Chapter Text
Kristen’s friends are waiting for her.
She’s ten minutes late, and still at the temple, so she’s going to be twenty minutes late. Twenty-five if she really wants to be annoying about it, both to Cassandra and her friends. It’s not her fault, sort of. If Cassandra had answered her prayers on the first try she would have been on time. But they didn’t, so she isn’t, and now she just feels even worse and her friends are going to be all like, Oh my god, we’ve been here for twenty to twenty-five minutes! What gives! and she’s gonna have to tell them the reason she’s late, which is that she got held up trying to talk to a very newly radio silent divinity about how much she’s worried about how the thing she’s about to ask them all to do is a bad idea—
And then she’s gonna ask them to do it anyway.
In hindsight, she maybe should have done a bit more research into a ritual that asks you to drink moon pool water in order to travel back in time before she started roping her friends into actually performing it. In the nature of most mistakes, it was sort of just one thing after the other without a lot of room in between to consider the direction things were heading.
It started when they got back to school after spring break.
There was a buffering period in which they were all simply too exhausted to notice the shift, but after a week or so they began to notice the Differences. Call it the aftereffects of the forest, (or dying or being possessed or becoming a saint or any and all of the above), call it being five or six levels ahead of all your classmates, call it being any regular teenager. No matter what it was, it was there. Not always, and not even that much, most of the time, but it had settled inside them, quietly.
It wasn’t until the Summer was approaching that things began to fester.
Everyone was on edge. Jumpy, closed off, short-tempered. They were still the bad kids, but there was a profound straining in whatever it was that was holding them together, a thinning thread. Kristen has noticed it more lately, a bunch of little behaviours piled up on top of each other. Alone, none of it would really seem that conspicuous. Maybe one of her friends was having an anxious week or something. But all together it is impossible to ignore: Riz is avoiding mirrors. Fig isn’t playing music. Gorgug is weirdly quiet. Fabian isn’t wearing his letterman. Adaine is distant, like she’s living inside a memory. And Kristen, well she’s feeling like shit ever since Tracker left, but at least she knows why she feels like shit. And why she’s feeling like shit is what led her to look into the ritual in the first place—if it can help her friends get out of whatever the hell it is they’re in too, then that would be a fantastic bonus.
There is a warm breeze on the air as she exits the temple, one last look spared at the altar that has never left her in silence before. She’s not kidding herself. She knows it’s a bad sign. But she’s also not kidding herself into believing that will stop her from doing it; poor impulse control and relationship anxiety are, apparently, a deadly combo. She sighs and starts off toward home, shoving her hands in her pockets and trying not to think about the borrowed vial clasped in her fingers.
When she gets to Mordred Manor, she is greeted by a chorus of sarcasm.
“Guys, guys,” she says, “C’mon, I’m only twenty to twenty-five minutes late!”
Adaine looks down at her watch. “You’re twenty-four minutes late.”
“That’s in the range of twenty to twenty-five.”
“That’s twenty-four minutes late.”
They end up in the basement, sitting in a cross-legged circle with six mismatched mugs as Kristen explains the ritual to them.
Fabian’s eyebrows are pitched together, sitting somewhere between apprehensive and judgemental. “Can’t we just do normal drugs? You know I can get us normal drugs.” He looks at Kristen expectantly, arms crossed. “I can get the Hangman to get us normal drugs, Kristen.”
“Why are we doing drugs again?” Adaine asks.
“It’s a ritual,” she says, for the hundredth time, “and it’s not drugs, it’s just pool water.”
“Okay, then why are we doing a ritual with pool water again?”
Kristen sighs. “Do you guys still not check prayer chain?”
There is an outcry of varying levels of offense that only dies down as Gorgug pulls out his crystal and begins to read Kristen’s original message out loud for the group: “Hey guys, I think I figured out a way to help us all stop being messed up about what happened in the forest. I talked to Jawbone about it and I feel like we could all really benefit from talking about our feelings.”
There is a beat of silence, and then:
Fig: “Okay that is a really misleading prayer chain.”
Adaine: “Yeah, what the hell, I thought you just wanted us to talk about our feelings.”
Riz: “I still don’t think we should have to talk about our feelings, for the record.”
Gorgug: “Wait, Jawbone wants us to drink pool water?”
Fabian: “You know for a fact that I never downloaded that, that corn app onto my crystal. Also, yeah, what the fuck, Kristen.”
