The rockdust settled enough for Isaac to see Crassus’s face fully in the morning light that shone in from the hole in the church wall that Crassus had just blown in. The air smelled of earth and metal. Isaac thought for a fleeting moment about what would have happened to them had they continued standing where Crassus stood now. Isaac had connected the dots just fast enough through what felt like sheer luck.

For too long he’d been barely hanging on for every event that befell him, and now Aster lay unconscious in his arms. Crassus took a step forward, his whole body vibrated in indignation and anger. Isaac’s hand moved before the plan materialized in his mind. For some reason he felt more clear headed than ever. He winced as his broken arm fought it’s way past the fabric of his shirt.

The pain was almost unbearable, but he greeted his teeth, there was no time and the other healthy hand cradled Aster. He moaned when his thumb snagged the collar on the way out but he managed to wrestle it free. There was no time. He held his silver key out between weak and feeble fingers, he had no grip strength left, but he couldn’t drop it, so he held on, somehow. Everything rode on this.

“Here, I have the key. This is it, look,” Isaac said, and he couldn’t keep from gasping between syllables.

The effect on Crassus was immediate. All anger drained from his face and once more he became a mumbling mess.

“Ah! Thank you, oh, please, I need it, I just— please hand it to me, oh no no no, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” He started crying.

Isaac tried consoling him but Crassus didn’t respond to anything Isaac said. He just continued crying and moaning, completely inconsolable. He might appear more sane, but in the end it seemed to be a different kind of madness. That complicated things.

“I don’t want to— I can’t— I just won’t.” Crassus started denying and refusing something. Maybe he was talking to a ghost again. There always seemed to be some voice or voices Crassus could hear that no one else could.

The only times he had seemed to listen before was when it concerned the key. Perhaps Isaac could bluff his way out of this situation as well. But he clearly had the key right in front of Crassus this time, he couldn’t lie and say he needed to go get it like last time. Could Crassus even comprehend a more complex lie in his state?

“I need it, it’s the only thing, oh have mercy— I’m so sorry!”

Aster would pose a problem as well, he’d need to drag her with him. With his sorry state and a broken arm. Not to mention, once he got far enough away from Crassus, there’d be nothing to keep him from re-entering his enraged state of mind.

“You don’t understand, you can make it stop, it’s the only way.”

Perhaps he could convince Crassus to leave them somehow, send him on a wild goose hunt. No, that would have the same problem as leaving, he’d just get a certain distance away, go full crazy again and simply turn around and head right back.

“I’m tired of killing. I want it to stop. I don’t want to live anymore. Please, make it stop, we can make it stop.” Tears fell from the large blank and white eyes and nestled down between the dark hairs of his beard.

Isaac’s blood chilled as he realized the coherent meaning behind the crying man’s words. His throat felt dry and leathery. “Would this key make it stop?” He gestured to the key in his hand by shaking it.

“Yes! Yes, oh please end the suffering. I can’t go on— Forgive me!” He fell down onto his knees and started crying softly to himself.

Isaac licked his lips. He felt very dehydrated all of a sudden. What use did the key really pose to him anyways. It did nothing whenever he tried to use it. He couldn’t come up with a reason for why he shouldn’t hand over the key. The only reason he hadn’t done so the last time was simply because he didn’t realize it was there to begin with.

This one particular key didn’t actually mean anything to him. It was more the concept of the keys and the hope it provided him in surviving and finding Finn in this crazy new world he found himself in. If he gave the key to Crassus, and the obsession the man had with it continued, maybe they could crawl out of here, him and Aster, together.

For every second that went by, Isaac’s conviction that this was the only right move solidified more and more. Yes, this was the solution to his conundrum, if the key never left Crassus, maybe the anger wouldn’t return either. The only reason he could come up with that went against his plan was the interest Aster had shown in the key. He realized with a start that her attitude towards him had completely shifted after that time she had reached for it to try and throw it to Crassus.

