The pitch-black obsidian portal takes you into a space outside of space. There’s no distance here. The contestants stay within sight of one another because that’s the only way to even guess at where you are. In this void, all they have for the incalculably short eternity it takes to walk to the other side of the darkness is each other.
The portal opens out somewhere familiar, but unfamiliar, like the world viewed through a mirror. Quite literally, in fact, as the location’s haunting familiarity quickly resolves itself into recognition: the studio you arrived here at, seen through the lens of a mirror. Reversed, but identical. You’ve gone all the way around and you haven’t quite managed to reach the start. There’s no limit to how far you can go, but after a point turning back won’t take you to the same place you left anymore.
The night and the woods have swallowed the town up like a shark swallowing a school of fish. There are no cameras rolling, but the town’s faerie inhabitants peek out from underneath cars and behind trees as the contestants assemble at the drive-in movie theater. Mr. Key’s message remains painted on the screen as Cíoroc stands in front of it, conversing in hushed tones with Cáen and Augusta.
“There you all are, darlings,” he says, taking a deep bow as the contestants all gather round, some of them sitting on the hoods of cars, some electing to stand instead. “I’m starting to think that there’s more answers to this mystery than the ones you think you’re here to get. Anyway, the cameras aren’t rolling, so no need to extend this any further. Let’s get the show off the road, baby.”
A dead body in the woods. A trail of breadcrumbs. A cryptic cipher. The single word: Orpheus. The stars twinkle in the sky, a deep magenta. The bright light of the screen casts every contestant into silhouette, the neon glare leaving every one of them framed in the stark contrast between colour and darkness. There’s been enough delaying. It’s time to get down to business.
Cíoroc Mair’s smile seems befuddled more than anything. “Ah. Well, I guess this throws a wrench in things, darling.” As a clamor of voice demand an explanation, he holds his hands up as if to say, ‘I got nothin’. “I’m not even sure what we do now, baby. I mean, we’re not even on TV, I don’t know if we’ve got to do the whole song and dance, but--”
"We can't. just. n-not." An unexpected voice interrupts, and Surogu is stepping forward, fiddling with his sleeves anxiously while sounding both the most confident and most anxious he has yet. "We all. wanted to get out of, o-our contracts. Right? Yeah? That's- that's the plan.. long-term?" He wrings his hands and looks around, eyes darting over everyone. "I doubt. half of you did, like fucking, idiots. but I," He pokes his finger into his own chest, "Read the contract, we signed. And. We have to do a t-t-t.... trial. If any of us die. Ever. That's. Part of it. If we want to. con our contracts, ultimately, and not all. Die to fucking death. then, we really c-can't just. breach them now."
Cíoroc runs a hand through his hair, smile growing a little more anxious. “I mean. I guess, darling, you have a point. Those are the rules of the game. We’ll be following the formula one last time? Ah, well. This is it, I suppose. Our last ride. See you all at the finish line, darlings.”
And with that, he’s gone, and Phobetor is still dead.
The woods welcome people in like a crocodile’s open mouth welcomes in fish. The moonlight flickers blue and magenta, reflecting shapes that aren’t there, illuminating slitted eyes watching patiently from the undergrowth. It wasn’t as clear behind the cover of TV sets, of leather couches and blinding lights and sound stages, but it’s clear here: this is a predatory world. It’s barely safe to do so much as breathe in, much less march into the belly of the beast.
As the contestants approach a clearing at the end of the long, dark, winding path, they see first-hand that the world of the fair folk is a very dangerous one indeed.
The light of the sun, filtered violet by a haze of translucent clouds, filters through the town like blood through veins. It’s always bright, even when it’s dark; the creations of the faerie, even abandoned and unloved places such as this, are loathe to not be seen. The gleaming highlights and dark shadows of the motel lobby throw the ominous message written there into sharp relief: scrawled onto post-it notes, staring the contestants in the face confrontationally, daring them to figure out what they mean.
