TRACK 30

Do we, do we know

When we fly

When we, when we go

Do we die?

Sweet berries ready for two

Ghosts are no different than you

(Question!- System of a down)

********

Danger or safety? Staying or leaving?

If he had been following his self-preservation instincts, the question would have been extremely easy to answer. It would have been only a "retreat slowly without attracting attention and fuzzing leave". Faster than ever, too. Which... would have brought a longer walk, a larger amount of wandering around without those things near him, and a much stronger amount of tension rising because hell, those things were over the barrier, and hurray, more time wasted.

Still, it would have kept him out of their field. And -by walking until exhaustion took root, probably almost making him fall on his face- to reach the Orange River if he walked towards three o'clock.

But. There was a but. An enormous one, too, that was shown by the cathedral-looking limestones in front of him. That but, yes. It reminded him that they were in there to search for Dalai in the first place, not to ignore the danger.

Nobody could tell him that he wasn't in that kind of place. He could have used one of those sprouts as a den. Maybe the bigger one that was almost in the middle.

It was a hidden spot. It was protected by the creatures flying all around it like hell was breathing on their wings. Plus, it was big enough to make unknown -or worse, known- unwanted people lose themselves inside it. Much more than Camelot's castle... And that was saying a lot.

To be able to walk in it, someone had to know where they wanted to go. And how the floor plan moved.

It was perfect to disappear in it. Had he been in Dalai's shoes, he would have picked it without even thinking twice.

So, no, Douxie couldn't leave. Even if it seemed a very stupid, very dangerous choice.

No matter the idea of finding the red insects at his heels, no matter the loud buzzing sound that they emitted, no matter the idea of being assaulted and finding himself fully surrounded by them, no matter even the possibility of just getting so lost to never get out of there... he had to check. Even just a little.

He had to see if the Keeper was there... And tell him that Merlin needed his help. That they needed his help. He would have prostrated himself to his feet, even, to convince him.

'Or, in case he isn't there, there is still the option to search for drinkable water...' his mind whispered. He agreed with the thought, in a one-hundred-percent way.

He still forced himself to ignore the second thought, tough. All in the hope of not getting too disappointed if neither of them were there.

Taking a deep breath, he stilled himself, filled his being with determination and something akin to adrenaline, and then restarted walking.

As he did so, his mind instantly wandered towards Archie, asking himself if he was okay. And then the sensation enlarged, making him ask if everyone was alright.

It wasn't the first time that he questioned himself with that same query, but the amount of worry it brought him was always the same, every kind of internal reassurance being deleted by the unknown.

He sped up a little, mostly when the creatures were out of his view, then got a bit slower, cautiously lowering his body a little, when they were right there, just in front of his gaze.

It took a bit to get near the limestones. And it took many shivers running down his spine, too.

But then he was there and they were momentarily out of sight, so he immediately started running.

Once the destination was reached, he then flattened himself against the cold wall, not even daring to breathe. Tried to calm down his heartbeat, whose rhythm had gone haywire and was thumping loudly inside his chest. Too loudly.

After just a little moment, head in the air to check if above him the sky was still clear, he started walking again.

One of the entrances wasn't too far away from the point he had reached. But it wasn't that near, either. So, he moved fast and quiet, almost tiptoeing, feeling the anxiety raise the hair on his body and perceiving how the soil under his feet felt almost too soft to be normal, only to delete the constatation from his brain. Because what was normal in that place, after all?

Halfway through his way to the cathedral-like entrance, his ears started to feel the buzzing returning, becoming louder and louder as he quickened his pace to cover the space between him and his destination, some of his steps being slowed down by how the earth seemed to sink them a little.

He was in just the second before they fully appeared. He realized it since the sounds they emitted became so much stronger that he almost feared they would enter the same place as him, too, but after an utter ruckus, the sound started to lower again. And he was able to get air in his lungs decently again, a wet smell hitting his nostrils.

After several seconds in which he remained still as a statue, he looked around with slight curiosity.

The sight in there made him freeze for a moment before collecting himself.

There were a lot of bones. A literal cemetery of dead creatures -animal-like, for what he could see- left on the mushy floor; white ribs, skulls, and legs scattered in utter disorder.

It was a small space. There wasn't much more except for dark humid walls and corpses.

Quietly, he got out of there, peeking his head to listen first and then speeding up again to find the next entrance. Or a good first point to hide when the red insects eventually pass again.

