They sit in a circle, fifteen spritely entities beside the flooded area Lacey and Gideon had stopped to look at earlier, the steep hill still the only barrier between a damp Here and a soaked There. They all carry the same wispy energy and clothes, but they vary in appearance, in hair and skin and features and height, and two of them appear to be boys. They whisper amongst themselves, even as Lacey stands just outside of the circle; some flicker their eyes up to her and back to the friends they sit beside, lips moving even more rapidly than before. One whisper is indistinguishable from the next. It drives her nuts trying to untangle it all.

The girl from before, glistening in ethereal glory, skips her way into the circle from nowhere and then settles into her spot, criss-cross applesauce. Her eyes, an icy blue, drive into Lacey, and she curves her lips in a soft, unmenacing way as she pats the wet grass beside her. Lacey immediately takes a step back and curls her mouth down. "Listen," she starts, struggling to keep the anxiety and doubt from her tone, lest she anger them. "I don't know what you are. I don't know what this is. I'd feel more comfortable keeping my distance."

"Lacey," the first spritely ghost says, which jolts the mortal in question - they know her name, excellent. "I make an oath on behalf of the lot of us that no harm will come to you here by our hands. You are afraid, understandably so, given your situation, but we are not the ones you must fear in these woods. Even if we were, you are much too valuable to cut down, ah, and the mean ones know it too. Come, sit, darling girl. Complete the ring and we'll explain."

Although her face is still curled with reluctance, she cautiously steps around one of the entities and makes her way to the girl she'll dub Spirit One. She sits. The moisture soaking through her jeans makes her nose wrinkle. It's at this point that she notices Gideon, still standing outside the circle, glancing left and right, disoriented. "Can you tell me what's going on?"

"Uh. Well. See, there's like, fifteen of the same thing that brought us out here and they're all sitting in a circle. They wanted me to sit. That's about all I can tell you because I have the same question. I have a lot of questions, actually." She turns her chin to Spirit One. "What are you?"

"Straight to the point, I see." The girl smiles, her lips pink and vaguely translucent. Her gaze drifts from face to face, all of them hush-hush now, attentive. "We are fates, sweet, darling girl, and you must believe us, for we are forbidden to tell a lie. We see all, know all, can share the end-all-be-all with you, if you'd like."

Another spirit bursts out, unable to contain herself, "Oh, we'd very much like to share!" She rises up on her knees and claps her hands together. "It is so very lonely to be ignored by the world, most of all when you know all of what's to come for it and cannot share!" Noise erupts amongst the circle, all of them excitedly agreeing in unison.

"All right, all right," Lacey stresses, tugging at the dead ends of her hair. "I'll listen. I can handle story-time. What do you know about the missing kids here? Who's the prick helping Isaac get away with this?"

"Mm," another girl says, aura buzzing with need, "so much to tell, so little time for you and him and him and her and him, yes, yes. It'll close in within the span of nine days, and at daybreak, you will discover the fate of your friend."

"Okay, but can you tell me what that fate is, or...?

"Again, we cannot tell a lie," Spirit One says. "There are several ways this can go, and so we must account for every possibility. Only those things which are set in stone can we give you."

"The death count is two," Spirit Two intercedes, "one of which you've already attended in more ways than one, and the other underwater. And to give insight into the manner of their taking, it was little Ro's curiosity that took her, Stella's trust with she, and Erie, well, he's a boy with too many suspicions. On the other end, it was rage that took Ro, but not her own; fear that took Stella, but not her own; habit that took Erie, but not his own."

A prickle of fear strikes at Lacey's chest, and she swallows down a lump. "But is Erie alive?"

"So far," Spirit Three says, "but to say it will remain that way is up in the air."

Gideon stands stiff, wide-eyed, trembling as he awaits Lacey's answer. She lets loose a sigh of relief and nods at him, and he brings a palm to rub at his eye.

A fourth spirit shuffles in her spot. "As for the other girl, Little Ro, her fate has come full circle, and now she lives beneath the water, her body nothing more than oats for bacteria and other little creatures. A shame, for she had many a gift to give. Before you, she was a friend to the obscured parts of Carrick. But a place like this cannot be long without a second set of eyes, and so here you are."

