Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A long time ago, there was a prophecy. A child would be born to the king and queen, shielded by the purest form of flow coursing through its veins. As both prince and protector of the people, the chosen one was destined to use his immeasurable power to save his home from a threat larger than the Danceverses themselves. He would devote himself to this destiny, wanting for nothing but to secure the safety and everlasting light Floworld shined upon all its neighboring planets.

Right now, however, all he wanted was a nap.

“Now catch it!”

Wanderlust ducked as a ball of light whooshed over his head, knocking his crown askew and spinning around to keep darting at lightning speed around the room. 

“Wanderlust!” His father lightly scolded him, his arms crossed. “Come on, it won’t hurt you!”

“I know!” Wander grumbled before dodging it again. “It’s a lot harder than it looks, okay?”

The Traveler sighed before raising a hand and flicking his wrist. The light froze in midair and then floated calmly over to land in his palm. Wanderlust took a seat on the floor and scowled. Training usually went better than this. He must have been off his game today.

His father knelt down to his level with a reassuring smile. “You’ll get there,” he said. “It just takes practice.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Just like when I was twelve.”

Patience had always been in short supply for Wanderlust, but it was especially scarce when it came to this. He’d spent his whole childhood growing into and learning to control his powers. He was so proud of himself when they finally evened out and the countless hours of training paid off. Aside from some regular practice to keep his skills sharp, he thought he was done. He never thought he would spend several years brainwashed as a weapon for The Night Swan, and he certainly never thought the whole ordeal would hijack his powers and jack them up to a thousand.

From the moment he woke up from The Night Swan’s spell, the amplified magic inside him was restless. He couldn’t contain it. It was wild and uncontrollable, setting itself off whenever it pleased and destroying anything he wasn’t careful with. Even after The Night Swan was defeated and he went home to Floworld with his parents, he was dangerous. He locked himself in his room for a week to keep from hurting anyone until his father finally convinced him to give controlling it another shot.

At first, it seemed pointless. Wanderlust could only go from zero to a hundred, and the force of his magic felt bigger than his whole body. But his father stayed by his side, guiding him through exercise after exercise in getting to know his power just like he did when he was a kid. He was patient enough for the both of them. And eventually, it worked. Wanderlust hadn't been worried about blowing anything up in months. Unfortunately, that wasn’t fast enough for him.

“I’m tired of this,” he moaned. “I’m too old to still be training.”

“Things happen that you can’t control,” The Traveler said. “You’re just learning to adapt. Learning isn’t just for children, you know.”

Wanderlust rolled his eyes.

“Don’t give me that,” his dad scowled.

“You sound like you’re reciting ‘Dad Advice for Dummies 101’ or something!”

The Traveler put up his hands defensively. “Well I’m a dad and you’re a dummy,” he shrugged. Wanderlust smacked him in the chest and he just laughed and got to his feet. “Come on, use that reaction time to catch the spell and I’ll leave you alone for the day.”

Wander groaned again, but he got up. “Fine. One more time.”

He readied himself and his father summoned the ball of light again.

“Focus. Sense the path of the flow, find the resonance with your own, and catch it.”

The Traveler threw the spell.

Sense the path…

Find the resonance…

CATCH IT.

Wanderlust threw his hands up and summoned power of his own. His dad’s spell collided with it. But instead of freezing, it ricocheted off. Wanderlust gasped as the light shot backwards at twice the speed and slammed into The Traveler, knocking him into the bookshelf behind him.

“Sorry!” Wander immediately ran over to help him up. 

The Traveler groaned and rubbed his back. “Alright, maybe that is enough for today,” he said as he got up. “That’s progress, though! You at least connected with it this time!”

“I guess,” Wander sighed.

“Get some rest,” The Traveler smiled. “We’ll pick this back up tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” Wanderlust sat on his bed and watched his dad put his cape back on and adjust it in the mirror.

“You’re doing great, Wanderlust,” he assured him. “I have to go to a meeting, but I’ll see you at dinner. Okay?”

Wander gave him a half-hearted smile. “Okay.”

Before he closed the door behind himself, his dad poked his head back in the room. “Also, your crown is falling off.”

“Wha-” Wanderlust looked in the mirror to see his crown was indeed almost horizontal on his head. The door closed, and instead of adjusting it, he tossed it to the other side of his bed and dropped onto his back with a sigh. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be so careless with the thing, but he didn’t care anymore. It wasn’t his real crown, anyway.

That was the other problem. The Chosen One’s Crown, the magical artifact that was always bound to him even if he somehow misplaced it, was gone. It disappeared when The Night Swan turned him into her puppet, and hadn’t reappeared since. His parents had a replica made for him in the meantime. It eased the public’s worries, but not Wanderlust’s.

Wander wasn’t supposed to be able to lose his crown—not while he was still worthy of being the chosen one, at least. If it wasn’t showing back up, that had to mean he wasn’t worthy anymore. He certainly didn’t feel like he was. What kind of protector of the people would have done the horrible things he’d done as a member of The Night Swan’s army? 

Even after the curse was broken, Wanderlust wasn’t the same. There was something dark inside him, something that couldn’t be fixed with a magic spell. His emotions were stronger. His heart didn’t just ache for what happened to him and his friends; it stung. His unruly magic wasn’t just pent-up energy trying to escape. It was rage, something stronger and more powerful than he’d ever felt. In that final face-off against The Night Swan, Wanderlust got caught up in his anger and wound up momentarily taking control of her body. It was horrifying; the kind of thing he would never, ever justify before. But it felt good. And even now, he couldn’t exactly say he regretted it. If she came back, he’d do it again. He’d be the reason she plummeted several hundred feet to her death this time.

“Stop that!” Wanderlust groaned to himself and rubbed his hands over his face. This was exactly what he was talking about. What happened to him? Why did he keep thinking horrible things like that? What kind of prince daydreamed about murder? No wonder he didn’t deserve his crown anymore.

He’d earn it back, he promised himself. He just had to turn himself around. Stop having all those vile feelings, get control of his heightened powers, and rededicate himself to doing the right thing again. He had to take his role more seriously than ever before. He couldn’t let himself slip up again.

Wanderlust sat up and looked at the false crown next to him. Part of him wondered if the dishonesty of wearing it made him less worthy too. The chosen one wouldn’t lie to his people about being the chosen one. Was he even the chosen one anymore?

Wander groaned again. He was too tired for this. He sighed and checked his phone, hoping for some kind of distraction. He didn’t find one, but he could make one of his own. He waved a hand and summoned a small portal in the air, opening up a window to a familiar tower in Eternyx.

“Hey Jack!”

A blur of black and red jumped out of view with a yelp. Wanderlust laughed.

“I told you to stop that!” Jack Rose’s voice called from beyond the portal. “Or at least text me first!”

“You never answer your texts,” Wander said.

Jack stepped back into view, a lovable scowl on his face and his arms crossed. “Yeah, but I read them.”

Jack was Wanderlust’s boyfriend—or, at least, Wander was about seventy-five percent sure they were boyfriends. They hadn’t exactly put a label on it or anything. But they’d kissed a few times, and sort-of-kind-of shared a milkshake once, so… that had to mean they were together, right? Wanderlust had never had a boyfriend before, so he was really just going off of movies he’d seen.

“Are you having a midlife crisis or something?” Wanderlust teased. “This is like the third time I’ve seen you wear a beanie in the last month. If you’ve suddenly become a hat person, that may be a sign you need help.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “It’s just a hat,” he said.

It wasn’t just the hat that was different, really. Since Jack took over Swan Tower in his mother’s absence, he’d changed a lot. When Wanderlust first woke up from The Night Swan’s spell, Jack had been a scrappy underground revolution leader doing secret missions in ripped jeans and dark-colored hoodies. It was already a sharp contrast from the prim and proper tailored suits he used to wear back before everything had gone so terribly wrong. But these days, he had an entirely new style. He wore tactical boots with cargo pants and a tight-fitting shirt underneath a black and red high-collared coat, constantly dressed like a rebellious apocalyptic supervillain. The beanie was the newest addition to the look.

“It’s not bad ,” Wander said. “It’s just different! And now I can’t see your hair.”

“Is that all I am to you?” Jack teased back. “A pretty haircut?”

“Seems like all you are to you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you walk past a mirror without trying to touch it up.”

“That is not true.”

“Oh wait—I know what’s happening!” Wanderlust gasped, a mischievous smile blooming.

“What?”

“You’re trying to hide the fact that you’re going bald!”

Jack instantly looked almost genuinely offended. “I am not!”

“Hey, it’s okay!” Wander laughed. “I’m sure you’ll look just as handsome in a couple years when there’s nothing left up there.”

Jack picked up a pillow from the loveseat behind him and chucked it through the portal at Wanderlust’s head. Wanderlust was delighted.

“Okay, okay, you can have your beanie phase,” he finally said. “But I’ll be here for you when you finally accept the truth.”

“Can you at least be there with a warning first?”

“Nope!” Wanderlust smiled.

“What if I was naked?!”

“I’d turn around?”

Jack groaned. “Seriously, just please text me next time. Okay?”

“Fine,” Wander moaned. “But in my defense, I wouldn’t have to keep popping open portals if you’d just invite me over.”

“I do invite you over.”

“Not in like a month! Every time I ask to hang out, you’ve been busy.”

Jack sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s just been… a lot. There’s constantly something I need to attend to around here,” he said.

Wanderlust frowned. He couldn’t exactly argue. Having taken over all The Night Swan’s resources, Jack was essentially in charge of all of Eternyx at the moment. It was a full-time job. But that didn’t mean Wanderlust couldn’t be upset about it.

“Yeah yeah, I know,” Wander said, searching for any way to put a positive spin on things. “Do you need any help?” he asked. “I could come stay for a bit and-”

“No,” Jack said strangely quickly. “You… don’t want to come here.”

“I will, though,” Wander insisted. “Really, I don’t mind. I’m sure it’s much better with you in charge, anyway.”

“It’s still Eternyx. You’d hate it. Besides, I’m fine. I have everything under control.”

“Whatever you say,” Wander sighed. He got the feeling Jack wasn’t as fine as he said he was, but he also knew there was no convincing him to talk about it. “I just miss you.”

Jack dropped his gaze to the floor. “Yeah… I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You’d better,” Wanderlust laughed. “Or I’m just going to have to show up in your house uninvited.”

Jack shot him a glare. “Don’t you dare.”

Wander laughed again, but before he could continue getting a rise out of him, Jack’s attention was grabbed by something beyond the portal. His face snapped back to seriousness and Wander’s smile fell.

“I have to go,” Jack said.

“Oh come on! Can’t it wait?”

Jack shook his head and tucked his phone into one of his many pockets. “I wish it could. But no, I have to take care of this right away.”

“Okay,” Wander sighed. “Just please text me, okay?”

“Of course,” Jack said before briskly walking out of view. “Talk to you later!”

After a moment of silence staring at an empty room, Wander waved his hand and closed the portal. He should have been used to this by now. Jack was never a particularly warm person, but he’d been even more distant lately. Just seeing him again after waking up from The Night Swan’s spell was strange. He was hardened and tactical, a soldier who’d been through years of fighting all on his own. Wanderlust had essentially been asleep that whole time; so meeting that new Jack felt like he’d woken up in an alternate universe. It was tough, but he thought he could get used to it. 

After Jack had taken over Swan Tower, however, he seemed to change even more. He got even more reserved, interacting with their friends less and less and always looking like there was something else on his mind. Wanderlust had to go above and beyond just to get a few hours of time with him.

He couldn’t blame him, though. What happened in Eternyx was hard. Wanderlust, Brezziana, Sara, and Mihaly had been under The Night Swan’s control for years. Maybe Jack just had to get used to hanging out with them again. Maybe he was scared of them. Wander could never pretend to know what it was like for him those years in the rebellion. 

Jack just needed time, he assumed. It hadn’t even been a year since his mom died. Even with a mother as horrible as The Night Swan, that had to have an effect on a person.

Time would fix it, Wanderlust reminded himself. Time and some space—as much space as Wander could bear to give him, at least. He’d be back to normal soon enough. In the meantime, Wanderlust luckily had three other best friends he could bother.

“You did what?! ”

Brezziana was laughing so hard she almost choked on her smoothie.

“It was an accident!” Wanderlust said, his cheeks blushing purple. “He wanted me to connect with the magic, and I did! I wasn’t trying to throw him into the wall!”

“You’re a mess, Wander,” Brezziana smiled, shaking her head.

“Hey!”

“I mean that in a loving way!”

“You’re really not helping here, you know.”

“I’m sorry!” Brezziana covered her mouth to hide her struggle to keep the giggling to herself. “It’s just really funny to imagine you accidentally sending The Traveler flying across the room. I’m sure you’re doing great!”

“He said I was doing well,” Wanderlust groaned. “But he’s my dad. He has to say that.”

“Just take the compliment. Even if he’s lying, you gotta fake it till you make it. Y’know?”

“I guess.” Wanderlust sighed. “But that’s easy for you to say. You’re like, the queen of motivational speeches.”

Brezziana laughed again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s like your whole thing! Your job is getting people pumped up.”

“I teach fitness classes.”

“Isn’t that what that means?”

“You’d know if you came to one ,” Brezziana said with mock offense.

“I know,” Wander moaned. “I just have to do training every day! The last thing I want to do after a morning of my dad working me to the bone is more exercise.”

“Lazy rich boy,” she taunted him.

Wander stuck his tongue out at her. “Try-hard.”

Brezziana chuckled. “Speaking of trying hard, I gotta head to the gym. Are you coming over tonight for movie night? Mi’s bringing brownies.”

“Of course I am! And I’ll see if I can get Sara set up to watch through a portal.” 

“Great. See you then!”

Wanderlust closed the portal and Brezziana smiled to herself as she grabbed her gym bag. That man was a delight.

Class went pretty well today. The people who showed up were excited to put in the effort, and Brezziana was able to work up enough energy to match their enthusiasm. It was harder to do that these days. Ever since what happened in Eternyx, she hadn’t been able to get enough sleep most nights. Energy drinks and protein shakes helped, but not enough to replace a good night’s rest.

Almost every night, she had nightmares. She’d be back in that dark uniform, watching as hundreds of Eternyx citizens cowered in fear at the sight of her. She’d have flashbacks to the atrocities she committed, so violent and horrible that she couldn’t tell if they were just dreams or real memories. Sometimes, she’d dream that The Night Swan was back. She could feel the spell taking hold of her again, filling her head with darkness and pushing her consciousness away from her body. She would wake up in a cold sweat, having to look in the mirror to remind herself that it wasn’t real. That it was only a dream.

The others didn’t know about her nightmares. None of them really talked about what happened in Eternyx. They didn’t want to think about it. Besides, what if Brezziana was the only one dreaming about such awful things? What would that make her? 

No, she had to keep it to herself. Even if the others were having similar problems, they probably weren’t mentioning it for a reason. She wouldn’t want to ruin their healing by digging up old memories. She was fine, anyway. Logically, she knew it was over. The Night Swan was dead and Eternyx was safe in Jack’s hands. There was no longer a threat. She just had to convince her anxiety of that.

“Hey Brezziana, are you free after your class on Tuesday?”

One of her coworkers, Jake, had cornered her in the break room while she was taking a breather. She raised an eyebrow. Jake was a nice guy, but he was constantly trying to get out of work. She knew where this was going.

“I might be,” she said. “Why?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I… might have a date I accidentally scheduled for the wrong day and need someone to cover my yoga class?”

“Jake,” Brezziana groaned. “Again?”

“I’m sorry! I swear something’s up with my calendar app; I keep scheduling things and then they’re on completely different days than I thought they were.”

“I don’t believe you for a second, but fine. I’ll bite. What’s in it for me?”

Jake frowned. “I’ll pay for your lunch?” he offered.

Brezziana thought for a moment. “At Gio’s,” she added.

“Gio’s is expensive!”

“Those are my terms.”

“Fine. Thank you.”

“No problem,” she laughed. “But seriously, you’ve gotta stop calling out. Your students are gonna think you’re dead or something.”

“To be fair, you were gone for a couple years and then came back,” he pointed out.

Brezziana tensed. She didn’t like to talk with her friends about that time, and she certainly didn’t like to talk about it to other people.

“That was… different,” she said, hoping she could blow it off and change the subject. “Not the point.”

Jake apparently didn’t get the hint. “Well yeah, I guess that’s different since we all knew where you were. Everyone who watches the news, at least.”

Brezziana nervously twirled her hair. She knew what happened to her and her friends had been on the news, but she didn’t want to hear about it. She didn’t know what to say.

“Where were you exactly, anyway?” Jake asked, like this was casual conversation and his curiosity couldn’t possibly be opening up any old wounds. “Did you have an apartment in Eternyx? Or- wait, did you stay at Swan Tower? That’s gotta have been creepy.”

At the mention of Swan Tower, memories pinched Brezziana’s mind. Waking up every morning from dreamless sleep, automatically getting dressed and heading to The Night Swan’s throne room without so much as a yawn. Taking a knee as she walked in. Eagerly awaiting some poor citizen to punish.

“Jake!” she suddenly snapped. 

Jake looked at her confused, but the expression slowly twisted to show a little bit of fear. Her heart was pounding. In the tension, she didn’t even realize she was scowling at him and her hands had balled into fists.

Jake lowered his voice. “Uh- what?” he asked.

Brezziana realized the way she was looking at him and took a deep breath, forcibly relaxing her shoulders. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she said calmly, avoiding eye contact. She hated how awkward she’d made the conversation, but she didn’t know what else to do. If he kept asking her about what happened in Eternyx, she was going to wind up crying at work.

“Oh,” he said. He didn’t seem to understand what the problem was, but he wasn’t about to argue about it. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, even though it definitely wasn’t. She got up from the couch. “I’ve gotta go. Have fun on your date Tuesday.”

She successfully avoided Jake for the rest of the day and made it home without any more issues. The conversation still hung in the back of her mind. She couldn’t be that sensitive. People had a right to wonder about what happened when she worked for The Night Swan. They were the victims, after all. She owed it to them to answer their questions.

But today, she reminded herself, she didn’t have to think about any of that. She had plans with her friends that night, and that was much more fun to focus on. On a whim, she took out her phone and texted Jack an invite. As far as she knew, he hadn’t left Eternyx once since taking over Swan Tower. He wasn’t going to say yes, but Brezziana crossed her fingers and sent the text anyway. Maybe one day.

Jack Rose was furious. He controlled everything that used to belong to The Night Swan. He made his power over Eternyx clear. He’d earned the danceverse’s respect by leading the rebellion to take down the old rule in the first place. How were there still people conspiring to take his throne?

Electricity buzzed through his body, making his fingers itch.

“Can’t this car go any faster?” he called to his limo driver up front.

“We’re almost there, Mr. Rose.”

Jack slumped back in his seat. The two guards with him tried to hide it, but they glanced at him nervously. He was too worked up. That wouldn’t be helpful to anyone. He tried to take a deep breath, but the energy running through him was too much.

Jack’s phone buzzed in his pocket for the fifth time. He finally took it out and checked the screen to see a bunch of messages from Mihaly, Brezziana, and Wanderlust. He didn’t even read them. Seeing their names right now only added a pang of guilt to the swirling concoction of frustration brewing inside him. He’d deal with them later. He put his phone on silent and instead took out something much more comforting: the spellbook.

He’d gotten much more use out of his mother’s spellbook since she died. In the weeks leading up to the final battle that killed her, he’d discovered a concerning trait she’d apparently passed down to him: he had magic, a temperamental, previously untapped well of it that finally made itself known when he must have needed it most. He’d been afraid of it. Although he’d never told anyone, it was his magic that killed The Night Swan. He hadn’t even meant to. He couldn’t control it.

But then, going through her old things, he found her spellbook. It was an old book that haunted his childhood, full of every twisted, horrible spell she’d come up with to cement her reign over Eternyx. He shouldn’t have wanted anything to do with it. But on the last page was a envelope addressed to him: “For Jack, my final gift. Make me proud.”

Opening the envelope unleashed a spell that flooded into him before he could stop it. The spell made his magic finally click. The electric current of dark flow inside him surged to its full power. Over time, he learned to bend to it—use it. His mother’s notes weren’t just strange glyphs and scribbles anymore. They were recipes, tools for keeping Eternyx safe. Not only could he understand them, but he could cast them and change them, creating his own kind of magic. He’d never be like her, he swore. But seeing what the book’s power brought him, he had to admit she may have been onto a thing or two.

Jack flipped to the last filled page. The spell written down wasn’t in his mother’s handwriting; it was in his. His power sparked with excitement. This one was his latest invention, and it was finally going to come in handy. This was the third problem like this he’d had to solve this month. The people were getting too comfortable. Since they had a king more merciful than The Night Swan now, they thought they could get away with anything. Apparently, the freedom to do what they wanted without being turned into mindless swan soldiers wasn’t enough for the citizens of Eternyx. They needed to be taught a lesson.

“We’re here, sir.”

Jack read over the page one last time to cement it in his head. He closed the book and followed his guards out of the limousine. It wasn’t often that he had to come downtown. He took a quick scan of the area. The streets were still fairly empty like they were during his mother’s rule, but not as much so. A few people saw him, but they quickly looked away and headed out of the area. They knew better than to get involved. The buildings were cleaner now, less depressing and newly covered in street art. The Night Swan wanted everything stark black and professional, so Jack wanted it colorful—well, as colorful as Eternyx could get. Every building had a signature, and every street had the icon of the Rose dynasty spray-painted somewhere it could be seen big. He knew every inch of this city, and now it was all his. All marked, all under surveillance, all perfectly controlled.

Except for one place, apparently. Jack’s eyes locked onto tonight’s problem: The Maneater Club. He’d been there before, back when he’d found out it was a favorite spot of Lilith de Ville. Lilith had betrayed him and his friends in the rebellion’s final battle. They could have all died because of her. The Maneater Club had been an easy place to corner her and lock her up for good. Unfortunately, it must have been a hot spot for more villains than just her.

Followed by his guards, Jack knocked on the door of the club and took a few steps back. He waited. After a long silence, he called out. “I know you’re in there,” he said. “And I’d hate to have to shut this place down if the bartender is helping hide traitors.”

Sure enough, after another minute of waiting, the door opened and two people were being shoved out the door.

“We didn’t have anything to do with this,” the bartender stammered from the doorway. “Just- please, I swear we didn’t know!”

Jack didn’t believe him for a second, but he wasn’t scared of him. He simply smiled and gave him a nod. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not here for you.” He turned his attention to the ones the bartender kicked out. “I’m here for them.”

Two familiar witches stood before him. Felicia and Skarlett had been part of the rebellion when they were taking down The Night Swan. They’d followed Jack’s orders, but really only because it was in their best interest at the time. He hadn’t heard from either of them since his mother’s death.

“I should have known you’d be a problem,” he said as his guards restrained them. “You were never really on my side, anyway.”

Felicia smirked as if getting caught had been her plan all along. “I made that very clear from the beginning. We needed her gone, and now we need you gone. No hard feelings, I’m sure.”

“I knew you’d be trouble, but I didn’t think you’d try to dethrone me. You don’t seem like the political type.”

“We just want to make sure Eternyx stays true to form,” Skarlett said. “This place needs a cold-blooded sorcerer in charge, not a washed-up pop star who thinks we can all just be friends.”

Jack glared at her. Maybe he really hadn’t made his presence known enough. He was an Eternian. He was the one who fought, blood and bone, to topple the throne of a dictator and restore the verse to it’s former glory. If anyone was going to lead, it was going to be him.

Felicia rolled her eyes. “Don’t even bother.”

In an instant, Felicia’s eyes flashed and a burst of magic burned the guard holding her, making him scream and push her away. She took off running, but it was no use. The electricity in Jack’s veins crackled to life.

Suddenly, a circle of the street around the witch split through the pavement. From the concrete, thick, enormous vines burst up and wrapped themselves around Felicia’s body. Jack smiled. Felicia screamed as they continued to grow, lifting her off the ground and high into the air. The vines squeezed tighter and bloomed, roses and thorns sprouting up the stalks. 

“What are you doing?!” Skarlett screamed. She tried to yank herself away from the guard’s grasp, but wasn’t strong enough. 

Jack just stared at his handiwork. “I don’t have time to deal with little schemes like this,” he said. “So I hope you’re paying attention.”

Thorns pushed into Felicia’s skin. It wasn’t enough to cause any permanent damage, but her screaming told Jack that she got the message.

Jack looked around. Several Eternians were in the streets now, mostly watching from behind corners and halfway in doorways. Exactly what he wanted.

He looked back at Felicia. “I’ll let it stop here this time,” he said. “But don’t forget. This is my city. And anyone who tries to change that from now on will not be making it out in one piece.”

Felicia thrashed in the vines’ unrelenting grip.

Jack turned to Skarlett’s terrified face. “Understood?” he asked.

She hesitated, but couldn’t take her eyes off Felicia. “Y-yes,” she finally said. “Understood.”

With that, Jack was satisfied. He turned on his heel and motioned to the guards to let Skarlett go. Felicia stayed stuck in the air as they got back into the limousine and drove away. She’d be fine. Her girlfriend could find a way to get her down herself. Neither of them would be plotting anything anytime soon.

Jack exhaled as the area disappeared from view, running his thumb along the spine of the spellbook in his lap. That was one problem solved. “Thank you for the intel,” he said to the guard with the blonde hair. He didn’t look directly at him, but he saw the look on his face in the corner of his eye. He seemed slightly perturbed. They both did.

To be honest, Jack was a bit unsettled too. Something didn’t feel right. Maybe he’d gone a bit too far. But this was Eternyx . Preventing the countless villains roaming the streets from taking over required some amount of an iron fist. At least he’d let them go mostly unharmed. He was never going to kill anyone. He just wanted to scare them a little. That’s all he did, and the city was now safer because of it.

But by the time he got back to Swan Tower—or Rose Citadel, as he insisted it be called these days—the feeling hadn’t gone away. If anything, it’d only gotten worse. The real test came when a group of his employees came up to him in the hallway with something to show them.

“Jack, look!” a girl with split-dyed red and purple hair said, thrusting a tablet into his hands. Arleen was a more enthusiastic recruit who’d moved here from Carnivallium. She’d been thrilled to come to Eternyx and help the Rose dynasty pick up the pieces of The Night Swan’s empire. Why anyone would choose to come to Eternyx, Jack didn’t know. Her passion was a bit strange, if not somewhat concerning. But she served Rose Citadel well, and she fit right in.

Arleen tapped the screen and a video started to play—a video of The Maneater Club, barely an hour ago. A video of him .

“You said you were going to send a message,” Arleen said, “but I didn’t think it would get around so fast.”

Jack couldn’t help but be a bit proud of himself. In a city full of atrocities, it was hard for something to be surprising enough to go viral. He almost smiled until he looked at the footage a bit closer.

He could see the looks on the faces of a few civilians in the background. They were trembling, their eyes wide in terror as they hid behind garbage cans or ran from the scene as fast as they could. He’d seen those looks before. They were the same faces he’d seen in the crowd every week during his mother’s reign, when she would gather an audience to pluck innocents up at random and turn them into her mindless swan soldiers. These people weren’t just learning not to mess with him; they were fearing for their lives. 

Jack tried to forget it, but then the camera panned over to himself. He barely recognized the person he was looking at. His eyes glowed pink, but they also burned—burned with hunger. Burned with joy. As the witch writhed in pain being held by his magic, he wasn’t flinching. He was enjoying it. The Jack in the present stared at the recording’s eyes. A shiver ran down his spine. He knew those eyes.

“Get this away from me,” he suddenly said, pushing the tablet back into Arleen’s hands.

Arleen looked confused. “What? Don’t you wanna see how many people have seen this already?”

Jack’s stomach twisted and he felt his magic stir along with it. “I said put it away!” he snapped.

Arleen looked to her friends baffled, but then their heads all turned to the sound of heavy footsteps coming down the hall. Their eyes widened.

“Jack, I’m sorry,” Arleen said, but it was too late. From behind Arleen and her posse appeared two almost humanoid creatures—a set of hulking, horrifying monsters of vines and stone that lumbered closer at the sound of Jack’s voice and only made him feel even more sick.