It feels like it’s been a long time since the train derailed. An abrupt loss of forward momentum does that; a show thrown off its rails needs time to find its footing again. But then again, are you even making a show anymore? The faerie service workers gasp in wonder and excitement whenever they see the contestants, watching them with awe-filled eyes from dark corners. Whether they like it or not, the world cares about them. And their story isn’t over. A sharp knocking, at a late hour of the evening, brings the contestants to a scribbled message in the hotel hallway: an ominous summons to the edge of the forest.
Along the way, however, it becomes apparent that there’s more than one graffiti artist making the rounds today. On the drive-through theater’s screen, someone’s spraypainted — using the exact same paint as the messages on the contestants’ doors last episode — a towering, cartoonish frowny face, and a message in capitals, the stylization somehow perfectly bringing the voice you remember across: I’M GOING TO BRING THIS SHOW BACK ON THE ROAD IF IT KILLS YOU. YOURS SINCERELY, MR. KEY.
The message, if not the method of delivery, is chilling. It’s hard not to wonder where the show’s hosts have been. If even the irritable Augusta, melodramatic Cáen, and showboating Cíoroc have been quiet, it means something’s up. Oddly enough, it’s neither of the three that awaits the contestants as they trickle, some arriving early, some late, to the small clearing on the edge of the forest, where a haze of pulsing lights filters dimly through the trees and illuminates the ground in shifting neons. Instead, it’s… Phobetor. They look like they have something very serious to say. Whatever’s about to happen, it seems like the story is back in motion again.
After a few minutes of walking, the sneaking suspicion that this is some sort of fairy trick has gone from ‘strong’ to overwhelming — but sure enough, there are lights in the distance, faint ones, but lights. It’s unnerving, after so long spent on the faerie’s sets, looking up into the sky and seeing something that looks like the real night sky, only darker and deeper, the stars brighter, somehow more than the real thing in every way. As Cíoroc leads the contestants — if they’re even still contestants — towards the small town, the flickering neon lights come into focus, illuminating a place that calling a ghost town would be a disservice to ghosts. A few buildings in a variety of different, mismatched styles stand, barely, illuminated by weakly glowing signs that might have seen better days back when feudalism was still a popular form of political organization. Bright eyes peek out through windows and from behind buildings. Whispers are spreading at the edges of town already. There aren’t many people here, but they recognise you.
Cíoroc’s smile is unflappable as he gestures around. “Ta-da, darlings. Here we are. The middle of nowhere! I’ll book you all rooms at the motel, shall I, and then we’ll figure out how ever we’re going to get out of this mess. The cameras aren’t on right now, so… be good!” He winks. His grin widens. For some reason, he doesn’t seem too put out about the chaos the show has descended into. As he vanishes, the contestants are left in the cold, in the darkness, with only dim flickers of neon and each other to keep them company.
There is light, and there is colour, and there is noise, and then there is silence. Your ears are ringing. You smell smoke and burning metal and worse things. You close your eyes and it makes no difference because the world is still an incomprehensible blur of incandescent white and vivid colour that’s been burned into your vision like a brand. It takes a few solid minutes for anyone to be able to see what’s actually happened, and when the aftershock has faded away it’s clear what’s happened, if not how or why. The train’s derailed, engine car smashed into tiny pieces, passenger cars turned up onto their sides or tipping haphazardly one way into another. From the fire and shrapnel all around, it’s pretty clear something exploded. Somehow, something here’s gone horribly wrong.
Cíoroc smiles at everyone, standing in the middle of the burning wreckage. A forest looms all around, but a very different one to the forest on the island you came from. Instead of oppressive darkness, the menace of this forest comes from a sense of depth, a sense that it stretches on forever and forever and no matter how far you walk you will always be in this forest and you will never find your way out. A number of brightly coloured paths offer alluring sanctuary like a venus flytrap embracing you with open arms. “Well, darlings,” he says, sunglasses gleaming, “Looks like things have really gone off the rails. We’re in the middle of nowhere, huh?” His grin widens and gleams even brighter, like veins of crystal in the walls of a secret cave. “Follow me. I’m pretty sure I know a place where we can stay.”
