EMBER CITY

  The rapier gleamed with moonlight from Iker's bedroom window, however the target of Joaquim's possessed body was no longer there. Both Iker and Noah had vanished.

  "No! I had you!" Joaquim yelled, his voice sounding like Ember's. "I had you! I had you! I had you! I had you! I had you! I had you! I had you! I HAD YOU! I HAD YOU TRICKSTER!"

  Not only were they not there, but the nether corners of the bedsheets had been made in a military style as if no one lied in it at all tonight. Ember Comsa as Joaquim screamed into the dark bedroom. "I WILL JUST KILL THIS THING NOW! STOP ME NOW TRICKSTER!"

  She raised the right hand that did not belong to her as if she was mad at the ceiling and spun the hilt between the fingers to point the rapier towards the body she possessed. Upon descending the weapon to point towards the heart, a pair of white hands spawned over the hand inside the hilt. The rest of the ethereal body manifested, a short-haired Monica pulled ghostly blonde edges out of Joaquim's physical head.

  "AAAHHH!" Ember screamed, her elongated flux-face being pulled out by Monica that was preparing to jaunt somewhere else. Joaquim regained consciousness to find the two sisters in spiritual forms trying to pull each others hair, Ember slapping her own long forehead before she went for Monica's neck. Whether it was illusion or not, the reality Joaquim became conscious in was destabilizing at the seams. The bed and pulled curtains were appearing and disappearing as if they were jaunting themselves, and translucent replications of the gray walls were dancing around the solid ones. When the sisters vanished, so did the floor, Joaquim instinctively entering kaya form as he was falling towards open skies. Then the floor returned, his flux-laden feet in white socks tearing through the carpet and hard floor, now both of his feet stuck in it as more cracks surrounded them.

  "Help! Gabe!" Joaquim yelled. When he glimpsed in the direction Gabe had been sleeping in, when all the walls separating them became invisible for less than a second, Joaquim found his older brother had already been falling way past Iker's platform.

  AN HOUR EARLIER FROM MONICA'S PERSPECTIVE...

  "Do you know about betrayal blindness?" Spiderland asked Monica from vis pew.

  "No," Monica replied, She waited for Spiderland to explain it.

  "Children... children of any species cannot afford to not look at their parents like little gods," Spiderland said. "It is inherently beneficial, whether it be small infractions or irreversible harm, to simply reframe what the parents did in a more positive way, minimize it, or even forget that it ever happened. Our survival as children depend on our parents, and coming to truly comprehend the unimaginable horror they had inflicted upon us would not only risk the relationship with our source of survival, but it also could destroy us psychologically at a young age. Thus betrayal blindness is a wonderful mechanism to help us survive as children, however that biological drive for betrayal blindness never goes away."

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Spiderland shifted vis head towards the crucifix on the elevated stage before continuing to speak. "As adults we will look for something else to take that god pedestal. Anger disguised as logic. The corporation we work for. A religion. A cult. A fandom. An ideology. When I lived as Hunter, I... for a certain period of time, I believed that if I just presented all the facts that people would just change their minds about certain political issues, but all of the twenty-first and twenty-second century had become monuments to show me that humanity does not care about what is real or what is not real... but one day I asked myself the most important question I ever asked myself. If it's not facts that make people accept the truth, then what will?"

  Monica also looked at the crucifix in horror.

  "You're not... I hope I am misinterpreting..." Monica mumbled.

  "There's not only the proliferation of fascism, but there are many climate and technological horrors still coming and little solutions are not going to cut it," Spiderland said. "Religions are just fandoms that forgot that they were supposed to be just fandoms. Churches and mosques esoterically were supposed to just be book clubs that got a little too enthusiastic. Religion is technology. Capitalism and billionaires need to vanish as soon as possible, for the bell tolls for the human race."

  Joaquim was not quite experienced enough to simply tear his feet out of the house and platform floor using his kaya form, even from everything he had learned back in the Ersatz platform. Luckily it was not tight enough to hurt, but there was no budging his soles.

  I'll just wait for the flo—

  The floor vanished before Joaquim finished that thought, falling through right towards night skies. His plan was to find a surface to jump off of to catch Gabe and worry about the rest later, but a skeletal hand grabbed his wrist when he spotted Gabe as a dot in the air. Joaquim screamed and tried to pull his wrist out, however the skull and hand that had caught him squeezed even tighter.

  Glowing and lavender pupils came online within the skull that was still generating a mandible. "It's me... I think I am Iker."

  "HELP! GABE IS FALLING! LET GO OF ME!" Joaquim yelled.

  "How do you plan to survive once you catch him?" the one who apparently was Iker asked."

  With everything that happened at once, Joaquim only now registered the loud roars of the sky winds rushing by his ears, but now the atmosphere around him went completely silent. In fact, all the gray clouds below, the rest of Ember City below and above, Iggy, and even the dark violets of the night sky went jet black. What could only be described as a hug of gravity comforted Joaquim's fear of falling, the space he now entered flipping him upright very gently. The force responsible eventually laid him snugly on his feet.

  Gabe, already having been screaming on his arrival, eventually stopped himself and blushed upon arriving also floating in this jet black space they found themselves in. After him, their skeletal savior also spawned as a bony left arm and skull.

  "You can call me Iggy," the floating skull said.