Looking attentively, there were few of them. The structure of the walls outside often had some holes and points in which the rock could cover his head.

'It could have been much worse...' he thought, walking again and listening to the silence at the point that he almost felt a little paranoid when, well, the same sound he got tense about was the one that he provoked by breathing, by his growling stomach, and by the squelching sounds that the ground made at times.

********

She stayed there, peering nervously at the woman as she left and entered the room while moving stuff left and right. All without even daring to open her mouth for at least twenty minutes.

She was trying to find the perfect way and the perfect moment to crack the ice, gathering the courage to succeed, but a good part of her ended up paying more attention to what Helena was carrying -including the dirty plates of the dinner they just had and the last remaining piece of the Candle of Babylon that Minerva had used, and that had gone from being bright red to almost a violet color, moving it inside the same drawer where she had left the remaining snake oil, the piece of paper with the sequence and the key attached to the crest- than to keeping track of the questions she would have to fling at her. And that brought her back to the beginning every single time, mentally cursing at her innate ability to get distracted by the smallest of things.

But at the end of that twenty minutes or so, Alice spoke without any warning, with another rumble of thunder joining her voice.

"So what's the real deal?" She asked, the words escaping her mouth, spoken so quickly they seemed to stick to each other. Then she drummed her fingers on the table, a little like the rain falling outside, barely leaning over and staring at the woman.

Helena had almost left the room for the umpteenth time, but the sentence made her stop and turn her head, a silent question between a confused and a vaguely annoyed expression written on her face.

Another crack of thunder followed, accompanied by the heavy rain that was quite quick in its tempo, and Alice hurried to speak.

"There are so many different myths," she said in a half-voice, bringing both her clenched hands in front of herself and staring at them as if she were seeing them for the first time. She paused for a moment, but not for too long.

"There is the one from Ancient Greece," she held up her index finger on her left hand. "The one from Northern Europe, from Ancient Rome, from the Americas, from Asia," all the fingers of her left hand, one behind the other, were moved just like the first one. She prepared the right one to do the same. "From Egypt, Africa, Oceania..."

She moistened her lips with her tongue, watching the eight fingers raised, with yet another thunderclap ringing in her ears. "And then there is the scientific side. And there are the ones from several religions. And I'm more than sure that there are other mythologies from specific cities that I don't know about and specific cults that for some people shouldn't exist. All over the world. Well, probably not even just on Earth either."

Helena barely collected herself -as if to chase away a thought- saying nothing, but taking a few steps forward in her direction.

"They all have different versions, you see." Alice continued after a small sigh. "In each of them, there is a beginning of the universe, a birth of the Earth that is different from how it is seen in the other mythologies."

Ticking the table one more time -index, middle finger, middle finger, index finger, and so on twice before moving on to ring finger and pinky, pinky, ring finger- the girl felt the Elder Witch's cold gaze on her as if she wanted to cross her with it from side to side.

'At least it's not a murderous look... Yet.' She thought nervously, a strained smile painting itself on her face, as she shook her head to focus her attention back on the topic at hand.

"There is the original division between darkness and light, with Gaia, Uranus, the Titans, Zeus, and the other Deities in the Greek one, of course..."

Helena seemed to narrow her gaze.

"The World of Muspelheim and that of Niflheim with the primordial void in between, Ymir and all the various descendants in the Norse one. The Cherokee, the four strings connecting the spiritual realm to the earthly realm, the beetle in water, and Poiana in the Americas. The Big Bang, the... I mean! There are an awful lot of different ways in which the creation of the universe and the world is treated. A hot mess of narratives that are similar in some ways, but at the same time they are different from each other, and come on! You have to ask yourself which one is the real one. It is impossible not to wonder. It is the question that all philosophers, all scientists, all living beings ask themselves at least once in their entire lifetime."

Another lightning bolt. She caught her breath, realizing that she had been talking too fast and swallowing hard. She continued to feel herself being stared at all too closely, but there was still no sign of an assassination attempt.

She could take a normal insistent stare.

"In some ways, they all seem to exist, but all of them. Really. All of them. Because the creatures present in those mythologies, the powers moving things and the Magics presented in those mythologies, well, they exist..."

Minerva and the Runes were the most blatant examples of just that. They should have clashed, but they did not.

