“I see now that I may have been too hasty in my recruitment efforts. The 12th I will hide and then forget. The usual redundancies will be necessary as they cannot be allowed to find it.”

Smoke lingered in the air as I slowly came to, but its sting forced my eyes shut. I felt the Medoblad pushing up against my stomach and I opened my eyelids a crack to try to take in my surroundings. In front of me was a figure prone on the ground, but it wasn’t a mop of blond hair that I saw. It was one of fiery red.

“Frankie?” I croaked before a coughing fit seized me again. The figure didn’t move and it was then that I noticed that her hands were tied behind her back and her ankles bound together.

I rolled over on my side to see Beatrice passed out on the ground to my left.

“Bea-Beatrice!” I said with my hand over my mouth. I rolled over again until I was right next to her and shook her shoulder with my other hand. She thrashed back and forth several times before she too slowly opened her eyes and looked at me.

“W-what’s going on? What happened?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know, must have been some sort of gas grenade, knocked us out. And, look there. It’s Frankie, the woman with the tattoo. But she’s tied up and unconscious.”

There was a panic in Beatrice’s eyes that I had never seen before, but she quickly suppressed it and groped around for her bag at her side. She withdrew her hand and was holding something maroon wrapped in plastic.

The vitality buff.

Beatrice fumbled with the wrapping for almost 30 seconds before finally freeing the buff and handing it to me.

“Here, take half.”

I pushed her hand away and shook my head.

“No need. I brought the one you gave me.”

“Oh. Good. Take it now.” She popped the buff in her mouth and began to chew as I reached for my own in my bag. Within seconds, Beatrice was on her feet, the smoke seemingly having no effect on her. I found the maroon buff in my own bag and started chewing. It tasted like wet socks wrapped in week-old fish, but as soon as I swallowed, my eyes jolted open, and I pushed myself up from the wet ground with ease.

“It’s gone,” said Beatrice, who was standing at the back sconce, her elbow over her mouth.

“What?” I said, careful to not breathe in too much of the smoke. “The diary?”

“No, that’s still here, but the box isn’t. Shit. Should have opened it right away. Stay here with the girl, I’m going to go check up ahead.”

“What if whoever attacked us is still there?”

“Then I’ll handle them,” said Beatrice, making a fist with her right hand.

“OK.”

Beatrice walked passed me and disappeared into the smoke, while I bent down to check on Frankie. Her eyes were still closed, and I could see the slow rise and fall of her chest, along with raw red skin on her wrists. Whoever had done this to her had kept her tied up for longer than this evening and I shuddered at the thought.

I heard a yell up ahead and left Frankie to investigate, grabbing one of the red stones from the wall to light the way. The smoke eventually dissipated as I made my way back up the path. Turning the corner, I saw Beatrice holding her phone flashlight over a large wall of debris that completely blocked the way back to the door.

“Shit!” she yelled. “We’re trapped. God damn it!”

Beatrice kicked the air in anger and began pacing back and forth.

“How are we going to get out of here?” I said.

“Stand back,” said Beatrice.

“What?”

“STAND. BACK,” she commanded and I complied as she set her phone on the ground and closed her eyes.

A light began to glow on her right hand. At first it was barely as bright as a firefly, but as it intensified, the light became almost blinding and I shielded my eyes. Soon though, it wasn’t just the amethyst ring that was glowing but Beatrice’s entire body, which radiated with the same light from the ring.

“What are you doing?” I yelled, but Beatrice didn’t break her concentration. The last time she had drawn power from the ring, it had knocked her out for at least an hour, but this time she was going far beyond that.

Another minute passed, and Beatrice’s body shimmered with a purple halo of power.

Suddenly, she opened her eyes and surged forward toward the rock. The first punch blasted a small chunk of the debris free and she brought her fist back again before smashing it into the rock again. Then it was her left fist that connected with the rock, then the right again, a small opening slowly forming on the right side of the debris. Beatrice continued to hammer away until, finally, her right hand punched through the rock and hit the air on the other side. She widened the opening with a couple more punches before stumbling through to the other side.

The purple light suddenly vanished and I rushed forward through the gap in the wall to find Beatrice unconscious on the ground.