“It’s alright,” Jack told the two. He tried to portray an air of confidence, but his voice quivered a bit at the sight of them “Just a disagreement. They’re fine.”

The monsters didn’t advance further, but they stayed standing there, just staring at Arleen and her friends with pitch black, empty eyes.

Jack hadn’t planned on having bodyguards besides the old rebellion members he kept in his employ. He certainly hadn’t planned on having a pair of terrifying nightmare creatures mindlessly roaming the citadel. But a few months ago, one of his most trusted agents confronted him after they’d dealt with a possible uprising. He said Jack had gone too far, that what he’d done was inhumane and no better than the things The Night Swan had done when she was alive. Jack was hurt, and he was angry. He couldn’t control his powers. The confrontation turned into a screaming match, until emotions ran too high. Jack lost it. Before he knew it, his friend was coughing up blood, rose petals coming out of his mouth. 

Jack couldn’t stop it. All he could do was watch as his skin turned gray and hardened, thorny vines sprouting through it and wrapping around his deforming body. Jack ran to his mother’s spellbook, heart pounding as he searched in vain for any kind of spell that could reverse what he’d done. By the time he realized it was hopeless, all that was left of his friend was a silent, thorn-covered monster with hollow eyes that awaited his command. When his girlfriend ran in, having heard her boyfriend’s screams, and tried to kill Jack for what he’d done, he panicked. He did the same thing to her. 

Jack couldn’t let anyone know what he’d done. He couldn’t get rid of them, either. They were hard-wired to obey his every command. Thankfully, it was easy to hide the truth. The extent of their curse made them unrecognizable. Jack could say they were magical constructs he created from nothing. All he had to do was tell anyone who asked that Blake and Liv had disappeared on a mission.

“I have to go,” Jack said. Even though Blake’s eyes were now soulless and devoid of all feeling, Jack could remember the look on his face when he’d confronted him that night. He was right. He’d gone too far. And tonight, he’d gone too far again.

When Jack started walking away, Blake and Liv’s footsteps followed him. Tears burned in his eyes. They followed him around like loyal dogs. Maybe it wasn’t to await a command, after all. Maybe it was just to remind him of what he’d done.

“Enough!” he finally shouted before he reached his bedroom. They stopped and stood at attention. “I don’t need you right now,” his voice cracked. “Just- go back to patrolling or something.”

They finally shambled away, leaving Jack to enter his room by himself and lock the door behind him. Fear and guilt welled up in his chest, taunting the magic that lived there. What did he do? What kind of a monster was he?

Truth be told, Jack’s heightened magic wasn’t the only thing that changed since his mother died. Something was happening to him. Freedom wasn’t enough for him anymore. He wanted control. He wanted what was his. And he kept finding himself getting farther and farther away from caring what he had to do to get it. 

Jack hung his coat on the back of the door and walked over to his dresser praying that something would just magically fix itself. Looking in the mirror, he finally took off the beanie he’d been wearing all day and took in his reflection. Just as he expected, the red in his hair had disappeared even more. 

A month ago, he noticed a streak of black had appeared in his hair. He tried not to worry, but then there was another. And another. Now he had to wear a hat to cover half-red and half-black hair that had to be a sign of what everyone around him was already afraid of. It must have had something to do with the spell his mother sealed away in that envelope for him. The more he caved to the dark flow, the more he changed. The more like her he became.

Jack scowled at his reflection and a crackle of power rose to the surface. His eyes flashed, and for a moment he saw his mother—the black hair, the pale, angry glower, the pink, glowing eyes. He flinched and his eyes darted down to the top of the dresser to avoid the sight. Derkes , he cursed to himself. He was going insane.

To calm his nerves, he picked up a pack of cigarettes from his dresser and ran a hand through his hair. As he lit one and moved to the balcony to take a drag, he almost laughed at it. That was just one more thing Wanderlust would kill him for if he found out about. 

Jack frowned and looked out over the city. He’d stood here with Wander a few times, watching the nighttime ecosystem from above in silence. Even in all it’s crime-ridden, life-threatening glory, it seemed almost beautiful in the moment. He missed that. He missed Wanderlust.

Speaking of which. He sighed and took another drag of his cigarette before taking his phone out of his pockets and seeing all the texts he’d missed. Scrolling through them only made him more upset. It sounded like he was missing an invitation to a movie night tonight. That would have been nice, he thought. If only he could afford the luxury of setting all this down for a few hours and popping over to Dancity to hang out with his friends like everything was normal. But even if he had the time, he couldn’t risk it. The longer any of them saw him, the closer they’d be to discovering the truth of what was going on with him. He’d rather have four friends he rarely spoke to than four friends who feared him just as much as everyone in Eternyx did.

And what about Wanderlust? Wanderlust, who’d been the only one to truly believe in him when he was still working for his mother. Who saw enough good in him to pull him out of her grasp and give him a chance to be a hero. Jack couldn’t bear to let him see what he’d made of that chance. He couldn’t crush him like that.

Brezziana had sent him twenty-five of the same “Are you coming tonight? ” texts. Wanderlust had taken to spamming him with emojis hoping that would get him to answer. Mihaly only tried once, and it was around ten minutes ago.

“hey, r u ok? if u dont answer brezz ill have to come over there myself to check on u”

Jack sighed. “Sorry, busy night,” he sent to the group chat. 

Wanderlust sent a sad face back. A few moments later, Mihaly texted him privately. 

“a likely story”

Of course Mihaly didn’t believe him. He knew he wasn’t being very convincing, but he at least hoped the three of them would play along.

“I’m fine,” he texted back. “You don’t have to come here. Trust me, you don’t want to.”

He held his breath waiting for Mihaly’s response.

“fine. but let me know and ill head right over”

Jack finally exhaled. Mihaly was a hard one to fool. It was nice to know someone had his back, but he knew it wouldn’t last. If Mihaly knew what was really keeping him away from them, they’d change their tune in an instant.

Mihaly had already been on the shuttle to Eternyx when Jack told them not to come over. If he hadn’t answered, they would have just showed up there anyway. They were still half-tempted to go even though he specifically said not to. Thankfully, they had other things they’d been meaning to do in Eternyx anyway.

The trip from Dancity to Eternyx only took a few hours. By Mihaly’s calculations, they should have had plenty of time to make it back for movie night without being too late. Still, they hurried off the starship once it reached the station and ordered a ride right away. They hadn’t been back to this verse since what happened with The Night Swan. It wasn’t that they were scared, exactly. The Night Swan was dead. Even if she wasn’t, Mihaly was never afraid of her. No, their feelings were much more complicated than that.

The taxi let them out at a dingy, old building just outside the city. Walking through Eternyx was like trying on an old dress—it brought back memories, but it just didn’t fit the same anymore. It was strange how they slipped back into autopilot keeping their head down and blending into the background. Avoiding attention was a language they’d had quite a bit of practice with.

For the first time in a long time, Mihaly climbed the stairs to the apartment at the end of the hall and took a deep breath before knocking on the door.

After a few moments, there was a series of clicks on the other side from the several locks that had to be undone and the door opened up to reveal a girl with hot pink pigtails and a yellow and purple dress.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” the girl said, crossing her arms. She popped a bubble of gum as she waited for an explanation.

“Hey Gwen,” Mihaly said. “How’s it going?”

“Better than it was when you were last in the verse.”

Mihaly frowned. They didn’t need a reminder of what they’d done under The Night Swan’s control. They certainly didn’t need their ex blaming them for it, either.

“I’m messing with you,” Gwen laughed, but she still stood in the doorway. “Just cut to the chase. Why are you here?”

“To pick up the rest of my stuff,” they admitted.

“Of course you are,” Gwen smirked. She stepped back and gestured for Mihaly to come in. “Traveler forbid you just come to say hi.”

“I can say hi over the phone!”

“And yet you don’t do that either.”

Mihaly rolled their eyes as they came in. They know Gwen was just bickering for fun. Still, it was slightly sad that the two of them didn’t talk anymore. Mihaly had been a very different person when they lived here. They had more of the cunning and vengeful streak that fit in with Eternyx. Sometime during their training with Master Panda, they’d outgrown all that. 

“Really, though,” Mihaly asked, “are you okay? I didn’t see you at the battle.” The two of them may have grown apart, but Mihaly still cared about them.

“Oh, I was there,” Gwen said. “I was in Jack’s rebellion for a little bit, actually. I knew you’d never work for The Night Swan on purpose . Even before you became a goody-two-shoes, you’d never stoop that low.”

“Thank you?” Mihaly wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or not.

Gwen laughed. “But yeah, I’m okay. I was never in her army. Anyway, your stuff is in your old room. I had a roommate just move out, so it’s been a storage room for a bit.” She waved Mihaly in the direction of the hallway. “Help yourself. I’d say don’t steal my stuff, but it’s probably against your magic Floworld panda religion or something now.”

Mihaly scowled and Gwen just laughed. 

“I’m gonna take all your jewelry!” they called as they headed to their old room.

“Don’t you dare!”

Just as Gwen said, Mihaly’s old room was full of boxes. They’d only lived in Eternyx for about a year before meeting Master Panda and changing their relationship with The Flow, but it still felt like an important phase of their life. They spent a lot of time in this room, practicing their abilities and plotting for what they would do when they were strong enough. Swan Tower was visible in the distance from their window. It was strange how hard they’d fought for her attention. 

Even now, it bothered them. All they wanted when they were younger was for The Night Swan to notice them. They’d come here to find her. They trained night after night, trying to build their power to even a fraction of hers. They were so sure they could do it. If they just tried harder, if they just kept working, they could be perfect for her.

They were glad that they gave up that quest, of course. They were proud of themself for turning toward the light before they went too far down a bad path. But now, The Night Swan had seen them. She wanted them, even if it was only for her twisted mind-controlled army. Why now? Why weren’t they good enough for her before?

Two boxes of Mihaly’s old things sat in the corner of the room. They’d left in a hurry when they broke up with Gwen and left Eternyx to train with Master Panda. They only grabbed the essentials, so quite a bit was left behind. Opening up the first box, they sifted through old clothes they’d almost forgotten about. Most were definitely more of their old Eternian-adjacent style, but some they could still work with. 

What they were really looking for was at the bottom of the second box. Wrapped in an old t-shirt under a stack of journals was a polished metal pin, something they never once wore but kept around anyway. Mihaly had a complicated relationship with the past. They were supposed to leave it behind them, but they weren’t supposed to run away from it. That made perfect sense to Master Panda, of course. But to Mihaly, it was a paradox. That’s why they never knew what to do with the pin. They’d just kept it in the old Eternyx apartment, just in case.

But now, they’d made up their mind. After being under The Night Swan’s control, they knew they wanted to say goodbye to who they used to be for good this time. 

There was a small forest just ten minutes away from the apartment. Mihaly brought a shovel out there and dug a pit underneath the oldest-looking tree they could find. Then they tossed the pin inside, filled it back up, and hopped another ship back to Dancity.

Sara had grown to appreciate her mundane world. Heading back home to her apartment after class, even taking the bus amongst a dozen tired, grumpy strangers felt special. It was certainly better than things were a year ago, at least.

When Sara was finishing her undergrad, she thought she knew everything. She was an adult, after all. She’d seen a fair amount of the world and thought she’d at least heard of everything in it. It wasn’t until a blue-skinned magical prince from a video game popped out of her TV and dragged her into the danceverses that all of that changed. The world of Just Dance was incredible—infinite planets of bright colors and extraordinary magic, filled to the brim with so many beautiful places to see and interesting people to meet. Even with the challenge of taking down an evil witch, everything seemed possible. 

But when she had to return home to Earth, part of her heart had stayed behind with Wanderlust and the others. Though she loved her friends at college and the life she had before, the world around her just paled in comparison to the vibrance of the Danceverses. Here, everything was neutral tones, boring streets, and complicated feelings. She missed how simple things were in Just Dance. How happy she’d been. Aside from the times she’d talk to Wanderlust through the TV, she couldn’t be satisfied in the world she came from. It just wasn’t the same.

Her friends thought she was ridiculous, of course. She couldn’t tell them what happened to her, so all they saw was a college senior obsessed with a children’s game. They were nice about it, but they didn’t understand why she was so fixated with checking for news on the next game, the newest map, the latest coach. And how could they? Sara would think it was crazy, too, if she didn’t know all those characters were actually real . Earth was her home. But at that point, she felt more like she belonged in the danceverses than anywhere on Earth.

So when Wanderlust offered to bring her back, she immediately jumped at the opportunity. She jumped so fast, however, that she didn’t realize it wasn’t Wanderlust at all. The celebration barely lasted a minute before she realized it was a trick by The Night Swan. Before she knew it, she was trying to fight off a powerful spell. She couldn’t even remember how long she fought before she lost.

When she woke back up in the middle of a riot at Swan Tower, surrounded by people she’d hurt and filled with ghostly memories of things she’d done without her control, she was terrified. All the novelty of her dream world had worn off, and all she could see was a nightmare trap she’d been dumb enough to let herself fall into. When Wanderlust opened a portal to send her back home, she couldn’t wait to go through.

Ever since, she’d been happy to stay in her boring little apartment where she belonged. Being back took some adjustment, including an awful lot of explaining for her whereabouts for the past couple years. She told her friends she’d been in another country without cell service. That was ridiculous, of course, but what were they going to do about it? It wasn’t like they were going to guess the truth.

After enrolling in grad school, she tried to forget about Just Dance. That proved to be much easier said than done, though—especially when Wanderlust insisted on calling her through a portal several times a week. She knew she should tell him to stop, but she just couldn’t. As terrified as she was of the danceverses, she couldn’t be scared of him. He was delightful!

No, she couldn’t forget her friends. Wanderlust would arrange for her to chat with as many of them as he could, and she was always grateful. Like tonight, they even had a few little movie nights.

“Hey Sara!” Wander called through the TV just as she was setting herself up on the couch with a blanket and some popcorn. She’d finally started to get used to him opening up portals out of nowhere with zero warning.

“Hi! Is everyone there?”

Mihaly and Brezziana slid into frame and waved at her.

“Everyone except Jack,” Brezziana said.

Sara frowned. She didn’t think she’d heard from Jack more than once or twice since what happened in Eternyx. “How is he?” she asked.

“Broody, dramatic,” Wanderlust said. “So… perfectly normal.”

Sara laughed a little. 

“I made brownies!” Mihaly said. They held a container out to Wanderlust and he grabbed one before sticking his hand through the portal and offering it to Sara. Sara almost flinched. Even though she was sure it was really Wanderlust this time, she was hesitant to accept anything from through a portal.

Still, she grabbed it and took a bite. “Wow,” she said through a mouthful. Even the flavors in the danceverses were bolder than the ones on Earth. She missed that. “These are so good.”

“There’s more where that came from if you come visit,” Wanderlust teased. He was joking, but Sara knew it wasn’t entirely a joke. He asked her to visit all the time, and she always turned him down. After what happened last time, she wouldn’t dare to set foot in the Danceverses again.

“Maybe you should come visit me,” she teased back.

“Okay!” Wander said with a mischievous smile. He suddenly started running full-force at the portal. 

The others immediately started yelling at him. “Nonono!” Brezziana cried, and Mihaly tackled him to the ground just in time. They scowled and Wander just dissolved into laughter.

“I wasn’t actually going to do it! ” He insisted.

Sara just shook her head with a smile. Maybe she would be okay with her friends coming to hang out with her in the real world, but it was impossible. There was no magic on Earth. If Wanderlust passed fully through the portal, he wouldn’t be able to make a new one back. Besides, Wander was a deity. He was practically made of magic. What if coming to a world without it would kill him? It wasn’t worth the risk.

“Well I’m just going to stay here until the portal closes just in case,” Mihaly said from on top of Wanderlust. Wanderlust attempted to free himself and a wrestling match quickly ensued.

“Hey!” Brezziana shouted when Mihaly’s elbow somehow jabbed her in the back. “We’re here to watch a movie!”

Brezziana was pulled into the tussle. Sara just laughed, watching from the other side of a threshold she was too afraid to cross. It was fun, but she couldn’t help but feel alienated.

Still, the four of them eventually managed to get the movie started and settle down. For part of the night, at least, it felt like Sara’s friends were really in the room with her. When it was time to say goodnight, the three in Dancity thanked her for showing up and Wanderlust promised to see her again soon. If only cell phones could work across dimensions.

After turning off the TV and heading back to her bedroom for the night, Sara checked her phone for any messages from her real-world friends. As it turned out, she’d missed quite a few. Aside from homework questions and a bit of gossip, there was a text from one of her friends with a link attached. “I assume you’ve seen this already, but just in case,” the message said. 

It was an article about Just Dance. Since all her friends knew how overly invested she was in the game, they’d send her anything about it they happened to come across. Most of the time, it felt like salt on an old wound. But this time, it was a good thing. She somehow hadn’t seen this article. It was a business update about the company who made the game. Apparently, the president of Just Dance’s team had suddenly stepped down. A short video announced their replacement.

Sara hit play and watched as a sharply-dressed woman with long black hair and perfectly-manicured nails took the stage. Something was wrong. Sara couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but the woman looked… oddly familiar.

“Meet the new director of Just Dance,” the announcer said as the woman smiled for the camera. “Leda Nox.”

Chapter Text

Wanderlust was going to do it this time. He was going to get it right. 

He’d learned from the last training session with his dad, he thought. He could connect with the flow now, so he had to be able to capture it. He was ready.

There was a knock at the door, and Wanderlust nodded to himself in the mirror. He could do it. “Come in!” He called. 

In walked his dad to start their daily training session. But this time, he wasn’t alone.

“Oh, hi mom,” Wander said with a bit of confusion as his mother followed her husband into the room. “Come to watch?”

It was then that he noticed the looks on their faces. They seemed a bit troubled.

His mother shook her head. “Wanderlust, we have to talk.”

Uh oh. That never meant anything good.

“I swear it was like that before I touched it!” He said. He wasn’t sure what he was talking about exactly, but he had to have broken something, and that was usually worth a try.

His dad sighed. “No, you didn’t break anything,” he said, and then his eyes narrowed. “That we know of…”

“Nope!” Wander quickly recovered. “Nothing!”

His mother sighed. “Wander, we told you to be careful with your portals to Earth.”

Wander blinked. That certainly wasn’t what he was expecting. “I am careful,” he said. “I promise!”

“You said you would only use them to talk to Sara.”

“I have!” He insisted. The only place he’d ever crossed dimensions to was Sara’s TV. Even if he were allowed to, where else would he go? 

“Wanderlust,” his dad warned him, “don’t lie to your mother.”

Wander’s heart sank. He hated the disappointment in his dad’s voice, even though he knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. “I’m not lying!”

His mother raised an eyebrow. “You have to be. Who else could be opening unstable portals? Your father certainly isn’t.”

This was the first Wander was hearing of any of this. “Unstable portals??” He repeated.

His parents glances at each other and had a conversation with their eyes he couldn’t begin to decipher. Finally, his mother sighed. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am! What’s going on?”

If anything, clearing his name only seemed to make his parents more concerned.

“Something is happening in between the danceverses and Earth,” his father explained. “People have gone missing, and others are showing up who aren’t from here. They look like danceverse citizens, but say that isn’t what they used to look like. Apparently, they were sucked through portals and wound up here. And when they describe the world they came from, it sounds like Earth.”

Wanderlust’s eyes widened. As far as he knew, Sara was the only person from Earth to travel into the danceverses. Something like this was unheard of. “So people are being kidnapped?”

“We don’t think its purposeful,” his mother said. “Not entirely, at least. It sounds like these portals just opened up out of nowhere and pulled in whoever was nearby.”

“But how can a portal open by itself?”

“I’m not sure,” his father said. “Typically, it doesn’t. But this isn’t the only strange thing going on. There’s a town in Sun Horizon that’s losing its color. Beyond a certain point, everything is suddenly faded and the flow is weak. It’s becoming like Earth.”

“We thought these were separate incidents,” his mother sighed. “But if you aren’t opening these portals, and neither is your father…”

“The divide between our world and Earth must be broken,” his father finished.

Wanderlust didn’t know what to make of that. What did that mean? Were the Danceverses dying? Was every planet going to become like that town in Sun Horizon? How could this happen? Was it because of him?

“I’ve been talking to Sara a lot,” Wander said. He didn’t want to know the answer, but he had to ask. “Did I weaken it?”

“I don’t think so,” his father said. “Not if you’re still following the rules I told you. It should be safe.”

Wander let out a quick sigh of relief, but that only solved a little of the stress. “Well how do we fix it then?” he asked.

His parents looked at each other, exchanging another quick conversation. Even though he couldn’t tell what they were saying, it worried him.

“Well…” his father said in the tone of voice that meant he was just trying to avoid saying ‘I don’t know’. “We’re going to figure that out. Nothing like this has happened before. But we’ll look into it, and we’ll sort it out. Don’t worry.”

Of course, Wanderlust was going to worry. The fate of the Danceverses was at stake. Did a threat this big mean it was time for him to go about his destiny? He still hadn’t earned back his crown! How would the world protect itself without a real chosen one?

“Can I do anything?” Wander asked. 

“Not right now,” his mother said. “But we’ll let you know.”

Wanderlust’s heart sank a little. There was supposed to be something he could do. He was supposed to be in the room with them, investigating and solving any threats to his world. This should have been his problem too. But his parents didn’t trust him to take it on. Would things have been different if he had his powers back under control? If he still had his crown?

“We’ll have to skip training for today,” his father said. “Your mother and I have a lot of work to do. You keep practicing, though. You’ve been doing great.”

His father smiled at him, and he gave a half-hearted smile back. “I will,” he said. “Good luck.”

After his parents left, Wanderlust just sighed. He didn’t have the heart to practice. What was the point, if he wasn’t even going to put his powers to use in a situation like this?

Setting his fake crown on the dresser and laying back down on his bed, he raised his arms to open a portal to Jack. That was always his first instinct when he was feeling down. What better distraction was there? But before he summoned his power, he reconsidered and put his arms back down. Jack was probably busy. He was always busy, and he didn’t want Wanderlust surprising him anyway. He shouldn’t just show up. Not unless he was going to text first, and he didn’t have time to wait for a response he probably wasn’t going to get.

Thinking about it only made him feel worse, so he quickly moved down to the next contact on his list. He sparked up his power and felt the crackle of shifting dimensions as he opened a portal to Sara’s living room.

“Helloooo?” He called.

From somewhere else in the apartment, Sara’s voice came in. “Wanderlust!” She ran into view. “There you are!”

Wander laughed, the pressure finally lifting off his chest. “Where else would I be?”

Sara didn’t look as happy to see him as usual, though. She looked kind of frazzled.

“Something might be wrong,” she said.

Wanderlust’s smile quickly faded. “What?”

“There was an announcement the other day,” Sara said. “About your game—the person in charge stepped down.”

Wanderlust nodded, trying to keep up. The idea of his whole world existing inside a video game was strange, but there were stranger things out there. Reality was relative anyway, right? Maybe Sara’s world was a video game to someone else. It was best to just go along with it.

“Which isn’t too weird, I guess,” Sara continued. “But there was a video of the new director. And she looks familiar. Like, Night Swan familiar.”

Wanderlust sat up. “What?”

“I know! But I swear, it looked just like her!”

“That’s- literally impossible.”

“I mean, it looked like an Earth version of her, but still! Give her the white skin and the crazy-colored eyes and it’s her.”

The Night Swan couldn’t be on Earth. Nobody from the danceverses had ever been to Earth before. It was too dangerous to risk getting trapped there. Even if that weren’t true, The Night Swan was dead. Wanderlust saw her body himself. 

“Does she have an identical twin sister you never told me about?” Sara asked. “Someone named Leda Nox?”

Leda Nox. Wander shook his head, the fear setting in. That had to be her. “Leda Nox is The Night Swan’s real name.” 

Sara looked even more scared. “But- how? ”

“I don’t know.”

Wanderlust desperately searched for an explanation. He couldn’t come up with one, but he did realize something else. “People from Earth have been showing up here and people from here have been disappearing. She’s the only other one we know can open portals,” he said.

Sara’s eyes widened. “People are disappearing? ” she repeated.

“Yeah. And Night Swan must have something to do with it.”

“Oh man,” Sara shivered. “What do we do? It’s not like I can go track her down myself.”

“Definitely not,” Wander said quickly. After what happened last time, no one was going after The Night Swan unless the five of them were together. “Unless we could come with you.”

“You can’t, though. You’ll get stuck,” Sara said, but the gears were already turning in Wander’s head. He’d thought about traveling to Earth before—a lot, actually. Everything in the danceverses was so complicated these days. There was so much he had to do and he didn’t even have the tools to do it. For once, he’d like to be somewhere where everyone wasn’t counting on him all the time. Even if he could never come back home, maybe it would be worth it to go to Earth. Maybe.

But if The Night Swan was there, that changed things. “I might not,” he said. “Night Swan would never go to a world without magic. And if she managed to take over Just Dance, she had to have used some magic on people to make it happen.”

“So… there has to be magic here.”

“Exactly.”

Sara frowned. “I don’t know, Wander, that still sounds like a big gamble.”

“Not a big gamble,” he insisted. It made sense, didn’t it? Whatever The Night Swan was planning, she’d never do it if it didn’t involve magic. If there was enough magic in Sara’s universe for her, there had to be enough to open a portal back home. “Here, I’ll try it.”

“Wanderlust, don’t,” Sara urged him. But Wander was nothing if not a man of impulse. He closed the portal above his head and opened a new one in the middle of the room, big enough for a person to fit through. He reached his hand through and watched the visual style of it change as it passed into the other world.

“Give me a hand here?” He smiled. Sara crossed her arms. “Fine,” she groaned. Gathering his courage, he held his breath and stepped through.

For the first time, Wanderlust saw the rest of Sara’s living room. “Woah,” he said as he looked around and dingy white walls and plain brown furniture. “This place is boring.”

Luckily, Sara didn’t seem to hear the comment. She was too busy staring at Wanderlust with her jaw wide open.

“This is crazy,” she said. “Look at you!”

Wander looked down. Sure enough, his clothes had changed from his bright purple princely outfit into a simpler, duller shirt and shorts. Even his skin had changed color. He fit right in with the strange world around him.

Sara was horrified, but Wanderlust just laughed and closed the portal behind him. This opened up a whole new world of possibilities—literally. 

“Go back,” Sara said. “If you’re stuck here forever, I’m never going to forgive myself.”

“Okay, okay,” Wander chuckled. “It wouldn’t be your fault, anyway. I accept full responsibility.”

Still, he turned back to the TV and concentrated. Turning his attention to the familiar humming through his body, he smiled. His connection to the flow was still there—weakened, but still there. He could feel the tension in the air relax when the portal opened.

“Oh thank God,” Sara sighed.

Wanderlust shrugged it off as if he hadn’t been worried. “See? I told you,” he smirked before climbing back in.

“So I guess we are gonna have to investigate here, then,” Sara said. “Can you bring your parents?”

Wander probably should have said yes. But after that conversation, he felt like he needed to do this without them. He could show them he and his friends could handle this on their own. Maybe it would even earn him back his crown.

“They’re busy,” he said instead. “But I’ll gather Brezziana, Mihaly, and Jack.”

Sara frowned. “Jack isn’t going to like this,” she said.

She was right. It was hard enough for Jack to deal with his mother being dead. Wander didn’t want to put him through the roller coaster of finding out she was suddenly back. Besides, he had enough on his plate. The poor man deserved a break from constantly having to save the world.

“We don’t have to tell him what happened,” Wander said. “At least, not yet? I‘ll tell him it’s just a trip to see you. We’ll investigate, and then once we know what’s going on, we’ll tell him.”

“I don’t know… we shouldn’t lie to him.”

“It’s not a lie. We’re visiting you. We just… have other things to do while we’re there. I don’t want to worry him.”

“Alright,” Sara sighed. “But we’ll tell him as soon as we know how Night Swan got there. Deal?”

“Deal,” Wander smiled. He was already coming up with a list of things to pack. This was going to be quite the vacation.

