Love will danm you, love will save you

As Trevor charged at Two, I readied the revolver, hoping for a swift resolution. The cold metal of the gun reassured me. As I raised it, my fingers deftly adjusted its intricate dials and levers.

Not that Two was helpless. Telekinesis versus hammer. It was not hard to predict which would come out on top. But he was likely to hurt Trevor more than necessary.

With my thumb, I rotated the cylinder until I found the most appropriate bullet for the situation.

Bullet type: Moonstone. Configuration set: Petrification spell

Spell Formula became visible, as a circle of occult symbols and abstract geometrical figures around the barrel, as pressed the trigger. The beam that emerged looked like a shard of pale moonlight.

At the speed of light, it rushed toward the hammer-wielding boy. It was too fast for any human to dodge. And yet, it missed.

It wasn't that Trevor had dodged; it seemed as if the world itself shifted.

The space twisted, just a little. Just enough for my spell to miss.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Two spat, taking a step back as Trevor charged towards him. "You're really gonna declare your love for me and then try to kill me? That's some fucked up shit, even for you," he said, his voice tinged with both anger and confusion.

Two raised his right hand dramatically, and a drop of blood dripped from his nose to his lips. He was caught off guard by Trevor's sudden attack, but he quickly gathered his wits and was ready to use his telekinetic powers.

Trevor's charge faltered, as though he was racing against a forceful wind.

But it was not enough. Trevor's charge was unstoppable, and Two's efforts merely managed to slow him down a little. There was no time to change the configuration of the revolver, so I quickly rotated the cylinder to the unspent bullet. It was slick under my sweaty thumb as I prepared to fire.

Bullet type: Amber. Configuration set: Petrification spell

The bolt of yellow lightning jumped from the barrel of the gun towards Trevor. He swung the blood-soaked hammer with all his might, parrying the attack.

No. The movement of his hands was too awkward for that. It was the hammer that pulled his hands in position to parry the bolt. Trevor did not even seem to notice my spell.

"I need this," Trevor said, his eyes full of lust, pleading, and naked terror "I need to know the puzzle of flesh. I am an artist, and this is the place where inspiration is paid in blood."

Something about his words… I was near to unravelling the puzzle of this place, but it still eluded me. And I was nearly out of time.

A few more steps and Trevor would be close enough to give a fresh coat of paint to the red hammer, with Two's blood and brains. It would mix nicely with the viscera already on it.

"You need… You love…. It is all about you, isn't it?" Two angrily muttered, strain evident in his voice. The few drops of blood had become a steady stream. The young psychic was pushing far past his limits. From what I know of his psychic strength, this was enough to hurl a barbell that weighed at least 150 kilograms with ease. I had seen him do it in one of the gyms on Io.

And yet, it was his words, that slowed the murderous advance more than all of his psychic power.

"No, my love. It is about both of us. Together we make something special. Something perfect. That is why I am doing this." Trevor's eyes were wide and pale, a look of admiration and love, and perhaps madness too, in his gaze. He stared at Two as if he could not see me at all, or as if to him I did not matter at all. For Trevor, the world was reduced to just the two of them

"It's just sex, you virgin," Two almost spat out. His face had gone pale, and I could see that he was at the end of his endurance. 

But this little delay gave me enough time to cast a spell. I was left with only two bullets, one diamond, and one sapphire. I could not afford any more mistakes. I had certain before I acted and there was a spell just for that.

"Shatter: Ophanim."

Metatron who once had been Enoch. The man who had become an angel. A Mystery hidden within the holy texts, revealed by painstaking research.

Divine inspiration allowed me to use Natural Language Processing tools to go over the bible in its original language, and then through every major translation seeking patterns and hidden information. I was particularly proud of a neural network layer based on Metraton's Cube. When looking at certain numerology was a method of text vectorization. Although numerology worked on a letter, rather than token units which did make models rather large.

Improvement on the previous iteration of the spell, through a deepening of foundation.

Taste of transcendence. The outsider observer that judged the outcomes.