"Ay," Spirit Five says, shaking her head and the black locks framing it, "and if you aren't careful, there will be a third to take your place just as you took hers."

She doesn't like the sharp tang in her ears once she hears that, and her lip curls into a deep frown, pulled to the side. Sure, she knows the danger - the demon sucking on her bandages and all of the wicked things crawling after her are evidence enough of that - but to know someone else fell apart because of it...and what is it, exactly? "Are you saying Ro was like me? She could see you all? She, there's, there's someone out there like me?"

"In the sense that she had abilities beyond the ordinary, yes. The same as yours, no. Whereas you can see and hear and sense us, she only obtained the latter, but with a natural skill for cultivating another gift, that of conducting rituals and tapping into the world around her to see what she could otherwise only feel. There-"

"Wait, wait, wait," Lacey says, pinching her eyes shut. Her heart thumps; her lungs grow heavy. "Are you telling me she was like, a witch or something? Because that's what it sounds like to me. It sounds like you're telling me Ro-Anne Foster was a witch."

"There are witches too, bro?" This from Gideon. His arms are splayed out, face screwed up in confusion.

Finally, the entities heed his presence, and the whispering commences again. One of them speaks louder than the others, tsks. "Oh, that poor, poor boy. It's a shame what happens to him."

The others sigh to sympathize with a boy who knows nothing of what they've said, nothing of what's to come. Lacey looks at him and everything starts to speed up in her chest. "You said nothing's set in stone though. What do you mean by that?"

Spirit One rests a hand on Lacey's knee and she flinches at the sensation of ice seeping through the denim. "His fate is one of inevitability. It is of an unconditional sort. Nothing will change where he winds up, sweet girl."

"What are they saying?" Gideon asks. He wraps his arms around himself and starts chewing on the inside of his cheek, probably to keep his teeth from chattering. He's so, so in the dark.

Better it stays that way. Lacey's face hardens, and she presses her palms into the grass, making a move to stand. "That we need to leave. They can't tell us anything else."

Gideon parts his lips, clamps them shut, shakes his head. "Can't you ask where Erie is? Or who's helping Isaac? Just those two, then we can go, okay?"

"Clearly it's all bullshit anyways," Lacey adds. The entities gasp. "They'll just lead us into a trap or something."

"I can say that nobody is helping Isaac," Spirit One says rapidly, likely in an attempt to draw Lacey's attention back. That, "And Erie sits wrapped in iron, in a castle of splinters and glass. The water creeps towards him as each day passes." She's made up her mind, though.

"See? Bull. Start walking, Gideon. I'm right behind you."

A wave of disappointment passes over the fates, and they moan disapproval to one another. One of them even cries out, the first break of a sob. Still, Lacey pushes herself up off the ground. By the time she's on her feet, the melancholy is over, and the world goes quiet. The fates themselves must be holding their breath and hers hitches. For as much as these things like to talk, this seems uncharacteristic. Something's wrong, but then she looks up, looks around, and, oh, something's so, so right.

Stella de Almeida approaches from the flood, not a drip on her, donned in the same faded, off-white green dress as the fates, her bare toes walking across the surface of the water. It ripples underfoot, and when she lays eyes on Lacey, her smile broadens out. She swears her heart stops in that moment. It doesn't start beating again until Stella is standing in front of her.

And even then, all Lacey can choke out is a pathetic, "Hi."

Pretty Stella, perfect Stella, her bronze cheeks shimmer and she smiles, flush with life, despite what Lacey already knows. "Hi. I've missed you."

Words escape, and suddenly her brain is swimming in the flood, unsure of where to find land. A rush and a push and air comes back to her suddenly, a sucking gasp, and out goes a tear, and then another. "Oh." Then a push and a rush, and a fragment clings to her tongue. "Stella, I need to know who killed you. You must've seen their face, describe them if you don't know their name but-"

"Lacey," Stella says. The words die on her tongue as Stella's ghostly hands envelope her own, oddly warm, unnaturally warm. Not quite like human touch. "Don't make me relive that. It's done and over with but now I'm here and so are you and we can..." Warmth and smiles. "We can catch up."