"...But it is not possible that all the creations dictated by mythologies have been here! Earth, Saturn, Jupiter, all the uncharted worlds... they could not have been created by all of those different ways at the same time."

"They could," Asserted Helena instead, "nor did it necessarily happen at the same time." A mysterious expression took the place of the one she had shown earlier. An expression that this time seemed almost to be mocking her, especially because of the look that she was staring at her with, and which made Alice feel her cheeks warm from inner embarrassment. The shame one's type.

"No it couldn't!" she snapped back, offended at the sudden teasing for which she saw no motivation. And thus clutching the stones to let the sudden annoyance flow inside them. "A thing cannot be created more than once! It is not logically possible! And yes, there are a lot of things that are not logically possible in the ordinary world, but this..." She made a repetitive, almost aggressive circle with her index finger, shaking her whole hand. "...This is different! Otherwise, it would mean... It would mean..."

She interrupted herself abruptly, the concept blossoming in her head so sharply that it left her stunned, the hand clutching the stones letting go of them.

'Oh. Shoot. That totally makes sense.'

"'It would mean?" Quipped Helena in a vaguely ironic tone, blinking almost in the same ironic manner -and honestly, it was so annoying. How was it possible that eyelashes could be so expressive? The nerves- but that... at the same time it seemed to want to push her? To press her to keep talking for real, challenge-like.

"What would that mean?" she insisted, moving to sit on the sofa and crossing her legs. Outside, the rain seemed to slow down a little, but not enough.

"That..." She fell silent. And she wished she had a shovel in her hands to prepare the pit, because yes, she felt dumb for not thinking of it right away. "It would mean that, well..."

She drew a big deep breath in.

"Okay. That may be possible. You're right." Alice caught a glimpse of Helena almost smirking -in the way some self-centered people did- at such words. "There are multiple versions of the Universe, for what Minerva said. Different universes. So... different Earths," a pause. "Different Earths, all created separately by different means. But all of them have similar patterns of evolution."

"You are partly right, and partly not," the woman moved the hair behind her back a little with a quick gesture. "A single breath of a God might get steered onto one of the various versions of Earth. That one single breath becomes a hurricane once it reaches its destination." That speech already screamed about the butterfly effect. "It could kill people who in another reality are instead living. The consequences could be small or big. Can be quite extensive, sometimes. So the patterns, and the Time Lines, are not always the same, but in specific cases they are similar. People can fortunately be quite interchangeable when needed."

"People are not replaceable." Snapped Alice, unable to hold back the disgust that was almost palpable in her tone of voice. A grimace appeared on her face and it felt like it was etched on it because she couldn't shake it off no matter what. She forced herself to go back to grasping the stones in her pocket, but they only accepted some of the rages that made her bristle on the spot. The remaining part boiled in her veins.

"Oh yes, they are." Helena retorted, almost apathetically. "Most of them can be easily replaced. A creator of something is just the first person to reach a specific idea or a specific conclusion. They might also be the last ones to do so if there is no driving force, there is no denying that, but... something that is sought after, that someone wants, is hardly not found when there is enough willpower and intelligence for it. So if one person fails at something, someone else can succeed at it instead. This is what I mean by being interchangeable."

"Would Troy have been conquered if Achilles and Odysseus had not been on the side of the Greeks?" she asked bluntly, totally on purpose and perhaps with a slightly venomous tone. "Would the war itself have begun had it not been for Paris taking you away from your husband?" another thunderclap struck in the air. She saw her stiffen, a spark of anger shimmering in her eyes. "I would say that you and your choices have not been very much of an interchangeable type," she remarked.

"I said most people. Not all of them, you insolent little girl," Helena fumed, visibly vexed. "Some souls leave grooves behind, others spend their lives wandering hopelessly and without a sense of existence. And so they fade away unsatisfied, disappearing from the entire universe as if they never even existed. That's the truth of life."

Alice glared at her. "That is pure crap. One person influences others. Whether they want to or not. Whether they realize it or not..."

"You're quite the naive type." Helena interrupted her bitterly.

"I'm just telling the truth!" she indignantly replied. "It's not my fault if you have too much of a half-empty glass view of life to realize how little it takes to change other people's lives and how important an unknown person can be. So, yes. You cannot say that people are expendable. Negatively or positively, they do have an impact."

"Do they? All of them?" Helena fluttered her eyelashes, staring at her with a cold expression.

"Yes."