My angel self saw how that would end in a dozen different variations. Spoiler alert: Two would die at the end. Sometimes Trevor wept over his corpse, sometimes he laughed, in hollow mirthless laughter. Sometimes he just stood, as he could not believe what he had done.

In all of the potentials but one.

One where I shoot at Two. 

Bullet type: Diamond. Configuration set: Reinforcement

I had chosen. Potential collapsed into certainty.

Blood poured from my nose.

Two's eyes glinted with maniacal glee as he lifted his arms to the sky, palms outstretched. The air around him crackled with energy, and I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

"I can feel it," Two exclaimed, his voice dripping with arrogance. "The power... it's coursing through me. UNLIMITED POWER!"

Really, it was just a reinforcement. Yes, it was A-rank, bordering on A+-rank, spell, but it would hardly be called unlimited power. He was strong enough to fight a vampire bare-handed and the strength was not the only attribute that was enchanted. But the spell had its limits, mostly because Two was human. There was only so much the human body could be pushed before it broke. And it wouldn't allow him to shoot lightning from his fingers. I already spent all the amber I have brought with me. 

Two's voice shook with a mix of fear and triumph as he shouted, "Rin had not abandoned me. He is with me!" His fists clenched tightly, knuckles turning white as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Of course, I was with him. I had been standing right next to him all this time. And it was not as if I was hidden. I was glowing, for Root's sake.

Something was very wrong here. Now that I thought about Trevor had been ignoring me too. It was that two lovebirds were stuck in their own world, and not just as an expression.

And now that I looked for it, I could feel it. The subtle suggestion for me to stay silent, and not act. Just watch.

It seemed that this place had divided us as actors and audience. I got to be a silent audience to the teenage romance with a dash of murder.

The suggestion was not that strong. I did overpower part of it. But it was not alone. When I acted against it in a direct manner, like trying to disable Trevor with paralysis spells, the world itself acted to counter me.

And I was doing it again. Pushed into inaction. It was quite insidious.

Fortunately, it seems that the little performance was stuck in its dialogue stage.

Trevor's eyes grew wider as he watched Two with a mixture of fascination and rage. His grip on the hammer tightened until his knuckles turned white. The veins on his neck bulged as he struggled to contain his anger.

"You're not making any sense, Damien!" he yelled, his voice shaking with emotion. "Just give up now and accept your fate. It is just brief pain and you will never leave me. Nothing dies forever in Birdland."

Two moved like a blur, too fast for human eyes, but not mine, to track. In one fluid motion, he snatched the bloody hammer from Trevor's grasp and darted away. But Trevor was quick to react, lunging towards Two with a desperate grab. His fingers closed around the tattered hospital gown that clung to Two's body, but it offered no resistance. The flimsy fabric ripped apart, leaving a scrap of cloth in Trevor's hand as Two streaked away, naked and unencumbered.

Trevor stumbled back, clutching the torn fabric to his chest as his eyes burned with a wild fury.

Two moved with an almost inhuman speed, his fingers closing around the handle of the bloody hammer. With a violent twist of his wrist, the hammer head broke off with a sickening crunch. Trevor lunged forward with a desperate grab, but Two easily sidestepped him, twisting the broken hammer in his hand until it snapped into two pieces, like a dry twig.

With a triumphant smirk, Two lifted the broken halves of the hammer high above his head, revelling in the weight and power of the shattered tool. He tossed the pieces aside with a flourish and turned to face Trevor, who looked stunned and enraged.

"I live for myself and die for no one!" Two shouted, his voice ringing with defiance. "I never promised you anything but a good time!"

"Fine then," Trevor said softly. "I always imagined doing it with nothing but my hands."

As Trevor lunged towards Two with a fierce determination, I turned away from the spectacle. It was harder than it should be. After all, the audience was supposed to watch. But such suggestions were no match for my will. Instead, my attention was drawn to the broken hammer head that had landed on the porch. I made my way towards it and knelt down.

As I reached out to touch the weapon, the tendrils of my familiar emerged from under my sleeve. They wrapped around the hammer, their skin parting to reveal rows of small, suction-like mouths. The barbed tongues that emerged from those orifices began to lick the blood and gore from the surface of the hammer, almost as if they were savouring the taste.

