Cassie walked forwards.

The trees seemed to recede behind her, until they were miles away, and when she turned around, they were still present, but when she turned around, she found herself facing that same impossible ascent. With a roll of her eyes, terrified as she was annoyed, she turned to face instead...

... this was home, wasn't it? Of all the cruel jokes to play on her, this had to be one of the most blatantly obvious. Aliens began to peek out of their houses, rose from the villages, all of them bipeds of a fashion, with little cloven hooves on all four of their limbs. Their eyes were a soft pink, contrasting their short curled fur, and all of their ears were so massive that they dragged the ground. Little horns curled just above these, packed into almost bunlike formations like Benn's horns were, and they approached Cassie with immediate interest.

"You're a traveller?" asked one.

"Of course," Cassie said. "You don't know where I would find a horn, would you?"

In a chirpy laugh, it responded, "On your head, of course! Now, you're going to want to come inside before the day ends."

"Are there... monsters outside or something?" asked Cassie. "Coming down from the hills?"

It cast her a bemused look. "What's a monster?" At this point, several had come up to observe Cassie, and they passed the word around a few times before it died out. "Your heart beats so fast. That's so strange."

"It's... elation," Cassie said. "Forget it. Should I come to your house? Which one is it?"

"What?" asked the alien, tilting its head again. "Who's house?"

Cassie sighed, already guessing the shape of things to come. "Forget it. I'm being tested. Please just lead me to somewhere I could sleep."

The murmur of 'tested', too, spread around before dying, once more, and the dull gaze she received informed Cassie that anything she had said had barely registered on the horde at all. Nonetheless, she was eventually lead to one of the cottages by one of the creatures... was it the one who had talked to her to begin with? It was nearly impossible to tell, given they all looked alike. Given the seraph, it was likely they were all previous adventurers who were enchanted, or something wretched like that. It was fine. Eventually, Alexa and Tabai would have to find her, and they'd be furious, but they'd also get bored of chastising her, and thus their terrible codependent family would perpetuate, endlessly. Cassie couldn't wait.

As long as she didn't panic, she would be fine, Cassie reminded herself as she turned circles and settled into the hay.

It was softer than Pechi's fur. Cassie found herself wishing it was a little itchier, so she could at least have something to be angry about.

She awoke in the morning to sunlight overhead. There was another alien next to her, wrapped up in its ears, and breathing softly. When it saw her rise, it, too, awoke and beamed at her, with perfect white teeth.

Cassie tried to smile back. "Are you the one I talked to earlier?"

"I might have been. I don't remember." it chirped.

"You don't remember," sighed Cassie.

"We all talk, so we all remember everything everyone says, but there's not much to say. Does it really matter who says what, what it means, who knows it?"

"Of course! Information transfer would be completely irrelevant in a society like this, since there's nothing to convey in what I'm going to stick a leg in and assume is utter paradise," Cassie said, utterly bitter. Nonetheless, she trotted alongside her companion into an equally sunny, idyllic day. There was no sound save for the murmur and clap of the little aliens walking around the town, smiling to each other and stopping for conversation that seemed to never go pass 'hello'. Most of them were closed in around an obsidian trough, a black scar in the center of an otherwise warm city.

Cassie's stomach mumbled. "Where's... where's the food?"

The alien, or perhaps a different one, seeing as she'd looked up long enough for them to change positions, laughed. "The food's right there!" It pointed, with a hooved hand, towards the trough.

Cassie stuck her head into the trough. It was cold, and though the others were pantomiming eating quite effectively, "There's nothing there!"

"There's food. Maybe you'll see it soon," said one of the aliens, leaning on the trough.

Cassie seethed under her breath. She had truly fowled this one up.

The group around the trough was beginning to disperse, though they showed no signs of effective motion in any given direction.

"What do you do all day?" Cassie asked, kindly. "Should I help?"

"Oh, not much. There's plenty of grass in the meadows to frolic on." The creature's eyes dulled out.

