Chapter Ten: And So It Goes

I spoke to you in cautious tones; you answered me with no pretense

And still I feel I said too much: my silence is my self-defense.

The guard standing somewhere outside the cell grunted and started walking away. The dim, unfocused light slowly filtered back into the room as soon as the guard had moved from in front of the door. Zane waited until the sound of the guard's footsteps faded into the distance before turning back to Pythor.

"That's the seventh one since the light turned on," he said. Pythor's lightly-glowing fuscia eyes immediately turned to him in response.

"And there were at least another three that came by before that," the Serpentine added.

"They have significantly increased their patrols," Zane said. "You said they should have significantly decreased their patrols. Why did you lie?"

Pythor hissed. "I did not –"

"You're working with them," Zane realized. "You're trying to keep me from escaping."

"How dare you to suggest that I would work with these liars!" Pythor growled. "They may be Serpentine, but they turned against their own kind in the end. I could never get along with these cheats."

"How do you know they're Serpentine?" Zane asked, suspicious.

"Their smell," Pythor whispered. "For these ones, it's about the only way to tell most of the time. And be quiet – there's another guard coming."

Pythor was right. Zane heard the guard's footsteps approach their cell's door at a cautious yet seemingly nonchalant pace. Something passed in front of the distant light – most likely the guard's head, Zane guessed – and stopped, as if the guard was peeking in. Neither he nor Pythor said anything while the guard was watching them, and eventually the guard stalked off to a different part of the prison complex.

"They're definitely on-edge," Zane commented quietly.

"I can understand why, at least…" Pythor muttered almost silently.

"What?" Zane asked, turning towards Pythor.

The glowing fuscia eyes turned toward him suddenly, as if Pythor hadn't wanted him to hear that. Zane waited with what he hoped was an accusing look on his face – it was impossible for him to tell in the pitch darkness. After a moment, the eyes turned away from him and looked towards the cell's window, as if Pythor were listening – or smelling? – for any approaching guards.

"…Something strange has been happening over the last few days," Pythor finally whispered once the Serpentine was sure the two of them were alone. "There's… how to put this… bad energy in the air."

Zane frowned. "What do you mean, 'bad energy'?"

"Serpentine have a sort of internal sense of what happens to other Serpentine," Pythor explained. "A sixth sense, perhaps. Over the last few days, it's been telling me that something is in pain. I have no idea what it is, and I bet these guards don't, either. It doesn't feel like a Serpentine, but I wouldn't be able to sense it if it weren't. Whatever it is, it's very confused, and if it's enough to put me on edge, it's probably making these guards overreact to everything."

"Where did it come from?" Zane asked.

Pythor was silent for several moments. "I don't know," he finally breathed. "But it's waking up."

The first thing he acknowledged was the light.

The light was very, very dim, and a reddish-orange color. It didn't appear to have any specific source; it was all he could see in any direction.

It took him a long time to realize that the light was filtering through his closed eyelids, and that scared him. He squeezed them shut so that he couldn't sense the light anymore, but was still left with the reddish afterglow.

He didn't want to wake up again…

But the longer he lay there the more futile he realized it all was. The fact that he'd recognized it, the fact that he was comprehending the thoughts racing through his head and the light beating on his eyelids, the fact that he could feel he was lying on some kind of mat that was warm from his body heat…

Whether or not he was awake or still sleeping – whether or not he was still dreaming in riddles that he'd given up the idea of solving – was entirely irrelevant, because he acknowledged that he would wake up. He didn't really have a choice in any of it anymore – the dream, whatever kind of dream it was, pushed him and pulled him and forced him onto some sort of convoluted path. The more he tried to understand it, the less sense it made, so he forgot about it and instead tried to remember how he'd come to this point.

His name was Cole, but he wasn't sure whether that was relevant anymore. He remembered something about an island and a tournament and a challenge and a sweater, and then everything turning red before it all faded to black. He wasn't sure whether that was part of the dream, too, but he couldn't prove that it wasn't.