Chapter Text

Being the ruler of Eternyx was an endless cycle of putting out fires. In a world accustomed to villainy, keeping the peace was even harder than Jack had imagined. He could barely keep up with all the things he had to do to reverse the damage his mother did to the danceverse. Even if he could, it wouldn’t be enough for him. He couldn’t just fix The Night Swan’s mistakes. He had to be better than she was. He had to improve things.

He’d been working on several ways to improve things all day, it seemed like, and things were still the same.

“Next week isn’t soon enough,” he huffed to the man over the phone.

“I’m sorry, sir. We just have too many other projects right now.”

“Then delay them. Cancel them. I don’t care. This project needed to be started ages ago.”

There was a moment of silence over the line. Jack knew that silence. The contractor was considering his next move, trying to decide if sticking to his schedule was worth angering the king of Eternyx. He knew what happened when people crossed the last ruler. 

Sure enough, he didn’t want to take his chances. “I understand,” he finally said. “My apologies. The demolition will begin tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Jack said, a slight bit of weight lifted off his chest. He’d been trying to have one of The Night Swan’s old minion barracks torn down for months now. After the swan soldiers were freed, countless citizens were left without jobs, homes, or families. Few of them could return right back to the lives they had before. Jack had plans to build a shelter to help alleviate a bit of that, and he was done being patient.

With at least one fire finally put out, he hung up the phone and slouched back in his chair with a sigh. He needed a break. But instead of a break, he got a knock at his door.

“What now?” he groaned under his breath before sitting up straight and calling for his guest to come in.

One of his shyer recruits opened the door and poked their head in, almost as if they were afraid to step inside. “Excuse me sir,” they said. “Sorry to interrupt, but the inventor is here.”

“Oh,” Jack blinked. “I assumed he wasn’t coming. Didn’t I ask him to be here hours ago?”

They just shrugged. Jack let it go and got up to follow. He should’ve known better than to expect Eternyx’s most eccentric engineer to ever be on time, anyway.

To his dismay, Jack was escorted to the throne room. He’d told his employees several times that he didn’t want to make any use of the room where his mother used to take people prisoner and conduct her terrible business, but they always ended up taking guests there anyway.

The recruit left him and scurried off. When Jack entered the room from behind The Night Swan’s old throne, Cygnus was already standing in front of it waiting, Blake and Liv standing at attention against the wall watching him.

“There you are!” Cygnus said, as if he was the one who was late. “You called?”

“I did,” Jack nodded. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the inventor. It might not have been since the battle where his mother died. He’d been a great help during the rebellion, but after that, Jack had lost track of him. “How are you?”

If Cygnus was feeling the same sentimentality, he didn’t show it. “Oh I’m just fine,” he smiled. “Got my old shop back now that there aren’t swan soldiers infesting the streets. It’s been lovely.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“You must not be doing so well, though, are you? If you’re calling me for support.”

Jack straightened his back and forced a neutral expression. He wasn’t exactly wrong. Setting a clear reputation for himself as a ruler had settled down some of the attempted uprisings, but he was still constantly under threat. There were too many people in this city who wanted the throne. But he couldn’t admit that.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said instead. “Things have been fine. We just figured we should have some extra security in the tower. The Night Swan’s method of defense was brainwashed soldiers, so we need to come up with something just as effective. Since you’re better with technology than anyone I know, I thought you’d be the best one to call for developing an ethical replacement.”

“Ah, I see.” Cygnus was still smiling, although it seemed a bit more amused now. “Well I’m honored to be your first choice. But no.”

With that, Cygnus nodded and turned to leave.

For a moment, Jack just stood there, dumbfounded.

“Wait- what? ” he finally blurted, stopping the inventor in his tracks. “No? This is- I’m offering you the chance to fully upgrade The Rose Citadel! And I’ll pay- very well, too! Isn’t this right up your alley?”

“Normally, it would be,” Cygnus shrugged. “I designed Swan Tower in the first place, after all. It’d be wonderful to fix the place up to my new standards. But I’m not interested.”

He said it so flippantly that it felt like an insult. Jack was quickly getting over his surprise, and what came in its place was anger. “Why not? ” he snapped.

Cygnus’s smile finally faded a bit. For once, it seemed like he was choosing his next words carefully—a hint of that familiar fearful silence Jack was so used to. He never thought he’d get it from Cygnus.

“The Swan Empire, the Rose Dynasty, whatever you want to call it,” Cygnus said, his tone oddly serious. “I don’t want any part of it anymore.”

Jack froze. “What? ”

“I’m not interested in doing business with you,” Cygnus simply repeated before continuing on his way out the room.

“Wh- stop! ” Jack commanded, and Cygnus obliged. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m afraid I’m not sure how to put it any clearer, really.”

“This is not the Swan Empire. I saved everybody from that! This is the new, better version of Eternyx! And I’m offering for you to invent something—which you never say no to. This is what you’re all about! Why wouldn’t you want to do it?”

“I’ve learned my lesson, Jack. As tempting as it is, I have to start being more careful with the clients I take on. Enabling corruption simply isn’t worth it anymore. Not when I know the pain it will eventually cause.”

Jack’s shock was slowly being overshadowed by a strange heartbreak. “ Corruption? ” 

“Yes.”

“I’m not corrupt. I’m fixing Eternyx!”

Cygnus let out a laugh. “If I had a nickel for every time I’d heard that,” he said, and Jack finally understood. This was about his mother. But after everything they’d been through to take down her rule, how could he be comparing him to her?

“I am not my mother,” Jack scowled, raising his voice to drown out the doubt bubbling up inside.

“No, but you have to admit some of your methods so far have been questionable. I mean, we all saw what you did to those two witches at the Maneater Club the other day. It certainly wasn’t something that prince of yours would have approved of.”

“Don’t bring him into this,” Jack growled. Cygnus was right, of course. Jack knew what he’d done had been a bit much. And if Wanderlust knew about it, he’d be horrified.

“I’m just saying,” Cygnus smiled, “You make a fine Eternian ruler. It’s not something I want to be a part of, but I’m sure your mother would be proud of you.”

“That’s enough!”

Blake and Liv moved to flank Jack as his anger summoned electricity to jump between his fingertips. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and his restless magic stirring beneath his skin. How dare he? After all Jack had been through, after all he’d helped him through-

“Ooh, look at these two,” Cygnus said, focusing his lone eye on the stone creature that used to be Blake and tilting his head in curiosity. “You’ve even created your own bodyguards. I’m not a fan of magic, of course, but this is very impressive.”

Jack wasn’t letting him change the subject. “I am nothing like her!” he shouted, the back of his throat burning. He put a hand on the throne behind him to steady himself against the crackling magic ricocheting inside him. This needed to end. He didn’t know how long he could hold the power back, but part of him didn’t want to. “You know I’m nothing like her! She was a tyrant! She enslaved thousands of people! I’m trying to help this world! How is that anything like her?!”

Cygnus continued examining Blake with his mechanical eye before raising an eyebrow and meeting Jack’s gaze for a brief moment. “Well clearly, you’ve already taken two people under your control,” he said. “I can only assume an army is next. Turning innocent people into thorn-covered living statues isn’t much better than swan soldiers, Jack.”

Jack lost it. At the mention of swan soldiers, the guilt and fear he’d been trying to bury gave a last forceful shove at his heart and pushed all the anger into action.

“You TRAITOR! ” he screamed. The lightning burst out of his control, scattering wildly around the room and momentarily shorting out the lights overhead. Jack watched Cygnus’s face finally turn to real and proper fear as he stormed down the steps of the throne and grabbed him by the coat, his fingers leaving scorch marks in the leather.

“Jack-”

Jack shoved him back. He fell, and at first Jack thought he’d tripped over his own feet. But then he realized something else was happening. The untamed electricity in his hands had turned to black smoke, spilling across the floor and surrounding the inventor. Cygnus tried to turn away from it, but it poured into his mouth and down his lungs.

Black veins trickled along Cygnus’s neck and on to the rest of his body. He screamed a horrible scream and clutched his hands to his chest—hands that were twitching and twisting into long, black claws. Bones cracked and his body contorted as the shape of him became less and less human. Some little voice inside of Jack enjoyed this—giving him what he deserved—but the rest of him was horrified. He stumbled back as if that would help, but whatever was happening only got worse. 

Cygnus’s screaming suddenly morphed into screeching as his face followed suit. His eye went solid black and his mouth shifted and hardened into a twisted sort of beak. It should have clicked by then, but it didn’t until the next development— sharp, black feathers sprouting on Cygnus’s face and across his body. One of his arms bent into a misshapen, partially formed wing, and an image suddenly flashed in Jack’s mind—Just months ago, watching as The Night Swan plucked random citizens out of the crowd to turn into her soldiers. They’d scream and scream as their bodies twisted into monstrous shapes, only barely hidden by the clouds of black smoke. Jack was doing that. He was turning Cygnus into a swan soldier.

“No! No, nononono-” Jack backed up so fast he tripped on one of the steps and smacked the back of his head into the base of his mother’s throne. He didn’t even register the pain over the pounding in his chest and the horror of what he’d done. Sitting back up, the smoke had cleared. Cygnus was still screeching in earsplitting, birdlike sounds, but the transformation had stopped.

Breath quivering, Jack got back to his feet and hesitantly stepped closer. This wasn’t like his mother’s spell. The metamorphosis had been much more violent and ugly than hers, and it hadn’t even finished. When Jack fell, it must have been cut short. Cygnus was stuck somewhere in-between man and monster, a grotesque creature of haphazard feathers and deformed avian features mixed with a distorted human frame. Jack could hardly breathe. Watching Cygnus take in what happened to him, he could feel the lingering magic dance a victory lap across his skin. He did that. He did that. This had to be a dream.

“Cygnus…” Jack said softly, inching closer. He didn’t know what to say. “I… I’m-”

Cygnus finally looked away from his own body to see Jack coming toward him and immediately moved back, an awful sight as he struggled to use the anatomy of his new form. Even with barely human features, the terror on his face was gut-wrenching. 

“Cygnus, I’m sorry,” Jack said. This couldn’t be real. If it was real, he had no idea how to fix it. If he couldn’t reverse what he’d done to Blake and Liv, he certainly couldn’t reverse this.

Cygnus screeched back. He jumped, registering a new horror, then opened his mouth to speak again. Only bird-like cries came out. He went into a panic all over again. He couldn’t speak.

Even though the only people in the room were him, Cygnus, and the cursed Blake and Liv, it suddenly felt like Jack had a million eyes on him seeing what he’d done. Cygnus was right. He’d done the unspeakable. He was just like his mother.

Cygnus stumbled to his feet and started hobbling toward the door. Amongst the guilt, Jack was finally hit by the realization of what this would mean. People would know what he’d done. Blake and Liv were unrecognizable in their stone golem forms, but Cygnus was still human enough to identify.

Jack stepped closer again. “Cygnus, please,” he begged softly. “Just- hold on, we’ll figure something out.”

But Cygnus didn’t stop. He only moved faster as he adjusted to his changed legs.

“Cygnus!”

Cygnus was about to reach the door. Jack couldn’t blame him for trying to run. But he couldn’t let him go, either. He bit the bullet and cast one more quick spell, summoning a magical glowing wall in front of the door. Cygnus screamed again and tried to reach through it, but it was no use.

Jack approached him once more, followed by Blake and Liv shambling after him. “Cygnus, please,” he tried one more time. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just- I can’t let anyone find out about this.”

Cygnus finally gave up on the door, only to whip around and slash his newly-formed claws at Jack’s chest. Jack jumped back just in time, but Cygnus wasn’t giving up. Again, Jack couldn’t blame him. But it didn’t matter. Before he could get in a hit, Blake and Liv each grabbed one of Cygnus’s arms and held him back kicking and screaming.

They looked to Jack for orders. He didn’t want to give orders. He wanted to cry. But after a brief moment of choking back tears, he forced himself to get back to business. He couldn’t reverse this. So he had to react to it.

He exhaled and turned away, walking back toward the throne. “Take him to a cell,” he finally ordered, no emotion in his tone. “A spacious one. But far away from anyone else. Nobody goes in or out of that area except you two or me.”

Wordlessly, Blake and Liv began to carry a screeching Cygnus down a hidden passageway to the holding cells in the basement. Jack wiped his eyes and swallowed his feelings before walking out the way he came, his head held high all the way up to his room. Once he was there, he checked to make sure nobody was coming, locked the door behind him, and burst into tears.

Or, he would have burst into tears, if a certain prince’s voice suddenly piping up from behind him didn’t make him scream instead.

“There you are!” Wanderlust smiled, hopping off of Jack’s bed. “I’ve been waiting for like ten minutes.”

“Wander-!” Jack tugged his beanie tighter over his head, just in case. He met Wander’s smile with a furious glare. “What are you doing here?!”

Wanderlust’s smile faded a little, but his insultingly cheerful attitude was unbreakable. “I swear I tried texting you,” he said, “but you didn’t respond and I needed to talk to you.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just break into my room!”

“Opening a portal isn’t breaking anything,” Wander teased, but he quickly noticed Jack wasn’t in the mood to play along. “What’s wrong?” he frowned.

“Nothing,” Jack said. He tried to force a neutral expression so the lie could be at least slightly convincing, but his face wouldn’t cooperate. Even his hands were still shaking.

Wanderlust stepped closer and Jack braced himself as if closing the distance would let him see something he wasn’t supposed to. “It really doesn’t seem like nothing,” Wander said. “You kind of look like you’re about to cry. Really, what happened?”

“Just- don’t worry about it.” Jack pushed past Wanderlust to the other side of the room where he could turn away from him and look in the mirror. Sure enough, his eyes were a bit glassy and he just couldn’t wipe the rest of the terror off his face. But he only worried about that for a moment before he noticed something worse. The bit of his hair by his ears that was visible beneath the hat wasn’t red anymore. Even his eyebrows had turned strangely dark. His heart skipped a beat and he quickly tugged down the sides of the beanie again, but it still couldn’t cover it completely. Wanderlust had to leave.

“Jack,” Wanderlust sighed. His voice had lowered to that soft tone he used when he was worried about him—a voice Jack heard often these days. It was sweet that he cared, but right now, Jack really didn’t want to hear it. “You know you can tell me anything. I mean- even if it’s top secret king-of-Eternyx stuff, you know I tell you all about all the secret prince stuff I’m not supposed to tell you. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Just drop it!” Jack snapped. Wanderlust frowned and he looked almost deflated, like a puppy being scolded. Jack felt terrible. 

“Okay,” Wander said quietly. “I’m sorry. I do need to talk to you, though.”

Avoiding eye contact, Jack crossed his arms. “What is it?” he asked more calmly. 

“I portaled to Earth.”

The attempted calm didn’t last long. “You what?!”

“I know-”

“Are you insane?! You could’ve gotten stuck there! What were you thinking?!”

“I didn’t get stuck there, though! That’s the point!”

“But you could have!” 

“But I didn’t!” Wander insisted. “And it’s not like you can go back in time and stop me from trying it, so there’s no use in worrying about it right now. Okay?”

“Whatever,” Jack grumbled. As much as the idea of Wanderlust being trapped in another dimension forever terrified him, he didn’t want to start another argument. Besides, he was right. What was scolding him going to do when he’d already done it?

“The point is,” Wanderlust continued, “I can get there and back. Which means we’re taking a vacation!”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “We?” he repeated.

“Me, Brezziana, Mihaly, and you.”

“You guys have fun, but I can’t take a vacation,” Jack said. Eternyx was constantly threatening to tear itself apart. It needed him there to keep the peace. Even if he could leave someone else in charge for a bit, he was keeping his distance from his friends for a reason. He couldn’t risk them finding out what was happening to him.

“Come on,” Wander whined. “It’s Earth! ” Aren’t you curious? And—I won’t make you tell me anything, but I know you’re stressed out. I think you need a break. Maybe things will be better after you’ve gotten away for a bit to clear your head.”

Jack sighed. He’d love to leave his duties behind for a few days. He’d love to see Earth and he’d love to hang out with his friends. But it just wasn’t that simple.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I have too much to do.”

“Just… think about it? Everyone really wants you to be there. I really want you to be there.”

Pulling the boyfriend card (boyfriend? Were they boyfriends? Jack didn’t know what the qualifications were for that) shouldn’t have worked on him, but it never failed to tug at his heartstrings. Jack knew he wasn’t good enough for Wanderlust. Especially now, he was getting worse and worse for him every day. But he couldn’t silence the part of him that sang every time Wander looked his way. He wanted to be there with him. He wanted Wanderlust at his side, no matter how wicked of a person he may or may not be becoming. It was greedy and selfish. The more he thought about being with Wanderlust, the more he knew he shouldn’t be. But he couldn’t stop himself.

“I’ll think about it,” Jack said, mostly just to humor him. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

That big, beautiful smile popped back onto Wanderlust’s face and the corner of Jack’s mouth quirked up in response. “Yes! ” he cheered. “I’ll be back in two days to pick you up.”

“If I decide to go,” Jack corrected him.

“Yeah, yeah, if you decide to go. This is gonna be amazing, I promise!”

Jack laughed a little at his enthusiasm. Watching Wander practically vibrate with excitement like a dog about to go to the park was almost enough to make him forget what had happened just before. Almost.

“We’ll see,” Jack said. “But if you’ll excuse me, I really do have things to do.”

“Right,” Wander nodded. “Sorry. I’ll leave you alone now, I swear. Just make sure you’re ready. And pack a swimsuit! I assume they have beaches there? Or at least a pool. I should’ve asked Sara.”

Jack smiled-and-nodded through a whole list of things to pack while Wanderlust continued rambling all the way through the portal back to his room.

“I’ll see you soon,” Jack finally said when Wander was back where he belonged.

“Yeah,” Wander smiled. “See you soon.”

The portal closed, and Jack finally broke down.

The tears fell almost immediately. He tried to muffle his sobbing, but he couldn’t help it. Cygnus’s mangled, mutated body twisted in his memory. His animalistic scream rang in his ears. What did he do to him? And why couldn’t he reverse it?

Maybe he didn’t want to reverse it. Maybe he was just so far gone that some evil in his subconscious wouldn’t let him cast the spell to make Cygnus human again. Maybe he was secretly enjoying the man’s suffering, just like his mother would have. 

His hair. He turned back to the mirror and hesitated before taking off the beanie. He instantly wanted to throw up. His hair was completely black.

He turned around, heart pounding out of his chest. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be turning into her. But of course he was. Cygnus was right. He’d threatened the very people he’d sworn to protect. He’d turned Blake and Liv, two of his most loyal agents during the rebellion, into mindless servants. He’d just done that. He wasn’t afraid to do horrible things to anyone who stood in the way of what he wanted. That wasn’t the way of a righteous leader. That was the way of The Night Swan. And no matter how much it scared him, he knew he wouldn’t be able to give it up. It would only get worse.

Jack took out the spellbook attached to his belt. He wanted to throw it across the room. He wanted to toss it out the window where he could never reach it again. But he couldn’t. His hands felt glued to it, gripping it tightly like phantom claws digging into the leather cover. He couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t let any of it go. It was his magic, his power. And he couldn’t let himself be powerless again.

Unless everyone was powerless. He looked up at the spot Wanderlust had disappeared from as an idea dawned on him. He couldn’t separate himself from his magic or the darkness brewing inside of him. But he could go somewhere that would cancel it out.

Earth was a place without magic. If he went there, none of it would work. The spellbook would be useless, and he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone even if he wanted to.

Maybe Wanderlust’s offer was worth taking. Here, Jack was a monster. He was growing in dark power every day. But on Earth, all of that went away. His friends wouldn’t be in danger around him, and everyone in Eternyx would be safe without a budding new Night Swan to enslave them.

Jack grabbed a bag and started shuffling through his closet. He was going on vacation.

Chapter Text

Sara picked nervously at the seams between the cushions on her couch. She’d set out a bowl of chips and some soda, inflated a blow-up mattress in the corner, and dusted every corner of the apartment. It’d been a long time since she’d had friends stay over, but she’d never had friends stay over from another dimension.

That must have been where the nerves came from, she told herself. She was just worried about being a good host. It had nothing to do with the twisting feeling in her stomach that popped up whenever she thought about interacting with the Danceverses. 

There that feeling was again. She tried to shoo it away along with the guilt that came with it. She couldn’t be scared of Wanderlust and the others. They were her best friends! They’d been through hell together, and they’d do anything for each other. She knew that. So why did part of her not want to see them?

Before she could dwell on that question for too long, the TV flashed a bright purple light. A brief flicker and crackle of static made her heart skip a beat before the image cleared up into the face of none other than the bright-eyed prince of the Danceverses himself.

“Hey!” he smiled. “You ready?”

Sara smiled back as he backed up and revealed the others standing behind him. Waving back at her was Brezziana, Mihaly, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Jack. Sara didn’t think she’d seen Jack since she first returned to Earth. He’d always been too busy to call. Now, she almost didn’t recognize him. He was wearing a dark, high-collared coat and paint-stained pants, with his hair tucked away into a beanie. Even his demeanor felt off—he looked tired. Sara tried to dismiss the unfamiliarity. Maybe she just didn’t remember him like she thought she did. And leading Eternyx had to be a tiring job. It was probably fine. But as much as she told herself that, there was something about him that… almost scared her.

“Yep! I’m ready,” she lied, before she could think too far down that path. 

“Awesome!” Wanderlust picked up an enormous duffle bag and tossed it with a grunt through the screen. Sara yelped and jumped back as it landed at her feet with a thud. 

“What did you pack?!” she gasped, “Your entire closet?”

“That’s just my shoes,” he laughed, slugging an equally oversized backpack over his shoulders. Sara couldn’t tell if he was joking. He stepped out of the way and gestured to the portal with a bow. “After you,” he smiled to the others.

Brezziana was the first through, charging ahead without even a moment to hesitate. She ran head-first across the divide and nearly crashed into Sara’s couch with a victorious “Whew!”

Everyone stared at Brezziana wide-eyed. Her stark white skin and purple hair had completely changed, now different shades of warm brown. “Woah,” she grinned as she looked down at her own hands and body. Even her clothes had changed into completely different workout gear—still pretty brightly colored by Earth’s standards, but nothing compared to Dancity.

“This is so cool,” Wanderlust said. “Next?”

Mihaly stepped up to the screen. They looked inside curiously before sticking a hand through. On Sara’s side, it showed up a human-like beige. They watched it and the rest of their body as they stepped through, their pink hair turning black and outfit becoming a muted tank top and jeans.

After gawking at Mihaly’s transformation, they all turned their attention to Jack. Jack stepped up to the portal with clear uncertainty on his face, gripping the strap on his bag like he was about to turn around. “I don’t know,” he said, “Maybe this is a bad ide-”

Without warning, Wanderlust gave him a hard shove and sent him tripping over the edge of the portal into the living room. Jack screamed when he landed and found himself suddenly dressed in a simple button-up and ripped jeans on Sara’s floor.

Wanderlust laughed. “Your hair!” he pointed, and Jack frantically reached up to grab the beanie that was no longer there. “It’s orange!”

Jack’s sudden terror eased to confusion.

“That’s a natural color on Earth,” Sara pointed out. “It’s not orange, it’s ginger.”

“Whatever,” Wanderlust said, stepping through the portal and closing it behind him like it was no big deal. Just like last time, His blue skin turned to brown and his princely outfit transformed into something relatively normal. “It’s still cool.”

Jack grumbled and stood up. “You’re sure you can get us back?” he asked Wanderlust.

Wander threw an arm around Jack’s shoulder, much to Jack’s surprise. “Of course I can,” he said before throwing another portal open with his other hand and closing it again. “No need to worry.”

Sara let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. They were all here now. Now she just had to make them feel welcome. “So, welcome to my place,” she said, gesturing to the apartment that suddenly felt much smaller with four larger-than-life video game characters standing around in it. “It’s not much, but…”

“Woah!” Brezziana interrupted. She’d rushed over to the window and was now marveling at the apartment’s less-than-adequate view of the city. Despite it being nothing special, the other three followed her and were just as amazed.

“Just look at that!” Brezziana gasped.

“It’s just like Dancity,” Mihaly said.

“Only very… gray?” Wander added. Of all the cities Sara had been to, she would say her college town was one of the more colorful. But compared to anywhere in the Danceverses, she couldn’t argue. She couldn’t believe people who were used to amazing places like that were impressed by somewhere as boring as this .

“You have to show us around,” Brezziana said.

“Don’t you want to unpack first?” Sara laughed, but the four of them were already heading for the door.

Brezziana pulled her purse out of her duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Later,” she insisted. “Come on, we’re burning daylight!”

Sara didn’t consider herself the best tour guide. There wasn’t much for visitors to see around campus, anyway. Most of the big buildings required a student ID to get in, so she couldn’t bring her otherworldly friends along with her even if she wanted to. But it turned out she didn’t have to be much of a tour guide at all. Walking along the street, the four were already captivated just by the sidewalk alone. They’d gawk at boring buildings, read street signs aloud, and point at every squirrel or pigeon that ran by. If anything, Sara had to be more of a babysitter making sure none of them got too excited and accidentally walked into traffic.

“Alright guys,” she laughed when Wanderlust stopped to stare at a bus schedule like it was a map to buried treasure. “Take it easy a little. You’re gonna look suspicious.”

They were gathering a few stairs. They’d lost Mihaly for a few minutes when someone walking their dog walked by and Brezziana had to be the designated “Jack handler” to stop him from checking his hair in every mirror or reflective surface they passed by. Had Sara been this distracted when she entered the Danceverses for the first time? It was hard to believe two of these people were more-or-less in charge of entire planets .

“It’s not my fault this place is so weird,” Wanderlust defended himself. “Why’s everything so quiet?”

“Quiet?”

Come to think of it, there did always seem to be some kind of song playing everywhere Sara remembered going in the Danceverses. Most of the time, it just blended into background noise. She’d never really thought about it.

“Hey, look!” Brezziana suddenly called out. “Is there some kind of party over there?”

Brezziana was pointing to the central plaza in front of one of the campus libraries, where a large crowd had formed. It wasn’t too strange to see some kind of event or demonstration going on there, but Sara’s eye didn’t go to the crowd. It went to the library— the bright purple library.

“Now that’s more like what I’m used to,” Wanderlust said as they walked up to join the crowd. “Is that an art library or something?”

“No,” Sara said quietly, her eyes glued to the building. The brick walls looked more polished than last time she’d seen it, almost cartoonish in shape. Splatters of pink and lavender paint decorated the lower half like a hastily-finished art project. “This isn’t what it usually looks like.”

Something was wrong.

“What’s going on here?” Brezziana asked one of the students standing nearby. There weren’t any tables set up or activities going on. Everyone there was just staring at the library, watching the police officers surrounding it put up caution tape and try to shoo people away.

“Someone vandalized the library,” the student said. “Probably a whole team of people, ‘cuz they did it all overnight somehow. I heard they used some kind of smoke bombs to block the security cameras all night so nobody knows who did it.”

“That’s crazy,” Sara said, but worry was bubbling up in her stomach. She looked over at Wanderlust, who made knowing eye contact back. This didn’t look like graffiti. This didn’t look like something from Earth at all.

“We should go,” Mihaly said, catching on to the implications.

“Yeah, come on.” Sara led them away from the plaza before Jack could figure out something was wrong—or before any creepy swan creatures could crawl out from the shadows. If Night Swan did this, who knew what else she was capable of here?

Wanderlust slid up alongside Sara as they walked. “You’re sure this isn’t something common around here?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” she said. “There’s no way someone could do that overnight. Even if they could, they wouldn’t do that. That’s definitely something out of the Danceverses. If a bunch of college students wanted to play a prank, they’d cover it in inappropriate doodles and profanity.”

Wanderlust frowned. “This doesn’t look like Night Swan’s magic, though. It’s definitely not her style.”

“You said there was a place in Sun Horizon that suddenly looks like Earth,” Sara said. “If Night Swan’s portals are affecting the Danceverses… do you think it could be affecting Earth too?”

“That… does sound like a solid theory,” Wander said. 

Sara hoped she was wrong. As little sense as it would make, she hoped it really was a prank. But looking back at the library before they turned the corner out of view, she could feel in her stomach that that wasn’t the case. Whatever The Night Swan was doing, it was bigger than the Danceverses. Even if she wanted to forget her friends and stick to her normal life, she couldn’t anymore. Even Earth was no longer safe.