For a moment, her sweet words reel her in, but then a logical question comes to mind, and her whole face buries itself in pain. "But how did you get across Darcy's barrier? You shouldn't have access to me right now."

"A good question," Stella notes, and don't think that Lacey doesn't notice the way her eyes drift to her lips, "but look around. I've joined the ranks of the fates. They aren't blocked off the way the other spirits are. I'm free to roam, and I choose to roam wherever you are."

The fates begin to whisper amongst themselves, but a sharp look from Stella shuts them up, and a few of them curl into their neighbors, looking uncertain. Now, perhaps Lacey isn't the most attentive of folks, but she does see this, see a discrepancy in what Stella says and what the fates seem to know - and they do know all, after all. Why the confusion, then?

Stella's hands get hotter, her grip tighter; when she breathes out, it carries with it a warm, sour taste, a sourness mixed with the metallic tinge of blood. Lacey recognizes the stink right away. It's a well-disguised stink, but a stink nonetheless.

She tries to wriggle her hands away but then Stella's features curl downwards and the aura of her hands becomes searing. "It hurts, Stella," Lacey tries, attempting to keep up the illusion that she still believes Stella to be Stella. Demons know better than that, though.

Stella yanks her forward, and as she's doing that, Lacey growls out, "Gideon! Demon!" It hugs her tight, and the heat spreads throughout Lacey's body, scorching her skin. "Get off me, motherfucker."

"Did you just call the demon a motherfucker?" Gideon calls, clearly scrambled and running amok in an attempt to find something.

"Not a concern right now! Get over here!" Her nostrils flare and she growls under Stella's smart gaze. "And get my salt!"

The words alone are enough to get Stella to release her, and Lacey stumbles away, gasping for breath and glancing at her pink skin. It's not burnt, not yet, but definitely inflamed and way too warm. Flushed, she takes a few more steps back, not taking her eyes away from Stella. This is disrespectful. Completely sick. Just like Malevolence to take something - or someone - good and make them nauseating. She jabs a finger at Stella (from a reasonable distance, of course): "Go back to Hell and keep burning."

Stella genuinely looks wounded. "Why are you being so mean to me? I thought you liked me." But injury soon turns into rage, and she marches forward, fists clenched, jaw shaking from the force of her teeth grinding together. The fates finally cry out and scramble out of their spots, breaking the circle. Symmetry and equidistance becomes scattered, flighty chaos. They run with no order or reason, cutting in front of Lacey, behind Stella, tying themselves in knots around each other. She starts to run, to try and find her way out, but there's so much wispy hair flying in her face and ghost feet nearly tripping her up that she quickly loses sight of where she is. She quickly loses sight of her friend, too.

"Gideon!" No response. "Gideon, I'm over here!"

She turns herself in circles, hopping up and darting around in the frenzy in hopes she'll catch sight of warm skin and honey-brown hair, but she sees nothing but buzzing auras, mist trailing behind them. And then she can't even see that, Stella before her, a fate's arm caught in her grasp. Lacey can only watch in horror as someone taking the illusion of a girl she'd once shared a life with grabs the fate up, unhinges her own jaw so as to widen her gaping mouth, and gobbles the poor little spirit whole.

The scream she lets loose matches that of the fourteen others around her, full of anguish, full of fear. It is rough and raw and trembling and she turns herself in the opposite direction and just keeps running.

The sensation of moisture seeping into her shoes is the only thing that stops her. She looks up, sees the wide expanse of the flood sitting there, fills with dread. "Fuck," she says, panting. "Aw, fuck." She takes a few steps back, and the removal of her soles from the muddied "shore" sends ripples out forever. Just as she's setting her feet back on solid earth, a force slams into her back, knocking her flat into the mud. Her hands and arms slide through the goop, and she cries out as she tries to catch her bearings and scramble away.

Stella slinks through the mud after her, bare knees leaving snail tracks, dress splattered and soaked with unpleasant brown. She laughs at herself as she crawls forward, but when she reaches out to take Lacey's arm and the latter flinches away, the laugh contorts into a deep, malicious frown. She tries again, lurching out. Lacey tries to jump away on nothing more than her elbows and heels but it doesn't work; Stella takes hold of her foot. With teeth ground together, she kicks out, knocking Stella in the chin. Then, with great force, she yanks her foot back towards her own body. Stella's got such a tight grip that she slips free of the shoe, socked foot landing right in the slippery muck.