"Thank you," Cassie said, already trotting away. The light she had been feigning left her face the second she was away. She looked at the sun overhead, trying to gauge time, but there was no guarantee days were the same, and worse, it appeared to be directly overhead and immobile. Whatever purgatory she was trapped in likely didn't have times of day.

Forget that.

Cassie found herself in the meadows, which were sprinkled, at just the optimal interval, with little white flowers. She found herself a place far from the others, and relieved, Cassie bent down to graze, only to hack it up at once. The grass there wasn't just bitter-- it was inedible. Not as in she could not swallow it, but as in it physically dissolved in her mouth, with a harsh, acrid sensation. Cassie sighed. The seraph had promised she wouldn't come to any physical harm, and death by starvation counted, so sooner or later it would have to give her an opportunity to eat.

Would it honor its word at all? There was a chance she could just perish. Still, she spent most of the day on the fields, just watching the others, and pacing the perimeter of town. As she looked out across the meadows past the town, on the other side of the woods, she was able to identify hazy obelisks in the distance. That seemed like an answer in and of itself, so she followed them out to the edge, but to her disappointment she found little more than innate, dull rock. Most of the statues were cracked in some way, limbs torn from the bodies which had clearly once been one of... she really had to get their name at some point, even if she was nigh certain none of them had any individual monikers... and then, massive, carved obelisks with patterns. Her eyes lighted on worn stone, but nothing could be made out.

The world taunted Cassie, and she returned to the village just as the sun began its breakneck descent from the peak of the sky, unannounced. They were allowed only a beat of red glory before the sunset fell away to a night in which the singular moon shone overhead, surrounded by unfamiliar stars. Cassie trod back into her room, exhausted beyond any reasonable capacity, and found another alien sleeping on her bed from the last night.

"Excuse me," she muttered.

It stirred, wide eyes watching her own. "What is the matter, Cassie?"

"That was-- I mean, I slept there last night, should I--"

"There's a free one two cottages over," it said, with that same intolerably innocent smile.

There was no pressing that. "Sorry," Cassie muttered. She turned around and deposited herself in a bed a few houses down, which was just as soft as the first. She found herself asleep almost at once, and the morning came too quickly, without dreams to hold her through. She thought she had become used to living without them, but this period of darkness was somehow more punctuated than that on the ship, and when she woke up, she couldn't even feel rested. Her mind still buzzed with the vaguest notion she was being threatened.

Trough was still empty. Sun rose high in the sky.

She spent her day on the edge again, though half of it on the forest. Could the seraph horn be at the top of that impossible incline? She hopped onto one of the tree roots, where the incline wasn't so pressing, and tried to get her hooves in so that she was secured, but the next jump was perilous, and she felt herself hanging out over the edge. She'd barely taken two steps, but already her limbs burned.

"This counts as physical harm!" she yelled to the seraph. "And if you're listening, I hate you, you lying, blasphemous square-pupiled piece of--"

One of the aliens sat at the bottom. Once again, it could have been the same one, it could have been any of them, but they all had the same body language, the same voice... it was ridiculous."Cassie! You should come back to the village with us. There's nothing out there," it said.

"I'm waiting on someone," Cassie said.

"Who?"

"My friends," Cassie informed them.

"Your friends!" it chirped, horrified. "Do you... own them?"

Cassie sighed. "Do you own anything?"

"Of course not! Everything here belongs to everyone, and everyone in the Flock belongs to the Lamb, who takes care of us."

She jumped down, which lead her to buckle on her feet. The pain was muted just as quickly. Cassie felt herself grimace, wishing she could feel it. She'd had all sorts of strange thoughts like that lately. It was the hunger getting to her, that soft, constant burn... she'd gorged herself on grass, but it dried her mouth up, so that she hardly had the saliva to swallow the remaining fizz. She noticed the way the... well, the Flock itself... was looking at her, its mouth wide, and she shook her leg out. "It's fine." She walked past it, and it bounded, happily, back into town with her.

They found themselves in the town center, and Cassie leered down at the empty trough before passing it and wandering back out into the empty, endless fields. The flowers swayed in the wind like small bodies, and Cassie plucked one out of the ground with her teeth and felt it fizzle into nothingness. Poor thing didn't even have roots. Why, Cassie couldn't figure. Why did anything happen in this depraved hellscape?