He starts to walk off, looking back over his shoulder at any stragglers, smile getting sharp and twisted like a knife wound. “Unless you’d rather take your chances alone in the forest, darlings.”
In the distance, an island burns and burns until the ancient oaks are nothing more than ashes. Forests older than some histories are reduced to a memory. One day, they won’t even be that. Cíoroc Mair smiles at the camera, leaning out of the back of the train’s last car, the wind whipping the contents of his colourful cocktail out of the glass and sending them flying through the air in a steady stream as the level of liquid never seems to get any lower, the number of cocktail umbrellas that are launched into oblivion impossible to count like a magician is practicing his sleight of hand with them.
“Where are we going?” he wonders out loud, seemingly to himself. “Well, we’re going towards the ending, of course. What, did you think this was going to go on forever, darling? But where is the ending? Who’s even driving the train? It’s not me, baby. This isn’t my story.” He cheerfully takes a sip from his cocktail, which stops spraying haphazardly in the wind for just long enough for him to drink from it before it turns back into a swirling maelstrom of colour as soon as he pulls it away from his lips. “And speaking of endings, baby, I’ve got some other people’s stories to tell. That’s right, darling. To keep you from getting too bored as we near our inevitable destination, here’s another segment of 『THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!』. One last look at the past before we meet our unpredictable future head-on.”
“Ah...It’s kind of stupid,” Cinder… or Chou, you guess, says to kick off the voiceover as an unremarkable childhood with an older brother flickers away in low-resolution fast-forward, the uninteresting parts of their life skipped over as if they don’t matter at all, a second brother being born and skipped by just as carelessly. “In highschool they called me Ash so...y’know…” The camera cuts to a laid-back Cinder sitting lazily in the interview chair as they gesture vaguely. “Ashes..cinders.” There’s a stuttering glitch, and the view rolls over to magma pouring down the sides of the volcano as smoke suffocates the sky. “...Fire ‘n stuff.”
The smoke fills up the screen, ominous and impenetrable, lifting only to show another burst of low-resolution archival footage, another kid, one with a childhood that’s much more eventful — a blur of constant motion, fights and vandalism and screaming, so many incidents that this, too, starts to fast-forward just to get through the sheer volume. Kamikaze’s voice — it still feels odd, to call him Kade, but that’s who he is — speaks over it, without a care in the world. “‘Cause if I run into something at like a thousand miles per hour I can probably make it explode, duh.”
“Tell me about what you gave up, darling,” the Cíoroc in the interview purrs, smile distinctly wider than that of the Cíoroc presenting the segment.
Chou opens their mouth to reply, and there’s a burst of static and they’re on the archival tape, yelling at the top of their lungs, the words not played back but clearly angry. The person they’re yelling at, their brother, clearly intoxicated, snaps back, the only sound that of a young child wailing in the background. “My memories of every ‘first’ I shared with Sarah,” Chou explains, as the argument escalates before a smoky black visual corruption covers it up and they’re older, handing a sketchbook to a woman in a tattoo parlor who smiles at them, a smile that stays almost exactly the same when the footage jumps forward and she’s coming in through a door as Chou slowly crawls out from a makeshift bed they’ve made on an apartment couch, except this time the smile is accompanied with a wink. “She gave me my first tattoo, she was my first roommate, first kiss,” and at this the footage cuts to that exact moment before the smoky corruption encroaches at the edges, blotting the footage out and preserving some scrap of Chou’s privacy, before the dark picture resolves itself into them at the interview table, blowing air at their fringe. “It goes on.” As they keep speaking in the voiceover, a montage reel plays, the footage of varying quality, scratched and blurry in some images, of times spent with the woman who can only be Sarah; comparing sketches, drawing, Chou looking down at their newly applied first tattoo, smiles and laughter and excitement. The reel gets blurrier and blurrier, the darkness eating away at it. “I can make new memories, but nothing will replace those. If I’m honest, it might be better I forget about her if I win, and I thought you guys would gobble that kinda sentimentality up.” By the time they’re done speaking, it’s all gone. The screen is dark.