Chapter Text

Earth was a strange place. It was duller than everywhere in the Danceverses, but it still had a warmth to it that Eternyx lacked. It felt almost like a middle ground to Jack. It was boring in a lot of ways, but it was comforting. Growing up in the darkness of Eternyx, the other verses he’d been to were always a bit loud and overwhelming. Here, even the city felt toned down. It had the subtlety of Eternyx but the heart of a place that wasn’t filled exclusively with criminals and villains. And it didn’t have magic. Maybe Jack could get used to it.

While Jack was quickly settling into the muted energy of Sara’s world, the others started to go a bit stir-crazy by day two. While Brezziana and Mihaly begged Sara to let them tag along to one of her classes, Wanderlust whined about needing to see “something a little more lively” or he’d “shrivel up and die from lack of whimsy”. Sara suggested he go to the movies, so the team split up for the day. The girls and Mihaly set about on yet another campus tour and Wanderlust cheesily asked Jack out on a movie date.

They found a movie theater close to Sara’s apartment and sat through an animated movie with enough bright colors and flashing lights to give someone a seizure. Jack was decently entertained, but Wanderlust loved it. He came out of the theater glowing like a plant that had just been watered after a drought. Maybe people from Daceverses other than Eternyx actually needed bright colors to live, like some kind of photosynthesis? Or maybe it was just Wanderlust.

“Look at that!” Wander gasped, grabbing Jack’s shoulder before they were even halfway down the block and turning him to look at the opposite side of the street. He was pointing to a cheap-looking restaurant with an obnoxious number of neon signs and a picture of a cartoon mascot that claimed to make the “best pizza on Earth”.

Jack laughed and raises an eyebrow. “You really think that’s the best pizza on Earth?” he asked. “You know they’ll say that anywhere, right?”

“Yeah,” Wander smiled. “But if we don’t try it, how are we supposed to know for sure?”

Deciding not to point out that they couldn’t decide what the “best pizza on Earth” was if they’d never had any other pizza on Earth, Jack played along and followed Wanderlust to get some lunch.

“Look at this place,” Wanderlust said. “It’s like if a club in Dancity was on a crazy tight budget.” 

“Yeah,” Jack chuckled. “There’s a sign behind you that’s missing a letter so it says ‘pizz’ instead of ‘pizza’.”

It was an incredibly stupid thing to be amused by, but Wander was loving it. “One of the bathrooms is missing the doorknob!” he laughed. “This place is so sketchy.”

“Trust me,” Jack said, “I could take you to some much sketchier places in Eternyx.”

“You couldddd,” Wander trilled, giving Jack a look that reminded him of a puppy begging for extra treats. Jack’s smile faded a little. Even the few times he had gone out with Wanderlust since taking over Eternyx, he always insisted they go to some other danceverse. He was too scared of what Wander would see.

“You don’t want to go to Eternyx,” Jack laughed a little, trying to play it off as a joke. “You know we’ve spent enough time there in the past few years.”

“Not really,” Wander insisted. “Years of being a Night Swan puppet doesn’t count. I barely even remember it! And I’m sure it’s a totally different place now that you’re in charge.”

Wanderlust gave him a smile that only made him more uncomfortable. It was so genuine. Wanderlust really thought he would make a difference. After all these years, Jack finally had someone who truly believed in him. Someone who had no idea Jack was letting him down.

“I don’t know,” Jack shrugged as casually as he could muster. “It’s hard. It’s gonna be a long time before it really looks like a different place.”

“Well yeah, I guess. Politics is long and tedious and boring. But you’ll figure it out. You already saved the world twice.”

“Fighting swan soldiers is weirdly a lot easier than leading a whole planet.”

“Come on,” Wanderlust whined. “Just give yourself some credit! Things are going well so far, right?”

Jack fought the urge to look surprised. Things were not going well, at least by Wanderlust’s standards. The people of Eternyx were scared. If Jack hadn’t run away to Earth, they might be dealing with another dictator soon. “What makes you so sure?” he asked.

“I mean, sure, I don’t totally have my eye on Eternyx. My parents and the Floworld council still aren’t paying enough attention to what goes on there. But you’d have told me if anything terrible happened.”

“Right,” Jack said, maybe a little too quickly. No wonder Wander wasn’t suspicious of him. As much as the news of Jack’s scare tactics had spread throughout his world, the others wanted nothing to do with Eternyx. They wouldn’t hear any news until it directly affected them.

“Has anything terrible happened?” Wander asked. Now he was getting a little suspicious. 

“No, no,” Jack said. He couldn’t totally meet Wander’s eyes. It felt wrong to lie to him. It was wrong to lie to him; he knew that. But he couldn’t tell Wanderlust what was happening. What he was making happen. He took a bite of pizza—it wasn’t bad, per say, but if this was the best pizza on Earth, he’d have to stick to hamburgers. “How’s the pizza?” he asked in an attempt to change the subject.

“Oh, it’s terrible,” Wanderlust said with a big smile and took another bite. “I love it.”

Jack laughed, but he had to force it. Even Wander’s unshakable cheer couldn’t lighten the load of the guilt that was resurfacing.

They went back to eating, and it seemed like that was that. But just as Jack’s anxieties were starting to calm back down, Wanderlust looked up at him again with a concerned frown.

“Can we talk?”

Just like that, the pit in Jack’s stomach was back. He’d come here to avoid all his problems in the Danceverses. Couldn’t Wander just leave them there?

“We… are talking,” Jack said back. He wanted to sound unbothered, but he had a feeling it wasn’t all that convincing.

“No, I mean like really talk,” Wander sighed. “I feel like we haven’t talked in ages. And I’m… worried about you?”

He should have seen this coming. “Wander, I’m fine, ” he said with a bit of a scowl. 

“Are you really, though? You know you can tell me anything. You’ve obviously been really stressed out, and I figured bringing you to Earth would help you get away from things so you’d be in a better mood, so-”

“Is that what this is about?” Jack snapped. “You only asked me on a date so you could try to probe me about my feelings?”

“No! I mean- it was part of it, I guess. Mihaly said-”

“You’ve been talking about me with Mihaly?”

“No! Well, yes. But just because I’m worried! All of us are! We barely ever see you!”

“I told you, I’ve been busy.”

“Even when I have seen you, you’ve seemed upset! And you refuse to talk about it. You barely talk about anything. Every time I show up at your place you just seem to want me gone.”

That last part made Jack’s heart hurt. He did turn Wanderlust away every time. He’d been creating distance between them, and it was on purpose. He just didn’t think Wander would catch on.

Jack didn’t know what to say. He just stared down at his pizza, trying to come up with a lie. But he didn’t want to lie.

Wanderlust sighed. He hesitated before he spoke again, and when he did it was quiet. “Do you not like me anymore?”

Jack should have said yes. It would’ve made all of this so much easier—a clean answer, a reason to cut off ties for good and avoid disappointing his friends with the real truth.

“Of course I like you,” he said instead. “It’s not that I don’t want you around, it’s just…”

Just what, Jack? Just what?

“I’m sorry,” Wanderlust said when Jack couldn’t seem to find any more words. “I’m making this all about me. You’re the one running a whole danceverse by yourself. I want to give you space and I want to let you figure this out on your own; it’s just hard. I hate seeing you struggle.”

Jack nodded. If Wander could talk himself in circles enough to resolve the issue on his own, maybe Jack didn’t have to lie to him. Withholding information wasn’t the same as lying, right?

“Just… please,” Wander continued. “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know. And if you need to talk about anything, talk to me. Or Mihaly. Or Sara or Brezziana, or anyone. We all want to help.”

“Thanks,” Jack said quietly. He tried to force a smile but he wasn’t sure how it came out.

That was the end of that conversation, and they ate the rest of their meal without bringing it up again. But even though the subject was off the table, the tension still remained. The rest of lunch was mostly small talk, and Jack couldn’t shake the lingering feeling that he was doing something wrong. Even Wanderlust’s smile wasn’t quite as big as it usually was. If Jack didn’t have the courage to just cut off their relationship, it might have been heading toward a slow fizzle out.

Chapter Text

As fun as it was to explore Earth and take a vacation, Wanderlust and the others had a job to do. The Night Swan wasn’t going to stop herself. So after telling Jack they were going to a club so he’d want to stay home, Wanderlust, Sara, Mihaly, and Brezziana set out in the night to investigate the vandalized library.

It wasn’t too difficult to sneak in. Sara had keycard access to a back entrance for graduate study, and they must have forgotten to disable it when they closed down the building. Once they’d avoided being spotted by the few security officers guarding the police tape barrier, they could walk right in.

“Is this normal?” Wanderlust asked as they took in the rows of books and abandoned study spaces. Even before he got an answer, he was pretty sure the answer was no. It looked almost like someone had had an intense game of paintball in there. Splatters and puddles of color pooled all over. Outside the splotches, it looked as dull as everything else in the city. But inside, everything turned to bright and vibrant clashing colors. The edges of some of the shapes were hard to look at. They twitched and fizzled slightly, like a computer glitch.

“It’s definitely not normal,” Sara frowned, seeming to shrink into herself a little at the sight. She hesitantly pulled out a book that was caught in the middle of the two worlds. The cover looked split down the middle, half a boring math textbook and half a visual history of Wasterra fashion.

“It’s merged with a library from the danceverses,” Mihaly observed out loud.

“I guess…” Brezziana said, taking the book from Sara to examine it herself. “But how is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” Wanderlust admitted. “My dad said Night Swan was making ‘unstable portals’. Maybe they’re… pulling things in?”

Brezziana opened the book. Immediately, a flash of light burst out of the pages and it flew out of her hands, slamming into a shelf and sending a spill of glowing shapes pouring onto the floor. Cartoonish stars and circles whirled around at their feet before slowing down and melting into stains on the carpet. 

The four of them just stared at it in silent shock for a minute before turning back to each other.

“That certainly looks like something unstable,” Mihaly finally said.

Sara held up a hand. “Wait,” she said. “Do you guys hear that?”

They all listened. The silence of the empty library had been unsettling since they walked in. But now that she mentioned it, it wasn’t exactly silent. If Wanderlust listened closely, there was a faint noise drifting through. It sounded like music, but wrong—notes out of place, abrupt pauses, sudden changes in key. It was like a broken radio in a horror movie.

“I don’t like this,” Brezziana said.

“You don’t like this?” Sara whispered, as if the disjointed music could hear her. “I live here!”

“Okay, okay,” Wander interrupted before anyone could point out anything else creepy. “It’s just Earth, and also the danceverses. We’ve all been to both those places! We can handle this. We just have to look for clues. How big is this place?”

“Three stories,” Sara answered. “Including the basement.”

Brezziana crossed her arms. “I’m not going in the basement.”

“Alright, then we’ll split up,” Wander said. “I’ll check the basement.”

“Are you crazy?” Mihaly scowled.

“Someone’s gotta go down there!” If Wander was being honest, he didn’t really want to venture into the basement either. But they couldn’t leave a whole floor untouched. And if he could pretend to be brave, maybe it would make the others less scared. Being the chosen one was all about taking one for the team, right? “Besides, I might have an idea,” he said. “If this place has books from somewhere in the danceverses, maybe it has ones about portal travel! If you guys go look for more physical clues, I can try doing some research.”

The others opened their mouths to argue, but Wanderlust had a point. So after Sara gave them a basic rundown of the library sections, the group split up to investigate.

The basement wasn’t too much like a horror movie, Wander supposed. It mostly just looked like the rest of the library. Except there were no windows. And half the lights were off. And the lights that were on were tinted so they turned the whole room a creepy reddish-pink. Okay, maybe it was like a horror movie.

Wanderlust wanted to turn around, but he couldn’t look like a coward. If he chickened out and admitted he was scared, there was no way the others would keep searching. So he set out down one of the ominous pink aisles and started scanning the shelves.

Most of the Earth books in this aisle were on natural sciences, but the brightly-colored danceverse books that interrupted the order looked to be from a history section. Skimming over a biography of the first queen of Melosia Realms and a textbook on ancient Winterhaven societies, Wanderlust didn’t see anything helpful until his eyes fell on a book at the end of the aisle: The Historical Usage of Portal Travel .

Wanderlust pulled the book off the shelf, a trail of glitter pouring out of it onto the floor and a mysterious ghostly giggle echoing around him when he opened it up. He shuddered. Super creepy. But it seemed harmless enough, so he started flipping through the pages. Aside from his father traveling between the danceverses and The Night Swan kidnapping coaches all over, he’d never heard of people using portals in the past. He always just assumed nobody else could do it. He certainly never thought people would have used it enough to write a whole book about it.

At a glance, the book didn’t have too much other than common knowledge. Some deities had abilities that let them transport themselves or others between planets. Some, including Wanderlust’s father, created things that resembled impossible holes in space—portals. But according to this book, it wasn’t just deities that had done it. A long, long time ago, a group of mortals solicited help from The Traveler to let them create their own portals. 

Wanderlust was shocked. His father was always very protective of his abilities. He couldn’t imagine him giving them away . But that wasn’t the most surprising part of the story. This wasn’t just a lesson on the flow, it was the origin story of the entirety of Wasterra. 

Long ago, the book said, there were two planets that didn’t exist anymore. Westin, a land of cowboys and sunsets, and Terra, a broken-down planet trying to rebuild itself after being crushed by an enormous meteor. The two had a disagreement that turned into a feud that turned into a years-long war. In a desperate attempt to turn the tides in their favor, officials from Terra asked for portal magic from The Traveler to invade Westin, telling him they’d be using it to bring about peace. When The Traveler found out he’d been lied to, he tried to take it back, but it was too late. Terra’s military scientists found a way to amplify the taste of power they were given and were quickly creating portals all over the other planet. But reaching beyond the gift’s capabilities made the portals dangerous and unpredictable. Soon, they were opening all on their own and causing chaos in both worlds. By the time the two planets had called a truce and called off the war, their lands were bleeding into each other and becoming one. There was nothing they could do. Soon enough, the planets absorbed each other and created Wasterra: a perfect mix of the two old worlds.

“No way,” Wanderlust whispered to himself. That must be what was happening with Earth and the Danceverses. If they didn’t stop whatever The Night Swan was doing, it could be the beginning of a universe-altering catastrophe! 

Wanderlust looked over the part about them giving up the portal magic again, reading it more thoroughly in case it said anything about how they tried to stop it. But before he could get very far, there was a sudden sharp pain in the side of his neck and a pair of arms wrapped around him from behind.

Wanderlust screamed. He threw the book and tried to yank himself free, but the attacker had caught him off guard. Not only had they grabbed him, they’d sank their teeth into his neck. The attacker pulled him back, closer to them, before pausing to take a breath right next to his ear. Wander used the brief moment of clarity to jam his elbow back into their stomach, hard. Thankfully, it worked and their grip was loosened long enough for Wander to slip out. They must not have been expecting much of a fight back.

Wanderlust grabbed a heavy book off the shelf and whipped around with it over his head, ready to slam it into the stranger’s head. But when he saw the man in a red coat standing there bracing himself against the shelf behind him, he paused.

“...Vester?”

The man looked like he was from Earth, aside from the sharp fangs dripping blood down his chin. He was pale with jet black hair and piercing green eyes. By that alone, he wouldn’t have been anyone Wanderlust would recognize. But his facial features looked oddly familiar. He looked like the bad-tempered vampire Wander had fought alongside in Jack’s rebellion against The Night Swan.

Vester’s eyes widened in surprise at hearing his name. Still holding himself up against the shelf, he growled at Wanderlust. “How do you know who I am?” he asked.

Wanderlust raised his hands up defensively. “It’s me!” he said.

Vester narrowed his eyes and studied his face for a moment before something must have clicked. “...Prince Wanderlust?” he said slowly, like he didn’t believe it.

“Yeah! Obviously!”

“Obviously? You look nothing like yourself!” Vester sneered.

“Neither do you, and I recognized you ,” Wander pointed out, crossing his arms.

“Well I’m easier to narrow down than you are. I doubt you know that many vampires to distinguish between, so obviously if someone were to drink your blood, it’d be me.”

Wanderlust scowled and gestured to his neck. “Yeah, about that. Are you gonna apologize, or..?”

Vester paused, probably realizing that he’d just attacked the prince of the danceverses. But apologies weren’t exactly his thing. “No, I’m not going to apologize,” he finally said, standing up straighter and crossing his own arms. “I was hungry. Consider yourself lucky I only took a little bit.”

Wanderlust rolled his eyes. He knew better than to start an argument with him. “Whatever. Just don’t do it again.”

“No promises.”

“What are you even doing here?” Wander asked.

“I don’t know,” Vester snapped back, as if it were Wanderlust’s fault. “I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”

“We’re on Earth.”

Vester’s eyes widened even more than before. “Earth? ” he repeated. “How- wait, is that why we look like this?”

“Yep.”

“Selios,” he cursed. “Val’s going to kill me.”

“Watch your mouth,” Wanderlust warned him, not that he thought it would do any good. “How did you even get here?”

“I don’t know! This portal just opened up out of nowhere and the next thing I knew I was in here, looking like this.”

“A portal? What did it look like?”

“Like a portal?” Vester grumbled. “One of the pink ones?”

“Did it look… wrong? Unstable?”

“I guess? I haven’t seen that many. It definitely looked angry, though. And it disappeared right after sucking me up.”

Wanderlust nodded. “Where were you when this happened?” he asked.

Vester didn’t seem to like being asked questions, but he seemed to like complaining even more. “I was out hunting. Somewhere in Cygnus City.”

Wander made a face. “Hunting?”

Vester rolled his eyes. “Yes, hunting,” he groaned. “I’m a vampire, your esteemed royal majesty. Try to keep up.”

“Yeah, but-! You hunt people? Don’t you just, like, go to a blood bank or something?”

“Eternyx isn’t as pretty and forgiving as one of your fairytale vampire movies. I hunt for my food. There are much worse things happening on that planet, trust me. Especially thanks to your little tyrant boyfriend.”

“My what?”

“Rose,” Vester scowled. “Isn’t he your boyfriend? Or maybe you broke up now that he’s finally gone off the deep end.”

A pit formed in Wander’s stomach. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “Jack isn’t a tyrant; he saved Eternyx. You were there!”

Vester laughed. “He didn’t save Eternyx. He took out the old ruler so he could take her place. That’s how it works there. There’s no saving that place. It’s just a long line of worse and worse psychopaths kicking each other off the throne.”

“But Jack hasn’t done anything bad! He’s trying to help!”

Vester laughed again until he caught the sincerity in Wander’s anger. “Wait, you’re serious, aren’t you?” he said. “Have you really not heard? Any of it?”

Vester still just seemed amused, but Wander was anything but. He still didn’t know what was going on, but he was getting the creeping feeling that it was very, very bad. “Heard what?” he asked.

“Wow, you people really don’t pay attention to our world, do you? Just let all the criminals and no-goods fend for themselves, right? As long as it doesn’t affect you?”

“Heard what? ” Wander repeated, glaring at him.

“Your boyfriend’s gone insane,” Vester said with a wicked smile. He seemed to relish Wander’s discomfort in a way that made Wander want to smack that smile off his face. “He’s using his mother’s dark magic to get everyone to fear him. He’s imposing all these weird super-controlling laws. Some of his employees have been going missing, too. He’s probably doing some horrible experiments on them or something. It’s just like the beginning of Night Swan’s reign.”

That feeling in Wanderlust’s stomach sunk deeper and deeper. That couldn’t be true. He knew Jack! He was a good person! Vester wasn’t to be trusted, anyway. The guy just bit him!

“Oh come on,” Wander said. “Stop trying to mess with me. It’s not gonna work.”

“I’m not messing with you!” Vester insisted, but the mischievous smile on his face made it unclear. “Go to Eternyx and see for yourself.”
“I don’t need to go to Eternyx. Jack wouldn’t lie to me,” he said. But deep down, a little voice in the back of his head was kind of thinking he should.

“Of course he would. He’s a Swan. He learned to lie before he learned his ABCs.”

“Just- stop!” Wander snapped. He heard footsteps coming from the stairwell. The others probably heard his scream earlier and were coming to check on him. “I’m not listening to you,” he said. “Let’s just get you back where you came from.”

Sure enough, the girls and Mihaly were running toward him. Wander breathed a sigh of relief. But before they got within earshot, Vester smiled again. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But I warned you a while ago, remember? I told you; he has his mother’s eyes.”

Wanderlust wanted to say something back to him, but that was when the others arrived. For some reason, he was scared to have them hear the argument.

“Oh my god, your neck!” Sara nearly screamed.

Brezziana grabbed Vester and yanked him away from Wander. “What happened?!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Wanderlust said. “Just a little misunderstanding. Vester’s here.”

Vester jerked his arm away from Brezziana and scowled at her like grabbing him wasn’t a totally reasonable reaction.

“Vester?” Brezziana repeated, getting a better look at the vampire’s face. “De Ville? How did he get here?”

“Unstable portal,” Wanderlust said.

“That confirms what happened to the library, then,” Mihaly said. 

“I was just about to send him back,” Wander sighed. He threw open a portal in front of them—a little harder without a screen to anchor it to, but still stable.

Vester gave Wander another look before crossing through the portal and letting him close it behind him. The look probably meant something along the lines of ‘don’t trust Jack or pretty much anyone ever again’, but Wander didn’t want to hear it.

“I found some information about portals,” Wander said. “I can fill you in on the way back.”

“Great,” Sara said. “Now can we please get out of here? You really need to wipe up that blood.”

“Yeah,” Wander said. Vester was gone, but the unease in his stomach remained. “Let’s go.”

The four of them got back to Sara’s apartment and cleaned up Wanderlust’s neck before running into Jack in the kitchen.

“Have fun?” Jack yawned, pouring himself a glass of water. He was cute in his plaid purple pajama pants, his hair just a little messy but still somehow perfect. 

Wander smiled at him a little. “Yeah,” he said. “It was awesome.”

“Cool,” Jack said, before getting a hint of a mischievous glint in his eye. “Guess you didn’t miss me then.”

The girls and Mihaly went to Sara’s bedroom where she’d set up their air mattresses and Wander sat on the two-person pull-out couch taking up the living room. He laughed, but it didn’t feel as genuine as it should have. “Of course we missed you,” he said. “I thought about you the whole time. Every two minutes we had a timer go off to remind us to stop and frown at each other and all say ‘oh my, I wish Jack was here, wherever will we do without him?’”

Jack laughed and set his water on the coffee table before lying down in bed next to him. “I do have that effect on people, don’t I?” he smiled, closing his eyes and pulling the blanket over him. 

Wanderlust grabbed his pajamas and started to get changed. “You sure do.”

“Goodnight,” Jack said, rolling over away from him.

Wanderlust just looked at him. Why couldn’t he forget what Vester said? It wasn’t like he believed it. Jack was a good person! He was nothing like his mother. Wander would trust him with his life. So why did something feel wrong?

Could Jack really be lying to him? If he was, would Wander really be stupid enough to fall for it? To be fair, he’d fallen for lies before. That was how they’d all gotten brainwashed by The Night Swan for years. Wander hadn’t been able to spot an obvious trap. He’d been too confident. He was always too confident. Even when they first met Jack, Wander trusted him too quickly. Sure, Jack had switched sides halfway through the battle, but at first, he fought against them.

Maybe that was what his parents meant when they said he was too young to deal with the things they dealt with. He did make mistakes all the time. He was naive. That was why he’d failed to save his friends. Maybe that was why his crown still wouldn’t reappear. Maybe he was too foolish to be a good prince. Was that what he was doing now with Jack? Being a fool?

Wanderlust shook his head. He trusted Jack. He couldn’t let that trust be damaged by a snarky vampire who just wanted to see him squirm. He laid down in bed and pulled the cover over him, smiling weakly at Jack one more time.

“Goodnight.”

Chapter Text

After that conversation at the pizza place, Jack didn’t have to deal with any more uncomfortable questions about what happened in Eternyx. Though it made things a bit tense to ignore the enormous elephant in the room, it was probably for the best. Jack didn’t have to answer any more questions and Wanderlust didn’t have to worry. Well, he probably was worrying. But at least he didn’t have to do it out loud.

Hopefully, Wander would be too busy having fun today to worry about Jack at all. Sara’s college was setting up a free carnival for the weekend to help students “destress after midterms”. She said it was stupid, but of course everyone else insisted they go. An Earth carnival was sure to be interesting, and Wanderlust wanted to see how it compared to Carnivallium. So after some begging and pleading, Sara took the group on a trip to see the planet’s best attempt at a colorful, popcorn-and-cotton-candy-filled good time. 

As expected, it was a bit pathetic. Sara said there were better carnivals that weren’t a school’s cheap excuse for a free event, but Jack doubted it. They didn’t even have a roller coaster! Nevertheless, it was fun. The small rides and sugary snacks were better than nothing, and the rigged carnival games did have a good selection of prizes.

“Guys, guys!”

Jack and the others had lost Mihaly for about twenty minutes until they finally heard them running up behind them. Brezziana burst out laughing when she saw the stuffed panda wrapped around their shoulders. It was even bigger than the gigantic smile on their face.

“So that’s where you went,” Jack smirked.

“Sorry,” Mihaly said, stopping to catch their breath. That thing must have weighed twice as much as them. “I kept being so close to winning that duck game and I couldn’t leave until I did it.”

Wanderlust offered to hold the stuffed animal, tossing it around and inspecting it. “Have you ever been to Carnivallium? You can get much better quality plushies there,” he said.

Mihaly scowled and snatched the panda back. “Don’t you dare insult Mr. Miyagi like that,” they gasped.

Wander held up his hands. “I’m just saying!”

Sara raised an eyebrow. “How much of the Earth money I gave you did you use on that game?” she asked. “‘Free carnival’ only applies to the rides, you know.”

“I know, I know,” Mihaly said. “I don’t need to answer that question though. But… can you pay for my lunch?”

Sara rolled her eyes, but she laughed. “Only if you let me hold the panda for a bit,” she said.

Mihaly tossed him over. “Deal.”

After a moment, Wanderlust gave Jack a look. “Are there any plushies you want?” he asked him. “I could easily beat any of these games, just so you know.”

Jack smirked. “Sure you could,” he said.

“I could!” Wanderlust held up an arm and flexed his muscles to prove a point. “Look at these bad boys! That hammer game over there won’t know what hit it.”

Jack couldn’t help but laugh. Wander was strong, and Jack did almost blush watching him do that, but he wasn’t that strong. “I don’t need a stuffed animal,” Jack said. “You can save your dashing bodybuilder biceps for another time.”

Wanderlust turned up his nose. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that sarcastically,” he said. “I know you think I’m dashing, anyway.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Jack smirked. “If I wanted a prize from that game, I’d ask Brezz, anyway.”

Wanderlust gasped in mock offense and Brezziana showed off her own muscles, which were indeed more impressive than Wander’s. “Smart choice,” she said.

“Okay, actually, that’s fair,” Wander admitted.

“You could be this fit too if you’d come to one of my classes,” Brezziana teased, poking Wander with her elbow.

Wander crossed his arms. “Touché.”

“Let’s not waste any more of my money on carnival games, okay?” Sara laughed. She lifted her chin off the giant panda bear in her arms and turned him around to look him in his little button eyes. “Not that you aren’t absolutely wonderful and a fantastic addition to the family, buddy,” she told him.

“Watch it, he’s mine,” Mihaly said.

“She’s right,” Jack said with a small smile to Wander. “I appreciate it, but I really don’t need a stuffed animal.”

“Fine,” Wanderlust groaned. “But how else am I supposed to do something incredibly cheesy and sweep you off your feet?”

Jack didn’t know how to answer that. He was too busy trying to stop himself from blushing.

“I have an idea,” Brezziana said with a mischievous smile that immediately told Jack he wasn’t going to like whatever she was about to say. “There’s a tunnel of love over there,” she cooed.

Mihaly made a gagging sound and Sara covered the panda’s ears.