As if she could read his mind, Aster closed a hand around the wrist of his broken arm.

“Don’t— trust him— he’s a liar.”

Isaac wondered at when she’d woken up, and how much she could’ve heard of Crassus’s rambling. He tried to think of the answers. The answers to why she’d changed her mind after touching the key. That was when she’d grown the grotesque display of feathers. But she claimed to not know what his key did. Perhaps she was the liar.

But Isaac bent down to tell her that it didn’t really matter. They had no choice. Their only chance was giving up the key and crawl out of there with their lives intact. Maybe, if they were lucky, Crassus would stop chasing them as well. But he never got the words out, because in that moment the church wall opposite from the hole Crassus had made, exploded.

Something large and black flew past them and collided with Crassus. The large black mass brought Crassus hard against a stone pillar and Crassus let out a pained moan that reverberated around the church. Crassus fell from the pillar as the black shape stepped away, and he collapsed into a crumpled heap on the floor.

The dust once again settled and Isaac spotted two long hammer shaped lines sticking diagonally up from either side of the black shape. The man turned. He had a boyish face with stubble. Black insect like carapace covered most of his body. He stood shirtless and the carapace made it difficult to spot the pink skin beneath.

From his forearms along his elbows and well up past his shoulders, stuck two thin horns that could’ve belonged to any oversized horn beetle. The man grinned.

“That was easy!” he said, dragging out the last word. He laughed and brushed some rockdust off his shoulder. “When did you become such a pussy, Ronan?” He spoke to someone behind him.

Isaac turned to see Ronan at the head of a group of people. They looked very similar to Ronan’s own gang from earlier.

“Keep guard, Jakob.” Ronan looked very frightened, in stark contrast to the man walking shoulder to shoulder with him ahead of everyone else. The man was clad from head to toe in rain gear reminiscent of a hazmat suit and he carried himself like this was a picnic and he’d come prepared.

“Keep guard.” The carapaced man, Jakob, aped after Ronan’s terrible English with a grimace to match. “How about showing some appreciation for having your dirty work done for you by your betters, huh, Ronan?” Despite his boisterous and mocking attitude, Jabok did not turn his back on Crassus.

Ronan responded, trying to communicate caution with his barely understandable English, but Jakob kept on taunting Ronan. Everyone in the group shifted uncomfortably. Only the rain gear guy seemed at ease. As they fought Isaac tried to scoot his way behind the closest pillar, moving one inch at a time trying to make each movement as imperceptible as possible.

Jakob snapped to them immediately however. “Stay the fuck still!” he screamed. Isaac jumped, his heart beating twice a second.

A hand reached out from the clouds of dust behind Jakob and grabbed his shoulder. The man covered in rain gear cried for Jakob to watch out. Jakob struggled but Crassus had already grabbed his neck with the other hand. Crassus’s fingers strained against the black carapace and it snapped open like a hard boiled crab, his fingers finding hold beneath it.

The twisted and enraged face of Crassus shook as he flexed his muscles, each arm pulling in opposite directions like he was trying to break free from a pair of handcuffs. Spittle and sweat flew off his face and his black hair matted in front of dead-looking white eyes.

Everyone stood paralyzed. Jakob screamed, almost louder than Crassus. Only Ronan moved. He threw one arm behind him and the other in front, aimed at Crassus. The ceiling and floor of the church cracked as an enormous pressure bled off from the kinetic force Ronan exerted onto Crassus.

Crassus didn’t budge an inch. The stone tiles beneath him cracked and he sank into the floor as he was pushed into it, but the man himself stood unfazed. A chunk of the church wall behind Ronan snapped off and the pressure abated and disappeared.

Jakob went silent. A split like the seam of a piece of clothing opened up and extended down from between his shoulder and neck as Crassus tore the shoulder off his body.

Crassus threw the discarded arm and shoulder off to the side. The rest of the body he just let go off and it crumpled to the floor, much like how Crassus had done mere moments before. He breathed hard. Someone hurled the contents of their stomach out on the stone tiles.