"Then why did I hear that some of your lives did not have even a hint of an impact?" the woman toyed around with the silk of her shirt, the tone of her voice being extremely sour, the room being lit up by the lightning that flashed across the sky, while the rain sped up again. Alice's heart lost a beat. "In one of them, you did not run away from home that night that we both know about . You tried to convince your loved twin to accept you, but she didn't. You lost too much time trying to change her mind and your parents came back." She paused. Something seemed to come to a screeching halt around them. The time, maybe. Or maybe the entire space itself. It wasn't clear at all. "Your father shot you in the head when he discovered what you were. They didn't even cry. Didn't even make you a proper funeral celebration."

"T-that's..." Alice barely began, interrupting herself.

Her lips trembled faintly, trying to formulate some more words, but they did not come out, and a shuddering breath made its way out of her mouth. Her eyes began to burn like living flames.

"Where do you see a purpose in that version of your story?" Helena asked, striking and almost poisoning her with her question.

Alice didn't utter a single word, the image evoked replaying several times inside her brain.

"In another one, if I'm not mistaken... you accepted the future they wanted for you," the old witch went on relentlessly, casting a new glance at her nails.

"You got married. You had a few little younglings with that nice Spaniard boy they had forced you to meet..." Alice sensed a wave of nausea forming in her stomach. She could have retched right there. "But he didn't love you and you didn't love him either. And your children all died in the usual war that your family had lived in for centuries."

She wanted to tell her to shut the hell up, but she only inhaled, her hands shaking.

"You passed the rest of your life without love, without ever knowing who you could have been. And what skills you could have developed." a small pause. "You were miserable, empty, and alone." Helena hinted at a wry smile.

A long moment of silence followed, heavy, as Alice went still like a statue. She kept staring at the floor, her hands out of her pants' pockets, closed in fists.

It took a while before she was able to breathe and raise her head again, her gaze falling on the older woman.

"Like you?" she said venomously, her voice small and somewhat hoarse. "Doesn't seem to me that you are that much different right now."

Helena's expression bent into an angry grimace in a scarce second, her entire face turning scarlet. Her Aura seemed to burst for an instant but was swallowed up inside the woman herself as she took a long deep breath.

"Leave." She snapped, so icy that Alice felt a chill run down her entire spine. "Right now."

The slight fear disappeared quickly, though. She was able to ignore it and to let the inner burning feeling -the pain of the sudden discoveries that felt like deep paper cuts in the flesh- slide into the precious stones and allow the anger to bubble up again instead, her face darkening.

"Fuck you! Like hell I'm leaving!" She spat out, quivering in place. And Helena went from having an expression full of icy rage to a shocked and then scandalized one -Scandalized by the language used- blinking a few times.

The Elder Witch looked ready to say something, but Alice beat her to the punch. She didn't even let her say a single word.

"I have no intention of being a good little girl and going back to my room because you ordered me to." she chuckled acidly. "I had and still have some questions to ask you. It would have been cool if we had been able to talk civilly, but you pretty much acted like a bitch from the exact moment I opened my mouth. But, still, I'm not going to leave just because you say things about me. Because you act like an entitled, annoying, judgy, mean arse for no fucking reason."

She almost threw her fist at the table. Avoided doing it for a whisker. Breathed in and out.

"Yes, maybe other versions of my life didn't have a final purpose in the end. Okay. Fine. It was because of the choices that I made that diverted me from whatever path I had and that I have right now. But still, even the unhappy, empty, and lonely version of me has a purpose right now. That me makes this me understand who I don't want to be. Who I know I won't be if I keep being myself. And sure as fuck I don't want to become like you. So, no. Fuck off, I'm not bloody leaving." She glared at her, her eyes burning even more. "You could pray to me in Latin, in Ancient or New Greek, in Portuguese, or English. You might come up with other sadistic images of my other sad paths in life, but I won't move from here until you answer what I want to know."

She ended up rubbing her hand over her eyes, removing any hints of angry tears that had tried to make their way down her cheekbones. Took another shaky breath. Stared at a menacing Helena, straightening her back and head.

"I could kill you right now, you impudent child." The woman snapped harshly, glaring even more.

"You wouldn't." Alice shot back without even blinking, raising her eyebrows. "You can't. Apparently, you need this version of me." She smiled in a fake, forced way. "And if you're gonna leave this room, I'm going to follow you around even if I'm hurt. Just try me."