“Well none of you even read it, so!” Kristen scoffs and lets herself fall back onto the floor, legs still crossed in front of her. She brings her wrist up to her face and starts chewing on her friendship bracelet, generously flavoured from years of camp. “I really think this could help,” she mutters. It isn’t technically untrue, but it’s definitely not the entire truth, either. She does really think it could help, but she also isn’t one hundred percent certain sure that it won’t unravel time and reality, like, just a little bit. It’s not her fault that Arianwen writes her exclamation points and question marks in a nearly identical way—is it really that big of a deal if the little scribble beside the description of how to perform the ritual labelled ‘backup’ says will change the timeline?? or will change the timeline!!, in the end?
“Help with what?” Fabian scoffs, “We solved the thing with the Nightmare King, we’re still super cool at school, and I literally buried my old self. We don’t need help!”
“Wait a minute,” Fig says, squinting over at Fabian, “I thought you just got chased by Chungle Down Bim and Sexy Rat?”
“No, I had to—wait, yeah. Fuck you and your sexy rat, that was awful.”
He recovers quickly, but Kristen spots the initial confusion and clicks her tongue, head shaking as she exhales, sitting up. “Guys, this is literally what I’m talking about,” she says, “Fabian, you’re not even sure what happened to you in the forest.”
Adaine chimes in, “I think he meant like, personal growth and transformation burying his old self?”
“No, he didn’t.” She doesn’t know how she knows this, but she knows it proves her point that something is up. “Something messed up is going on. I know you all can feel it too. And if you, if you guys don’t wanna talk about it, I thought maybe we could try and change it. Or at least remember.”
Fig sighs, holding her hands up in surrender. “Sorry, I know I can be a little bit withholding about my emotions and everything,” she says, “but if you guys really wanna know, then, I guess I’m ready to talk about it.” She takes a deep breath, looking down at the floor before she faces them all again and says, “I met Hilda Hilda in the forest.”
Adaine blinks. “Yeah, no, we know. You’ve told us about it, several times.”
Riz nods boredly as he lists off on his fingers, “Walked through the forest for like days, met a lady in like a spider web or whatever, turned out to be Hilda Hilda, met your alter ego self and she was really mean—”
“I don’t think she was in a spider web. I’m pretty sure I heard her calling and she was just hanging out?”
“No, you said she was in like a chrysalis—”
Kristen reaches over and grabs Fig’s cheeks, Riz stopping with a scowl as she cuts in, “Fig, you are not the problem. The problem—” she whips around to face the others “—is the rest of you people. We are all clearly all kinds of fucked up about it and no one is doing anything to get better!” Hearing it out loud only strengthens the belief in her mind. There is something seriously wrong here. She turns to Riz next. “Riz, I have not once seen you not cringe away from your reflection since the forest.”
“Oh, the ball!”
“Riz, you’re like, super cute. You need to get some confidence.”
“Yeah, man, you—”
“Guys,” Kristen says, “this is all very true but not my point here. Adaine, you’ve been acting like you’ve seen a ghost like, at least eighty percent of the time. And Gorgug, you’re acting like you are one. Fabian, you—okay, you had some really fucked up shit happen to you before the forest that you’re obviously still dealing with, but still! You’re not yourself! And Fig—”
“I’m not not talking about it!”
“No, you’re not, which is good, but don’t think I haven’t noticed you haven’t been playing your guitar or writing your songs or singing since we got back. We live in the same house, dude.” By the time she’s done her chest is heaving and nobody is making eye contact. There’s no way any of them can deny it now.
“Don’t you guys want to remember what happened? Doesn’t it drive you insane that you can’t even trust your own mind?” She feels insane, desperate, searching her friends’ averted gazes for some kind of validation. She knows, can feel it in her very core, that she’s not alone when she feels like she’s swimming in her own mind when she tries to recall that… night? Day? Week? The time in the forest, memories bloated and ripping apart into thousands of pieces, stretching themselves out like string, taut and tangled together. It feels like they’re holding her in traction, stagnant in the middle of thousands of Kristens, all screaming different versions of that forest. She sighs, willing the noise to quiet as she deflates. “Guys.”
Riz is the first one to meet her gaze. “What if some of us are better off forgetting?” he asks quietly.
Gorgug answers before Kristen has a chance to. “Do you really believe that’s true?”
He looks down at his hands, shrugs. “I don’t know.”
There’s a beat of silence, a long sigh from Adaine, and then nothing. Kristen wants, momentarily, to take it all back. To tell them she was kidding, that there’s no ritual and everything is fine and they’re all fine. She wants to walk up to the dichotomy of her stomach—one side the gut feeling that this isn’t safe and one side the anxiety that needs to know if she could have done any of it so that Tracker didn’t leave—and choose her gut. She wants to, but she can’t. It is a gnawing feeling inside of her, migrating up her stomach and tearing at the inside of her chest like it’s trying to get out of her, and she can’t make it stop.