That is, until it cuts abruptly to Kade, expression unreadable behind his mask, but hands clearly shaking as he holds them up in peace signs at either side of his head. “My pretty face! Hope you liked that, sado fuckin’ bastards, when I win I’m coming for yours—” there’s a burst of static, the sound distorting and warping, colours twisted out of shape, and when they’re back to normal he’s sat down, looking away. “I mean, everyone says looks don’t matter and probably no one is gonna think this shallow but that was the only thing that was really good about me. Being too cute for my own good was the only reason anyone put up with me this long.” Another montage is played, winks and seductive smiles and kisses and more, some of the people involved far too old, inaudible flirting, a shelf’s worth of beauty products shoved hastily into a bag and stolen, until this, too, is wiped out by bursts of static, distorting his face into an incomprehensible scramble of coloured pixels, brief still snapshots of a faerie in a black suit leaning menacingly over Kade and reaching a hand out that dissolve into yet more static as the voiceover continues. “If anyone could see me and still think I was worth anything then it wouldn’t be a punishment, y’know? Lol. But, like, I’ll fix it when I win, and until then I’m gonna stay locked up tight, so who gives a shit, right?” The footage finally restores itself, but only for a moment, a smile on Kade’s face as he laughs at some unheard joke before the smoke fills up the screen.
There’s a few moments of dark, shifting silence before the quiet is broken by a third voice. Zephyr — make that Micki — sounds as cheerful as ever, as a young boy is left alone for hours and hours on end, playing with toys, an exhausted-looking woman coming into the rundown house at late hours of the night and immediately collapsing into bed. “Zephyr. . . Like, a gentle breeze. Not something else you think about, just kinda there and it’s nice when it is, yeah? I’m just going where the wind takes me.” The carefree words contrast with the boy on the screen growing up, working full-time and then more, quickly becoming just as exhausted as his mother. Stress builds up, he loses a job, he finds another. Once more, the footage becomes a timelapse, until something changes — his mother is holding something in her arms, the two of them in the same room together for once — a baby girl. Micki smiles, and the baby laughs. Cíoroc’s question is muffled as something about the way the audio is cut goes awry, but Micki’s reply is audible nonetheless.
"My life." The boy grows older, and so does his sister, and he makes her laugh. The more he’s around her, the more he smiles, even if the time he does get is precious and far between when sandwiched between job after job. “It's not important in the sense that I cared much about it. I'm an aimless, talentless person. There's nothing I can give the world that it was void of already.” His mother is back with her two children again, but this time in a hospital room. A doctor is giving her what can only ever be bad news, what other kind of news do doctors ever give? He gestures towards the little girl, and she starts crying. “But it's important in the sense that, before this, I could wake up to a smiling face, I could hear her laugh or hold her hand. To mean something to a child, to my little sister, was the only thing that kept me going.” Micki says something to his sister, and she laughs, and then he goes to work and ten hours later he lies awake in his bed, looking up at the ceiling. The smoke creeps up around the edges of the screen as it slowly shifts back to Micki giving the interview. “I did it for her. Everything I do is for her. The reason I smile, the reason I laugh, the reason I signed up to be here. A life for a life. I think that's only fair." In the rising black smoke, the barest silhouette of someone raising a rock is visible for a moment before the scanlines cover it up.
Although it’s night-time, the show’s footage is as high-definition as ever, as if you could reach out and touch Chou, looking terrified, eyes wide, the third eye tattooed onto their forehead blinking rapidly, ink-black pupil swinging from side to side across their skin. They jump as something rustles in the bushes. The voiceover, of course, is totally calm. “Hmm, for some reason I thought you guys already knew exactly what I wanted. Maybe you do...” they comment unconcernedly as the Chou on screen panics and runs from something in the dark, perhaps real, perhaps not.
“It’s for promo, darling,” Cíoroc says cheerfully, abruptly cutting back to the interview footage as they tilt their head to one side in curiosity before answering.