"Eugh," Lacey says. "Ah!" Stella makes another grab. She's quicker than the demon, though, anticipating it this time. As she flings herself back, she makes a grab for the salt in her pocket, but of course: the jeans are too tight and her chubby fingers can't fit into the small women's pocket at the front of her pants. Quickly, she glances to the left, the right. With instant dread, she realizes that there's only one way she can go without getting completely flanked by this demonic bitch.

She crawls to her feet and starts wading into the water. It's frigid and bites through to her skin with sharp shock, but she keeps going. Her knees dive under, then her thighs, then she's waist-high and has to fight against the slo-mo the water forges into her legs. Still, she keeps going and refuses to look back for fear of that small act slowing her down. By the time she's made it to chest-deep water, she can't hold out anymore - everything clings to her as she cranes around, dirt-liquid splashing onto her chin.

Nothing. Stella is nowhere to be seen. Neither are the fates. Neither is Gideon.

She lets herself stay there for a moment, standing with one shoe sunk into the gritty earth and the other foot suspended in the water. It's silent, aside from the lap of water and the rustling of barren branches and the distant twitter of birds come back from the winter. Grass torn up from the earth brushes her arms as it floats along. "Gideon!" After a pause to test the silence, she calls out again. "Gideon!"

At first she thinks it'll be fruitless and she'll never hear his loud, annoying voice ever again, and this brings a peculiar pain to her chest, especially thinking of it being taken and manipulated and torn apart like what was done to Stella's. But then, distantly, suddenly, she hears it: a vague cry, an indecipherable call, but most definitely Gideon's. It comes from deeper in the woods, where she can't see, where she's swam far from.

Without a second thought, she starts wading back out, back towards ground that doesn't feel like it'll cave beneath her. She slips on the mud and submerges twice, but eventually she makes it. Her first few steps on dry land result in her shoeless foot landing on a branch. The sock tears open and she yelps at the sudden pain, but she continues on, even if it is at a limp.

He cries out again; she changes direction. Her fists clench as she moves as fast as she can sopping wet with a tear in her foot. I'll kill it. I don't care that I don't know how. I'll find a way. Her cheeks flush with heat despite the mist spreading rapidly from her lips. She finally plunges her fingers into her pocket and works out one of the tiny plastic bags she'd rationed salt into.

By the time she can make out Stella's warped shape, dress drenched and torn to rags, sour stench detectable from miles away, Lacey has the corner of the bag in her mouth and tears it open with her teeth. When she sees Gideon beneath her hunched form, she runs up with a hoarse war cry and splays her arm out in a sweeping motion, flinging all of the salt-breather salt that was in the packet along Stella's heaving back.

The reaction is immediate. The writhing and screeching would bring her joy if it weren't Stella's writhing, Stella's screeching. It devolves quickly. The illusion drops. Stella's soft skin and pretty features fall away to reveal a wrinkled gremlin of a thing, a horned demon that drives its fingers into the ground and screams at the world on shaking haunches. The rags fall away, and Lacey gets a clear sight of the sweltering lumps growing red and inflamed on its singed back, like bubbled cysts. Her lip curls in disgust. "Now fuck off!"

It turns its head back to her in a full one-eighty spin, hisses with yellow teeth, and then takes off into the forest, staggering against the various trees until it's out of sight.

Gideon also staggers, barely catching himself against a tree when he tries to stand. She rushes to his side, grabbing at his elbow to help keep him balanced. "Easy now, easy. What'd it do to you?"

He gives her a strained glance amongst the panting. Beads of sweat dribble down a red face. His fingers grasp at the hem of his shirt and he winces as the fabric is lifted over his head and allowed to dangle weakly in his fingertips. He turns his back to her. "Is there something there?" he asks.

It's horrific enough to make her eyes glossy, to make them burn. The skin of his well-defined back is tinged a deep red, much like her own after being bear-hugged by Stella, but there's another significant difference between the two.