********

Claire's head still hurt a little. The pain had lessened a lot, yes, and although it hadn't gone away completely, well, she saw it as a big step forward.

The same thing couldn't be said about the intense irritation that continued to run under her skin, almost in spurts. At certain times they would be mild and then they would explode, totally beyond her control.

It was like that to the point that it had been hard to fight. It had led her to scream at Sir. Galahad or to say terrible things towards him quietly more than once -for the smallest, most ridiculous reasons- and then finding herself embarrassed by her overreaction and to apologize every single time.

The Knight always seemed to overlook it. He stared at her for a few moments, looking perplexed for just that amount of time, and then he proceeded to do things around her as if nothing had happened.

He sipped alcohol from his flask, moved back and forth to get his legs to wake up... or to empty his bladder -which he even announced as if it was an event of the century, then letting out a loud, happy sigh when he was done- as he watched everything he could look at. And eventually, he would sit back down.

There were moments when he would start whistling while waiting. Others in which he began to gargle repeatedly and then spit on the ground... and Claire couldn't help but wonder if he was doing it on purpose to get on her nerves even more, or if it was simply a daily routine. Having only been around him for a short amount of time, she had no way of knowing which one was it.

In one case he even started talking to her and asked her for information about her life. He had been particularly interested in the details of her relationship with Jim... a curiosity that had not continued for long, however. Or at least, it had continued until the man had moved on to talk of conquests that he had made in his youth, dwelling on hot, hyper-described details -that, yep, Claire would not have wanted to hear. At all. They were nothing short of scandalous- which made her turn red all over her face.

In that chat she had been barely able to stop him -with the fast way of speaking with which he had talked at that moment, he had seemed more than determined to continue with that speech, decorating it with even more descriptions- and it had always been due to one of the many sudden outbursts of anger, which also emerged out of nowhere, and was also very capable of making her cheeks feel on fire.

In that case, instead of simply being shocked, Sir. Galahad started laughing out loud, cackling and apologizing for having discussed topics unsuitable for her age.

"Unsuitable for your age in this century, at least," he had said then, once he had stopped his hyena-like laughter. "Because sixteen-year-old ladies in the Middle Ages hardly batted an eyelash at any kind of filth whispered in their ear, in my days. They were a year away from the right age for marriage! They had to be prepared for the idea of ​​satisfying their husband, you know."

And then he had commented -a quite unnerving one that Claire did not remember at all- to which she had preferred to close her eyes and lie on her side, inhaling and exhaling. Mentally swearing in Spanish.

In between her numerous loops of irritation, Claire had ended up taking several naps, always slowly falling asleep and waking up suddenly -in them she hadn't had any more dreams. None that she remembered, at least. None that were as vivid as the one about Dalai, whose mere thought continued to provoke explosive fury in her- and on one of those many occasions she... She thought she saw a semi-transparent figure.

It had been crouching very, very close to her and had been intent on reaching out a hand towards the back of one of hers as if to touch it.

For a moment, Claire had felt only intense confusion. Then she had roused herself hastily, her heart beating madly in her chest and a strangled sound escaping her lips.

She had sat up and immediately fought to move. She had been determined to defend herself, trying to summon her magic and failing, not even feeling a hint of it pinching her fingers for obvious reasons... but she hadn't needed it.

At the exact moment she had tried, the figure had already no longer been there, and Sir. Galahad had approached her again -strangely quickly- after having made yet another lap to stretch his legs.

When she had been asked "Is everything okay, lass?", Claire hadn't had the faintest idea about what to answer.

Even at that moment -thinking about it between looking at the river and lying down on the ground again- she wasn't sure. How could she be when her stay in that dimension seemed to be gradually becoming filled with oddities rather than dangers, at least for her?... Excluding the blow to her head, of course. That was a separate thing.

Seriously. There was already too much weird stuff.

There were irrational, erratic fits of anger.

There was the dream -extremely realistic, of which she remembered the smallest of details, the smallest of tensions in the tendons of her legs, the smallest shiver on the surface of her skin in contact with the wind- in which she had no longer been Claire but Dalai himself, the same famous Wizard they were looking for... and who had been Xia's Apprentice. And in love with her. This information wasn't written in Blinky's book.

There had been the weird waterfall even though for most of it she had not been awake. And the fog.