Ronan conjured a new wave of pressure and the whole church shook this time, threatening to send the church ceiling crashing down on them.

He reared his head, screaming at the people around him. “Fight, you dogs!” With that the paralysis broke.

Several lances of varying materials flew past Isaac and Aster huddled together on the floor. The lances hit Crassus, shattered or bounced off him leaving Crassus unharmed. Isaac tried to crawl away from the fighting but couldn’t muster the strength to drag Aster with him. A swarm of what looked like wooden spiders crawled over and past them.

Isaac cast about for a way out, for any means to spirit them away from this godforsaken church, but the line of fire was in between them and the only open exit. The two remaining exits were blocked by either Crassus or Ronan and his people. The pillar behind Crassus that Jakob had thrown him into burst and a large section of the roof fell between the three parties on top of some unfortunate soul who’d attempted to close in on Crassus.

Then there came a loud hissing noise and suddenly everything above knee height became encased in a thick sickly yellow gas. Poison! Was all Isaac could manage to think before the tendrils of lightning crawling along the floor occupied all of his attention instead. The tendrils licked their way up across the pile of rubble where Crassus’s legs disappeared up into the gas cloud.

Isaac watched as if in slow motion as the gas ever so slowly billowed towards the earth. One adventurous tendril spiked into the air, caught the edge of the cloud, and the gas ignited.

Isaac blinked. He lay on the floor again. He could hear shouting, far away. Something passed overhead. Gasping, all the sound and sensation rushed back into him. He flailed around him with his arms and the broken one caught onto a body. He turned and checked it with his healthy hand. He could feel a pulse, and his own steadied somewhat.

The poison gas had gone, but more dust and debris took its place. Light shone in from behind them now. Isaac’s eyes widened. Had they been blown around that much by the explosion? Isaac looked up. No, there was still a roof there, although much less intact than before.

Someone collided with the pillar that him and Aster had been hiding besides mere seconds before. Crassus followed after, leaping out of the dust clouds, landed on top of the person, and drove his arm through the persons mid section as if it were made of butter.

The next second some invisible force took hold of Crassus and hurled him to the side, away from them. The pillar cracked as if struck by a ten ton hammer and crumbled into a pile of gravel. An ominous moaning sound started from above. Someone stumbled behind them and Isaac turned to spot Ronan trying his best to keep himself standing.

Ronan spared them only a glance and the time to shout “RUN!” at them before going after Crassus and two seconds later he had disappeared in the dust cloud. Screams of agony sounded from beyond the swirling dust.

Isaac heaved Aster upon his back. He struggled to drag her up high enough to hold her with only one working hand. A particularly loud explosion much too close made him throw all caution to the wind however. Using both hands, broken or not, he forced himself through the intense pain until he finally got Aster secured on his back.

“Fuck you!” he screamed. Isaac didn’t know whether he meant to curse at his broken arm, the unconscious Aster, Crassus, Ronan or, hell— himself. Somehow he mustered the last vestiges of his strength, enough to carry them both to the new exit behind them past the non-existent altar.

Isaac thought he understood what had happened once he closed in on the new hole. Crassus must’ve made one of his hallmark moves of throwing something, he’d probably missed and hit the wall behind them instead. Perhaps it had been a blessing that they’d both been unconscious.

When he was about the step through and out of the church, he spotted the discarded corpse of Jakob. Something silver gleamed there. In a spur of the moment, he bent down and yanked the chain around Jakob’s neck free. The added weight of Aster on his back threatened to slide forward and send them both face planting into the torn corpse but Isaac managed to hold on.

“Who are you?” Aster mumbled over his shoulder on the way out.

“It’s me, Aster.” Isaac said.

“You take care of me.” It didn’t sound like she was fully aware of her surroundings. “Thanks, Ed…”

Isaac hesitated. He secured her as he set into a brisk pace, carrying most of her weight on his healthy arm. “I got you, Aster.”

“I got you.”