Jack’s face was definitely bright red now, but he crossed his arms and scowled as if that would help. “That’s disgust-”

Before he could finish his sentence, Wanderlust gasped and grabbed his arm. “We’re going!” he said, and tugged him away toward the ride. “See you guys in ten minutes or something!”

The girls and Mihaly laughed at them as Jack was dragged across the carnival against his will. “Wanderrrr,” he whined. “Come on , that’s so stupid!”

“That’s the point!” Wander grinned when they got to the line in front of a giant, gaudy, lit-up heart leading to the ride. Ten or fifteen couples were already waiting there, holding hands or whispering mushy things about each other’s eyes or getting way too touchy for a public place. The second Wander let go of Jack’s arm, Jack turned around and started walking away.

“Jack!”

“Nope. Nope. I’m not going in there.”

“Pleeeease? It’ll be funny!”

“I’m not sitting down in a boat after those two have swapped spit in it,” Jack scowled, gesturing toward a particularly touchy-feely boy and girl who were too lost in each other’s eyes to notice they were being pointed at.

“It’s not that bad,” Wander said before turning to look and immediately cringing. “Okay- I take that back, that’s disgusting. Do they realize there’s other people here??”

“See? We’re not getting on that line.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Wanderlust groaned. “But we’re doing something fun together.” He scanned the other rides around him before his eyes landed on one and lit up. “Ooh! How about that?”

Jack followed his gaze to a cheesy funhouse with a much shorter line, promising “mind-bending illusions!” and “unimaginable fun!”. It seemed just as stupid as the tunnel of love, but much less disgusting. “Okay,” he conceded. “I can do that.”

Wander grinned and dragged him over to the funhouse. Now that he wasn’t being threatened by college student PDA and obnoxious love songs blasting in his ears, he found himself fighting back a smile at seeing the way Wander’s whole body lit up with energy at the simplest things. Even when he was being the biggest idiot in the danceverses, he was adorable.

They walked into the funhouse holding hands as if plastic slides and cartoon clowns were the peak of romance. Wanderlust was absolutely delighted by the sights, even more so than the sketchy pizza restaurant. Jack watched the flashing lights reflect in his eyes and wanted to squeeze his hand tighter for a moment before reality sunk in again and he casually let go. 

This was wonderful. The whole day was pretty great, now that he thought about it. He hadn’t had this much fun with Wanderlust or the rest of their friends since before. Before he became the ruler of Eternyx, before the rebellion, before they all got brainwashed by The Night Swan and left him for years. Those were the good days. Those were the days when Jack thought everything was going to be okay, when he was starting to discover who he was without his mother and how life could be without an evil, controlling witch constantly looking over his shoulder.

Jack wanted those days back more than anything. Maybe for the others, they were. They all seemed to be having a good time. Everything was normal now for Wanderlust, Mihaly, Brezziana, and Sara. It was just Jack who was sucked into another disaster. He didn’t get a happily-ever-after. That didn’t mean he could rip them away from theirs.

Jack looked away from Wander as a knot formed in his stomach. He shouldn’t have been there. Wanderlust and the others had fought a terrible monster. It took years, and they’d been through so much in the process. Now they were finally free. The last thing they needed was another one hanging around them.

Jack wanted to stay on Earth. He’d been thinking about what would happen when Wanderlust, Brezziana, and Mihaly wanted to go back home. He’d come up with some excuse to stay with Sara so he’d never have to go back. But maybe that was still too close. Maybe he’d have to disappear. He’d been paying attention to everything they saw on Earth. He could figure the place out enough to slip away one night and grab a bus out of town. It was a big planet, apparently. There had to be somewhere he could start over.

“Woah, look!”

Wander grabbed Jack’s hand again, snapping him out of his thoughts and dragging him down a hallway toward a big glowing light that faded between different colors. There was a round table in the middle of the room where the light trailed around and around like a glowing worm. Wanderlust reached his hand over the table and another light lit up underneath it. As he waved his arm back and forth, the light followed.

Wanderlust laughed. Jack put out his hand to make a light of his own and move it around, but his heart wasn’t in it. Even watching Wanderlust be captivated by it like a cat chasing a laser pointer didn’t give him the usual butterflies in his stomach. His growing anxiety squeezed at his stomach instead. He needed to say something.

Jack took his hand away, watching Wander have fun for a moment before finally opening his mouth. “Wander…”

Suddenly, the table made a click! and a tall painting of a clown on the wall swung inwards to reveal another hallway.

“Woah! ” Wander shouted. “They’ve got secret passageways in here?!”

Jack sighed as Wander’s attention immediately transferred to the new room and he disappeared behind the painting. He just stood there for a moment before Wander’s voice called him in. “Come on!”

Jack reluctantly followed. But when he entered the passageway, he didn’t see Wanderlust. All he saw was… himself?

“It’s a mirror maze!” Wander’s voice echoed from somewhere he couldn’t see.

“What?” Jack couldn’t help but groan. Seriously? This was not the time.

He walked forward slowly, reaching out in front of him to feel if he was about to walk into a mirror. Even the floor reflected him from a strange angle. Something about it made him even more tense. “Where are you?” he called out in exasperation.

“I don’t know!” Wanderlust laughed. “Come find me!”

Jack didn’t want to go find him. With every passing second, what he wanted to do more and more was punch a mirror. But that wasn’t going to get him anywhere, so he started into the maze.

Heading down a random path, the discomfort only got worse. Most of the mirrors were normal, creating an infinite array of images of himself all around. But in true funhouse fashion, some of them were warped. It made the shape of the halls look wrong and nonsensical, every step feeling like it should take him somewhere else. Worse, it gave him too much of a view of himself.

Jack didn’t mind the way he looked, usually. He thought he was generally attractive, actually, despite how narcissistic it made him sound. But these days, all he could see when he looked in the mirror was the resemblance to his mother. Back in the tower, there was a room that had been there since he was little. He used to practice dancing in there every day. Watching his reflection in a circle of full-body mirrors showed him every angle and every flaw in his performance. As intense as it was, he got used to it and grew to like it. If he could see his problems, he could fix them before anyone else could notice them. But that was before all his flaws piled up and compounded into a dangerous monstrosity he couldn’t control. He knew there was something very, very wrong with him now and there was nothing he could do about it. Seeing it didn’t help the situation anymore. It just made him feel worse.

Jack’s heart pounded. At least traveling to Earth changed his hair away from the black it turned to in Eternyx. With that and the pinkish skin, it was far from the reflection he was used to. But his features stayed the same. He had the same sharp cheekbones he inherited from his mother, the same rigid posture. The same coldness in his eyes. He could hardly look away from those eyes. His nerves buzzed as his reflection’s stare pierced into his. It reminded him of being younger, of disappointing his mother. She had a dangerous look he could never forget. Maybe it was the trick mirror, but he thought he could see it now.

“Jack!”

Wander’s voice was still so far away. Jack tore his eyes away to pick a direction to go in, but everywhere he looked was another reflection. Another image of the budding tyrant of Eternyx, the one who was plunging the verse right back into the misery he swore to pull it out of. The opposite of the so-called hero who saved it years ago. The opposite of Wanderlust.

Jack’s growing anxiety pushed against the inside of his chest and twinges of anger twitched under his skin. How could he have turned into this? How could anybody have trusted him not to in the first place? 

Stumbling aimlessly through the maze, he stopped when he realized the restless fury in his muscles was familiar—dangerously familiar. His fear was an electric current, setting off every defense mechanism in his body. But that couldn’t be right. It shouldn’t have been possible here.

Nevertheless, Jack squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block it out. Not now. Not here. And definitely not with Wanderlust somewhere nearby.

Wanderlust called his name again. His breath quickened. What was he doing here? What was he , the heir to The Night Swan’s throne, doing with Wanderlust , the chosen one sworn to stop heartless villains like him from destroying the danceverses? The electricity rampaged through his bloodstream. It crackled in his hands. This was just like her. When she got mad, she would lash out with her power. That was what he was doing, wasn’t it? He was being like her. He was just like her. 

“Jack!”

Jack inhaled sharply as his control shattered. He opened his eyes to a burst of pink light and a deafening CRACK shaking the building walls. Magic shot out of him in all directions, smashing all the mirrors nearby and ricocheting off the broken glass deep into the maze. His eyes widened in horror and he clamped his hands over his mouth to stifle a scream.

“Jack?!” Wander called from somewhere Jack still couldn’t see. “Are you okay?!”

Jack ran. He turned back the way he came into the main room of the funhouse and shoved open an emergency exit door. Ignoring the passerby who looked at him strangely as he fled the plaza, he escaped down the street and didn’t stop until he ran out of breath. Trembling, he sat on a bus stop bench and wiped away his tears. 

What was that? It didn’t make any sense. It had to be magic. It looked and felt exactly like the insatiable energy that took over him back in Eternyx. But this was Earth . There was no magic here. That was why he came in the first place!

What was he supposed to do now? Even if he left his friends and hid on the other side of the planet, it wasn’t safe. He could still use magic here. He was still dangerous. Did Wanderlust see what happened? Did he know that it came from him?

Before he could spiral further, he was interrupted by a strange sound, a quieter crackle of magic coming from an alleyway behind him. Jack turned and went silent, waiting for a followup. Nobody else was around. For a moment, nothing happened. And then there was a scream.

Jack leapt up from the bench and ran to the source. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but what he saw certainly wasn’t it.

Floating in midair at the end of the alleyway was a portal. It had to be a portal, but it didn’t look quite right. The edges were jagged and moving rapidly, almost blinking in and out of existence. It wasn’t one of Wanderlust’s portals, either—it was pink. Like The Night Swan’s. 

Stranger than the portal was the man shaking on the ground in front of it. He was hyperventilating much worse than Jack was, looking down at himself in horror like it was his first time in a human body.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a human body by Earth’s standards. The man didn’t have the pinkish-brownish skin tones of people on Earth. His skin was stark white and his hair was a bright neon green. Aside from the boring dull-colored clothes, he looked like someone in the danceverses. Jack stared with his jaw wide open. That also shouldn’t have been possible. 

The man finally noticed Jack standing there. Jack was ready to run, but the man didn’t look afraid of him.

“Help!” the man cried. “I- I don’t know what’s going on!”

Jack didn’t know what exactly he was supposed to do to help the situation, but he slowly approached it anyway. “Okay,” he said in what he hoped was a calming voice. “Okay, don’t panic. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Don’t panic?! ” the man repeated. He looked down at his hands. “I’m- I don’t even know!”

Jack took a closer look at the portal. Unlike a regular portal, he couldn’t see what was on the other side. Beyond the glowing edges, everything was just black. The air felt strange when he got closer to it, too. There was a breeze only in the vicinity of the portal, seeming to pull towards it. The wind faded out until the air was still, and then a pink light suddenly flooded the alleyway. Jack jumped back and shielded his eyes. When he opened them again, the portal was gone.

The man screamed again. Jack took a deep breath.

“What the-?! How are you not freaking out?!” the man shouted.

“I am. I’m just… not very expressive,” Jack said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. “What happened before I got here?”

“I don’t know!” the man said, finally trying to slow down. “I was just back here to smoke, and then suddenly that thing appeared! I got closer to see what it was, and then I almost got sucked in, and then- this! ” He gestured frantically to his skin. Wait ‘till he sees his hair.

Jack nodded, trying to put the pieces together. Clearly this was some kind of flow magic, but that was about all he could decipher. “So you’re… from Earth?”

“Wh- of course I’m from Earth! Where else- oh my god, is this aliens?! Are you an alien?!”

“No, no! I’m just- I mean, maybe it is aliens! But I’m not an alien,” Jack stammered. He really wished one of the others was dealing with this instead. How was he supposed to calm someone down about this? Should he even be lying? Even if the man knew nothing about the danceverses, he was going to have to find out now.

“Call 911,” the man said. 

Jack didn’t know what 911 was, but it didn’t sound good. The last thing they needed was more Earth people finding out about this. He did have a better idea of who could help, though.

“Hold on,” he said. “One of my friends is a doctor. They’re at the carnival right now. Just stay there, I’ll be right back with them.”

Jack ran off without waiting for approval. Mihaly was as close as this planet was going to get to a flow doctor, right? Maybe even Wanderlust. Either way, he needed to pass this on to somebody else. When he got back to the carnival, he found all four of his friends standing in line by the info desk. Wanderlust spotted him right away and grabbed the others.

“There you are!” Wander said, running over to Jack and hugging him so tight he lifted him off the ground. He didn’t let him go until Jack let out an uncomfortable squeak. “Where did you go?! We were about to ask security to look for you!”

“I wasn’t feeling well,” Jack said quickly. Again, not exactly a lie. “I just needed some air. But- forget about that. Something’s wrong.”

Sara frowned. “Clearly,” she squinted. “Have you been crying?”

“No! Just- there’s a guy in an alleyway down there. A portal opened. And now he’s- he looks like someone from the danceverses! But he says he’s from Earth! Apparently the portal tried to pull him in and then it did something to him?”

Something was definitely wrong, but not in the way Jack was expecting. The others looked worried, but they didn’t look surprised. Instead of gasping or screaming or responding at all, they all looked at each other.

A different sinking feeling returned to Jack’s stomach. He narrowed his eyes. “What?” he asked. Something told him he didn’t want to hear the answer.

The girls and Mihaly looked at Wanderlust. Wanderlust looked at the ground.

Another spark of magic jumped in Jack’s chest. He lowered his voice. “Wander, what did you do? ”

Wanderlust held up his hands. “I didn’t do anything!” he insisted. “I just- we may have something to tell you.”

Jack crossed his arms.

Brezziana sighed. “You mean you have something to tell him,” she said.

Sara looked even more guilty than Wander did. “We wanted to tell you, I swear! Wander said not to!”

The dangerous anger was building up again. Jack wanted to stop it, but it was happening too quickly. “Tell me what? ” he growled.

Wanderlust took a deep breath in and then admitted everything way too quickly. “We’re not actually here for vacation, we’re here because there’s weird portals opening up on Earth and in the danceverses and they’re making things cross over between the two and combining them somehow and my dad said to leave it to them but I couldn’t do that so we decided to come and investigate and we wanted to bring you but I didn’t want to stress you out so we kept it a secret and I’m really really sorry.”

Jack just stared at him. It was a lot to process. “What? ” he said after a moment. 

Wander looked like a guilty puppy, and it wasn’t cute this time. “We’re not actually here for vacation,” he said more slowly. “We’re here because there’s-”

“No, I heard you,” Jack cut him off. “But what do you mean that’s the whole reason we’re here? You’ve been lying to me this whole trip?!”

“Technically, yes.”

“Are you kidding me?!”

“We told him it was a bad idea,” Mihaly said.

Jack ran through it all again in his head, but that only made the anger worse. Wanderlust knew something was wrong. He knew Earth had magic in it. And none of them said anything!

“How-” Jack sputtered, “Who’s even doing this?”

They all went quiet again.

“Answer me! ” he snapped. They all flinched. Jack wanted to hit something. He wanted to let his magic out again. 

When Wanderlust couldn’t say it out loud, Sara quietly did. “It’s The Night Swan,” she said. “She’s here.”

There was silence for a moment before Jack lost it. 

“She’s what?! ”

Wander finally tried to look at him. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you until we had it figured out. I didn’t want to make you upset,” he said. He tried to put his hand on Jack’s arm but Jack smacked it away.

“You decided not to tell me that my mother is alive?!” Jack shouted. “You-!” His voice broke when it set in. She was alive. The Night Swan, his mother, who he killed himself, was alive. His anger gave way to sadness, partially stifling the electricity in his veins but making tears burn in the back of his throat instead. That wouldn’t do either. He had to add more anger.

“Jack, I’m really sorry,” Wanderlust said. “Really, I should have told you from the start. I was stupid.”

“Take me to Eternyx,” Jack ordered.

Mihaly blinked. “What? But what about that guy in the alley?” they asked.

“Take me to Eternyx,” Jack repeated. “Open up a portal. You can all stay here and deal with that. I don’t care. I need to talk to Mothigan.”

She couldn’t be alive. They saw her body. Jack had it delivered to Mothigan’s crypt himself. This had to be some sort of trick.

“Hold on,” Brezziana said. “Let’s just talk about this for a minute. We should catch you up more in the investigation. Maybe we all get something to eat and calm down for a bit?”

Wanderlust was still quiet. He almost looked like he was going to cry. It would be cruel to keep yelling at him, but Jack knew that was what he was now.

“I said open a portal!” he snapped. Wanderlust flinched at his voice, but the guilt Jack should have felt got swallowed up by everything else.

Wander started leading them somewhere they wouldn’t be seen while the others tried to talk Jack down. 

“Really, Jack, slow down,” Mihaly said. “We’re going to figure this out together.”

“We haven’t been figuring it out together! You’ve all been figuring it out without me!”

“And you’re right to be mad about that!” Sara insisted. “But we need to be careful how we move forward!”

Once they’d gotten out of sight of any strangers, Wanderlust reached for Sara’s phone. She crossed her arms.

“Sara,” Jack warned her. She looked at him, and he saw another look he recognized. Dozens of fearful Eternians had given him that look in the past few months. He buried the guilt.

Sara handed over her phone and Wanderlust used the screen to open a portal. Without so much as a ‘thank you’, Jack headed inside.

Chapter Text

Wanderlust’s guilt followed him into Eternyx as he stepped through the portal after Jack. They both turned back to normal as soon as they re-entered the danceverses, Wander in his brightly-colored shirt and shorts and Jack in his high-collared coat and crooked beanie. 

Actually, Wander realized after getting a better look at him, Jack didn’t look totally normal.

“What happened to your hair?” Wander asked once he caught up to him. The hair peeking out of Jack’s slightly askew hat wasn’t red anymore—it was black.

Jack stopped his storming off for a moment and turned to see Wanderlust’s confusion. Wander didn’t like the look on his face. He’d never seen him this angry. It wasn’t him.

“Probably nothing,” Jack said, pulling the hat down over his hair and continuing on his way. “You said my mom is messing with the danceverses; it’s probably just some weird magic glitch.”

Wander frowned. Jack’s hair wasn’t black on Earth, so how did that make any sense? “But-”

“Just leave me alone!” Jack snapped. “I said I was going to talk to Mothigan. I didn’t say I wanted company.”

Wander’s heart sank again. In all fairness, Jack did have a reason to not want him around right now. He lied to him. He messed up. He knew that. But at the same time, Wander was right to want to follow. This was an even worse reaction to the news than he was expecting. If Jack was this angry, someone had to make sure he didn’t wind up doing something he would regret.

“I know,” Wander said, “and I’m really, really sorry. I’m just worried! Brezziana was right, you should take a minute to cool off first!”

The portal they’d taken had led them to a street in the middle of the city, a short walk away from Mothigan’s crypt instead of right in front of it. That way, Wander had hoped he could talk Jack down on their way over. But Jack was walking fast, and he wasn’t listening. 

“Please,” Wander begged him. “Can we just talk about this first?”

Jack ignored him all the way to the entrance of the cemetery. The enormous iron gates were wide open, so he walked right inside. Wander hesitated. The place looked straight out of a horror movie, even more so than most of Eternyx did. But he had a possibly-boyfriend to save, so he shook off the chill that ran down his spine and hurried in.

Jack walked past rows and rows of eerie, candlelit graves and up to the door of a cracked stone mausoleum. 

“Jack, really-”

Jack pounded on the door.

Wanderlust held his breath for a moment, waiting for a response, but nothing happened.

“See?” he finally said. “She’s not even home. Let’s go back to the others, and then we can come up with a plan.”

Jack looked at him again, but Wander almost wished he hadn’t. His eyes were pure steel, lit up with a sharp fire aimed right at him. Jack never looked at him like that. He looked like someone else.

Jack opened his mouth to lay into him, but that was when the door finally creaked open.

Wanderlust had heard about Eternyx’s infamous cryptkeeper before, but he’d never met her before. Her obsession with the dead and strange magic made her one of the many scary stories about the verse that children would tell each other on other worlds. As much as Wander tried not to judge anyone until he’d met them for himself, he was a little scared.

The woman who answered the door wasn’t what he was expecting, though. She was relatively short, dressed in a bright yellow gown that matched her long blonde hair, and had a small butterfly perched delicately on her shoulder like a pet bird. The butterfly’s wings flapped lightly as the woman looked up at Jack with wide, round eyes.

“Mr. Rose,” she said. Her voice had an airy, almost ghostly quality to it, and her tone was hard to discern. She sounded slightly surprised, but in a hollow, dreamy way. If she knew she was in trouble, the permanent look of fascination on her face didn’t show it.

Jack didn’t waste any time. “Where is my mother?” he demanded.

Mothigan gestured behind her to a long set of stairs that went down into the Earth, farther into the dark than they could see. “She’s in the crypt,” she said calmly before perking up a bit. “Did you want to have a service for her? It’s a bit late, but I’m sure she’d still appreciate-”

“Don’t lie to me,” Jack snapped. “What did you do?”

Mothigan’s smile fell, but her unsettling gaze remained. “What do you mean?” she asked. It sounded sincere, but everything about her was strange.

“She’s alive,” Jack said. “She’s on Earth trying to destroy the danceverses. I know she isn’t down there.”

Mothigan considered his words for a moment, and then her lips split into a wide grin and she gasped. “Could it really have-?”

Before she even finished her sentence, she turned and took off down the stairs.

“Wh- come back here!” Jack ran after her, and Wanderlust followed. It only got creepier as they descended into the crypt. Flickering candlelight filled a dark room lined with coffins and urns locked behind glass doors. Wander shivered. He must really like this boy if he was following him down here.

At the top of one of the walls was a small stained glass window, the shape of a butterfly casting a single beam of moonlight on a coffin made entirely of glass. Wanderlust let out a small gasp. On the outside of the coffin was a soft yellow light, pulsing faintly with the rhythm of a heartbeat. But on the inside was a perfectly preserved body. The Night Swan’s body.

Mothigan hurried over to the coffin to look at the body inside. Jack, who hadn’t softened for a moment since leaving Earth, finally slowed down. He approached cautiously, as if The Night Swan’s hand was going to suddenly burst through the glass and grab him by the throat.

Mothigan frowned. “No, she’s still here,” she said.

Jack reached out to touch the glass, but changed his mind. “But… I saw one of her portals- I thought.” He turned back to Wander, the anger still there but muffled by disbelief. “You said she was on Earth.”

“She is,” Wander said in astonishment of his own. “I saw the video. And the magic- it has to be her.”

Jack turned a hawk-like gaze back on Mothigan. “How is this possible? How could she be alive there and dead here?”

Mothigan trailed her finger over the top of the coffin as if she were trying to caress The Night Swan’s cheek. Wanderlust didn’t think he could get even more uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” she said, almost like someone caught in a trance. “It’s fascinating.”

Wanderlust looked closer. “Why is it glowing? That’s not some kind of resurrection spell, is it?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” Mothigan laughed. “That’s not the resurrection spell. That’s just to keep her from decomposing.”

Jack was about to say something else, but then he stopped. 

Wander heard it too. He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, that’s not the resurrection spell?”

Jack’s voice lowered almost to a growl. “Is there a resurrection spell?”

Mothigan still gazed longingly at the coffin, oblivious to the growing tension in the room. “Well there was,” she said. “But it didn’t work, obviously. If it had brought her back to life, it would have returned her to the realm from whence she came. But here she is, still fast asleep.”

Suddenly, an ear-splitting CRACK boomed through the room—was that thunder? Jack lurched forward and grabbed Mothigan by the collar.

“You tried to bring her back to life? ” he growled.

Wander flinched. “Jack!”

Mothigan’s face finally showed a glimpse of concern, but she didn’t seem to understand what she’d done wrong. “Well, yes-”

There was a loud thud as Jack shoved her up against the wall. Wander couldn’t believe his eyes. Who was this?

“Are you insane?!” Jack shouted in Mothigan’s face. “Why would you want to bring her back?!”

Of all people, Vester de Ville’s face popped into Wanderlust’s mind. Vester had tried to warn him that something was wrong with Jack. Was this what he meant? Was he actually telling the truth? No, he couldn’t be. Jack was a good person. Right?

Mothigan finally looked afraid—really, truly afraid. Something was very, very wrong. “I- you have to understand, true love is-”

Jack threw her to the ground.

“I had to bring her back!” Mothigan begged. “Once I did, she would see how I felt about her! We would finally be together, and- and you wouldn’t even have to worry about her! She won’t even care about taking over the danceverses anymore after she realizes we were meant to be!”

Jack took a step toward her, and she slid back, covering her face.

Wander finally found the strength to do something. He grabbed Jack by the arm before he could try to hurt her again, tugging him back. Jack tried to jam his elbow into Wander’s stomach, but it didn’t work.

“Jack!” Wander pleaded. “Jack, stop! ”

Jack was shaking under Wander’s grip. He kept struggling, but Wander held firm. 

“Let go of me!”

“Not until you calm down!” Wander said. “She’s gonna learn her lesson, but you don’t have to hurt her! What’s gotten into you?!”

Jack finally gave in. He stopped trying to pull away, but Wanderlust didn’t let go.

“Jack,” he said more softly. “Come on. I know you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Jack closed his eyes and turned away from Mothigan before taking a deep breath. Wander hesitantly loosened his grip. 

“I’m sorry,” Jack said weakly.

Wanderlust wanted to cry, but they had a situation to deal with. He looked over at Mothigan. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. “Is there any way that spell would have brought her back to life in a different universe?” he asked calmly.

“I- I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve never done it successfully before, so it’s hard to tell. But unless she was from Earth or something, it should have brought her back here.”

Wander nodded. That still didn’t make sense. The Night Swan wasn’t from Earth. It had to have been a weird side effect of a faulty spell.

“I think we’re done here,” he said. He paused in case Jack had any more questions, but Jack had gone oddly silent. Mothigan nodded, and Wander led a trembling Jack back up the stairs.

Once they were back outside the cemetery, the iron gates shut by themselves behind them. Wanderlust jumped at the sudden noise, but then he took a deep breath. He let Jack go.

Jack’s anger was gone, replaced with a hollow look that wasn’t much better. Wander tried to look him in the eyes, but he just stared at the ground.

“Okay,” Wander said softly. “What just happened?”

There was a moment of silence before Jack finally opened his mouth.

“I… I don’t know.”

Wanderlust sighed. As scared as he was, it hurt to hear the fear in Jack’s voice. Maybe this was a conversation for later, too.

“Alright,” he said. “Today’s been a lot. Let’s just go back to the others for now. We can talk about it in the morning, okay?”

“No,” Jack said quietly. “Not until we have more answers.”

Wander sighed again and rubbed Jack’s arm. “What am I gonna do with you?”

“We know what happened, but we don’t know how to stop her. There has to be somebody who does.”

Wander started flipping through the contacts list of his brain, scrambling for anyone who might have some sort of information. It didn’t even have to be good information. Just something to satisfy Jack for now so they could get back to Earth and let him rest.

“What about… that crazy inventor guy? The one who was with you guys in the rebellion? Blue hair, robot eye, threatened to surgically remove my brains that one time?”

Wander was sure that would help calm him down. The inventor who built all the weapons and technology for Jack’s rebellion was a genius. Surely, he’d have some kind of useful information for them. But suddenly, Jack got even more tense.

“Cygnus?”

“Yeah, that guy!”

“No,” Jack said quickly. “Not him.”

Wander raised an eyebrow. “Why not? Isn’t he, like, the smartest man in Eternyx?”

“He’s not available.”

Wander crouched down so he could see into Jack’s eyes for a moment. There was something he wasn’t saying. “I mean, this is an emergency. I might be able to locate him with the flow and open up a portal wherever he is. That works sometimes. And I’m sure he’d be willing to help.”

“He’s just-” Jack couldn’t find a way to finish that sentence.

“He’s what?”

Jack sighed, still avoiding eye contact. “He was cursed by Night Swan. She made him one of her soldiers and… he didn’t turn back after the war ended.”

Wander hesitated. He could have sworn he’d seen Cygnus at some point in the aftermath of the final battle at Swan Tower. Even if he’d been turned into a swan soldier, why wouldn’t he have turned back after she died? Everyone else did.

“That’s… weird,” he said. “Maybe we can turn him back though.”