“...I want my eyes fixed. That’s all. Can’t be a blind tattoo artist, although that’d be impressive.” The smoke rises up over the interview, obscuring all video for a few seconds before returning to the grainy archive, the argument with their brother, Chou slapping a blunt out of his hand with a look of frustration on their face. The dog by their brother’s feet growls, the sound distorted almost beyond recognition by another flaw in the audio as it leaps up and bites at their face. There’s blood everywhere, and then the picture glitches, stuttering and fading until resuming with a colour palette that’s too dim, too dark, bursts of static appearing here and there. Glowing eyes — or are they just glitched pixels? — show up in every dark corner, the same way they do for the brief few frames the footage cuts to the terrified, paranoid Chou at the top of a cliff. As their life goes on, Chou paints and draws, they tattoo people, they walk around like everything’s normal, but the picture quality gets worse and worse until you’re barely even sure what you’re watching anymore. Even cutting back to the higher-definition show footage, the night-time video of the Chou of a few days ago suddenly seems a lot darker as they stumble towards another dark silhouette on the top of the waterfall. “I’ve made it this far on my own. If I can’t live my life independently, I’d rather just not live it at all.”
It’s almost blinding when the colour comes back, bright and vivid and overwhelming, and Kade is in a fight, one that doesn’t look all that serious before all of a sudden in a whirl of fists and blood it very much is, and he doesn’t stop, either, fists and feet and teeth and every part of the body that can be used as a weapon being used as a weapon. “I wanna be better than all of you! If that sounds vague then good! It’s supposed to be a lot of shit! If it sounds so vague you won’t take it then, fuck it, whatever! Maybe I’ll think about it more and maybe I won’t!” The Kade in the interview room continues his tirade as paperwork is signed, concerned adults talk to each other, and the real Kade finds himself alone in the ward of some facility, looking no less ready to kill someone than he was in the precious clip. “Maybe if I just say ‘you have to grant it the way I want’ on the end then that gets rid of all the loophole garbage!” Days stretch by and turn into weeks, then months, conversations with psychiatrists, other inmates, one squirrelly and nervous-looking boy in particular, all seeming to melt into a timelapse made incomprehensible by the blurring effect of fluorescent lights.
“Maybe I don’t even know how I want it yet but I will! Maybe the thing I mean by that is gonna be different by the time I actually get it!” He’s discharged, he smiles and waves goodbye, he goes home. He finds a razor. There’s blood everywhere, and then the picture glitches, the warped sound of sirens screeching before they’re faded into the background so the voiceover can continue. The bright colours start fading, the smoke more like a fog, the colour draining from the video but in a different way altogether. “Look, I just want things to be some kind of different, okay? Better than whatever garbage momentum I’ve got going on right now.” The timelapse comes back as he’s back in the ward, back out, back in, back out. He doesn’t go home anymore. Couches and bus shelters and more winks and more kisses and cash changing hands. Light, dark, light, dark. “But if I got up to a murder game and it just gave me, like, normal brain chemistry that’d be so stupid, I wanna think bigger than me, bigger than fairies! I want to actually match how I feel when I’m on the up-and-up, you know? Everybody wants that. Right?”
It’s still dark, dark as the bottom of a pit you can’t claw your way out of, as Chou stumbles blindly in more ways than one into Kamikaze, a fight breaking out that doesn’t look too serious until suddenly it is. In the background, barely noticeable, someone watches from the dark, a presence lighter than a feather. "Treatment for my sister's cancer," Micki answers in response to an unheard but obvious question, and another timelapse montage plays, the colours vivid and real, Micki growing up alongside the little girl and smiling more and more with every day, playing and laughing with her, every moment he spends with her brighter than the last until the screen is just white noise. "Because she's my sister. Because no child should ever have to suffer. And because I love her." And with that, the white fades down, and the darkness is back, and in a simple glide, a leap and a bound with his feet barely touching the ground, Micki — Zephyr pushes both of the others off the edge of the waterfall.
“What are you going to do if you win?” Cíoroc’s silky smooth voice asks on the voiceover, as Kade and Chou — Kamikaze and Cinder — fall to their deaths.
