Seven months went by with Marx doing his best to rebel against the Creature without getting punished. He would purposely mess up, 'accidentally' break important magical items, pretend he couldn't hear it talking, and do tiny things like tap his fingernails loudly during exercises to annoy it. It got increasingly frustrated with him as the months went by but didn't have a solid reason to punish him. It knew that if it punished him for no reason, Marx would stop doing what it wanted altogether whether it punished him or not.

Marx felt himself slowly getting more and more comfortable rebelling against it as time went by. He found he could get away with more by covering his plot up with a constant stream of questions aimed at the Creature right as it realised what he was doing. It would eventually get so flustered with the amount of questions he was asking that it would forget what he had just done and couldn't get at him for it.

On top of the small amounts of rebellion, Marx was getting bolder and had met with Tom on numerous occasions, during which they would think up new ways for Marx to stand up to it and think of ways to find supporters. The trick was to ask the corpse or monster if it wanted to rebel in such a way that it wouldn't rat Tom or Marx out, but would still understand what they were asking him/her. At first, it was hard, but as time went on it got easier. At one point, they gained seventeen members within four days. Their numbers swelled until there were nearly two hundred supporters total, and the Creature had no idea.

Every week, on a different day each time, they would meet up at the cave Marx would always spend his free time in, and would come in small amounts at a time so as not to arouse suspicion. Marx began to realise that everyone in the group was just like him: wrongly held in that nightmarish world and forced to do what the Creature wanted. They just wanted to be free, and Marx was determined to help them in any way he could.

*****

"The next meeting will be on Thursday. Keep your eyes peeled for anything unusual, and speak no word of this in the city." Marx turned and stepped off the rock he had carried up to the cave a few weeks ago as a sort of stage, feeling satisfied but nervous. The rebellion was growing, but the bigger the rebellion got, the harder it was for him to hide it from the Creature. It could invade his mind, but he could hide things from it if he concentrated hard enough.

He folded his arms behind his back and breathed a weary sigh, pacing around the small cave while the twenty-or-so monsters able to fit in it climbed back down and into the rest of the crowd. Tom stayed, hovering by the entrance as if he had to say something. Marx extinguished a small, pinkish-purple orb of light he had summoned to illuminate the cave and walked over to Tom.

"Master Marx-"

"I'm not your master. Please, just call me Marx."

Tom paused for a second, indecisive. "...Marx, I have a feeling that something bad is about to happen between you and the Creature. I recommend you keep your guard up," He said worriedly, his echoey, creaky voice a ragged whisper. Marx nodded, his face grim. "Yeah... I feel it too. Thanks, Tom." Marx looked down at his feet. Despite the rebellion going well, there was a feeling he just couldn't shake that something was coming, and it was making him nervous. Not only that, but he was haunted by nightmares of people without faces asking him where he had gone, people he felt like he remembered but couldn't be sure.

"Something is bothering you?" Tom asked kindly. Marx blinked in surprise and lifted his head. It had been a while since anyone besides Hazel had asked him if something was wrong or even cared enough to in the first place.

"...I'm tired.," He murmured, "Tired of all of this, especially. Just tired..." He said it mostly to convince himself, even though he knew it was a lie. Hazel, who was perched on his shoulder, nuzzled his cheek. He scratched behind her ear absently and avoided Tom's glowing, pinprick eyes, studying the jagged floor instead.

"I will not pry into your personal feelings if it makes you uncomfortable. I will be going now, Marx." Marx smiled faintly at Tom calling him Marx for once and thanked him before starting to pace again. With the nearly overwhelming feeling that something hugely important was going to happen, he climbed out of the cave and began walking towards the place he fell into the Rift, unsure of why he was going there but sure that he had to. Hazel tried to get him to open his eyes so she could ask him what he was doing, but his eyes were firmly fixed upwards and she couldn't get his attention.

After a ten-minute walk, Marx was standing directly under the place where he was caught by the spiderwebs and greeted by the crowd of monsters so long ago. A horrible tingle ran up his spine at the memory and he frowned, knowing that when he landed he was just a normal kid, but not even a month later his memories were taken and he became something else. He hadn't gone there since he had first arrived.

Hazelmere became frustrated at being ignored and began flapping her wings in his face, squeaking up a storm. Marx was snapped out of his bad memories and stepped back, surprised.

"Gah! Hazel, stop!" The tiny thumbs on her wings stuck into his forehead and she clung to his face. "OW! GET OFF!" Marx yelled, trying to pry her off without hurting her. Her claws were sharp. She put her face right up to his eyes and squeaked something that sounded rude.

"Okay, okay! Stop and I'll talk to you!" He hissed. Hazel squeaked one more time before flapping her wings and lifting off his head, circling down and landing on his shoulder instead. Marx opened all of his eyes and was about to ask her what her problem was when a shriek shattered the near-silence of the land around the city. A dark blot appeared against the ceiling, slowly growing larger, and the screaming stopped abruptly. The person, for it was a person falling, must have passed out, Marx realised.

Then he realised what it meant for a person to be falling in the first place and his breath caught in his throat.

"Someone's coming," He gasped.