“We’ve tried,” Jack said, again strangely quickly. “He’s locked up at the citadel so he doesn’t hurt anyone. But any time we tried to break the spell, it didn’t do anything.”

“Huh,” Wander frowned. Maybe since The Night Swan wasn’t truly dead, her magic wasn’t either? He was grasping at straws. “Here, maybe I’ll give it a shot,” he said. He opened up a portal into the basement dungeon of Rose Citadel—a place he was unfortunately familiar with from his time as one of The Night Swan’s puppets. 

Jack went pale. “Wait-”

But Wander was already walking through. “Maybe it needs special god magic to break it. It’s worth a shot,” he shrugged.

Jack followed him in, but he was weirdly more jittery than before. Again, Wander got the sense he was hiding something. But he promised they’d deal with all those difficult conversations in the morning.

“Where is he?” Wander asked, looking down one of the three different hallways that used to be full of innocent prisoners. 

“It’s not safe,” Jack said. “That’s why he’s locked up.”

“But… he’s locked up. He can’t hurt anyone. That’s what you said, right?”

“...right.”

“So…?”

Jack sighed and turned to one of the halls. “He’s this way,” he said, and started to lead Wander to the cell.

Cygnus was in one of the highest-security cells. Jack had to unlock a separate door just to get to a secret extra hallway that held it. That was strange to begin with, but what Wanderlust saw when they finally got there was even worse.

Cygnus was cursed, alright. But he was no ordinary swan soldier. 

It was as if he’d been turning into one of The Night Swan’s monsters and gotten stuck halfway. A grotesque patchwork of feathers and flesh covered his skin, underlining unnatural bumps and shapes where the bones underneath had partially morphed into avian features. The legs were mismatched, one more human than the other but both twisted into something horribly wrong. It had to hurt to walk on them, or at least been extremely uncomfortable. Where one of his arms should have been was a boney, misshapen wing, sparse feathers revealing splits at the end that must have been the remains of fingers.

Wanderlust started to tear up the moment he saw him. Cygnus cowered in the corner until he looked up to see the two standing there. Startled, he pressed himself against the wall and let out a sound that was almost a squawk. Wander immediately felt like he’d done something wrong. Even though Cygnus’s face was more monster than man and his one eye was now solid black, his reactions were readable and almost human. He looked scared.

“Cygnus?” Wander gently asked. He slowly got closer to the bars of the cell while Jack stayed a distance behind. Cygnus’s attention flitted between the two of them before shakily rising to his feet and approaching the bars. Wander had to force himself not to flinch when he saw the familiar way the half-creature moved—guarded and animalistic, like the swan soldiers he’d faced many times before. 

But standing face-to-face, Cygnus didn’t look like a swan soldier. Actually, what Wanderlust saw confused him. Cygnus was being held here to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone. But he didn’t look like he wanted to hurt anyone at all. He just looked afraid.

“Jack,” Wander said, unable to take his eyes off Cygnus, “Why is he down here? He doesn’t seem dangerous.”

Cygnus’s head turned to Jack. The fear on his face intensified. He looked back at Wander with a pleading look in his eyes. He was trying to tell him something.

“Of course he’s dangerous,” Jack said. “He’s a swan soldier.”

“But not quite.”

Wanderlust closed his eyes and focused on directing the magic in his blood. Since regaining control of his newly amplified power, he’d found it easier to interact with the magic around him. He mentally surveyed the space in front of him until he felt the dark energy of Cygnus’s curse and concentrated on trying to read it.

What he found was strange. It was definitely similar to The Night Swan’s old curse (Wanderlust should know—he’d been under it once), but it wasn’t quite the same. There was no thread connecting Cygnus’s mind to hers. His mind seemed to be all his own, actually. Aside from the instincts of the animals the creature took inspiration from, Cygnus was entirely himself on the inside. He wasn’t dangerous at all.

“We should go,” Jack said. There was something wrong with his tone, Wander realized. He sounded nervous, too.

“No, wait,” Wander insisted. He opened his eyes and met Cygnus’s with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I think I can fix this.”

For some reason, that made Jack sound even more nervous. “Wander-”

But Wanderlust would have to deal with that after. He already created a connection to the magic; he didn’t want to risk losing his grip on it. Slowly, he reached through the bars for Cygnus’s remaining mostly-human hand. 

Cygnus hesitated, but finally placed his hand in Wander’s. 

“I’ve got this,” Wander promised him. He closed his eyes again, pulling back that thread to the dark magic and following it to the source. It still didn’t quite make sense. It didn’t feel the way Wanderlust felt when he’d been turned into one of The Night Swan’s soldiers before Jack broke him free. But it was recognizable enough. He took a deep breath, imagining himself pinching the edge of the spell and pulling it out of Cygnus’s body. His own magic drifted over to fill the empty spot, surveying the damage and reversing its effects.

Sense the path…

Find the resonance…

Suddenly, a warmth blossomed in Wanderlust’s hand. Opening his eyes, he saw Cygnus’s black claws start to retract back into his fingers. The mangy feathers trailing up his arm melted back into his skin, and the spell began to reverse.

Wander gasped. It was just as horrifying to see Cygnus’s body contort back into human shape as it must have been to see it transform in the first place, but he couldn’t focus on that. He’d done it. He fixed it!

Wanderlust’s face lit up with pride, but the celebration didn’t last long. As soon as Cygnus was back to normal, he let go of Wander’s hand with a sharp gasp and staggered backward. Despite being freed, he looked even more scared now with his human eye than he had as a swan-creature.

“Let me out of here,” he croaked, seeming surprised at the sound of his own voice. How long had he been like that? 

“Yeah, of course!” Wander said. He wanted to reassure him that everything would be okay, but Cygnus oddly stared right at Jack. Why did he still look so scared?

Wander turned to Jack and held his hand out for the keys. Jack hesitated.

Wanderlust frowned. “What? You have the keys on your belt there,” he pointed out.

“Yeah- right,” Jack stuttered. He fumbled for the keys on his belt and handed them over, his eyes locked on Cygnus. Cygnus stared back. Things were just getting weirder and weirder.

Wanderlust finally opened the door and held it open for Cygnus to walk out. But he didn’t move.

“He…” Cygnus pointed a trembling finger at Jack. “He did this.”

Wanderlust blinked. He looked at Jack, then back at Cygnus. The weirdly tense looks on their faces still hadn’t changed. What was going on?

“Did what?” Wander asked. A voice in the back of his head already knew the answer, but he didn’t want to believe it.

Cygnus’s voice grew more confident. “He cast that spell on me. He turned me into- that.”

Wanderlust’s face fell. He looked back to Jack for an explanation, but Jack didn’t offer one. He just looked back at Wanderlust, pale as a ghost.

No.

Jack wouldn’t do that. Jack wouldn’t- no, he couldn’t!

“Jack doesn’t have magic,” Wander said. He wanted that to be the end of it. He wanted it to be true, but the sinking feeling in his stomach didn’t go away. The explosion in the mirror maze. The fear in Mothigan’s eyes when she looked at him. All the secrets he’d been keeping from them for months.

Jack didn’t answer. Cygnus did.

“Oh he has magic, alright,” Cygnus said with a scared, twisted sort of laugh. “That’s how he’s been keeping this whole place in check! He’s been using it on people left and right to keep them from coming for his crown! We’ve all seen him do things straight out of his mother’s spellbook—and worse.”

No, no, that couldn’t be right. Jack was a good person. He was the one who would break the cycle of evil in Eternyx. He’d never do any of that, even if he did have magic. But it all made too much sense, and Jack wasn’t making any move to prove it wrong.

“Jack…”

“Wander, please,” Jack said. He didn’t get any closer, but Wanderlust found himself moving in front of Cygnus just in case. “Don’t listen to him. It was an accident, I swear.”

It was true. Everything Vester said, even back in Eternyx when he tried to warn him in the first place. Was that really guilt on Jack’s face, or was it just desperation? Apparently Wander didn’t know the difference. He’d fallen for another trap. No wonder his crown never reappeared. He was no savior; he was an idiot!

“Have you had powers this entire time?” Wander asked, afraid to hear the answer.

“Not always,” Jack said, scrambling for answers. Either he was looking for more lies or it was just another act. “It started a little bit before you woke up from Night Swan’s control. But- I just didn’t want to scare you! And then when we got her spellbook after she died, it released some kind of magic and everything got stronger, so-”

“Have you been the one making all those portals?” Wander gasped. If he was lying about this, what else was he lying about? The more he thought about it, the more and more mistakes he realized he’d made. He let Jack take the throne. He fed him information from The Floworld Council. He brought him to Earth! He was supposed to save the danceverses from some mysterious evil, but instead he’d been helping it take over!

“No!” Jack insisted. “No, I’ve never even- I don’t even know if I can make portals! I’ve never tried! I didn’t know anything about any of that until today!”

“Don’t listen to him,” Cygnus warned. “I made the mistake of trusting a Swan twice, and look where it got me.”

Jack’s fear suddenly snapped to anger. A CRACK split the air and he shot a deadly glare at Cygnus. Cygnus and Wanderlust both jumped as the source of the sound immediately became undeniable. Jack’s eyes flashed with the same bright sparks of electricity that jumped in his hands—a bone-chilling, dangerously familiar pink. 

Wander’s heart jumped into his throat and he grabbed Cygnus’s arm in case they had to run. He knew those eyes—very, very well. He’d seen them every day torturing the citizens of Eternyx and turning them into mindless puppets. They’d been the last image that flashed in his mind before he himself lost control of his body for years and became a soulless weapon of evil. Vester was right from the very beginning. Those were The Night Swan’s eyes.

The bloodthirsty stare broke as quickly as it appeared back into a false display of guilt, but it was too late. As much as it hurt, Wanderlust knew to ignore the crocodile tears in Jack’s eyes. Without looking away, Wander opened up a portal behind him to somewhere else in Eternyx. “Go,” he said to Cygnus, and the inventor took off without another word.

“Please,” Jack pleaded. “You know I wouldn’t do something like that on purpose. I’m- I don’t know what’s happening to me! I didn’t want to do that!”

Wander took a step back toward the portal. “If that was true, you wouldn’t have lied about it.”

“I didn’t want to scare you! I didn’t want this exact situation!”

“What? You didn’t want me finding you out before you could do the same thing to me?!”

“No! ” Jack sobbed. It brought Wanderlust physical pain. “I didn’t want you to think I was like her! ”

Wanderlust couldn’t take it anymore. He stepped back through the portal and closed it before breaking down into tears.

Cygnus was gone by the time Wander came through the portal. Wander supposed that was a good thing, since he didn’t particularly want anyone to see him cry. It would have been good to help him get off-world, though. Jack might try to hunt him down.

The thought only brought another sob up in Wander’s throat. How had he not seen it sooner? After everything The Night Swan did, how could he really have trusted her son so blindly that he missed all the signs? He’d even been told, multiple times, by people who’d seen the darker side of Jack, and he still fell for it. He really didn’t deserve to be the chosen one. He was naive and foolish, enough to have even fallen in love with the guy. 

After realizing his position crying on the side of a random street in Eternyx was starting to get him some strange looks, he wiped his eyes and got up to walk somewhere more private. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He just wanted to go home, but the last thing he needed was his father coming into his room and asking him why he was sobbing into his pillow.

Suddenly, he heard a scream.

That wasn’t exactly rare in Eternyx, but it was still concerning. And it had come from inside the corner store Wanderlust just walked by. He supposed if he was a failure of a chosen one, the least he could do to make up for it was try to help one random Eternian.

He ran into the shop, expecting to see some robbery taking place or a fight breaking out. Instead, the lone cashier was cowering behind the counter hiding from a bright pink glow in the middle of the medicine aisle. A portal.

“What is that?!” the cashier shouted.

It didn’t look like a normal portal. The edges were jagged and flickering, and all that was visible inside it was a black void. It must have been one of the unstable portals they were investigating. 

Wanderlust cautiously got closer. The air around it seemed to redirect inward, pulling a few things off the shelves to disappear into the darkness. If anyone else had been here, they must have gotten sucked in. 

Finally, Wander got an idea. If he could fix what Jack had done to Cygnus, maybe he could fix this. And maybe that kind of a hero move would be just the thing to start his path to re-earning his crown after making such a colossal mistake.

He closed his eyes and focused his powers again. Reaching out for the portal, it felt strange. The instability was palpable, like its mere existence was a gamble and at any moment it could explode or disappear. It was hard to read, too. It felt like something unfinished, like wherever it went to… hadn’t been written yet?

With a shaky breath, Wanderlust tried to wrap his hands around the feeling of it. Maybe he could grab hold and control it, and then shrink it down to nothing. But he couldn’t quite reach. He took a small step closer. And then another. And another.

And then the portal swallowed him whole.

Chapter Text

Jack was speechless. He’d known this was coming. He knew he deserved it, too. Wanderlust was right to be afraid. He was right to look at him that way, the way everyone else looked at him these days. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. 

Maybe some part of him didn’t really believe it would happen. Wanderlust was the most openhearted, most forgiving person he’d ever met. He believed Jack could be good before he’d even left his mother’s side. As strange as it was, Jack had gotten used to his seemingly unconditional kindness. He’d taken it for granted. And now he’d lost it for good.

A light buzz of magic pricked his brain. It had surged back to its full power as soon as Jack stepped back into Eternyx, and now it was restless with excitement to be in control once again. Jack didn’t want to say it was in control. But now, after everything, it was undeniable. The magic was a part of him he could never hope to separate or overpower. Months ago, the idea terrified him. But now, with nobody else left to hold him down, it felt strangely… comforting.

Jack’s eyes rested on the open cell Cygnus had escaped. Wanderlust was horrified by what Jack did to him, but he didn’t understand. He wasn’t there when Cygnus accused him of terrible things and spat on the empire he was trying to build. He didn’t see how quickly the problem was solved when he got the inventor out of the way. He didn’t know how it felt to have his magic give him what he deserved. How good it felt.

Jack shouldn’t have let Wanderlust free him. He shouldn’t have left the spell half-finished in the first place. As satisfying as it was to leave Cygnus’s mind just intact enough to watch what happened to him, he’d also left him too recognizable. Too easy for Wanderlust to take pity on and want to save. 

Sparks flashed in Jack’s fingers. He balled them into fists and the power burned stronger. It didn’t scare him anymore. It fueled him.

Jack grabbed one of the bars and shot power into it, sending the whole wall alight with a dance of pink electricity. At the very least, Cygnus should have kept his mouth shut once Wander turned him back. If he hadn’t given the truth away, Wander would have believed it was The Night Swan’s leftover magic. He wouldn’t have caught on to Jack’s. He wouldn’t have left.

The bars exploded. A burst of energy shot charred metal across the room. Jack didn’t even blink. 

This was Cygnus’s fault. He sold him out. And now he was getting away.

Jack turned and walked away from the cell, magic igniting his every step. This wasn’t the end of the story. 

Upstairs, his two stone henchmen spotted him and returned to his side. Blake and Liv, as his guilt would always remind him to call them. But now, if that guilt was still there, he didn’t feel it. Who was it for, anyway? Jack had always been so afraid of being too commanding, too forceful, all from the fear of people looking at him like they looked at his mother. The fear of Wanderlust looking at him that way. But now that that fear had come true, what else was there to lose?

Blake and Liv’s thunderous footsteps echoed his own as he stormed down the hall, finally a welcome sound. As expected, a group of agents were in the armory touching up equipment and awaiting orders.

“Jack!” Arleen smiled when he entered the room. “Where have you been?”

“Gather a set of teams to search the other verses,” he ordered, skipping the pleasantries. Seeing the seriousness in Jack’s expression, the other agents stood at attention. “Hunt down Cygnus and bring him to one of the maximum security cells. He could be anywhere by now.”

Arleen frowned. “Cygnus? I thought he was an ally. Why-”

Jack shot her a stone-cold glare and she suddenly choked on her words, doubling over and coughing heavily before bits of red came out of her mouth onto the floor. The other agents gasped and cleared away from her. Jack’s power buzzed with excitement as he eyed the mess and admired its handiwork. Rose petals and blood.

Arleen seemed to catch her breath after a moment, but she stayed down, heaving and clutching her throat. Jack looked to the others. Come to think of it, why had he been so worried about seeing that terrified look on their faces? Now that he’d brought it about on purpose, he didn’t see what the big deal was. Actually, it was quite satisfying.

“I didn’t ask for questions,” he said. “Find him. Now.”

They all nodded silently. Jack left them to it.

Cygnus would be found soon enough. Jack’s soldiers were the best around, and the inventor never had much of a gift for survival anyway. Once he was back behind bars, Jack would make sure he learned his lesson for real this time.

But Cygnus wasn’t the only person to blame for the disaster that just occurred. None of this would have ever happened if it weren’t for his mother. If she had just stayed dead.

The gates to Mothigan’s cemetery blew open with a blast of magic. The ground shook with each step up to the mausoleum and Jack’s hands trembled with power and rage. The door burst open the same way. As Jack descended the stairs, he saw Mothigan’s face at the bottom pale in horror and try to run. But there was only one exit.

“Where were we?” Jack smiled as she realized she was trapped. He still couldn’t believe he’d trusted her with his mother’s body in the first place. She was known to have had some kind of connection to The Night Swan a long time ago. He was a fool for thinking that loyalty was over.

“Wh- where’s the prince?” Mothigan stuttered.

“He’s off somewhere trying to fix your mess.”

“Maybe this can wait until he comes back!” she squeaked. “I- he probably wants to be here for this conversation!”

“Oh, no,” Jack laughed. It was a laugh he’d never heard from himself before. Maybe it should have scared him. “We’re going to do this without him here to save you.”

He inched closer, circling her like a wild animal.

“You really thought you could bring her back normal?” he asked, watching the panic in her eyes as they darted around looking for an escape. “She’s a monster. You can’t change that.”

“I wouldn’t want to change that. I love her just the way she is.”

“Wow, how romantic.”

“Please, Mr. Rose, I- I just wanted to be with her! A part of me died the day she did! You have to understand, you and the prince-”

CRACK.

Lightning burst across the floor, just barely missing Mothigan’s feet. For a moment, all the candles in the room were blown out by the impact and left them in pitch black before reigniting. 

“Oh, I understand,” Jack laughed again. The sound was growing on him. “You want to be with her? That can be arranged.”

Suddenly, an impossible gust of wind shoved Mothigan backward into an open coffin propped up against the wall. She screamed and tried to run, but two thick, thorn-covered vines burst out of the ground and pushed the door shut. She kept screaming and banged on the inside, but it was no use. More vines emerged, winding themselves around the coffin until it was nothing but a mass of twisted green. Until the sound was so muffled it couldn’t be heard at all.

Jack approached the cocoon of vines with pride, running his hand across the top of it. The thorns were sharp, but they didn’t cut him. “You’re welcome,” he whispered to the girl inside.

Jack’s heart was pounding with adrenaline. He never imagined it would feel like this to let his power take over. All the fear, the guilt, and the regret was buried away now, if it still existed at all. What he felt now was a pure high, anger so loud it turned to an indescribable joy. Mothigan had gotten what she deserved. Cygnus would, too.

Who was next?

Jack turned his head, eyes falling on the glass coffin that scared him so much earlier. The woman inside had been responsible for all his worst nightmares almost his whole life. Just the sight of her triggered the instincts of a terrified child. But now, she was just a corpse in a box. That wasn’t so scary, was it?

She may have died, but she was still around. She was a ghost haunting him and threatening his freedom from a dimension away. Unfortunately for her, he really, really liked that freedom.

Turning to the rest of the room, Jack wanted to try something. He raised a hand and focused all his energy, holding the image of his mother in his mind and harnessing the strength of all the anger it brought with it. This world was his now. She wasn’t taking it back. He would make sure of that. He would find her. 

Another CRACK split the air as the space split in front of him—an explosion of crackling lightning forming a glowing door before his eyes. He almost couldn’t believe it. It was flickering and unstable, but it was perfect.

As Jack stepped through the portal, he felt more powerful than ever. He didn’t need Wanderlust, and he didn’t need any of the others. He’d defeat The Night Swan himself. 

Cygnus had never been outside of Eternyx before. It felt strange to step onto the shuttle to Sun Horizon, but he didn’t have a choice. Jack would certainly be looking for him, and that man had eyes in every corner of the planet. 

The strangest feeling Cygnus sat with on the ride there wasn’t the fear of leaving his home, however. It was something much, much more unexpected.

When the prince undid Cygnus’s curse, he felt the magic’s monstrous instincts recede and his own mind return. But the mind he was left with wasn’t the same. And as time went on and the effects settled, he realized what the difference was. His mind was clearer.

For years, Cygnus’s thoughts had been scattered. Thanks to his own desperate-but-successful attempt to remove one of The Night Swan’s spells from his head a long time ago, his mind had been damaged beyond repair. He saw connections nobody else understood, couldn’t fully focus on anything but his work, and was rarely properly aware of his surroundings. Worst of all, he was missing memories. He knew his name and he knew he was an inventor, but anything before freeing himself from The Night Swan’s spell was a blur. 

But now, everything was sliding back into place. His thoughts were becoming linear. The world sharpened into focus like he was waking up for the first time in years. And memories were flooding his mind.

He first met Leda when they were both much younger. He had been experimenting with building automatons out of an abandoned warehouse on the East side of the city, and she had been looking to learn. She always said she was from another world, but would never elaborate. Cygnus found that fascinating. Almost as fascinating as how quickly she took a liking to his work. She wanted to help him, and he was more than happy to take on a partner—especially one as beautiful as her. 

He fell for the mystery woman quickly, but was never able to admit his feelings. She got close to another man, and eventually got pregnant with his child. Cygnus was heartbroken, but couldn’t complain. Their work together was thriving. With Cygnus’s technological genius and Leda’s ambition, she started to build an empire—a particularly impressive feat in Eternyx, where every possible competitor was always ready and willing to eat you alive. 

The other man was gone one day—Cygnus didn’t ask why, and Leda never felt compelled to tell. She gave birth to a baby girl, and while Cygnus wasn’t meant to be its caretaker, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for her. Leda was always busy, after all, with whatever she was doing outside of the lab. Someone had to watch the child.

Having to spend more time outside the lab himself to keep an eye on the baby, Cygnus eventually got a better look at what Leda was doing. That changed everything. Leda had always proven gifted with the flow, even though Cygnus had no interest in it. He thought she prioritized science like him, until he saw her trying to teach the child how to use it herself. Upon further investigation, Leda had been trying to grow in magic the entire time. She wanted to be stronger, by any means possible. And her current project with Cygnus wasn’t just about advancing technology—she wanted to combine their creations with the flow. She wanted to create soldiers.

Cygnus was terrified. He wasn’t working with a like-minded inventor; he was working with an aspiring tyrant. He should have left. He should have shut the project down. But looking at all their work, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. They were doing incredible things! He never would have gotten the resources to build what he was building without her! And as sly and morally questionable as she was starting to become, he couldn’t get over his feelings for her. Maybe he could help turn her around, he insisted. Besides, he couldn’t just leave. Who would protect the child?

So he stayed, and Leda became The Night Swan, and Cygnus kept telling himself he wouldn’t let it get that bad. Looking back, he was selfish. The child wasn’t much more than an excuse. He just didn’t want to give up on his imaginary relationship with Leda. He wanted to keep building incredible things, even if they were being used for nefarious purposes. 

Eventually, they perfected the automatons. The Night Swan got her soldiers. All thanks to Cygnus. 

But that wasn’t enough for her. Although she was already stronger with the flow than anyone Cygnus had ever met, she was constantly researching it and trying to get even stronger. There was a story from Cyberfunk folklore she found that told of a place between Earth and the Danceverses and decided she had to harness its power. To get more information, she reprogrammed one of the soldiers to lead a covert operation in Cyberfunk to study the strange space. That wasn’t too bad, Cygnus told himself. She was following a myth, after all. She might not find anything. But that wasn’t the problem.

Leda’s daughter was a young child by then. She’d kept trying to train her in the flow, but it hadn’t been working. Cygnus explained that most people with connection to the flow didn’t start to reach it until they were at least preteens, but she didn’t care. She kept pushing, she kept getting frustrated, and the child was too young to realize any of this.

Eventually, Leda gave up on her. Cygnus was horrified when he walked in on her packing the little girl’s things and clearing out her nursery. She was going to send her to live with the robot in Cyberfunk. “I’ll have to try again,” she said, as if her daughter were nothing more than a faulty computer she could just return to the store. “The next child will be a more suitable heir, I’m sure.”

That was the final straw. Cygnus finally stood up to her. He told her she was being heartless and said he was going to leave, take the child, and shut down their whole operation on the way out.

But that never happened. Before he could even leave the room, Leda snapped into a cold rage and magic filled the room.

Even now, everything after that was hazy. Cygnus had stopped being angry. He barely even thought about the child again. All he could think about was Leda, enchanting and fascinating and perfect. He listened to her every word for years, refining her army and building bigger and better horrible weapons and contraptions. He loved her with every fiber of his being, and she finally loved him. When the new child came along, a son, Cygnus helped her try to train him from the moment he could stand. When she got harsher and tightened her grip on Eternyx, Cygnus stood by. Anything for her.

One day, Leda left alone on a trip to the Melosia Realms. She’d heard tell of a secret power hidden deep in the caves there; something supposedly more powerful than The Traveler himself. Against all odds, she found it. When she returned, she was a different person. She was colder, crueler, and impossibly powerful. Magic filled every cell in her body, and Cygnus could see it even in the way she stood.

Thanks to whatever spell he’d been under, Cygnus was only more enthralled by her new dark power. He helped her plan horrible, horrible things, never feeling a drop of remorse until the day she asked him for help with a “very important” experiment.

The new child was four years old now, and still hadn’t shown any sign of magical ability. Leda was ready to call it another failure, but wanted to do one last test. She said she found a way to transfer her new “gift” from the Melosia Realms to her heir. If the child had enough natural magic to accept it, she’d give it to him after she died and that would be enough.

Cygnus held the boy’s attention while Leda cast a glow of dark magic and floated it slowly toward him. The boy’s eyes widened at the sight—not in fear, in amazement.

In that moment, something in Cygnus’s stomach turned. The boy reached out to the magic, trying to grab it out of the air. Leda smiled a wicked, scheming smile. The boy’s eyes glowed—the bright pink of Leda’s new power.

Suddenly, Cygnus panicked. In a moment of clarity, he saw the situation for what it really was. It worked. The child had enough magic to accept her gift. She was going to make him just like her one day. She would train him day in and day out for the rest of his life, ruthlessly carving him into the perfect heir before she corrupted whatever was left of him. 

Leda was too happy about the outcome of the experiment to notice Cygnus’s horror. She sent him off to take the child back to his room, and Cygnus just nodded and obeyed. His head was swimming. Devotion to his queen fought a crushing guilt, snapping back and forth and pulling him in so many directions it felt like his head was splitting open. He stumbled to his lab and searched for hours and hours through every spellbook he could get his hands on until he found something that might be able to fix whatever she’d done to him.

He broke the curse, but it broke him in the process. His mind was shattered. It took months to regain some semblance of stability and start building again, but by then it was too late. Leda found him screaming and crying in the lab, terrified with no idea where he was and barely able to form a sentence. She said he was “broken” and “no use to her anymore”, and she threw him out. That was the last he’d seen of her or the child for a long, long time.

The child.  

Cygnus was starting to get strange looks from the others on the shuttle as the realization dawned on him and he started to shake. Wherever the first child was, he hoped she had turned out fine without The Night Swan to raise her. But the second child… that one had grown up. That one had grown up to take over Eternyx with The Night Swan’s gift, just like she wanted. That one became Jack Rose. And that one was Cygnus’s son.

The shuttle came to a stop. Passengers stood and hurried to grab their bags and get off. Cygnus just sat there reeling. Slowly, he reached for the railing to pull himself up. But a hand grabbed his arm first. 

Three people had walked onto the shuttle. Three people who quickly handcuffed him and dragged him off the shuttle. Three people he recognized from The Rose Citadel’s guard.

“Sorry, pal,” one of them said as they ushered him onto another shuttle. “Jack doesn’t want you leaving just yet.”

