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Lacie didn't know where she was. Perhaps.. Amityville. It seemed familiar enough. She held neither gratitude nor a sense of superiority that the phoenix had somehow managed to escape to the hunter's portal. All that remained was exhaustion, regrets, and sadness.

The bogeymen would have no issues rounding up the little reaper. Unfamiliar, startling words floated in and out of her consciousness. The bogeymen's voices, Medea's words, the effects of insanity, and the other student's tormented cries about the statue.. Lacie heard all of it.

Perhaps, she wanted to react. But when she tried, she couldn't even form the words. Her eyelids closed, Lacie propped herself up against a corner, already falling asleep.

Nothing made any sense anymore.

The confusion...the terror...the fighting. All of it swirled through Rafael's mind, and he considered it with a detached consciousness. It was too big for him to consider. He couldn't put words to the feelings that swelled inside.

Except for one, maybe -- shame.

With so much death and terror surrounding him, the rat had allowed his survival instincts to trump his honor. He had spent so much time hiding...quivering...and now, somehow, they had survived, and they were back, and it was certainly due to no help of his.

This whole experiment had been a failure.

Normally, being at the Amityville gymnasium would have been a thrilling adventure, but the whole thing barely registered. Rafe was too deep in thought...and too exhausted...to pay much attention.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, in amidst all the chaos and confusion and shame and doubt, another thought had occurred to him.

Humans. Hunters. Killing any creature that got in their path.

...Did the colony know about this?

As he curled into a miserable, sleepy ball, a half-formed thought occurred to him: he needed to tell them...to warn them....protect them....

But how?

.....He would need to learn.

Ulmuka, still in owl form, was exhausted. It was like the anger had sapped the life from him. The strix didn't know the meaning behind the quarantine. He wanted to check on his friends but it was crowded by the portal. The further he moved away the more tired he got until he found something, anything, and perched on it.

He was asleep in minutes.

As they arrived back and faced the bogeymen, Israfel wore an expression of sadness. he hadn't be able to help Riley, not help Shehk or Sammy and- Now they were to be trapped until a further date. The idea of being trapped bothered him, but when he heard the term they used he understood. It was safe this way, better as well. The lives a of the few did not matter as much as the lives as all of them right? Part of him said yes, the other part of him said no. In any event.

He was alone again.

As they took Riley away, he felt a certain emptiness. He'd never gotten to speak with her. Not his mindless blathering conversations, but a true conversation. He regret that. What what wrenched his heart was Malodore. Pleading, begging to stay with her. It hurt him. Malodore didn't deserve to suffer like that. He didn't do anything to warrant his love ripped from him, denied. Then- he stiffened, Malodore cut down to send him away while they took care of Riley. He could nothing. He could only move on.

Then the siren saw the one he'd been worried about. He'd ignored part of it, tried to help those he saw- but "Lucien." The boil flew to the other, blessing the use of his wings once more. He was asleep, face peaceful and calm. Tired, he pulled the air spirit into his arms, cooing softly. Holding Lucien tight Israfel allowed himself to close his eyes. To dream without dreams.

Between them Riley had been heavy, but moveable. Her only thoughts as she lifted the stone piece that was once her friend was one thought. "Home... home... hoooome." She muttered as she carried the solid stone between her and Shehk.The portal was closer, things where going to better soon they would be home home would be good home would be...

Grey? The woods where squirming burning, and turning grey all around her, as pale stone as Riley was. For a moment she went to question it before the voices told her to be silent.

Quarentine they shouted as hands reached out to rip her away from Riley.

"NO LET ME GO!" The world snapped back, purple tinted as it once was, dim yet lit just enough for her eyes to see clearly as the boogiemen moved about Riley, Shehk was near by, she was saying the same thing, she needed to be with Riley, "Don't don't take her don't make us leave her." Boned fingers reached out towards the statue, a sudden shift of movement grey and white beside her, a boogiemen of stone shoving her back again wit the butt of his weapon.

"Give her back give her back." She muttered helplessly as she stood up to move forward taking the weapons blunt strike again reeling back as she noticed Arel. He looked so tiny, his shadow was big though, big and grey. Madea was beside him, but she was hardly the focus, the boogiemen where blocking her view of them, of Riley. She went to follow them again before being shoved once more, the world spinning.

She was in the gym? Had she blacked out? Her eyes flickered dimly confused and lost, the boogiemen glanced at her, head cocked to the side. He pushed her again, why the pushing? She wanted her friend, she wanted home, home was with them not a room or a place. They where taking a part away.

They where going to take Riley away just like Red the voices whispered just before the world went silent and black.

'No'

Her voice whispered back as everything else faded to white. White, watered out remains of a figure perhaps, louder and stronger than even the Heir standing herself. It moved, slowly, deliberately, the only constant in the distorted white.

'No, you failed us,' It hissed, 'We will never find home now and it is all your fault. Your fault, you, you YOU. You did this to us, you did this to your entire clan, it is YOUR fault.'

The words continued to echo. Her fault. Her fault. It was Cymbeline's fault for not being strong enough, it was her fault for not finding their HOME. It was her fault everything was too noisy, that her skin continued to churn and crawl, that her hair sizzled and burned in her scalp, that every single fiber of her Fear was impure and tainted.

She should just break apart, break apart into a thousand tiny pieces.

Perhaps the Heir was laughing still as the blinding light wrapped white, white hands around her shoulders, as fingers turned into claws and tore into her very skin, ripping it apart piece by piece. There was no blood, no Fear, nothing, after all, Cymbeline was simply nothing. She was emptiness.

She could feel every single tear, the pain as her flesh parted, as her bones crackled and peeled in layers into the ground nothing compared to the howl in her mind that she had not fallen apart enough not enough not enough not enough.

Piece by piece she continued to break until at last-

- She shattered entirely.

And someone else stepped out of the white, still laughing.