The substances analyzed through my karmic bond with my familiar revealed a chilling truth. The DNA was a close match to Trevor, indicating that the freshly spilt blood belonged to someone closely related to him. It was as if the murder had happened less than an hour ago, and not a decade in the past. But there was something else. Something that tried to disguise itself as human, but could not hide from me. Or rather, it didn't even try to hide from me, and me alone. 

Trevor's voice, barely above a whisper, reached my ears with unsettling clarity. "I just want to know how you're made, Damien," he said. "I love you so much. I want to climb inside you. I want to taste your brain. I want to feel your heart beating in my hands."

For a moment, my concentration slipped, and my eyes were drawn again to the two boys. Trevor held Two in what almost looked like a gentle embrace, but his hand was wrapped tightly around Two's neck, cutting off his air supply. Two's face turned red as he struggled to break free, his hands clawing at Trevor's arm.

With a sudden burst of strength, Two delivered a swift kick to Trevor's midsection, sending him stumbling backwards. Gasping for air, Two collapsed to the ground, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.

I turned away. It was the proper decision.

But my mind was preoccupied with the new information I had received. There was a task I needed to accomplish, and it had to be done inside the house.

I abandoned Two and entered the house through the now pristine door.

I was not worried.

The rules of this place were no longer a complete mystery to me.

I would not be late, nor would I be early. The moment I returned would be just right. Two's inevitable death scene. Of course, I planned to save Two. Whether I would be able to do so depended on what I did next.

It was a short trip to the bathroom, where I found the body. Bobby McGee hung from the shower curtain rod. It was the old-fashioned kind bolted into the wall. He was naked. His penis hung limp and dry as a dead leaf; there had been no last orgasm in death for him. His body was thin nearly to the point of emaciation, luminously pale, his hands and feet gravid with blood, his face so swollen as to be featureless except for the eyes bulging halfway out of their sockets. The rough strand of hemp cut a deep slash in his neck. His hands and his torso were still stained with the blood of his family.

Too late.

But time was malleable here. Well, honesty time was malleable for me anywhere, but with my skills, I needed places like this, where present and past mixed to perform miracles like this.

I placed my hand in the starting position, with the tips of my fingers touching, and slowly spread them apart. As I did so, a distortion in space began to form around my hand, much like the threads of a cat's cradle. But this was no ordinary game. I played it in more than just three dimensions, twisting and weaving shapes that could only be described mathematically. As I continued to play, I felt time begin to flow backwards, as if the strands of the universe itself were unravelling and rewinding.

The body began to twitch, returning to life. But Bobby McGee was of little interest to me. His fate was set. And even if was not, I wouldn't waste effort on him.

The screams told me when it was time to stop. The dying cry of Trevor's mother signalled that it was time for me to act.

I reached for the Five Colored Slime, allowing it to bite my right nipple and drink my Od-rich blood. It needed to store energy for what was to come, both in this world and the real one.

The door to Trevor's younger brother's room was open. I entered without any hesitation and found my target. It was time to act as proper fey and steal the child before the poor baby was murdered. I was even going to leave a fetch. 

I picked the three-year-old up. He did not wake. It was obvious that Boddy had drugged both of his sons. I suppose he wanted no complications for his fun. That could be a problem, but an easily solvable one. The slime flowed through the boy, examining every part of him, then dripped into the bed, taking the shape of the boy.

With another twist of my fingers, the switch was complete, and I was back in my proper time. The house was a ruin now, but I had Didi. And not just here, He was in my lap, in the real world too. 

The boy in my hand steered. He was still drugged, but that just made him more attuned to this dream realm.

As Didi stroked my luminous skin with his small hand, he murmured in wonder, "Shiny... pretty." I smiled inwardly, knowing that the child was fascinated by my otherworldly glow. The light of Two Trees, even just this poor reflection should be very soothing to his young mind.

"Come," I said softly, cradling him in my arms. "Let's go see your brother, okay?"