Chapter Text

For the first moment after Wanderlust woke up, he thought he was dead. His eyes were immediately flooded with bright light, an endless expanse of holographic color reaching out in all directions. Hypnotic patterns floated and twisted in the sky, mixing and reflecting off each other like nothing he’d ever seen before. He thought it might have been the afterlife, or some kind of mystical void on the way there.

And then a stranger’s face blocked his view.

“He’s awake!”

Wanderlust flinched as a girl with blue hair and an orange leotard started feeling for his temperature and checking for his pulse. He quickly sat up, his back sore, and slid away from her.

“Woah, woah, hands off!” he sputtered. “Who are you?”

The girl held up her hands. “Sorry! I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I’m Clementine.”

“Clementine…” Wanderlust repeated. Starting to come back to his senses, he took a better look around. There were some vague shapes in the distance, but aside from that the only other thing besides the psychedelic sky was another girl in a silver bodysuit running up to meet them.

“And this is Freyja,” Clementine said, gesturing to her.

Freyja knelt down on the ground next to them and looked Wanderlust over. “Who are you? ” she asked. “And how did you even get here?”

Wander was going to answer the first question, but he got distracted by the second and panic started to set in. “Where is here?” he asked.

Clementine sighed. “This is The Virtualscape. You aren’t from Cyberfunk, are you?”

“No… are we in Cyberfunk?”

“I wish,” Freyja frowned. “We’re not in any of the Danceverses.”

“You can’t tell me this is Earth.”

“Nope. The Virtualscape is a place most people outside of Cyberfunk think is just a myth. It’s a sort of halfway point. This is the space in between Earth and the Danceverses.” 

Wanderlust squinted. He didn’t remember seeing anything like this when he’d gone between the two. “So… we’re in a portal?”

“No,” Clementine said, “Portals go through here.”

Before Wander could begin to unpack that, a strange feeling flashed in the back of his mind. His magic was trying to warn him. Something was coming!

He quickly held his hands up above his head and called his powers to take the lead, and then several things happened at once.

A purple domed force field appeared over the three of them. A loud BOOM erupted from nowhere. And high up in the sky, two portals snapped open.

It only lasted a few seconds. A tunnel of light connected the two jagged pink portals and a shape shot through one to the other. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they vanished.

Wanderlust’s force field disappeared. He looked to Clementine and Freyja for an explanation, only to find them staring slack-jawed back at him.

“How did you do that?” Freyja asked.

“Uh… with the flow?” Wander said. He really didn’t see how that needed any explanation.

“But the flow doesn’t work here. It stopped working when Nithe’s headquarters shut down.”

Wanderlust blinked. “How- who’s- what? ”

Clementine sighed and stood up, then held out a hand to help Wander to his feet. He took it and went to wipe the dirt from the ground off his legs, but there was nothing there. The floor was spotless, an almost-invisible prism of what looked like glass. What was this place?

“Maybe we need to back up a bit,” Clementine said. Wander nodded, and she went on to explain. “This is The Virtualscape, the boundary between Earth and the danceverses. When a portal opens up from one to the other, everything that goes through actually passes through here. It used to be controlled by Long Corporation back in Cyberfunk. They had a whole base here to study it-”

“-and to imprison anyone who got in their way,” Freyja interrupted.

“That too. Both of us used to be trapped in there, but we escaped. We’d been trying to find a way out of The Virtualscape, but one day everyone in the base suddenly disappeared. The building’s been abandoned ever since, and we haven’t felt the flow in years.”

Freyja sighed. “Long Corp must have shut down the operation.”

Wanderlust thought back to what he could remember about Cyberfunk, but none of that rang a bell. “Long Corp? I’ve never heard of it.”

They both looked surprised. Clementine frowned. “Unless… they didn’t shut down the operation? They got shut down?”

Freyja smirked. “Maybe Nithe Long finally got what was coming to her.”

Wander was still lost. “Nithe Long? Still not familiar. It does kind of sound like Night Swan, though.”

The looks on both their faces were even more confusing.

“What’s a Night Swan?” Clementine asked.

Wander’s eyes widened. “The Night Swan? Evil ballerina-witch? Turned a bunch of people into bird monsters? Literally controlled all of Eternyx for years?”

They shook their heads.

Wander couldn’t believe it. “How long have you been in here?!”

“Unless time passes differently in the outside world,” Clementine said,” about twenty years.”

“Gods.”

“Well that’s all we know,” Freyja said. “Now you have to tell us how you were able to make that force field.”

“I don’t know!” Wander said. “I just did it! Maybe it’s because I’m more powerful than most people?”

Freyja scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not- not like I’m better than you or anything!” he sputtered. “I just mean- god powers! You know? It’s like a chosen one thing!”

“Chosen one? ”

Freyja just looked confused, but Clementine was starting to put some pieces together. “Wait,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Wanderlust. Nova. Wanderlust Nova.”

Freyja’s jaw dropped. “Like the prince Wanderlust?!”

Wander nodded politely and both of them went pale. Clementine dropped to one knee and bowed her head like she was preparing to be knighted or something.

Wander looked at her confused. “You don’t have to do that. Actually, please don’t do that.”

She quickly got back up and apologized. Freyja was still trying to do the math.

“But- oh my gods, it really has been twenty years, hasn’t it?” Freyja thought out loud. “I remember hearing when you were born! ”

“I guess time passes the same here,” Clementine said, “But… we don’t age? I’m pretty sure this is exactly how we looked when we first got here.”

While the two of them had some sort of existential crisis, Wander looked around at the psychedelic expanse again. They’d been stuck here for twenty years . And unless he could somehow come up with a way out that they hadn’t found in all that time, he’d be stuck here too.

As much as he wanted to seem upbeat, he was starting to get really scared. “So… there’s no way out?” he asked quietly.

The girls snapped out of it and looked back at him sadly. The answer was in their eyes.

“Come on,” Clementine said. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

Freyja and Clementine took Wanderlust to the place that had apparently been their home for the last twenty years. With Long Corporation’s old base mysteriously shut down, the huge building made an excellent shelter from the void. It was dark and ominous, but it had bedrooms, plenty of space, and a fridge full of food that would reappear every time you reopened it like something out of a video game.

The fridge wasn’t the only thing that looked like a game had been programmed wrong. Frozen holograms of rooms under construction ended some of the hallways, and occasional holes in the walls broke into pixels on the floor. In Cyberfunk, people believed that all of the danceverses was actually a video game—a theory that seemed to be true now that Wanderlust had been to Earth. If his world was a game, and Earth was the “real world”, that would make The Virtualscape the home of the programming that made it all possible.

“So what exactly does the ‘chosen one’ do? ” Clementine asked as she handed Wander a soda can and took a seat with him and Freyja on a strange pixelated couch.

“If I’m stuck in here forever, nothing,” Wander muttered.

“Okay, in theory , what does the chosen one do then?” she tried, with a fake smile that didn’t do as much to lighten the mood as she hoped. If anything, the question only brought it down more.

“I don’t actually know,” Wander admitted. “I don’t think anyone does. All I know is there’s supposed to be some big threat to the danceverses, and I’m supposed to be the one who can stop it, and that means I have some cosmic destiny I’m supposed to fulfill.”

“Well you already told us you saved the world from that Night Swan person twice,” she shrugged. “Doesn’t that mean you already did it?”

“I don’t think that’s the thing I’m supposed to do. I’d feel it.”

“Well, if it’s destiny, I’m sure it’ll happen eventually. Somehow.”

“I don’t know,” Wander sighed. “Honestly, I’m not even sure I’m still the chosen one anymore.”

“Can that happen?” Freyja frowned. “Can you get… unchosen?”

“I guess! I mean- okay, I don’t actually know that either. But I’m supposed to have this crown. I’m supposed to wear it all the time, and it’s supposed to magically return to me if I lose it. But it’s been gone for years now. So… I think that means I messed it all up.”

He choked up a little at the end, and Clementine scooted closer to him and rubbed his shoulder.

“That’s quite a jump to make,” she said. “You don’t know that that’s why. Did you even do anything that would make you lose the chosen one gig?”

At this point, Wander had done too many things to keep track. “Probably? I’m just a bad chosen one. I keep messing things up.”

“Like what?”

“Like-” he stopped and sighed. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to tell anybody about Jack. Even though he’d been lying to them this whole time, Wander still felt like he owed it to him to keep his secret. He wanted people to believe Jack was good just as much as he wanted it to be true. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He just couldn’t stop believing the best of people.

“Okay,” he finally said. “There’s this guy. I really like him, and I think we might be dating? Or we were? I don’t know, but we kissed a few times, so- that’s gotta mean something, right?” He blushed. “Not the point. He’s actually The Night Swan’s son.”

Clementine and Freyja both looked shocked.

“I know, I know!” Wander quickly said before they could voice their obvious concerns. “But he’s not like her! I mean- well- he left her to join us and helped us defeat her. He was good. Even when he was scared to be.”

Wander didn’t want to say the next part. Thinking back to the person Jack was when they first met—the person Wander thought he would always be—hurt. But he knew he was just in denial, and he couldn’t just end the story there after he’d already started it.

“But I just found out he’s… been doing a lot of bad stuff. Like, stuff his mom would do.”

Saying it out loud made him start to tear up. He couldn’t get that angry look on Jack’s face out of his head. He still couldn’t decide what to make of it. He was scared; but was he scared of Jack or scared of what a disappointment that made himself for not having seen it sooner? Was he angry at Jack for lying, or was he angry at himself for being tricked again?

Freyja sighed. “Well, you know what they say, the apple doesn’t-”

Clementine shot her a glare before putting an arm around Wanderlust and rubbing his back. It was comforting, but it also made a few tears escape.

“I’m sorry,” Clementine said softly. “Sometimes people aren’t who they seem. That isn’t your fault, though. You were just trying to give him a fair chance.”

“But I still believe him! Sort of. I think. I don’t know anymore,” he groaned. “Part of me just can’t believe he’s bad. And it feels bad to say that he is. Even though, logically, I know he’s…”

Wander couldn’t finish that sentence. Finishing it felt like betraying Jack. But not finishing it felt like failing his people. Losing his crown.

“That’s love,” Freyja frowned. “It can kind of brainwash you sometimes. And that’s really, really hard to let go. But it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It just means you’re human.”

“I’m not human, though!” Wander said. “That’s the whole point! My destiny is to stop some kind of big threat. Some threat that—honestly—might be Jack at this point! I have to be strong, I have to be smart, but I’m just stupid! I’m sitting here whining about a boy who just turned someone into a mutant bird-monster! What kind of a chosen one is that?!”

Clementine and Freyja clearly weren’t following, but they nodded sympathetically anyway. Wander just buried his head in his hands to hide his tears.

After a few moments of sniffling and silence, Freyja asked him a question he wasn’t expecting.

“Do you even want to be the chosen one?”

He picked up his head slowly, caught off guard. What did that even have to do with anything?

“Do I- I mean, it's the chosen one. It’s a super important job. I’m lucky I ever even had that title in the first place.”

“But do you want it?” she repeated.

Wander was about to give the same answer again, but then he really thought about it. All his life he’d been training for his role in the universe. He’d been a symbol for hope, an idol for the people of the danceverses to look up to. He always had to be prepared to take on a challenge, to protect people, to sacrifice anything necessary to save the world. And it was exhausting.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Freyja said when his silence made it clear that she’d unlocked something. “Just think about it. Because if this whole chosen one thing is really only causing you more stress, you really ought to put less pressure on yourself to live up to it.”

“I… have to do this, though. Even if I don’t want to. Everyone’s relying on me. The whole reason I exist is to stop whatever bad thing is going to happen.”

“No,” Freyja said. “You’re a person. You exist to be a person. Even if you’re a person who also happens to have some crazy cosmic destiny, you’re still someone with thoughts, feelings, and a life of their own. It's okay to feel the way you feel about it all. You at least deserve that.”

Wanderlust nodded. “I guess…” he said. He’d never considered himself better than other people because he was technically a god. But he did consider himself different. The idea of him having a normal life like anyone else—or deserving it, like Freyja said—was strange. But maybe it made sense.

He still didn’t know if he wanted to be the chosen one. Truthfully, he’d never really thought about it. Either way, it was worth considering. Did he really have to drive himself crazy trying to live up to something he didn’t even ask for? Or if he was just doing his best, was that enough?

Before he could think about it much longer, a twinge of magic flickered in the back of Wander’s mind. Just like before, his instincts jumped into action. He grabbed Clementine and Freyja and pulled them to duck as a purple force field popped into place above them.

BOOM .

Just like that, his powers were gone once again.

“Another one,” Freyja frowned. “They’re getting more and more frequent.”

“They aren’t dangerous, though,” Clementine said to Wander when she saw him looking frantically around like they’d just been in an earthquake. “Just strange.”

“Portals coming through here used to be very, very rare,” Freyja explained. “But lately, there’ve been a ton of them. They look different, too. They’re all scary-looking and-”

“Unstable,” Wanderlust finished for her as it started to make more sense.

“Yeah,” Clementine said. “What, do you know something about that?”

Wander nodded. “Unstable portals keep opening up between the danceverses and Earth. We’re pretty sure Night Swan is responsible. My friends and I have been trying to stop it, but we haven’t gotten that far. If this keeps happening, the two worlds will crash into each other and merge together. Forever.”

The worry on both of their faces was definitely warranted.

“Only now I’m stuck in here,” Wander sighed. “So… I guess it’s up to them now.”

“How did you get here in the first place?” Freyja asked. “We saw a portal open up, but instead of sending you through another, it dropped you onto the ground.”

“I don’t really know,” Wander said. “I was trying to investigate a portal that opened in Eternyx. I was using my powers to tap into its flow and get an idea of where it came from, but then it just… sucked me in, I guess? Maybe using magic made me get stuck in between.”

Clementine sighed. “If only that Night Swan lady had done that instead.”

Freyja raised an eyebrow. “What, so that we have to deal with her?”

“No, so that she’d be stuck here and couldn’t keep doing whatever she’s doing.”

“Man,” Wander sighed, “that would’ve been perfect. If you guys weren’t here for her to bother, of course. If there’s really no way out of here, she’d be out of our hair for good.”

“Well,” not so fast,” Clementine said. “Maybe there is a way out. We didn’t think there was, but we also didn’t think anyone could use magic in here. And you just did. Twice!”

“I made a force field,” Wander said. “That’s not that powerful. And I could only feel the flow for a couple seconds there. If I try now, nothing happens.”

Freyja nodded and turned to thinking out loud. “What if… it’s the portals? Both times you did it, it was when a portal opened overhead. What if, when an unstable portal opens, it opens The Virtualscape up to the danceverse’s magic along with it?”

“That could be it,” Clementine said. She turned back to Wanderlust. “Next time you feel your magic returning, could you try opening a portal out of here?”

Wander thought about it. “I could try …” he said, “but I don’t think it would work. Not in that short amount of time.” Normally, he could open a portal with the snap of his fingers. But going from being powerless to having his abilities back would take a bit of adjustment. By the time he was ready to do something as big as open a portal, his magic would be gone already.

Still, there were other things his powers could do. “Wait,” he said, a smile finally crossing his lips as he started to get an idea. “Even if I can’t open a portal of my own, I might be able to do the next best thing.”

“What’s that?” Clementine asked.

“I might be able to send a message.”

Chapter Text

Brezziana’s friends were scattered. Jack had (predictably) stormed off after finding out his mother was alive. Wanderlust followed after him. Neither of them had been seen for the rest of the day, and then Mihaly said they needed to go on a walk and disappeared. That left only Brezziana, Sara, and the Earth guy named Paul who Jack had found in an alleyway having suddenly changed color palettes into someone from the danceverses.

“Have you tried calling them?” Sara asked impatiently while she paced around the living room for what must have been the fifth time that evening. The girl was already a bundle of nerves normally; so this new development was really not helping.

“I can’t,” Brezziana explained again. “Whatever cell networks they have on Earth are totally different from the ones in the danceverses. My phone is useless here.”

It had been four hours since Mihaly left. For all they know, they could’ve been sucked into another unstable portal.

“So, like, why danceverses? ” the green-haired guy in the kitchen asked through a mouthful of potato chips. “Does everyone dance there or something?”

“Don’t worry about it, Paul,” Brezziana groaned. She felt bad for the guy, seeing as he couldn’t leave the apartment until they figured out how to turn him back into a normal Earth person. But man, was he getting on her nerves. Were all frat bros like this?

“Does that mean I can dance now?” he asked as if he’d just had an epiphany.

Sara shot him a glare. “Paul! ”

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, even though he didn’t look all that sorry. “Your friend wandered off, right. Focus on that, not the poor guy who looks like The Joker all of a sudden.”

“Who’s The Joker?” Brezziana asked.

Sara put her head in her hands.

Brezziana sighed. “Just… go take a shower,” she told Paul.

Paul raised an arm and sniffed himself. “Is it really that bad?”

“I don’t know, just go to a different room! You’re stressing her out!”

“You’re stressing her out!”

Brezziana just pointed to the bathroom, and Paul finally gave up and went to shower.

“Sorry about that,” Brezziana told Sara once he was out of earshot.

Sara took a seat on the couch next to her and sighed. “It’s okay,” she said, “It’s not your fault. This is just… a lot.”

“I know,” Brezziana frowned. “You’d think by now we’d have learned what a pain it is to save the world.”

She was hoping that would coax a laugh out of Sara, but instead all she got was another sigh.

“Why do we have to do it?”

“I don’t know. Because we’re the ones who did it the last two times? Because we got all tangled up with the chosen one?”

“But- I’m not even from the danceverses! Why do I have to deal with this?”

Brezziana’s heart sank a little. Sure, she never forgot that Sara was from a different world. It always sucked having one of your best friends a whole other universe away. But even so, she always considered Sara just the same as any of her danceverse friends. Did she not want to be seen that way?

“I mean… this time, it affects your world too. But even if it didn’t, you wanted to help out all of us before. Right?”

“Yeah, of course, but…”

Sara didn’t finish her sentence, and Brezziana’s ears took it upon themselves to finish it for her. She didn’t like what she heard.

“Wait- do you not want to help us?” she asked. She didn’t want to sound offended, but she couldn’t help it.

“No, I just-”

“I can understand being worried, but we’re all worried! And you know we would show up for you if you needed help. Do you not actually care?”

“No, no, I do!” Sara insisted. “Really! It’s just- I don’t know. I kind of thought I was done with all that danceverses stuff.”

This time, Brezziana didn’t care if she sounded offended. “ All that danceverses stuff? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just scared, okay?!” Sara finally burst. She couldn’t look at Brezziana when she said it, and her hesitation made Brezziana second-guess her anger. “I’m sorry. I love you guys. And I feel really, really bad that I keep feeling this way. But after last time I got involved… I just can’t help it. I can’t risk something like that happening again. Even before Night Swan showed back up, every time Wander would open a portal here… I was scared it would be her.”

Brezziana looked down at the floor, wishing she hadn’t snapped at her. “That’s fair,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.”

“And then I feel bad for feeling scared,” Sara continued. “I mean- you guys were all under her control too! And Jack had to lead a rebellion for years! You’re all fine. So why should I act like I deserve to stay away from it all?”

Brezziana almost laughed. “You think we’re fine? ”

“Pretty much!”

“Sara, we’re all messes. I know I am, at least. Some days I don’t even want to leave the house because I feel so bad about what happened.”

Sara frowned. “But- it wasn’t your fault. If anything, it’s my fault. I’m the one who she used to lead you guys into a trap.”

“She used you just like she used us. That doesn’t make it any more your fault than it does ours. For the most part I try to remember that, but… it’s really hard when everyone else sees you differently.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone sees me as the girl who used to work for The Night Swan now. Even after we were freed, that reputation didn’t go away. I see it online all the time. Nobody trusts me. They all think I’m lying about being brainwashed or that I’m secretly still under her spell.”

“But that’s ridiculous! You’re a hero!”

“I guess not anymore,” Brezziana sighed. She didn’t feel like a hero. She never used to let people’s opinions of her bother her. She always avoided reading comments online and managed to stay confident even when she did. But after seeing the whole world turn on her, that was harder than ever. Were they right? Was there some part of Night Swan’s influence that stuck with her? She felt like a different person from the girl she was before the spell. Was that what it was?

“I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I guess I’ve just been too focused on myself to realize how it all affected the rest of you.”

“Don’t feel bad. I’ll admit, I’ve been trying to act tough about it. My point is, it’s okay to be scared. It makes sense.”

Sara smiled a little. “Thanks. I just wish it didn’t mean I was kind of scared of… you guys.”

Brezziana half-smiled back. These days, a lot of people were scared of her. It definitely didn’t feel great to hear that her friend might have been one of them. But it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. “It’s okay. I know what you mean,” she said.

“Are you sure you’re not mad?”

“I’m sure.”

Just then, their unfortunate houseguest popped his head back into the room.

“Hey, sorry, I can not figure out how to turn on your shower.”

Soon after, Brezziana and Sara took it upon themselves to do some investigating of their own. If Mihaly had gotten sucked into a portal, it couldn’t have been too far from the apartment. If they could find some evidence of one nearby, maybe they could figure out where it sent them. Leaving Paul behind to entertain himself, they took to the streets and set out to find anything out of the ordinary.

That turned out to be much easier than they expected. Right away, the girls came across a taped-off broken bus stop on the next street over. The roof of it was caved in and the bench was split down the middle by a huge crack, as if a tree or a power line had fallen into it. But that wasn’t the weird part. It was also splattered with bright colors. A dried puddle of tie-dyed paint leaked into the street and weird shapes stuck out of the metal posts holding the structure together. The whole thing was covered in graffiti that warped around the strange bends and corners. 

“Well that’s got to be something,” Sara said. “If it’s not the result of an interdimensional alien portal, some sculpture artist must’ve worked really fast.”

Brezziana took a closer look at the graffiti. Something seemed familiar about it.

“Wait,” she finally said. “I’ve seen this before! See that tiger on the side of the bench? It looks just like the one on the wall I pass on my way to work!”

“So you think that’s where the portal went?”

“It has to be! All of this looks straight out of Dancity.”

If their theory was correct, Mihaly must have gotten pulled through a portal near Brezziana’s gym. That was some sort of relief, Brezziana supposed. Mihaly had been there before, so they’d know how to get home. Still, that didn’t help them figure out how to get to them. Without Wanderlust, they were stuck here.

“Hold on,” Sara frowned. “Come look at this.”

She led Brezziana down the street, over to an old shop that looked abandoned.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Sara said. The entire sidewalk in front of the store was completely white. It was covered in snow.

“What in the world?” Brezziana took a cautious step forward. As soon as she was on top of the snow, the air suddenly became freezing cold. She stepped back. Warm again. Definitely the work of magic.

“Could there have been a portal in there to… which one is that snowy place?” Sara asked.

“Winterhaven,” Brezziana answered. Sure enough, the door glistened like it was made of ice and the boarded-up windows looked frosted over.

Sara looked back to the bus stop at the other end of the street. “Two new portals showed up in the same day? In the same place?”

“What are the odds of them being this close together?” Brezziana wondered aloud. “Unless they aren’t the only two new ones.”

The worry on Sara’s face deepened as she realized what she was implying. “Unless there are a whole bunch of them… all over.”

Before they could take in the possibility, Brezziana was interrupted by a flash of light back the way they came. On the roof of a restaurant down the street, another portal had opened. This one in plain sight.

She pointed it out to Sara and the two of them ran for it. Nobody else was out on the street at the moment, but that could change in an instant. They climbed up a fire escape to the roof just as a figure tumbled out of the portal and landed inches from the edge of the building.

“Aaaah!!”

The two watched in shock as a tall girl with long green braids and stark white skin got to her feet and stumbled away from the edge. Now, not only were the portals pulling in people from the danceverses, but they weren’t even changing them to match Earth. This girl had on a super bright pink and green outfit with a holographic skirt and clunky heart-shaped goggles. Definitely someone from Cyberfunk.

“What- who- aaaah?!?” the girl sputtered.

For a moment, Brezziana didn’t know what to do. The portal was still there. Could they close it somehow? Or would getting closer only suck them in?

Thankfully, Sara took it upon herself to talk to the lost girl. “Hey- don’t freak out! You’re okay! You’re on Earth. It’s… kind of a whole thing? But I’m Sara. I promise we’ll explain everything—or as much as we understand, at least.”

“Uh- okay, I guess?” the girl said. She was definitely still confused, but that was about as well as anybody could take suddenly being flung out of your dimension and into another. “I’m Hoku. Why is- this is Earth?”

“I know, I know, everyone keeps saying it’s boring,” Sara said, a bit disappointed.

“No, no!” Hoku insisted with obviously fake sincerity. “It’s… it’s nice.”

Suddenly, the portal flickered. All three of them jumped back. Another shape shot out of it with a blur—an empty soda can? It hit Hoku’s bright pink hat and landed on the floor.

“What the-”

The portal closed with another flash.

The three of them just stood there holding their breaths for a moment, half-expecting it to open back up again. When nothing happened, Sara finally picked up the can.

“There’s a note taped to it!” she said, unfolding a piece of paper and holding it out for Brezziana to read with her.

Guys,

 I’m trapped in the Virtualscape. It’s a long story. Send help? 

—Wanderlust

Sara raised an eyebrow. “What’s the Virtualscape?”

Brezziana didn’t have a clue, but Hoku leaned over to take a peek at the note. “It’s a Cyberfunk thing,” she said. “Wait- does that say Wanderlust ? Like the prince Wanderlust?”

“Yeah,” Sara said. “He’s our friend. We’re trying to help him stop those weird portals.”

“He’s in the Virtualscape?”

“Apparently. What does that mean, though?”

“The Virtualscape is a place people in Cyberfunk believe exists in between the danceverses and Earth. There was this whole conspiracy a long time ago where a big company was supposedly doing experiments in there and controlling it, but then the CEO disappeared and it all got shut down. As far as I know, nobody’s been in or out since.”

Sara looked horribly worried, and Brezziana wasn’t feeling much better. Wanderlust was between dimensions? In a place most danceverses hadn’t even heard of?

“Wh- how do we get him out then?” Brezziana asked.

“I don’t know!” Hoku said. “I didn’t even know anyone could go in there! A lot of people don’t even believe it exists.”

“Well, apparently it does exist. It can’t be a prank; this is definitely Wander’s terrible handwriting.”

Hoku gasped quietly. “You call the prince by a nickname ?” she whispered, as if the royal army was going to come after her for asking the question.

Brezziana would have laughed, but she wasn’t in the mood. “Most of his friends do,” she said. “He’s really not that formal.”

Hoku seemed to have made a connection. “Wait, are you Sara Sara?” she asked.

Sara looked confused.

“Like, Sara from Earth who helped defeat The Night Swan?”

“I guess so, yeah,” Sara laughed awkwardly. “That’s me.”

Hoku turned back to Brezziana. “And- sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“I’m Brezziana.”

Hoku’s jaw dropped. “Oh my- I didn’t recognize you! Wait, you’re- woah !”

Brezziana did wind up laughing this time, if only because she wasn’t used to people looking at her so starstruck—especially not with the reputation she had now.

“Sorry!” Hoku said quickly. “I just- I follow you! Not like I follow you around, I mean- like- on social media! Wait, that was obvious, sorry- I’m- it’s so nice to met you!”

Brezziana just laughed again. It had been a long time since someone mentioned her social media accounts. Before she became a Night Swan puppet, they were what she’d been known for. “I didn’t know people in Cyberfunk were into workout content.”

“I am a little,” Hoku explained, “But mostly I just follow you because you’re really cool. I mean- you’re- you know what I mean! You’re a hero!”

Brezziana smiled. There was a strange warmth in her chest that she hadn’t felt in a long time. Everywhere she went now, people saw her as the girl who’d done terrible things at The Night Swan’s command. People were scared of her. She never thought she’d be seen in a truly positive light again. But here was this strange, excitable girl from Cyberfunk who she’d never even met before, calling her a hero. Maybe not everybody saw her as a villain after all.

“You could be our hero,” Sara said to the girl, “if you could help us get into the Virtualscape and get Wander back.”