“I...I dunno! I’ve never made a plan in my life so maybe winning means I’m just gonna be able to plan shit? It’s weird thinking about me being alive longer than a week from now!” the Kade being interviewed says. The fall is brutal and unforgiving. No coming back up from this one.
The night is dark and it’s a miracle you can see anything at all except the vaguest shapes and colours. It only gets darker and darker as Chou talks. “Start my own shop, get my own place. Sarah’s helped me come a long way, but I can’t keep living in her house and doing all her little jobs. I want to get out there and prove I’m capable. That’s why I’m here.” Cinder is dead when they hit the ground. The screen is so dark you almost worry it might be broken. The smoke is rising.
“I think it actually just means…” Kade resumes, as Zephyr sails down the waterfall, falling gracefully and landing like a leaf from one of the forest’s ancient trees, “I can do whatever I want, and the wanting’s gonna be different when I’m whichever person that gets spat out at the end. Something great. I’ll figure it out.” Zephyr lifts a rock over his head. He brings it down. There’s blood everywhere, and then the picture glitches. It’s daylight. The footage is grainy and archival. Micki smiles at his sister from the side of a hospital bed. The smoke is eating at the edges of the picture.
“Maybe I'll get buried in a cute field by the sea back home,” he speculates, as Zephyr lays out flowers around the bodies. “Or maybe faeries will set fire to my corpse for show. I don't care. As long as Mae gets one more chance at life- a healthy, happy one- then that's all I came here for." The smoke consumes everything that’s left. There is darkness. There is silence.
Cíoroc is sitting on the railing like a misbehaving child, leaning forward as the train speeds forward through a rapidly shifting landscape of neon and darkness. “It’s sad when a story ends. I think I’ve started to understand that. I mean, I said it before, right, but I didn’t really mean it. I do, now, though. It’s sad when a story ends. But it has to, doesn’t it, darling? But then… there’s something else I’ve started to understand. When a story ends, that’s not always the end. Because with every story that’s over, a new one begins. Besides. A story you remember and love is never really gone, is it? So… even if you don’t remember them, and, uh, we’re not actually on air right now… maybe should have mentioned that, huh, this show’s just for all of us here on the train…” he pauses, mumbling under his breath, counting something on his fingers.
“I remember everyone who died like Cinder, trying to get their sight back, which would be… let me think now, not too many, just Dairokkan, from season ten, Beethoven from season seventeen, and Zatoichi from season thirty-two. Kamikaze doesn’t become all-powerful, of course, and neither did Pretender from season two, Red Queen from season four, Aerial from season seven, Arthur from season ten, Vishnu from season twelve, Shang Tian from season fourteen, Odin from season sixteen, Malice from season nineteen, Caesar from season twenty-five, Lepanto from season twenty-eight, Ascensión from season thirty-one, Paperclip from season thirty-four, and Basilisk from season thirty-six. Zephyr dies in an attempt to trade his life for the life of someone he loves, just like Dante from season one, Yajna from season four, Gilgamesh from season eight, Asha from season eleven, Gunner from season seventeen, Romeo from season twenty, Shuzui from season twenty-four, Milostinja from season twenty-nine, and Redshift from season thirty-three. All stories that ended.”
Cíoroc — or, perhaps, just maybe, Marco — sighs. “But they mean something to me. And if it means something to someone, darling, it’s still alive. Now, when I said that I don’t know where we’re going…” he taps the side of his nose conspiratorially. “I wasn’t being entirely honest with you. I don’t know, but I can make an educated guess, and darling, you’re going to want to hold onto your hats and buckle in your seatbelts. See you soon for something that will not be our regularly scheduled programming.” He winks behind his shades, and the screen is completely dark with only the sound of the train rumbling along to fill the rest of the broadcast.
Zephyr — or Micki — is dead. The curtain’s closed on three more stories, and now it’s time for the tension to recede. “Alright, darlings,” Cíoroc announces cheerfully, Cáen standing behind him with a serious expression and a glare, Augusta having turned up at some point to stand with them. “It’s time for some downtime. Why don’t you all go back to your cabins, and
NO.