"Pechi," Cassie muttered to herself.

Pechi wouldn't know what to do in this situation either. It was unclear why Cassie even wanted her there. Would it be easier to suffer with her? Was that what they did for each other? Cassie's mouth dried out with the flower, and then Cassie knew.

She shook the bad thoughts back out. Her stomach roared in anguish, but Cassie couldn't do anything for it right now, so she just murmured a hostile "Shhhh...". Not far off, one of the Flock had found her, and was staring up at her with those same pink eyes. Cassie's ears flicked. "You want to know about Pechi, don't you?"

The creature blinked. "Who?"
"My friend."

"Oh! Your friends!" It seemed disconcerted, as if she'd said something not entirely publically appropriate, but nonetheless it seemed determined to please her. It was a pathetic kind of contrast, and if it was going to be daffy, it could at least be so consistently. Couldn't they all have been almost hostile stooges for order? It would be so much easier to get mad at them if they were.

"Yes, my friends," Cassie said. "Pechi is a long white Canira, so round ears like mine, but short neck, and huge, terrifying teeth, for gashing little animals! Ha, they sound scary, don't they? Well I walked among them... she knows everything, and she owns a lot of little trinkets, and she's one of the worst best Sentients I've ever met in my entire life--"
The conversation droned on into the night, met by silence from a being that could hardly understand half the pointed words she dropped. It passed out in the morning, but Cassie easily picked up the conversation with another member of the Flock, later. "Why would you ever want to own anything?" it asked, when she talked about the trees in Pechi's room. "It seems like a hassle."
"Because real, living beings want things," Cassie said.

It cast her a blank look. Cassie could say anything to it she wanted. She could buck it right through the head and it would probably thank her.

"She sounds bad. You're lucky you have us now," it said at last.

Cassie went back to her pacing. She followed the statues out further, to what looked to be a large stone slat of some kind. Around it were the crumbled remains of a massive outdoor auditorium. Her ears rustled as the wind kicked up around her, and she felt the land stir around her, glad to be out of the placid nothingness of the air inside the Flock's little town. Out here, there was something familiar... something brutal, sure, and the air here smelled harsh, but at least it smelled like something. She caught something white in the corner, a relic of a bygone era, and gave it a quick lick just to be sure.

That was bone. The arena was filled with old corpses.

Cassie didn't have the teeth for cracking bone in two.

She was so hungry.

Cassie returned by night. She hated being shepherded back into the houses by the sun, but of course, there was nothing much to do out there when the sun fell. There was nothing to see. It wasn't as if she was obeying. She was doing the opposite of obeying. There might have been nothing to rebel against, but if there had been, Cassie was rebelling, and she was rebelling beautifully.

It had been a few days. Cassie put her whole head in the trough and imagined that she smelled anything. Something about the place made it hard to hallucinate, which was a shame. Cassie had never been particularly interested in hallucinating up until she came here, but now, she was thinking mirages of meat and perhaps a quick glimpse of her friends would suit her well.

"Are you sure you can't see anything," it asked, as if Cassie was playing a trick on them.

She laughed, her voice echoing up from the trough and curdling on the open air. "If I did, I wouldn't eat it."

"Why not, Cassie?" it asked.

She bucked herself out of the trough. "Oh, he can't inflict any physical harm, but he wants my complacency! He's going to turn me into a dumb prey animal-- like you!" Cassie yelled.

"Dumb?" asked the creature. "Do you not want to be like us?"

"No," Cassie said. "I can't be. I can't become like you."

"Why not?" Several of them were closing in now. "Everything you've said about your life is so sad, Cassie. You're always wandering, alone. You're always in the corner, alone. You own others. You're friends with bad sentients, the angry teethed kind. You could stay here with us, and you'd never have to go back to them. They could hurt you if they wanted to. They might hurt you, Cassie. Aren't you afraid of that?"

Cassie twitched. "No."