Didi's eyes widened at the mention of his sibling. "Trev?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

As we made our way towards Trevor's location, I couldn't help but notice how light Didi was in my arms. It was almost as if he was weightless, but I knew better. His young body was just numb from the drugs.

Finally, we arrived at the most dramatic moment. Trevor was straddling and strangling Two, whose reinforcement had faded. It was a gruesome sight, but I knew what I had to do.

"Call your brother, Didi," I commanded, my voice laced with otherworldly authority. I had no time for coaxing, Two's life was on the line.

"TREV!!" Didi yelled with all his might.

Trevor's body convulsed as though battling an unseen force. And then, as if a veil had been lifted, he finally seemed to see me. Me and his brother.

"Didi?" he said in a questioning tone as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "But you are dead. I saw I saw your broken body, I could never forget the smell."

"Shh," I said gently. My light was reflected in his eyes, making them even more beautiful. I could see why Two was drawn to him, of all the young people in Sacred Yew. "Don't frighten your brother."

"Are you an angel?" Trevor whispered, eyes wide with wonder.

"Don't be stupid. He is an alien," Two interjected. "Only fools believe in angels these days. Does this mean that you're done with trying to kill me and declaring your love to me?" From Two's tone of voice, it was obvious that he found both equally distasteful.

But before Trevor could say anything there was a tremor in the air. Everything around us, the twisted landscape, the starless sky colour of the old bruise, and the murder house, started to fade.

"What is happening?" Trevor asked.

"The price was paid," I said, "And our time in Birdland has come to an end."

As everything faded to black, I lifted off my blindfold and opened my eyes. The physical world gradually came into focus. I was sitting in a lotus position with Frederick soundly asleep on my lap. Trevor had been drawing, but he had stopped and was staring at me and Frederick, looking dazed as if he had just woken up from a dream. Two was napping nearby. The transition back to reality was disorienting, but I was used to it.

Trevor gently set down his drawing pencil and approached me with hesitation.

He kneeled next to me and, looking at the boy on my lap, said, "Didi...is it really you? How...how is this possible?"

"Trevor, I am officially breaking up with you," Two spoke next, from his napping spot. He yawned and stretched, then continued, "Just to clarify, it is not because you tried to kill me. You are just too clingy." Pause. "I expect more of a reaction."

"My baby brother may be back from the dead," Trevor said, without taking his eyes away from the mentioned brother. "I don't have time for your bullshit."

"You were the one declaring your undying love to me," Two almost seemed disappointed. It was amusing, considering how freaked he had been by those declarations.

"Obviously I was out of my mind," Trevor sharply replied to Two and then said to me. "But is this really my brother? He looks like Didi, but it has been ten years. And why is he still sleeping?"

"The boy is drugged," I replied, "but seems healthy otherwise. As for him being your brother, we can always check once we are back in the Enrichment Center. I think that one of the labs is working on better DNA profiling."

"It is your brother," Two said with absolute conviction. "That was Rin's doing. He had beaten death before."

"How is that even possible?" Trevor began, but his question was cut off as the wall erupted, showering us with debris and engulfing us in a cloud of dust.

I shielded the sleeping boy from the initial blast. Realizing he'd be a dangerous burden in what was to come, I quickly passed him to his brother. Standing up, I drew my revolver, assuming a loose stance, ready for anything.

"You were Rin, all along," Two exclaimed. I suppose that Mystic Code was a bit too distinctive. But that was a problem for later.

From the blasted gap in the wall, a man strode in, clad in a pristine green American uniform.

It was crisp and neat, with a few badges pinned on it. He was tall and muscular, with short black hair that was slicked back, and his skin was a deep shade of brown. His features were set in a stern, almost predatory expression. Clutched in his grasp was a peculiar metal tube, terminating in a twisted metal V shape.

I could feel the same type of mana as the stone grail from it.

Looking at me through his mirrored shades, he said, "Another Antichrist, Master? Was Nero not enough? And spare me your denials. You may have donned another of your charming disguises, but your Vril is quite distinctive."