Then there had been the mysterious figure who appeared and disappeared into thin air. And they had been creepy enough the moment she'd glimpsed at them, however briefly -Maybe if she'd had less panic and more focus she'd have been able to get a better look at them... or maybe it was better that she hadn't done it. Perhaps simply looking at them closely was the midpoint that moved the situation from somewhat strange to harmful.

So, no. Claire didn't have a clue whether everything was okay or not at that point. She would have liked to know.

If everything was 'okay', however, it didn't feel like it. Not to her. Not at all.

********

Alice tightened her lips another time, receiving the murder glance from Helena and sending it back with equal fervor.

They remained silent for several minutes, continuing with the heated visual exchange and -the obvious- mental insult contest.

Then, finally, the Elder witch seemed to surrender. Or at least, she did it in the field of remaining silent. She easily continued to kill her with her eye without limits.

"Ask, then. I do not promise you answers, or respect. " Helena blurted out, throwing out air from her nose. She looked cold and detached, devoid of emotions. "And if you ask stupid questions, you will go away. I don't want to be around someone who can't use their brain properly."

Alice forced herself to avoid giving her the middle finger. Instead, she tried to calm down -again- and to remember her questions. To return to what she had asked before the entire conversation worsened.

The central focus reappeared like a sudden flash. More or less like the new thunder that brightened everything around them right at that moment.

"Who created this version of... This whole version of the Universe?" She asked, her left hand going to play with the precious stones around her own neck.

"I don't know what to say," Helena said back in a pure mocking tone.

'Such a nice way to start this convo again.' She thought sarcastically.

"You don't know what to say?" She asserted in a slightly annoyed voice. "Hell, you could say everything? The right myth? The God that snapped and said my turn?"

"I don't know what to say." She repeated unceremoniously. Alice rolled her eyes.

"Don't know what to say or just don't want to say it?" She insisted, almost grinding her teeth, but continuing to try to stay calm -it was so flipping hard, holy crap. Her face seemed so punchable right now- albeit her nerves were being pulled like her bass strings on a heavy metal's rift.

"It's not something important." Helena ventured to say.

"It may not be something important for you, but for me, it is. I care about it. I would like to know. Selfishly, maybe, but I do." She said.

'Try to soften up. Try to soften up. Try to soften up.' She repeated to herself.

In a couple of seconds, she did. She softened her emotions, her tone, and her own expression a little.

"I mean... it is not extremely necessary, but it is still a way to feel more centered. To get a general idea about how it started."

Helena blinked, stared at her, almost smirked. "The answer remains I don't know what to say ."

Alice's tried calm demeanor went to hell really fast. "Oh, come on!"

"No." The woman stubbornly said. And it was clear that she was seriously trying to make her angry again. And to make her leave for real.

She was almost succeeding, to be honest. She was quite amazing at acting like a witch, and not in the good meaning of the word.

'Damn you.' Alice thought, seething. She still collected herself once more and tried to act like the adult person in there.

A little "Please?" slipped from her mouth.

She almost attempted to give her the puppy eyes, the type that she had used a little on all her friends, and that with them they actually had an effect... but that with freaking Miss. Helena of Troy? It would just make her seem more childish -something that Helena clearly thought already and yeah, maybe on a side she was, but whatever?- and probably would not have any. So she didn't give her the eyes. She just stayed there, seeing her fix her shirt again.

The woman -after she took her sweet time to remove an imaginary fold or something that clearly Alice couldn't see- shook her head. She did it with all the calm and sadistic demeanor she probably had possession of.

The blonde stared at her, visibly annoyed, breathing in and exhaling loudly from her nose. Something in her expression that was not small suggested how much she wanted to choke the Elder witch right now.

"Discovering it would damage the universe?" Alice therefore asked, sounding vaguely ironic. "Something like that? Or you really just don't want to say it?"

Helena shrugged. The blonde girl instead rolled her eyes once again and imagined sending her more than repeated middle fingers.

The mental view of several pigeons which, after eating food with laxatives in them, shitted all around the house or directly in the woman's head was extremely pleasant

The image almost made her smile a little. She was barely able to hold back: She held her breath for a few seconds, then threw it out a little at a time, a hand that went to move between blonde locks and to move them from her face.