“Listen, guys,” she tries, “I don’t wanna bum anyone out or make anyone relive anything or whatever. I just wanna help.”
There is a handful of sympathetic smiles, eyes not meeting, and then Fig speaks up. “If you think it’ll help. This is obviously important to you, so. I’m in.”
“Oh, I mean, I was always gonna be in,” Riz says then, “It’s an obscure ritual from an ancient divinity of mystery, you can’t just not be in.”
Fabian sighs, throwing his hands up like, I don’t know. “Fuck it, I’m in too.”
“I’m in,” Gorgug says, “If you guys are there, I’m in.”
Everyone is waiting for Adaine. She huffs an exhale. “Well obviously I’m not gonna be the only one that isn’t in. Yeah, I’m in, whatever. Let’s fucking do it.”
A warmth spreads through Kristen’s chest, cutting through the anxiety just for a second. She smiles, all teeth and naivety, and begins explaining the ritual again. “The pool was a scrying thing, right? So it’s just gonna be a scrying spell. We’re gonna have a little sip of the pool water and we’re gonna see what happened. Happens? It’ll be fine.”
Adaine blinks. “Happens?”
“She totally just said happens,” Riz confirms. “Do you mean like, ‘haha, let’s see what happens!’ or like, ‘see what happens’? Like, in the past but present tense?”
“Uh.”
Fig nods at Riz, turning to Kristen with, “Like, you think we’re gonna see what happens in the forest like back when we were in the forest but also we will be there in our own present right now?”
“Umm.”
Fabian holds up a hand. “Wait, like time travel? Like we’re going to time travel back to the forest and see what happens?”
“Uhhhhh.”
Gorgug hums thoughtfully. “But if we’re going… if we’re going back to the actual forest to see what actually happened, wouldn’t that… you know, like, the observing effect thing? With the light and the—” He makes some vague gestures accompanied by a half-hearted sound effect.
“Yeah, the wave-particle double slit experiment thing. Light is a wave until you watch it, then it’s a particle?” Adaine looks to Gorgug for confirmation, earning a Yeah, that! as Fig scoffs excitedly.
“I didn’t know being the oracle lets you know truths about the nature of physics!”
“Actually, it’s our Mechanics of Spellcasting class you never came to that let me know that,” she says pointedly, “But anyway, Gorgug has a point. Don’t we risk changing the timeline or whatever just by virtue of our being there?”
Kristen laughs nervously, barely more than an exhale, as she recalls Arianwen’s cryptic note. “Hah.”
Gorgug clears his throat. “Also can I just add that I kind of had a really bad time when we did the drugs last time? So maybe we could like, stick together this time since we don’t have to follow our fear all alone or whatever?”
“You dont have to do the drugs if you dont want to do the drugs, Gorgug,” Adaine says, “Riz didn’t—Riz, you didn’t do the drugs last time, right? And that ended up fine.”
Riz opens his mouth then shuts it, confused. “Yeah, I… no, wait. I think—wait, did I? I think I would have done the drugs. Did I not do the drugs?” He squints into the middle distance over Adaine’s shoulder.
Fig gasps. “Holy shit, we can’t remember. Kristen, we need to drink this pool water right now.”
“Yeah, Kristen!” Riz yells, panic rising, “I need to know if I’m still a loser that hasn’t done drugs or not—” He looks over to Gorgug, voice calming immediately: “Not that not wanting to do drugs makes you a loser, Gorgug. You’re like, the coolest guy I know after Fabian.”
Fabian rears back in surprise. “Aw, the ball!”
Riz shoots him a clunky set of finger guns—absolutely a stolen mannerism of Kristen’s, adopted nearly correctly—and adds, lowly, “But also I really think we should drink this pool water right now immediately.”
Kristen sighs, not unfondly. She should expect the going off track by now—probably should just remove the rails from her expectations entirely. She takes a breath, gearing up for whatever it is she’s about to pull out of her own ass.