He knew that the first dream, with the forest and the bridge and the lava and the snake… he knew that that was a dream, or that it was part of the dream. Something about the snake, the way that it seemed to… be, made him think the snake was a dream. He'd already learned that he had to take the dream at face value, and the fact that the snake felt like a dream made him believe it was a dream. And if the first part of the dream was a dream, then the second one, of the Serpentine with the amber-colored eyes, had to be a dream, too. And if the Serpentine from the second part of the dream locked him in the dark room in the third part…

Cole didn't want to think about that dream.

Since the snake and the strange Serpentine reappeared in the fourth and fifth dreams, those were dreams too, right? They had to be. The fact that he referred to them as dreams had to prove it.

Something felt… off about the last dream, the other one that he didn't want to think about. It was impossible to tell any sense of time in the dreams, but the small dreams – if he could even call them dreams – between that one and now were mostly just pieces of images: a flash of purple, or an eye staring out of the darkness. The sixth dream behaved differently than the others. The last dream was different.

He'd woken up in the room from the third dream, the one with the snakes eating him alive; suddenly, the dream twisted itself and he was the monster, eating himself…

The immediate visceral reaction forced him to clench his jaw and one of his hands in addition to squeezing his eyelids tighter, and it yanked him back to his current situation just as suddenly as most of dreams ended.

He didn't want to open his eyes; not yet, anyway. Instead, he explored around his spot with his other senses.

He took a deep breath, trying to smell for anything out of the ordinary, because he remembered that this had worked before in one of the other dreams. Initially, he could only smell the staleness of the air, but eventually there came undertones a clean smell – bleach? – and some other scent that he couldn't identify. The air felt cold.

He was lying on his side on some kind of foam mat, wearing some kind of loose garment made of starchy fabric. The hand that wasn't pinned against the mat very slowly stretched out to patrol around him.

Where he wasn't directly touching it, the mat was very cold, which suggested that he had been lying there for some time already. From there, it was easy for his fingers to crawl their way to the edge of it and find the wall just beyond it. The wall was smooth, void of any cracks or impressions, and far colder than the mat. He followed it up near the corner of the mat near his head, and found a corner with a similar wall continuing above his head and off behind him somewhere. His gut told him the walls were made of concrete that had been painted white, but he still didn't open his eyes to check.

He was in a cold room lying on some kind of foam mat shoved into a corner. He'd been lying here for a long time. He was lying on his side, and there were cold, hard walls around him, and both were possibly made of concrete. The air in the room was stale like it hadn't been opened for a long time, and it smelled faintly of bleach. He wasn't wearing his own clothes and…

And there was… a weight…?

He could barely sense its presence, but there was something hanging from some kind of string around his neck. The string felt like woven leather; thin and strong, with twisting grooves along its length. A small chain link around the string was attached to a smooth, rounded object – perhaps a stone – with markings on both sides that he couldn't distinguish with his fingertips.

When he touched the pendant – or whatever it was – it was humming. It emitted a foreign energy that he found repulsive, and that was what finally forced him to open his eyes and see.

The sudden light momentarily blinded him, and he blinked desperately until he located the source – a bare bulb anchored in a socket set in the high ceiling. He let his eyes adjust for a moment longer, taking in the rest of the room – the white concrete walls, the greyish tile floor, the archaic-looking metal door across the room from the mat.

The amulet's eerie hum gathered his attention again very quickly, and he looked at it where it was resting in the palm of his hand. It was a perfect circle about four inches in diameter, and about half an inch thick – like a thin cylinder that had had its edges smoothed off. It wasn't very heavy, but it was relatively dense.

There were strange markings scratched on the back of it – lines and curves that were deliberately drawn, but looked completely foreign to him, like an alien language.

On the front was something that made his blood run cold.

It was horrifically beautiful. The geometric Anacondrai was crafted from polished purple and black gemstones that were inlaid in the off-white pendant. But the design was wrong – it had a very short neck, similar to a normal Serpentine, rather than a long neck like Pythor's.

He didn't know what it meant or why it was different or why it was humming with hostile magic. He needed this thing off.

The woven black leather string was too short to take the amulet off over his head and throw it across the room as fast as he could. He felt along the string and found a thick, complicated knot sitting against the back of his neck. He sat up and pulled the knot in front of him where he could at least work with it better – the string extended barely two inches past his chin, making it almost impossible to look at the knot itself.