'Fine. She won't tell me anything about this. Moving on to another question. '

"Zeus is both Zeus and Odin, doing things like the Mythology Odin in another Timeline." She asserted, just turning her head in the direction of the window to avoid looking at Helena's face and letting herself get angry all over again, being entertained by the heavy storm that raged outside, even though the thundering apparently diminished. "And he was ... uhm... Horus, too? If I'm not mistaken? And so on. And we know that he was because... "her eyebrow raised as she tried to make sense of her own words. "...the Gods themselves shared the information and the Magic with all the versions of the Universe. All by appearing themselves, sharing through messengers, and having kids, I imagine. "

"Correct," Helena said in a flat tone.

"And they do it for... fun? So as to see all the Creatures, human and magical alike, arguing for which one is the real religion or things like that. When in reality all of them are. Into other Timelines."

"Highly likely."

"Okay..."

Those dry answers were quite decent, despite everything. Better than before, at least.

"There are still things that do not feel right, though. Like..." she had to pause to find the words. "In some mythologies, Gods are killed. There must be a lot of different Timelines out there, and I'm pretty sure that, excluding the ones where there is only one God, they are needed. But they are technically dead? And often those who do are very important? An example is the Norse battle of Ragnarok. Fenrir kills Odin! And Thor dies after defeating Jormungand. And Surt kills Freyr..."

"The Gods, even when they are killed, never completely die..." Helena stopped her harshly -Maybe understanding that she would start talking and talking without stopping about the Norse mythology. And that if she hadn't done that it would have been more than difficult to make her shut up. Or maybe it was just because she liked to do it- finally stopping with all the clothes checking, which was great until a certain point. Over said point, well, it was straight-up annoying.

She sounded very rude while talking. But, still, Alice almost celebrated in front of the whole and well-articulated sentence. She could have made a happy dance on the spot.

"They reincarnate in a short amount of time. Same thing with the demigods. And the primordial entities do it, too, albeit by needing several years to be reborn a second time."

"Ah." It already made more sense, then. Much more sense. "Aren't they holding a bit of a grudge against those who killed them and led them to reincarnate once again?"

"They are Gods," she said. "They hold a grudge against everyone over everything. But after their momentary death, for them is Tabula Rasa. Definitively. They will know about their own history only through stories and writings."

Alice blinked, her expression only slightly bemused.

That, too, made sense... even if it remained strange enough to her eyes.

'Who knows how many times they must have killed each other... There must be a punishment of some kind after murdering another God. I doubt there is a celestial jail that isn't the Tartar, though.'

"Uhm." Another question... she had to ask another question. "And what happens to the Universes where... in which, I dunno... everything is wrong? The worst possible case ever, just happened? There would be more than a small push done by the Gods to fix it or..."

Helena performed a somewhat acidic smile. The same type she had shown when she had told her about the other Alice . "They would ignore it. And they would eventually turn it into a black hole to recreate a new one again. Little more than that. "

Alice became still like a statue, looking at her with wide eyes and an appalled look painted on her face. "...Come again?"

"They ignore it and transform it into a black hole," Helena repeated. "The only reason they decided to intervene in this case is precisely because of the fact that some Wizards hit them in their pride. If they hadn't done so, they would have washed their hands from it. And without thinking about it too much."

The shock left her utterly still. Several ' It's not right,' and ' Why?' played into her brain as she frowned and bit her lips.

"To Universe beings the problems of Universe beings." Helena continued, sounding detached. "The different worlds are only seen as places to break the boredom... Some trips here and there, a few meetings that are used a bit like a test or as romantic escapades between Creatures and Gods, which can even result in some people being brought to the Land of the Gods... Really, there is not much more for them."

"The last one feels like kidnapping," Alice commented spontaneously, not knowing whether to burst out laughing for hysteria or sigh and get her hands in her pants' pockets all over again.

"It can be." Observed Helena with utter nonchalance, the sudden return of another loud thunder following the two words, new light to brighten up the entire room as a photographic flash.

The blonde found herself staring at her intensely as if to be sure that she wasn't joking around out of sudden or mocking her, but her expression did not have even the smallest hint of hilarity. No, she was quite serious.

"... Balderdash." She blurted out, the word rolling through her tongue and spat out with appallment.

Helena immediately widened her eyes, a very confused expression crossing over her entire face. "Excuse me?"

"What?"

"What did you just say?"

Alice opened and closed her mouth. Then opened it again and finally was able to talk. "... Balderdash?" she repeated, her eyebrow rising.