The pitch-black silhouette of a man that stands on the other side of the trial setup from the faerie hosts radiates an oppressive energy, like the air his heavier in its presence. It looks two-dimensional, the darkness is so absolute, no room for any light contours or shadows as they’re absorbed into its form. Its arms are neatly folded behind his back.
IT’S TIME FOR THE PLOT TO ADVANCE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING. BUT WE DON’T HAVE ALL DAY. IT’S TEXTBOOK, IF WE’RE NOT STARTING TO GET THREAD RESOLUTIONS BY THE FIFTH CHAPTER PEOPLE FEEL CHEATED.
"What- fuck, you can't take them there yet! The next set still isn't-" Cáen’s anger, because of his voice, comes across as childish petulance.
NOPE. WE’VE TAKEN CARE OF THAT.
The dark figures clicks its fingers, and there’s a halting, crashing sound, the ground abruptly shaking like something very fast has just come to a stop. The gridlines in the sky project themselves down onto the ground, train tracks constructing themselves out of light and darkness, a large, old-fashioned steam locomotive atop it.
WE’RE GETTING ON WITH THINGS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. LET’S DO A DRAMATIC REVEAL. IT TURNS OUT THAT THE PERSON BEHIND THIS ALL ALONG WAS.
A wheel appears behind the figure, with all the participants’ symbols on it. The figure reaches into his pocket and throws a dart at it.
IT WAS
Augusta interrupts the figure, snapping, “Are you out of your mind.”
SEE. THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. YOU THREE HAVE JUST BEEN SO UNCOOPERATIVE LATELY. OH WELL. WHEN YOU’RE ON RAILS. THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO GO.
The figure snaps its fingers, and Cáen, Cíoroc, and Augusta are all suddenly wearing train conductor uniforms, materializing on their bodies in the same flash of light and darkness that the train appeared in. The doors of the train open.
NOW. LET’S GO. THE NEXT SET IS WAITING.
“Now, listen, darling, this is just not going to work out,” Cíoroc says, a hint of anger in his voice, after he’s done looking miserably at the train conductor uniform like an eight year old forced into a suit for an aunt’s wedding. “We’re trying to make television, darling. We’re trying to make something people care about, and you keep getting in the way. There’s more than one way of doing things, you know? Maybe we don’t want to be locked into this for the next thousand years, and even if we are, maybe it’s about more than just pumping out suffering and sadness! Maybe it’s about making these people people we care about! I’d like to speak for all three of us when I say that all of us have had enough, darling!”
There’s a pause. A deathly, still silence. Each word that comes out of the shadow figure is overwhelming, all-consuming, the only sound in the world.
THIS.
IS.
WHAT.
YOU.
WANTED.
ISN’T.
IT.
MARCO.
Cíoroc, Augusta, and Cáen don’t move. After a few seconds of dead air, Cíoroc does something you’ve never seen him do before. He stops smiling.
“...”
You can’t see a face in the silhouette, of course. But if you could, you know it would be smirking smugly. There’s an abrupt lack of fanfare as it disappears. The train remains. Everything is so quiet that it’s almost no surprise at all when the volcano erupts. It roars like a wild beast, like the center of the earth. The cloud of ash touches the sky, rearing up like the head of a monster. It is so enormous and fearsome that there is simply nothing to say about it. This island will be no more by the end of the day. This is not conjecture, but fact. Everything you are seeing here, you are seeing for the last time.
"That motherfucker. Fine. Change of fucking plans. Get onto the train, you pesky humans," Cáen grumbles.
Well, it’s not like there’s anywhere else to go. Nobody brought you here but you.
[The train contains a private room for each contestant, equipped with a bed, desk, their possessions, and a power outlet, as well as a bathroom, a lounge car, and a dining car. The next episode will begin next week!]
No one was around, and yet the graveyard was set up to the nines- a casket, placed deep within a hole, open with no one yet inside; chairs lined up, row by row, but not a single person occupying a seat; and music wafting from somewhere in the distance inconspicuously, something soft and non-verbal to avoid drawing attention from the ceremony being held.
