncomfortably slips away from the crowd. "We'll go back to Or's Hotel, she'll know how to find him, or a way to start..." Jane looks at Anne. "What about you?"
"Me?"
"Yeah, can't you touch something of his, get a vision?"
"I don't know, maybe."
"Here." Jane says laying the heavy axe down on the table with a thud.
"Oh, okay..." Anne puts her drink down and sits in front of it. She wraps her hand around the handle and closes her eyes. With a jump she lets go. "What's wrong is he okay?"
"Yeah- No I mean I don't know, all I saw was the things he's killed with it, he's not human, I can't get a read on him, I'm sorry."
Jane picks up the axe. "It's okay don't worry about it. Everyone stay here, I'm going alone." She leaves the room. Belle and crash look at each other, they follow Jane out. Olson steps back in from the veranda. He looks at Anne from across the empty room. "We're going somewhere then?"
The sun is rising over the desert when Jane walks out of the hotel and onto the street. The locals are opening their shops and setting up kiosks when she walks by holding the axe. Arabic chatter fills the streets.
"There's got to be another way!" Crash yells.
"There's not." Jane says calmly, still walking, not looking back. Crash runs to her and grabs her by the shoulder strap. It snaps, the crossbow falls to the ground. "Do you want to die!?" He barks.
"No! I don't! I wanna live! I wanna be old and married and fat! I want to get mad at the government about having to pay my taxes, I wanna see what movies will be like in ten years- But I'm the Slayer, short as my time is as one I still have to do as a Slayer does, I have to die... So that you and everyone else on this planet can live... Why should I sit around trying to figure out what to do, trying to find the right way to attack when I know the ending to this story? They don't have to seek me out, I'll find them and I'll kill as many as I have to so my friends may live."
They stand in the street, young and uncertain, old friends. Crash raises his hands to the sky "I can't just let you go to your death, you're my best friend! What am I supposed to do?"
"I don't want anyone to die for me. But I'm going." Belle walks to Jane's side, "She's right, this is going to end soon either way, I'd rather go to them than wait to die in a comfortable hotel room."
Anne and Olson shuffle out of the hotel. They join the three friends in the street. Olson seems unsure of what's taking place. "Are we getting breakfast?"
"No we're gonna save the world, why you hungry?" Crash asks, Jane smiles.
"...Bit peckish..." He replies.
......................
The trains comes to a screeching halt. Lilly wakes at the sound of it. "Where are we?" She asks. "Madrid. We can get off here, there's a way to get to Morocco, the same type of magic from the dungeon, but it's a Hotel, there's and entrance here, I can feel it-"
"Where's Caden?" she asks, looking at the broken empty train.
"I- She fought me, I tried to stop her... I'm sorry."
"No!" Lilly screams and runs to the back of the train as if to get her sister but there's no one there. Nathan chases after her, he grabs her and holds her. They collapse together.
.............................
Risser drives over train tracks and broken glass in the field, he gets out, a heaving mess. "No no no no!" he finds the spot where Caden's body was taken into the ground. He can feel her presence, he can smell her, the same smell he's known since she was a baby. He tears at the grass ripping chunks out, digging for his sister. There is nothing left. He screams.