“Beatrice! Are you OK?”

She didn’t respond, but from the light of the red stone, I saw the door just a few feet ahead.

“Hold on, I’m going to get Frankie!”

I bent down and fished through Beatrice’s bag, hoping that she had brought her full complement of buffs, but withdrew only a single lilac buff.

I unwrapped the speed buff and took my strength buff out of my bag and began to chew both of them. A surge of power rippled through my body, followed by the familiar feeling of time slowing, and in a second I was through the wall and back in the chamber, huddled over the still-unconscious Frankie. I wrapped my right arm around her and lifted her upward, and it was as if I was holding a bag of feathers. The strength coursing through me felt incredible, but I knew I only had moments to spare, which, thanks to the speed buff, were stretched out a little longer.

I carried Frankie up the path and through the gap, setting her down next to the crumpled mass that was Beatrice, and hurried to the door, hoping that whoever had done this had not had the foresight to remove the knob from the other side.

The knob turned slowly in my hand and, miraculously, I pulled the door open. I could feel my well of strength fading, and I ran back to the unconscious women, picked them both up with one last raw burst of power, and threw them into the black void beyond the door.

I was about to walk through when I had the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something.

Of course.

I ran back through the debris and, in a flash, was standing in front of that stupid diary. If we were actually going to make it out of this pit alive, at least we should get something for our troubles. I took the book from the sconce and seconds later was staring at the void through the doorway again. I closed my eyes and greeted the darkness like an old friend.

I opened my eyes to see a blaze of red and orange all around me. Was this the void? I squinted and as my eyes adjusted, the true horror of the situation revealed itself.

It wasn’t the void at all.

I was back in the lighthouse, which was now an inferno of heat and ash.

Beatrice and Frankie were right in front of me on the ground, unmoving, and I called out to them, but neither responded.

“Beatrice, wake up!” I said to her in my mind. She didn’t answer.

“WAKE UP!” I cried out again, but all I heard from her head was static.

Chunks of wood from the ceiling began to rain down on top of us as the fire continued to rage. My body suddenly collapsed, the strength from the buff completely gone, and I fell forward onto the ground, barely able to move.

My mind was still racing at a million miles a minute, and so I began to play out dozens of possible scenarios.

I could crawl past them, push myself up, put the door knob back on, open the door, and then pull both of them through. That would only take 10 minutes, at which point, the ceiling would have collapsed on top of us seven minutes earlier.

I could only save one of them. That would take five minutes, still two minutes too long.

I could save myself. Not going back for them would leave me with plenty of time to spare, but also with a lifetime of guilt.

Then I saw the ring on Beatrice’s hand and a new idea snapped into focus. There was still a chance it wouldn’t work, but I had to try. It was the only way. I reached out my hand to grab Beatrice’s ankle and then hurled myself into her mind.

I floated through the abyss.

It felt like the void between the doors, except where the void had been all darkness, here there were swirling lights all me. They looked like little galaxies, light years away, and when I reached out to touch one, it moved out of reach by just a hair.

“Beatrice!” I called out and one of the lights blinked. It blinked again as I called out her name a second time and then a third. Suddenly, I felt myself being pulled toward the light like a bungee jumper snapping back up just before hitting the water. The light grew bigger and blinding and I closed my eyes as it enveloped me.

When I opened them again, it was dark, except for a small sliver of light peeking through a door. I looked around and found myself in a tiny closet next to a small girl.

“Hi,” I said.

The girl turned and looked at me and I nearly fell backward. Even though she was eight or nine, the girl was a spitting image of Beatrice.

“Hi Jen,” she said.

“What’s going on? Why are we in this closet?”

“Don’t know why you’re here. I’m hiding from Burt.”

“Who’s Burt?”

“My mother’s asshole boyfriend. Typical abusive drunk. Beat my mom real good over the years. Me a couple times too.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry!”

Young Beatrice just shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s OK. I killed him the summer after college. Hit him with a metal pipe when he wasn’t looking.”

“W-what?” I said. “But you’re just a little girl, how did you-”

“It’s still me, Jen. Sometimes I fall back into this memory though. I guess you can’t really escape your past, no matter how hard you try.”