She wasn't lying. She'd never been afraid of Sentients before. Even if they were so much more terrifying than she was, and she wasn't afraid of the void that waited for her, like death, like an open maw... she could see it right now, if she wanted, but it was everywhere, wasn't it? So no point. No point even looking. She hadn't even been thinking about this. Her vision was a little poor these days, but it cropped up even when she wasn't using her future sight.

All those golds were heavy on the eyes. No place was supposed to have that much.

Cassie left. "It's a game," she announced to the hills, to the open auditorium, "but games have... they have rules! There has to be something..." Her voice echoed up the sides. Bad thoughts echoed back. She needed Pechi here right now. She would be able to make something out of the faded shapes on the sides of the obelisks. She would already have sniffed out the seraph bone, or maybe Pechi would just step on everything around her. Real Sentients wouldn't be so complacent. They had more active powers than hers. They could have burned the town down.

Did she want them to burn the town down? That seemed excessive. They were innocent creatures.

Cassie hated them. Cassie wanted them to burn the town down.

When the sun started falling, she stood against it, in defiance, but the white flowers looked different when the lights fell, and they were fur, and Cassie took dozens and ripped them out of the ground, tossing them aside. She could see them curled up, and they were familiar, but they weren't soft enough, and Cassie needed to calm down, or sleep, she was just tired, wasn't she? Ridiculously tired. She could lay down in the field. That would be better than going back.

"You look stressed. Do you want to sleep today?" asked one of the Flock, the next day.

"What else is there to do?" Cassie screeched. Hunger was wearing a hole in her, and there was poison leaching out of it. She twitched again, her whole body shaking.

"Did you worry so much when you were at home?" it asked her.

"Yes!" she hollered. "Yes, always! I'm never not worrying, but usually, I have something in my stomach to keep my mouth full so I don't have to talk about it!"

It stepped back, and Cassie savored the fear in its eyes like a meal. She'd need to eat something, soon. She was biting her own tongue at this point. She walked into one of the pretty little cottages, no furnishings, hay on the ground, and looked into the window, trying to get a sidelong view of her own reflection. Someone unfamiliar looked back, and Cassie's eyes half closed with fear and ecstasy. Her rescuer had come at last.

"G'ana," asked Cassie. "That can't possibly be you, can it?"

The dark shadow hovered in the mirror, behind her reflection.

"I'm being ridiculous," Cassie warned herself. "The group would jump down my throat in a heartbeat if they knew what I was doing. Talking to mirrors! You know how harsh they can be, G'ana. They don't mean it, but they're so cruel sometimes."

G'ana blinked back. Her reflection was like a little burn on the mirror. Cassie wanted to throw her head through the mirror at this point. Would that break G'ana, though? Would all this be over if she broke herself? What did G'ana want out of her, again...? "How do I get the seraph horn?" asked Cassie.

G'ana blinked again. Slowly, then, she pressed one paw up to the mirror, and gave her a stiff little nod.

That didn't mean anything.

No. Yes it did. She should do it. What was it? She hadn't been thinking about it all that much, but she had... her stomach snarled again. It was a really ugly morning, wasn't it? Each one got worse. Cassie could usually keep her head straight, but this morning, not so much. It'd been going for a while. How many days? More than she should have reasonably been able to endure. She'd had water, likely from the grasses, so that's over three days... but without food, she'd perish under roughly twenty. Some Sentients went forever if they knew how to utilize their magic the right way, but Cassie didn't. Of course she didn't. Cassie barely even had magic. Just a nice view of the end of days.

That's where worrying got you. It didn't matter what you did. You ended up at the end of the end of everything, and it looked back at you, knowing you, feeling you, Cassie was the hole, Cassie made the hole in the end of everything. She tore out a little bit of the paper they called time, and where everyone else could see the weave, she could just see the little hole, and what was behind it.