“I love you guys so much. And listen. This stuff isn’t from, like, a traditional pool, but I think we can still, uh, dive in. Sometimes it can be tempting to like, stand on the side of the pool and you go, ‘oh, I don’t know how to swim’ or ‘oh, it looks really deep’ or ‘oh I’m gonna get diseases from all the other people here in this warm water, shit, is that an open wound?’ but like, if you just think about that then you’ll never get to go swimming! Swimming is fun. Swimming is, is—it’s exercise. It’s good for you. And once you’re in, you always forget all the worries from the side of the pool. Like, ‘oh, the lifeguard’s gonna yell at me for spitting water on people because I wanted to know what it would feel like to be one of those big water fountains at the mall’! And you know what? Maybe the lifeguard will yell at you! But you’re not gonna get any coins if you don’t at least try. So let’s dive in, guys. Be the mall fountain you want to see in the world.”
There is a beat of stunned silence—meandering somewhere between confused and wholly unimpressed—and then she clears her throat, sheepish. “‘Kay, you all have five extra temp hp now.”
Adaine bristles, exhaling a half-laugh, half-scoff. “Why do we need extra temp hp?”
“Well I don’t know what’s gonna happen! I’ve never drank magic pool water to go back in time before!”
“But you’ve drank normal pool water to go back in time before.”
“No, just to be a mall fountain.”
“Wait, you call that an inspiring speech?” Fabian tsks. “Not your best, Kristen.”
Riz shakes his head as if to snap out of something, except this time he’s snapping in. “Guys, it’s gonna be fine. We’re just gonna drink this pool water and it’s gonna be fine,” he assures, gesturing frantically in a way that seems, surely, very fine. “Let’s just go.” With that he is throwing back his share of the water and—“Wait, fuck, that was just my coffee.” He turns to Gorgug. “Why didn’t you just get us normal cups?”
“Why is our pool water the same colour as your coffee?” Adaine asks under her breath.
“Because mugs are fun and homey and everyone is sort of high-strung right now so I thought it might help,” Gorgug explains calmly, glancing over at Fig, who gives him a nod and a thumbs up.
Riz rolls his eyes. “I’m not high strung.” The rest of them watch as he goes this time for the correct mug, grimacing as he swallows the pool water and chases it with another sip from his coffee. There is a beat of silence as they all sort of just blink at each other, waiting for something to happen before they shrug and do the same, five mugs emptied in succession. Riz watches and wordlessly passes his coffee over to Fig, who finishes it off in a single gulp.
“A little more pond than pool,” she remarks, struggling not to laugh as she rolls her tongue in her mouth.
There are nods and Fabian is the first to break, pained giggles as he says, “Guys, we just straight up drank dirty temple water. What the fuck.”
“I think we should all hold hands,” Adaine says then, over the laughter.
Gorgug offers his immediately. “Do you think it’s going to make the ritual stronger?”
She smiles. “No, I just wanted to hold your guys’ hands.”
There are laughs and aww s and affectionately rolled eyes all around as everybody links hands, settling into each other, into the commitment of whatever comes next. It would nearly look like an ordinary circle of ordinary friends in an ordinary basement, were it not for the fibres of reality beginning to ripple and unwind around them.
Riz is the first to break the silence. “It would be really stupid if we just drank some normal magic pool water and were all just sitting here holding hands with nothing happ— oh.” He doubles over himself, dropping Adaine and Kristen’s hands as he clutches at his stomach, gasping. “Not normal magic pool water, not normal magic pool water!”
The others watch in petrified horror as Riz begins to shake, groaning. “Guys, this is—”
Before he can finish his sentence Fig is letting out a strained string of swears into Gorgug’s shoulder and Adaine is turning ashen, muttering, “Oh, this is not good. This is not good,” under Fabian’s pained moaning of Kristen’s name.
Kristen feels like she’s underwater as she watches them deteriorate before her eyes, phantom pain in her fingertip radiating through her body and pounding in her head. She’s going to kill her friends. She saved them and they were fine but then she got insecure and now she’s going to fucking kill her friends because of it.
Gorgug looks over at Kristen, eyes wide as he speaks. “Can you make it stop?” The world slips out from under her, head tilting back, heavy. Vaguely, thickly, she knows that this is a familiar question with a familiar answer, though not in a voice that she can call her own.
“I don’t want to.” She says it without meaning to, words slipping from her lips of their own accord. She slaps a hand over her mouth, not trusting what will come out next.
Gorgug does not seem as phased by this as she is. “Are you sure?” he whispers, halfway to pleading, voice an apparition. It’s wrong, it already happened, she doesn’t remember, it’s wrong—
“I can’t.” She hears herself say it only as it echoes—halting, stilted, and only cut off by the sound of a sharp gasp as a bone-coloured horn gores through her spine, emerging from her chest a moment later with a wet tearing sound.
“Livin' la vida loca,” she whispers, watching her friends look on in sickly, half-present horror before slipping once more between the folds of shimmering darkness.