He tried using his fingernails to loosen some of the leather strings, but the knot seemed to be fighting back –

"Don't take that off."

He threw the knot down when he heard the voice and nearly jumped to his feet trying to find the source. He hadn't heard the door open, but now the metal door collided with the metal frame and boomed.

There was a man standing in the room now, messing with something on the door. He was a few inches shorter than Cole, even with his dark brown hair fluffed up in a strange style. Cole almost thought the man was a teenager, from how gangly and thin he looked, until he turned around.

The man looked like he was in his late forties, with small lines forming on his forehead and around his mouth. His skin tone was a middle shade of brown and relatively even across his face.

He would have looked like a normal person if it weren't for the nearly opaque red goggles over his eyes. He would have looked like anyone walking down the street if it weren't for the four parallel scars that ran from his forehead diagonally down his face, underneath the goggles.

"That thing is there to protect you," the man said, gesturing to Cole's amulet. "If you take it off, the magic in it can do nothing, and you don't have the skill to control yourself yet."

It didn't matter whether the man was angry. All that mattered was that the man was here, and he recognized him from the other dreams…

From the nightmare.

For every step forward that the man takes, he takes a step back – first against the wall, and then back to the far corners of the room. After several moments, the man stopped and fished something out of his pocket instead.

"This clearly isn't working, so I'll try something else," the man in the lab coat spat. "This is the key to this room."

He held up a rusted brass key that looked about as heavy as it was old. Cole's gaze darted back and forth between the man, the key, and the door in the far corner. If he timed it right, he could try to…

"I can let you have it soon enough…" the stranger trailed off, "…if I can make sure that you're okay."

Something about the way that he had emphasized the last word was deeply, incredibly unsettling. Cole almost shuddered in revulsion and tried to figure out why it sounded so wrong.

The amulet made its presence known again, but the strange man started talking again before he could figure out what it meant.

"I'm almost completely blind, and not very strong anymore," the strange man said, slowly and quietly. "But trust me when I say that we're in the same situation here: faced with a hard deal and no bargaining chips. I've been his pawn for many years now, and trust me when I say this: the slave's compromise is a 'choice' of one option."

He sneered. "So work with me here. It's your only choice, if you want either of us to live."

Cole took a deep breath very slowly.

He lifted one of his feet and stepped forward.

He couldn't speak to this man. If he were to speak, he'd acknowledge the dream once and for all. And if he fully acknowledged the dream, and if he responded to it…

It would kill him. Again.

And it would make it painful.

The man standing in the middle of the room wasn't sure how to interpret this. "Is that a yes or no?" he growled.

Cole didn't answer.

The man grew angrier. "Say something," he pressed.

He refused.

"If I can't report back to him and say that you're fine –" the man shouted, "He'll kill you before he gets around to finishing me off."

Cole closed his eyes and stepped back to lean against the wall. He needed to be alone.

"…Fine, then," the stranger's voice said, cracking. "We'll both be dead before this is over."

He heard footsteps retreating to the door, a key being turned in a lock, a door opening and slamming shut, and a bolt crashing back into place.

He opened his eyes and was alone.

Jay didn't know what to do.

Or, at least, if he knew what to do, and he didn't think he did, he certainly didn't know how to get about doing it.

Round Two was going to start tomorrow. Whoever won those fights would have to fight the next day, in Round Three. Whoever won those would be in the final.

And Jay felt so useless.

He couldn't control anything anymore. Kai and Lloyd… he hadn't talked to them since he broke down in the courtyard, the day after the little funeral. Chen was being nice about it and giving them time. Neuro – this strange person that he didn't even know, who just came out of nowhere like… like… he didn't even know – was tolerating him, staying close, and he didn't understand why.

Why would anyone care about Jay the Cowardly?

Because that's what it came down to. He was a coward.

He was a coward and it took his best friend's death to realize it. It took his best friend's death to prove to himself that he was a pawn in some celestial game, and that he should just give up and wait to die himself. Fate had given him an agonizing wait, to stand on the sidelines and just wait and see if either of his friends would win their battles tomorrow.