The strange expression of the Elder witch seemed only to intensify. "What is that supposed to mean?" She crossed her legs, but in the opposite way from which she had had them up to now. "Emerald said that you had quite the singular vocabulary, but that one word sounds invented."

Alice paused for a moment, a blank look on her face. "Well... theoretically it means nonsense...?" she said, shaking herself in place. "I use it as a curse word, though, because it sounds more like a curse of some kind than like nonsense." She grinned. " What is this balderdash you're speaking about?... Nah. Sounds wrong." She chuckled a little. Helena kept having a confused frown on her face and it was actually very funny to look at . "And if you give words enough power, many of them seem either an insult or a curse."

"Don't you have enough insults and curses in your discourteous vocabulary?" Helena questioned, vaguely unnerved. "You lack manners."

"I don't say bad words often." She smiled. "But, anyway, no. Finding new ones is always fun." A small pause, made her brain gear again to change the focus of the conversation before falling into another argument. "...I imagine that the kidnapped people have never returned to their homes?"

"It's quite unlikely that they might want to do it themselves after being in the land of the Gods for a week or so. It appears as an earthly paradise." She just huffed. She... She actually had to have been there, if her tone said something about it. And honestly, a similar fact did not surprise Alice.

"Usually they are let go after hundreds of years, when they are no longer of any delight to them."

The blonde blinked a few times.

'Ouch?...' she thought.

Helena had sounded very offended. And she also appeared like that, her hands going again to smooth the fabric of her own shirt.

Alice could not help but look at her with confusion and new interest, the curiosity that rose to waves. She almost asked about it, but Minerva's voice replayed inside her head out of a sudden, making her snap her mouth shut.

She forced herself to repress the spontaneous question, promising herself to do some research when she went to bed. She was quite sure that there were various different nuances in the legends of Helena of Troy and she was more than tempted to know which ones actually fit with the amount of information she was learning.

She threw herself onto another question rather quickly, barely noticing yet another slowing down of the rain but seeing the annoyed look on Helena's face quite clearly.

"Tell me about Mordrax and the rare precious stones that you have down there?"

"...it's not that I know a lot about him. I just have been tasked to protect this place and he never particularly interested me as a Wizard. "

Alice tilted her head "Tell me what you know." This time she made puppy eyes without even realizing it. "Please?"

Helena looked at her for a few seconds, deadpanned. Then she rolled her eyes and huffed loudly, but began to speak anyway.

********

As he walked by heavy steps, the land was surrounded by a frozen stillness. Eyes -somewhat tired, but in a constant search that would rarely interrupt itself save for blinking- watched it with undivided attention.

The wind had returned to settle down and almost faded completely, retreating who knows where or perhaps even dying in its drift. The sapless grass crunched and almost wheezed, almost like the rock that rose and fell. Rock that unraveled into uneven cliffs that looked to be near to their conclusion. Almost. Not yet, but he was not too far from it.

The river was flowing with its liquid chatter and its brilliant color gushed between its banks, back to a far more ordinary, natural rhythm, no longer seeming like a cluster of bristling horses that had been there several hours -many hours? Only minutes? Not clear- before.

And time flowed at a devastating slow motion, leaving almost no trace of it anymore, no evident signs of progression. Only by paying careful attention and by standing still for a long amount of time one might see some bright green being torn apart by a new dull gray.

Gray consumed them to the very end. Gray that seemed almost toxic and that could be found even in the dark new clouds that were forming in the sky, albeit not at the same slow rate as the graying of the plants.

They announced a possible storm with their appearance. They foretold a prolonged flood, whether it was clean rain or a dirty one.

With his nose in the air, there was no smell of rain, however. Only of the river itself.

With the same attention paid by his eyes, his ears caught very faint muffled whispers -laments, perhaps- failing to figure out whether they were whispers of that hint of dying wind left or real voices muttering almost disjointed sentences.

Whichever it was, some kind of deep gurgling noise escaped from his throat in response to them, and though it wasn't as loud as he was capable of making one, it echoed for at least ten kilometers along all sides of the valley.

Only then did it disappear, bringing back that static stillness that always seemed to be ready to envelop whatever he was going towards, with very few exceptions to the rule in place.

Even the living things in it seemed to be destined for the same fate, with the only good thing being that the uncolored process had not yet reached that point.

Aaarrrgh went on a little longer, still listening to the silence and trying to pick up more whispers, trying to grasp whatever he could.

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-Killian