Cassie wandered out further than ever before. She didn't even speak to a single member of the Flock, not that there was much to talk about-- You'll love them.-- Thanks for nothing, you terrible, terrible, terrible tool... the seraph thought it had her, the Lamb thought it knew her, but Cassie wasn't a yes-girl. Cassie was no one's tool, no one's pet, and she wasn't going to be his. Cassie went out to the auditorium and waited, pacing, for miracle. There had been something that G'ana wanted her to do, hadn't there? Maybe one of those bones, the bones of what these creatures had once been, they were the seraph horn the whole time. Maybe if she waited the whole night the others would come back.

A quick clatter of hooves sounded in the distance. Cassie turned, feeling her own eyes gleam. It was an unfamiliar sensation that shook her, but she took it in stride. "You were warriors," whispered Cassie. "Do any of you come out to this place anymore?"

It shook its head. "It's a bad place, filled from times when we wanted everything, and it made us so sad, Cassie. You should come home. To us. You should be happy. We know about everything you've ever done or wanted, and we could be so much better to you than the world has been. We could help you. Why do you keep resisting?"

"Because it's empty," Cassie said. "I'm empty, and this place is empty. I can't live like that! Where I'm from doesn't need to be good, it just has to be... it has to be something, and I hate-- I hate being treated like a pet. Do you think I'm your pet?" She looked directly up into the stars. "How do you like your pawn on a leash? Oh, you hate that connotation. I hate that. Catch me bound out on my own heartstrings, being lead along to the slaughter..."

The Flock stepped back. It laughed, nervously, and had that same innocence mixed with disgust about its eyes.

Cassie lowered her head to charge. "Hey, I've told you about Alexa, haven't I? Have I told you how bad she is? Well, I'm about to be so much worse."

Shaking, it inclined its head downwards, as if to defend. Suppressed instinct locked its head into charging position. Cassie's eyes lit up, certain she had finally evoked something besides dumb complacence in the Flock. The creature continued to shake and Cassie felt herself bolt forwards. She got it right in the gut, horns so much tougher than she'd expected, but she had better implements at hoof. She trampled it into the ground, feeling the crack of bone, and the stadium was as it was years ago, when there had been crowds there to see slaughter.

"Look at the bones," she whispered to it. "Let that be the last thing you see."

It obeyed.

Cassie's hooves came down on its head. It was surprisingly fragile. Surprisingly? No. Expectedly fragile.

She paused, the instinct fading back out. She breathed heavily. The night still shone overhead, unending. It might never recede if she didn't go to sleep. In the darkness, lit only by the dim, flickering, terrified stars, she looked over the kill. She hadn't meant to kill it, had she? Of course not. She had no motive, and murders had motive. Then again, it had barely been alive, so this was hardly a death. Maybe it was like dying the second time. You live once, you exist in a liminal space for some time, while things narrow to the end, and then, you pass along, one way or the other.

No sympathy for shades.

Although...

Cassie wanted to help the Flock pass along. There was time on her schedule to help. She was generous with her time. She had so much of it. Slowly, she bent her head down towards the body, and gave it a quick lick, ruffling up that familiar curled fur... as she looked down at it, she saw something gleaming in the body, something she couldn't get to. Cassie lifted the flesh away, biting down, and then it was over. There was something gleaming behind... oh. Oh that was too much. It had been in them, waiting for her. Of course. It had been in them. She could see it now. She just had to get to it. Her hooves were solid. She had to...

She...

...had a little something on her face.

Cassie lifted the seraph horn out of the corpse, and breathed out violently, blood running down the sides of her mouth and trickling back into the empty body. She felt the hunger leave her for the first time in days, and she laid the seraph horn down beside her and heaved. She lay next to the body, the horn, and her own sick, holiness defiled, and Cassie looked up into the darkness. She didn't remember activating her future sight, but still, there were the shadows overhead, closing in as the timeline faded out into an abyss that would leave no survivors and nothing left to evidence they had ever been there. Cassie leaned away from it, recoiling under its weight, but she hadn't been looking into the future at all. She realized with fear that the darkness was there, with her, at present. It was in this broken body in front of her, torn all the way open to reveal the little pink bits she had so tenderly taken in her teeth, this body which she would never have to look again, because someone had finally come in to save her.

Cassie had reached the end of the line.