Zephyr, after having made it to this point, looked around at the scene with wide eyes. His paintings, many of them depicting past contestants as well as family members and strangers he passed on the streets, were placed at the front of the stage, surrounding his death bed.
And one, of his sister and himself, was right in the front, dead-centre; her face, as detailed as the last time he saw it, while his own was unfinished, incomplete and messy.
He nodded, fully understanding what was to come and willingly walked down the aisle with a smile on his face. His strut was calmer than usual, confident almost, as he made way towards the coffin.
It's just like a wedding, he thought. It was sweet and gentle and reminded him of all the things he'd never get to do. His goals, if he had any, like to have a family of his own or to see Paris or to watch his sister grow up... If she could. And if only he could. But now, to walk this aisle like it was eternity for him, with no one to see and no one to hear; it was as insignificant and small as the life he chose to live.
But he tried. He's happy for that. If she only knew how hard he tried, for her sake, to give her a future that she deserved. One, inevitably, without him in it. But that won't happen.
A year left to her life, and just a few seconds left to his. One and the same, after all.
He kept walking this long and tedious path, head high for the first time in a while. The one good thing he ever did here was love her. He was proud of that.
He almost reached the coffin, but not before looking back to his audience one last time.
Despite not a soul being there to witness his death, he wiped tears from his eyes. "Thanks for the opportunity," he mouthed then headed into the casket, laying down in it with his hands crossed one over the other on his heart.
The ceremony came to a quick end as the door slammed shut on Zephyr's face, allowing him to take one final deep breath of oxygen before being dumped into the ground. Dirt covered over him, and not a single word of worry, or fear, or frustration came from the box below.
All was peaceful as he was buried underground, the last few notes of an unknown song playing gently in the slight gust of wind.
The sun has risen up higher by the time the thunder booms with a finality you can feel in your soul. Sticks lie at your feet, pointing the way to the campfire. The wilderness compels you. Time’s up.
The fairies, who have remained silent the entire investigation, are here now. This time both Cíoroc and Cáen are on the obsidian stage, Cíoroc holding some coconut drink with a little umbrella and straw, and Cáen on his makeshift throne behind him. Here and there, you see Augusta, ordering the camera crew this way and that.
Cíoroc clears his throat, ever grinning, and calls out to you all as the screen behind them both flickers to life. “Wow, two people dead again, baby! Well, you know, that's what the audience expects, right? Escalation! Can't go back down once you go up, it's just tension and suffering all day long! What else matters, right?" His brow furrows slightly, and for a split second it feels like his smile is about to falter. "Or at least, that's what we're hearing from focus groups, I'm being told. I don't want to question TV wisdom, but really, I'm just here to have fun, baby. And don't worry, we won't need any help from upstairs with both Cáen and I presenting『TURNABOUT TURMOIL!』”
Cáen tilts his head and sneers. “Now, then, prepare yourselves, common humans! Shall you find the killer? Or shall they be going home with their prize. The world is watching!”
The child snaps his fingers, and with a flash of lightning, the obsidian podiums appear, all in a circle around the burning flames. You feel the heat of the fire, the morning sun, and the fairies’ gazes all on your skin at once. It’s time to get to work.
There are no pings to signify the deaths, this time; such technology doesn’t befit the wilderness. Instead, no matter where you are, lightning strikes and thunder booms. You soon find your way to the Campfire, where the stage’s obsidian screen displays information...
Smoke from the mouth of a volcano is a portent of doom in the one and only true sense. Most omens are nothing more than coincidences; nobody remembers the day when they saw a raven at the crossroads and somebody didn’t die. The only real omens are those that occur when a disaster is self-prophesizing; the plumes of thick black smoke that rise above the mountain send only one message. I will destroy you, I will destroy everything around me, and then I will destroy myself.
The wolves are gathered in the dark, but they are only watching. They don’t growl or bare their teeth or approach, because they are no longer needed. The message has been received. Cinder is dead, but not alone. The volcano roars in the distance. By the end of the day you feel like everything here might go up in flames. You don’t recognise the face of the second body, but then again, who the hell could? You don’t need to recognise it. You only need to see the omens.