To stand by, idly, until he would fall on the third day.

Maybe his opponent would be merciful and just finish him off. Maybe Chen would be merciful and leave him to die instead of transporting him who-knew-where.

Maybe he'd get lucky and win, and have to return home alone after killing all of his friends.

Maybe it would be easier to kill himself.

But he couldn't do that, of course, because the Powers That Were wouldn't let him. He was a pawn in some celestial game, a slave to whatever sick narrative some hidden villain was trying to tell. He wasn't entirely important, but he couldn't just go.

There was no "going home" anymore.

He'd get one more day. One last day to do everything he needed to. One final day to make up for all of his mistakes.

A sudden noise pulled him out of his thoughts, and he looked around his room. The sound – knocking – came again, and he walked over to the door to open it.

"…I need to ask you a favor," Kai said slowly, staring at his hands in the doorway. "Can I come in?"

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no.

Jay silently held the door open and gestured with his head to the back of the room, and Kai came in. He passed all the way through the room to the balcony, and Jay followed him a bit behind.

The cool night air out on the deck was soothing, as was the pale moonlight staining the entire jungle view blue. For a moment, Jay thought he could calm down.

The next words out of Kai's mouth crushed the hope.

"I have a plan, but you're not going to like it," Kai said very quietly, being careful to make sure his voice didn't carry. "I've been talking to Lloyd about it over the past few days. He agreed with me that, even if it can't work because of tomorrow, that you should hold on to this."

Kai was holding out his tiny radio – the last of its kind. Lloyd had lost his on the mountain; Jay had lost his in the jungle; Cole had lost his in…

He didn't want to think about it.

"It's going to be fine, Jay," Kai said, taking a deep, gasping breath. "We're all going to be fine. I'm going to get Zane, and then we're all going home."

"Not all of us," Jay whispered.

Both of them were on the verge of tears.

(A/N): Haha. Ha. So, six weeks has it really been that long? Haha. Hahhhhh

But oh, how things have changed.

Chapter Ten. The chapter that forced me to start this project. Of course, I didn't know it would be numbered 'Ten' at that point. I knew it would be the entire middle section of this story, or almost the entire middle section of this story. But I didn't know it would be numbered 'Ten', and I suppose that counts for something.

This chapter has experienced the most change since I started this project. Originally, there were supposed to be a lot of very incredibly blatant 'hints' of Stockholm syndrome in here, and it was supposed to focus a lot more on the duality of Turner's position, and by extension, his personality. We got none of the former (at least intentionally), and a bit more of the latter to make up for it.

This was actually supposed to be a whole arc. This chapter was supposed to be almost the entire second act. And I suppose it is, to a certain extent; Eleven is going to start the transition into Act Three, or at least into the more action-heavy part of Act Two. Act Three is the events both starting and ending on Day 23, after all.

But oh, this alternate world, back when everything was so simple! So cut and dry! Back when The Anti-Trope was supposed to die at the end of TSC! Back before all these crazy sequels and trilogies! Back before the hero of this story was doomed to fall to a tragic flaw that was and is exposed here!

Back before the A/N for Chapter Eight, which had me rethink the antagonist of the sequel to this one, titled The Timekeeper's Paradigm, and had me tear down the old and replace it with something so much more extensive. Back before I found three songs by The Living Tombstone that suddenly told the entire story. Back before I imagined the void at the end of the threequel, The God's Selection, and saw two people standing in it.

Back before Season 4 was announced. Back when it was still as innocent as Minecraft and mind-control.

Back before I read a few 'shitty' fanfics (as my mother would say, anyhow) and became completely awestruck, causing my muse to come back as suddenly as it had left, and causing me to write another thousand words for this chapter in less than an hour.

But all of that is in the past. Now, here, we have a trilogy, one that truly deserves the genre of 'Tragedy', after so many misguided attempts in the Coraline fandom that equated it with 'character death'.

While we will have some of that, the characters have to be broken first, no?

This chapter was And So It Goes by Billy Joel. The next chapter will be This Is Gospel by Panic! At The Disco.

And maybe the next chapter will come faster. Who knows? ;D