“I thought you said Doug was the first person you killed.”

“No. He was just the first person I regretted killing. But enough about me. Why are you here?”

“You don’t remember? The Met, the lighthouse, the cave?”

“Oh. Right. What happened?”

“We were trapped in the cave and then you, you smashed through the rock using your ring, but then…”

“Got it. And so now what? I’ve been unconscious for so long you thought I was dead?”

“No. I used a strength buff to carry you and Frankie back through to the lighthouse. But whoever trapped us set the lighthouse on fire for good measure and I’m all out of strength. Can barely move. Do you have any strength left to lend me? So I can get us out of here?”

Beatrice peaked through the sliver of the closet door before huddling down in the corner, her knees tucked against her chest, tears trickling down her face.

“I’ll never get out of here,” she motioned to the closet. “But why are you trying to save me anyway? I mean, I threatened to kill you, what, two hours ago? This is your chance to get rid of me. Maybe I deserve it, for all that I’ve done.”

“What? No, I’m not leaving you here to burn to death. Or Frankie. Please, Beatrice, you have to tap the ring just a little more. I’ve worked through all the scenarios in my head. There is no other way.”

I reached out my hand to the girl. She considered it for a long moment before taking it and pulling herself to her feet.

“I’ll help you. If I can. We’re so far down in my mind, I don’t know if I can reach her from here.”

“Reach who?”

“You have to get out of here now. He’s coming.”

Beatrice suddenly pushed me backward, but instead of hitting the closet wall, I was soaring back upward, through the galaxies of memories, and across the link to my own mind.

The fire rampaged me as I opened my eyes again, my hand still gripping Beatrice’s ankle. In front of me, Beatrice still lay unconscious and I wondered if the whole thing had been a hallucination. But then a soft purple glow appeared around her hand and it slowly surrounded Beatrice’s entire body before spreading across to me, and as soon as it did, I felt a familiar surge of power. Except it wasn’t like the buff I had eaten before. It was like my body was being filled with a river of strength and I wanted it all.

I opened myself up fully to draw whatever power the ring had left to give me, but after only a second, which in my heightened state seemed to drag on forever, the glow vanished. I let go of Beatrice and stood up slowly, still holding the diary under my other arm, and reassessed the scene.

The door to Long Island City was still intact but the fire had already engulfed the wall. Would the door still work if it was on fire? I didn’t want to find out. I blinked and was at the door, my preternatural speed on its last legs. I fished the door knob out of my purse and turned back to the unconscious women, a new set of choices playing out in front of me, but somehow, they were even worse than before.

I clutched the diary against my stomach, only to feel the Medoblad press back against it, and my eyes widened as my mind raced ahead and finished the thought.

No.

It couldn’t be the only way.

There had to be another solution.

Maybe Beatrice had another buff in her bag in a hidden pocket or something. Maybe I could break the amethyst ring and swallow the pieces to draw out the last bits of strength. But, as if rebelling from my conscious self, my mind played out the scenario over and over again. After watching it play out for the tenth time, I screamed and the visions stopped.

The flames were now only inches from the doorframe on either side, but that still gave me enough time to do what needed to be done, and I reached one hand behind me to open the door a crack. My hand refused to let go of the knob, and I stood frozen for just a second as I came to terms with what I was about to do.

I thought back to that stupid Quest to make an apple pie and wondered if I had just picked the Quest right below it, would I be here now?

I thought about my friends coming to in the drunk tank, wondering why they weren’t getting ready to go to the airport.

I thought about Duncan and what I was going to say to him.

And then finally, I thought about the two women in front of me, one who had wronged me in so many ways and one who had only walked into the wrong tattoo parlor at the wrong time on the wrong day. I had tried so hard to save us all, pushed my mind and body to their limits, but it wasn’t enough. I felt a different fire begin to spark inside of me, a fire of pure rage at the ones who had forced me onto this path.

The Guild.

Enough stalling, I thought to myself.

It was time.

Tears welled in my eyes as I ripped the Medoblad free from my dress and decided which woman to turn to stone.