Hoku snapped out of it. “Right! Right. I mean… I’d love to. I just don’t know how. I could try to do some research, but I doubt Earth has any books on Cyberfunk folklore.”

Brezziana frowned, but Sara’s eyes suddenly lit up with an idea.

“Actually,” Sara said, “I know a library that just might.”

Chapter Text

There was some connection that remained between Jack’s magic and his mother’s. Now that he’d given in to its full potential, and now that he knew she was still alive, he could feel it. That tether nagged at him. Once and for all, he wanted it gone. 

But there was one benefit to that connection. When Jack tore open a portal to find The Night Swan on Earth, he knew where to find her. So when he crossed through back into the strange colorless realm, he found himself in front of a building he’d never seen before.

It was a bland, featureless skyscraper, somewhere in the middle of a city. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place he would picture his mother living. Then again, neither was anywhere else he’d seen in this world. 

Jack went inside to see a polished lobby area. He didn’t see his mother, but he did see framed posters of different video games he’d never heard of. It wasn’t until he saw the logo on the front desk that he realized where he was. Sara had told them the danceverses were part of a video game made in her world. This was the headquarters of the company that made it. If his mother was here, that couldn’t be good.

Jack marched up to the secretary at the front desk, a young man with round glasses and a slicked-back haircut.

“How may I help you?” the man asked in a soulless customer service tone.

Jack didn’t waste any time. “I’m looking for Leda Nox.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“An appointment?”

“Yes,” the man said. “Unfortunately, you can’t meet with the director unless you have an appointment.”

“The director?” Jack repeated. “Director of what?”

The man raised an eyebrow, as if this was all common knowledge. “Of the Just Dance franchise.”

Jack should have been scared, but all he felt was another flash of white-hot rage. Of course. Of course after being thrown out of the danceverses, she would look for a way to control it from the outside. Of course she wouldn’t be satisfied until she had another throne to rule from.

“Where is she? ” Jack asked through gritted teeth.

“She’s in her office. But I’m sorry, I can’t let you speak to her.”

Jack searched the man’s eyes. He’d felt the power inside him weaken when he stepped through the portal, but it was still there. When he concentrated, he could sense his mother’s matching magic. Some of it had attached itself to this man. The subtly glazed-over eyes and unnatural tone confirmed it. She was controlling him. Jack was willing to bet she was controlling the whole tower.

Jack pretended to pull something out of his pocket and hold it out in a closed fist over the table. “Pass this on to her,” he said. When the man reached out to take it, Jack grabbed his hand and yanked on the spell inside.

The man’s eyes suddenly widened. He opened his mouth to scream, but Jack kept control to ensure that no sound came out. The last thing he wanted to do was make a scene.

“Which floor is she on?” Jack asked, drilling into the secretary’s eyes and keeping an iron grip on his hand.

“What-”

“Which floor? ”

“Floor- floor fifty-three. What- How did I-?”

“Perfect.” Jack let go, leaving the man bewildered and looking around like he had no idea where he was. “You should leave.”

Jack walked behind the desk and down a hallway, leaving the terrified man to hopefully realize his best option was to walk out and forget that that ever happened. Not far down, he found an elevator. There was a guard standing beside it, but Jack didn’t have time to deal with that. There was nobody else around, anyway. Right as the guard started to ask what Jack was doing there, he doubled over in pain and started coughing up blood and roses on the marble floor. Jack stepped right over the mess and continued on his way.

The anticipation grew as the elevator passed each floor. He’d never looked forward to seeing his mother before. But this time, they would be evenly matched. This time, he wasn’t scared of her. He was going to make her see just what she’d done to him. He was going to make her regret it.

But right around the fortieth floor, Jack’s focus moved away from the encounter ahead. Something was wrong. He rubbed his eyes, but it was still there—the elevator was starting to glitch . Parts of the walls flashed different colors like a pixelated LED screen and segments randomly turned transparent. The soft music over the speaker stopped and started and distorted and dissolved into static. Whatever was happening only got worse and worse as he went further up.

The floor started to disappear. Jack panicked and grabbed the railing just before everything came to a stop. The doors opened to the fifty-third floor.

The hallway he stepped into wasn’t something from Earth at all. Everything was slick black, arching jagged shapes making up the walls and floor in different mismatching materials. It was almost like Swan Tower, only broken. Very, very broken.

If the glitch-like anomalies in the elevator were leading up to something bigger, this was certainly it. Nothing stayed the same for more than a couple seconds. Chunks of the walls disappeared and reappeared at random. Tinted lights at odd angles turned on and off like a horror movie. Desks and chairs and bits of office furniture were stuck clipping through the floor. Navigating down the hall was a twisted nightmare. A completely silent nightmare.

Jack’s footsteps were the only sound. Aside from the chaos, this was more his mother’s style. For years, he’d walked around a quiet, lonely tower, learning to soften his footsteps so she wouldn’t hear him sticking his nose where he didn’t belong. This time, he didn’t care if she heard.

The hall was lined with numbered doors, each as nondescript as the next. Jack quickly started to wish he’d asked the secretary for more information than just the floor number. Luckily, the pixelated holes appearing in the walls revealed what was behind some of them. 

Most were just boring offices. If any of them were The Night Swan’s, it’d have to have been a bit more extravagant. Either way, they were all empty. She was nowhere to be found.

Finally, one room piqued Jack’s interest. An electric hum broke through the silence, coming from a double-doored room that glitched enough to show the whole space inside. It was some sort of big computer lab—or at least it was probably supposed to be. This room was the most unstable so far. Screens blinked in and out of space in midair, wrapped in impossible curves, and blended into the walls. Walking inside, Jack felt like he was floating. Floor tiles lifted up and down around him, but nothing interrupted his steps. He blinked and found himself sitting in one of the desk chairs, then blinked again and was standing right where he’d left off. 

Jack had to squint in all the flashing lights and illusions to make out what he was seeing, but he managed to take a look at one of the masses of floating screens.

Given the context, he really shouldn’t have been surprised, but he couldn’t help it. Every screen showed somewhere in the danceverses. Some from Sun Horizon, some from Floworld, and a lot in Eternyx. A sinking feeling filled Jack’s stomach. Was she watching him? All this time, had she been overlooking what he was doing in Eternyx? Had he ever been truly free of her?

Some of the screens were running lines of code, seemingly writing themselves. Was it linked to the footage playing alongside it? Was this what his entire world was made out of?

Even more curiously, did that mean it could be altered?

Cautiously, Jack took a seat at one of the desks. His vision swam with all the strange lights and out-of-place patterns, but the screen cut through like the end of a tunnel. This was The Night Swan’s plan, wasn’t it? With access to all this, she could do whatever she wanted with the video game that made up their home world. She could change anything . Maybe she already had, and Jack just didn’t know it. Maybe his entire life had been written by her in the last ten minutes. Who would be the wiser?

But if that was how this worked, she didn’t have to be the only one who controlled the danceverses. Now, it was Jack’s turn.

The moment his fingers touched the keyboard, his vision exploded. Searing pain shot through Jack’s head as hundreds of images and a cacophony of sound shattered his senses all at once. He screamed, but he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t move.

The room dissolved around him. He felt himself dissolving, unfolding into infinite pieces that swirled and hummed and scrambled to click into empty slots amongst the pieces of everything else. He saw all the danceverses, all their histories, all the zeros and ones that glued them together. It made no sense and perfect sense, and it was all too much to take in. Parts of it were blinking out. Parts of him were blinking out. Everything went black.

“Tempting, isn’t it?”

Jack awoke on the floor in the middle of the computer room, his head throbbing. Exhaustion fought against him as he pulled himself to his feet. The room was still a glitching, impossible mess, but now only as much as it had been when he first walked in.

His thoughts should have gone toward figuring out what had just happened. Instead, they instantly latched onto the cold, familiar voice that woke him up.

“You’ll have to start smaller, though. At least for the first few tries.”

Jack’s adrenaline kicked back into gear. “Mother,” he growled.

Jack whipped around to face the woman he hadn’t seen since he’d pushed her out of an airship. He wasn’t scared of her, he decided. Maybe an old version of him deep down was still cowering at the sound of her voice, but that didn’t matter anymore. That Jack wasn’t here anymore. The Jack facing her now was stronger. He knew what he was here for. But he wasn’t prepared for what he saw.

Leda Nox was coming apart. For the most part, she looked like somebody from Earth. But at the same time, Jack saw the woman who raised him in the danceverses. He saw both versions of The Night Swan at once, overlaid on top of each other in a mind-bending illusion. Both parts were there, but both parts were incomplete. Parts of her skin switched from tan to white. Her silver necklace melted into metallic feathers gliding over her shoulders. One part of her face wasn’t there at all, skipping the skin and exposing bone beneath. 

Every part of her flickered and twitched, but she didn’t seem to mind. The one constant in her patchwork form was that sly, ever-present smile that Jack knew all too well. A smile that said she wasn’t afraid or in any sort of pain. A smile that believed it had already won.

“Withstanding the effects of trying to change the code takes practice,” she said. “Since we’ve been to the danceverses, our lives are intertwined with them. So when we try to reprogram the game, it creates a sort of paradox. I figured it out eventually, but it took a bit of a toll on me—not to mention what it did to the office.”

Jack wished he could be surprised. “You’re reprogramming the danceverses.”

“I will be soon. I’ve already been able to make small changes. Any day now, I’ll rewrite everything that went wrong and make sure I keep the throne for good this time.”

Jack’s rage bubbled over. Not only was she back, but she was planning to take back Eternyx from him. After all he’d been through to get the throne. After everything he’d had to do to keep it. He wasn’t going to let that happen. That planet belonged to him .

Jack yanked his power up to the surface. The lights blinked out for a moment before two thick, thorned vines burst from the floor. The Night Swan’s lips curled slightly—he’d surprised her. Using magic that strong in a world that wasn’t supposed to have magic took him so much energy that it hurt, but he smiled through the pain. This was more than worth it. 

The vines shot at her. Just before they could grab hold, her form flickered out of place and reappeared on the other side of the room. Whatever new powers she’d gotten from messing with the game code were unpredictable. There was no way for him to be prepared.

Nevertheless, missing only made Jack more determined. He whipped around to follow her, throwing out a wave of crackling energy that leveled half the room. It fizzled out in a bubble around her.

She walked toward him. With no strategy left, he blindly kept blasting electricity in her direction, feeling in his bones that if he wanted it hard enough, it would hit. But every attack bounced right off.

“I gave you those powers, Jack,” she said once she was right in front of him. “Don’t be so ungrateful.”

Suddenly, she thrust a hand forward. Her fingers clutched Jack’s neck. As soon as she did, all he could feel was pain.

All the lights and sounds of the room went wild, multiplying tenfold. It felt like he was exploding from the inside out. When she let go, he dropped to his knees and thought he would go right through the floor. He saw his hands bracing himself against the floor. He could see through them. His arms were breaking into pieces—flickers and pixels falling into a puddle on the floor. The pain pulsed in his body, every twinge another fragment of himself being deleted from the universe. He was screaming. But there was so much sound he couldn’t hear it.

Finally, it faded out. Jack gasped to catch his breath on the floor while he watched his body slowly piece itself back together again.

His mother knelt down in front of him. He was too weak to stop her as she tilted his chin up with one finger to examine his face.

“I was wondering what that would do to you,” she said to herself, as if whatever just happened was nothing more than a harmless science experiment. “I’ve tried it on people from Earth and people from the danceverses, and it’s had different effects. But of course for you it’d be something in between.”

Realization sank in as bits of Jack’s energy returned. 

“What?” he breathed.

“I can erase you, just like the others who came through the portals. But not all the way. For regular humans, it just causes an extreme amount of pain. Since you’re a mix of the two, you get a little bit of both.”

Jack wasn’t in the headspace to work out what she was implying. His head was still pounding. “What do you mean a ‘mix of the two’?”

She finally let go of his face and simply smirked at his confusion. Jack tried to get up, but he was too weak.

“I will say, you’ve done a very good job at growing into the gift I gave you,” The Night Swan said as she stood back up. “In some ways… I’m proud of you.”

Jack’s anger sparked back up at those four words. They were the words he’d spend his entire childhood chasing and never come close to. Hearing them now, after everything, was only an insult.

“But there’s work to do,” she continued. “It looks like your disobedience somehow got even worse as a side effect. Don’t worry. We can fix that.”

Chapter Text

Mihaly liked to consider themself a fairly responsible person. When they left Sara’s apartment to go investigate The Night Swan’s new headquarters by themself, they figured making the right decision most of the time gave them the right to make a stupid one every once in a while to balance it out. But hours later, when the bus ride to another city took longer than they expected and they found themself sneaking around the hallways of an office building that seemed to be dissolving into pixels and broken holograms, they were starting to reconsider.

They’d been so confident going into it. It was just a spy mission, they told themself. They snuck up to the floor above The Night Swan’s office, where flickering gaps in the floor would hopefully give them a peek into whatever she was planning. They didn’t need Brezziana’s strength for that, or Sara’s knowledge of Earth. It was a one-person job, and that’s how Mihaly wanted it to stay. That way, nobody had to wonder why it was so important to them in the first place.

To be honest, even Mihaly themself wasn’t sure why it was so important. They thought they had moved past their personal history with The Night Swan. Even in the battle against her in Eternyx, they’d only been fueled by the recent things she’d done to them and their friends. But something about this situation was bringing up feelings they hadn’t dwelled on in a long, long time.

They wanted to go back to Master Panda’s temple. If the peaceful atmosphere of home didn’t help settle their thoughts, talking about them to their mentor certainly would. It worked before, after all. But trapped in another dimension with their portal-traveling prince nowhere to be found, that was off the table. So what was their backup coping strategy? Splitting off from the group to break into The Night Swan’s new castle, apparently.

Derkes, that was something Jack would do. Maybe the two of them had more in common than they thought.

Mihaly had hoped the floor above The Night Swan’s would have less security, but it seemed totally abandoned. Every once in a while, the holes in the walls and ceiling would line up to show through several floors all the way up to the sky. Was every floor above hers like this? Did that make them uninhabitable? And if that was the case, did that mean The Night Swan wouldn’t be here either?

Just before they could settle on that conclusion, there was a clacking sound down below. Heels walking down a hallway. Mihaly slunk back but kept an eye on an opening to watch downstairs.

Sure enough, there she came. A polished businesswoman with jet black hair and the march of a woman with plenty of experience getting what she wanted. The same woman who’d taken away Mihaly’s family.

Mihaly lived most of their childhood in Cyberfunk, but they never quite fit in there. They weren’t exactly raised like most of the other kids, having originally been from Eternyx. There were similarities between the two planets, though. In the big city, everything was controlled by the rich. Corporate tycoons traded money for secrets and power and the poor did whatever they had to to survive. It was a tough world, at least compared to other places in Cyberfunk. But it never bothered Mihaly much. It was all they’d ever known, after all. And it helped that they lived with a mother who was one of the rich ones. 

Well, an adoptive mother, at least. Mihaly wasn’t even sure if she would call herself their mother outside of saying it for the public. But they couldn’t blame her. Mihaly was essentially thrust into her arms as a small child by a woman who didn’t want them.

The mother who raised Mihaly was always hard to read. She never asked for a child, but she still treated them like her own. She was far from the warm, nurturing caretaker Mihaly saw on TV. She wasn’t capable of that. But she respected them, and she never gave up on them. That was leagues better than their birth mother had offered. So Mihaly decided she was a good mother. They loved her. And no matter how little else they had in terms of family, they were happy with that.

Until one day, they lost that, too.

Mihaly’s mother worked for The Night Swan. Back then, Mihaly didn’t see that as a bad thing. It was something that made their family important. It gave them power in a world where power was everything. But it also made them replaceable. 

Mihaly wanted to be an asset. They’d seen what The Night Swan valued, and they were determined to show that they could meet those standards. So every day, while their mother was at work, they would study dark flow. It took years, but they unlocked a wealth of power that had lied dormant since they were a baby. They dissected The Night Swan’s moves. They did everything they could to match her skill. Everything they could to surpass her.

But still, it wasn’t enough. When they were thirteen, The Night Swan came to tell their mother that her services were no longer required. If Mihaly had more time to practice, to become strong enough for The Night Swan to finally want, maybe that would have changed her mind. Maybe she’d say she wanted Mihaly to live in Swan Tower and be her apprentice, and she needed their mother around to take care of them in the process.

But that didn’t happen. Mihaly was still a child, a novice in the flow, and they still weren’t good enough for her. So they just hid in the hallway and watched as The Night Swan took their mother away and left without another word.

That had been the beginning of the hardest years of Mihaly’s life. In one fell swoop, they’d lost their family, their home, and any respect they had left for the self-proclaimed future queen of Eternyx. They spent their adolescence seeking revenge. Eventually, they’d turned their life around and left all that bitterness behind. But somehow, even today, it still found a way to flare back up.

When they saw The Night Swan walk down the hallway below them, they were half tempted to leap down through the hole and attack her. But that was teenage Mihaly talking. Adult Mihaly thankfully knew that was stupid and stayed hidden in the shadows. There were other ways to go about this, they reminded themself. Ways that didn’t involve giving in to years-old anger and reversing ages of personal growth.

Mihaly continued traversing the halls, even more carefully now that they had confirmation that The Night Swan was down below. There had to be something here they could use to stop her—something they could break, something to steal, or some bit of information to turn back on her. Eventually, they found something, but it was the last thing they were expecting.

One of the floor tiles flickered away for a moment, just long enough for Mihaly to see a brief flash of something red underneath. They waited for it to happen again, but instead heard some kind of commotion from the room next to them. Slowly, they opened the door a crack and peeked inside.

“Jack? ”

Struggling to climb out of a pixelated hole in the middle of the floor was none other than the friend they’d all watched storm away to another dimension just yesterday. He’d almost made it up when he jumped at the sound of Mihaly’s voice, lost his grip, and fell. 

“Jack!” Mihaly rushed to the edge of the hole. Jack was laying with the wind knocked out of him on the floor below. He groaned and got to his feet, but something seemed wrong. Shouldn’t he be somewhat happy to see them?

“What are you doing here?” Jack grumbled once he was up. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Mihaly frowned before offering their hand to help Jack back up. “I’m going to worry about it. How did you even get here? Where’s Wanderlust?”

Jack hesitated. “I thought he went back to you guys.”

“No… we haven’t seen him since you two left yesterday.”

Concern briefly flashed across Jack’s face, but he shook it off. “Well- I don’t know then. But he’s not here. Where are Sara and Brezziana?”

“They’re… not here either.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “So you came by yourself.”

“You came by yourself.”

“Touché,” Jack muttered. Despite the strange attitude, he finally grabbed Mihaly’s hand and climbed up to the upper floor. It was a relief to have him back, but they still couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong.

“Why would Wander send you here by yourself?” Mihaly asked. 

It was a simple question, but Jack struggled to find an answer. Dread built in the back of Mihaly’s mind. He was hiding something. Why would he be hiding something?

“I’m- I’m kind of in the middle of something,” Jack said instead. “Night Swan caught me, so thanks for helping me out, but- I need to go.”

He started to walk out, but Mihaly grabbed his wrist. He tensed and didn’t turn back. “Mihaly,” he warned. 

Mihaly didn’t let go. “You can go after you tell me what’s going on,” they said.

He finally looked back at them, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything. As soon as Mihaly saw his eyes, they let go and took a step back. His eyes were glowing. Pink.

The color disappeared when Jack saw the look on Mihaly’s face and softened for a moment, but it was too late. Everything suddenly clicked.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Mihaly said. They didn’t want to sound scared, but they couldn’t help the way it came out. 

“What are you talking about?” Jack’s voice was still strangely out of character. Everything he said was usually laced with some kind of poise and care, even when he was angry. But this time, it sounded like he was barely in control of the way his words came out.

There were things Mihaly didn’t want to talk about. Their past was behind them, and all their friends needed to know was the person they were now. But if their theory was correct, Jack might be an exception. “I was in Eternyx a little while ago,” they said calmly, “visiting a friend. She told me a bunch of things about you abusing the throne and… having powers.”

Panic flashed in Jack’s eyes. 

“I didn’t believe her, but-”

Jack ran.

“No- wait!”

Mihaly took off after him. It was true. Jack had his mother’s power. And if everything Gwen said in Eternyx was true, it was overtaking him. Had he always had powers? Was this new? Did he have all of her powers?

Jack was fast, but Mihaly was too. Throwing caution to the wind, they chased him through the halls until Jack realized he couldn’t outrun them. He turned back, his eyes flashing again. Mihaly threw up their arms to shield themself as a crackle of pink lightning shot out from Jack’s hands and down the hall toward them. It didn’t hit them, but it destroyed the ceiling above. Mihaly dashed away just in time to avoid the crumbling roof crashing down on them. 

Mihaly got right back to the chase, but now they were significantly behind. They couldn’t keep this up forever. Thankfully, they got an idea—one they really didn’t want to do, but they were sure would work. Mihaly remembered the sight of The Night Swan down below, walking down the hall while they hid in the shadows pushing away the desire to jump down and attack her right then and there. They were better than that feeling. But now, for the first time in years, they leaned into it. The anger bubbled up like an old friend, reigniting a dormant spark that would never fully die out. Lightning crackled between their fingers. They stopped and took a deep breath.

CRACK!

Jack suddenly screamed as two ghostly pink hands of crackling energy burst from the ground and grappled him. Mihaly trembled at the feeling of the dark flow, revisiting its temptation after so long but keeping it at bay. They caught up to Jack and then finally released it, the hands disappearing with an exhale and the anger easing back in their mind.

Jack was free to run again, but he didn’t. He just stood there, eyes wide, staring at Mihaly like he’d never seen them before. In a way, he really hadn’t.

“The Night Swan passed on her power to you,” Mihaly sighed. “But she passed it on to me, too.”

“Mother never mentioned me having a sibling,” Jack said. After deciding it’d been an eventful enough mission and getting out of The Night Swan’s headquarters before she could realize Jack was freed, the two of them sat at a bus stop where Mihaly would have a chance to properly explain.

“Half sibling,” they corrected. “And of course she wouldn’t. She was ashamed of me.”

Jack’s irritability had softened now, but there was still a bitterness to his words. Mihaly couldn’t quite tell if it was genuine anger or a defense mechanism. “Why didn’t you tell me, then?” he asked. “We’ve known each other for a while now.”

Mihaly sighed. Maybe he was right. Maybe they should have told him sooner. But it never felt right. “I didn’t think it really mattered,” they admitted. “Night Swan made it like I never existed, so… we really never had that much of a connection. It’s not like we ever even met before Wanderlust found you.”

“But we could have. If you knew this whole time, you could have tracked me down.”

“For all I knew, you would’ve hated me just like she did. You were her second try at a perfect child. Since she didn’t get rid of you like she did to me, I assumed she got what she wanted.”

Jack laughed, but it was more spiteful than anything else. “Looks like she got what she wanted now,” he said.

Mihaly raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know what happened to me,” Jack said. “I tried to be strong enough for her when I was younger, but I never could. Now, I suddenly got these powers, and… I can feel myself getting more like her every day.”

He went quiet after that and slouched back in the seat, his eyes tracing cracks in the pavement.

“You’re not like her, though,” Mihaly said.

“You don’t know that.” Jack tensed, and Mihaly could almost feel the twinge of resentment in his voice. “This all started back in Eternyx, while all of you were still under Night Swan’s control. I’ve been lying about it this whole time. Everything your friend told you about me is true, and I’ve done even worse things that the public doesn’t know about. Things she would have done.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re like her.”

“Yes it does! She said she was proud of me. I didn’t think that was even possible, but- of course she is! I’ve hurt people without even caring. I’m angry all the time. That’s why I don’t know where Wanderlust is! He found out the truth and he left me. Because I’m turning into another Night Swan.”

“You do care, though. What you’re saying is that it bothers you.”

“But it doesn’t! I think I’m just scared of all of you looking at me the way you look at her! Because when I think about the things I’ve done, really think about them, all I can think of is how good they felt.”

Mihaly sighed. What he was saying was scary. If Wanderlust found out, it made sense that he left. But for Mihaly, it wasn’t that scary. For them, it was a little bit familiar.

“That’s not you,” they said. “It’s the dark flow.”

Jack rolled his eyes.

“I’m serious,” they insisted. “Dark flow feeds on negative emotions and makes them stronger. You’re new to it, so it’s hard to control. That isn’t your fault.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Yes I do! Why do you think I have such good control of my power?”

“I don’t know, some kind of mystical panda magic?”

This time, Mihaly rolled their eyes. “It’s not mystical panda magic,” they groaned for what felt like the millionth time. “It’s- never mind. When I first started being able to use the flow, it was dark flow. Night Swan was so entrenched in it that that’s all she could pass on to us. That plus how mad I was at her for giving me up was the perfect storm. My power was irresistible and all I wanted to do with it was cause enough pain to make up for my own.”

Recognition flickered in Jack’s eyes, so Mihaly continued. “I don’t talk about my past because I was a different person then. I was an angry, hateful kid. I spent forever trying to get revenge on her for what she did to me and my mom. I didn’t even start learning how to tame that until I met Master Panda. Even then, it was hard. It took a long time.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Jack said. “I didn’t use to be like this. I was mad, sure, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Then something happened and everything just suddenly… magnified, I guess.”

Mihaly frowned. “What happened?”

Jack hesitated. Mihaly couldn’t blame him for not wanting to tell them the truth. Most people would have run away by now. But Mihaly hadn’t given up on themself all those years ago, so they couldn’t give up on Jack now.

“When we were going through Swan Tower after she died,” he began, “I found her spellbook. I thought I didn’t want anything to do with it, but… I don’t know; I just couldn’t put it down. Then when I was looking through it, I think I unleashed some kind of spell. My powers were suddenly way stronger, and everything just went downhill from there.”

“They were suddenly stronger,” Mihaly repeated. Finally, everything was starting to make sense. “Strong enough for you to open a portal from the danceverses to here?”

“Yeah,” Jack nodded. “Why?”

This wasn’t the time to smile, but Mihaly couldn’t help themself. “I knew it!” they gasped.

Grumpy Jack returned. “Knew what? ”

“That spell in her spellbook. That was her gift.”

“Definitely not a gift. It ruined my life.”

“No, I mean the curse. Or- she called it her gift,” Mihaly explained. “When I was trying to find a way to get revenge on The Night Swan, I found out about a journey she went on to amplify her powers. There was some cave in The Melosia Realms that held a nexus of dark flow. Supposedly, if someone tried to take it, it would enter their body and corrupt them forever.”

Jack paled at the word ‘forever’, but Mihaly went on. “Obviously, she didn’t see that as a bad thing. She found it and took on the curse to multiply her powers tenfold. That’s how she got to be so strong. I wanted to go there myself and get the curse myself. Thankfully, it didn’t work. Apparently, it was a one-use-only kind of thing.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“There’s only one way to get rid of the curse. You have to pass it on to someone else. If her new heir wasn’t strong enough, her plan was to pass on the curse to them when it was time for them to take over the throne.”

Mihaly hoped an explanation would be a relief for him, but Jack only looked more scared. “So… I’m cursed to be corrupted by dark flow,” he said. “Forever.”

Mihaly quickly realized their mistake. “Well-”

“Gods, of course I am.” Jack buried his head in his hands. “Of course it’s out of my control. Of course she found a way to turn me into her even after she was dead!”

“Woah, woah, I never said any of that!”

“That’s basically what you’re saying! I’m losing my mind because she made sure to permanently force her magic down my throat! I can’t get rid of it! Unless I passed it on to somebody else, but I don’t even know how I would do that!”

“I don’t think you have to!” Mihaly said. “Look, I know it’s a bit different from my situation. I never got her gift. But if I was able to control the dark flow in me, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to do it too.”

“I’m not you, Mihaly. And even if I was, this is beyond just teenage angst. Whatever she put in me is strong, and I can’t get rid of it. You said it—it’ll be part of me forever.”

“You’re right,” Mihaly said. “You can’t get rid of it. I never got rid of my dark flow either. But I changed it. When I went to Melosia Realms and found out I couldn’t get the same power The Night Swan did, I found Master Panda instead. He taught me how to turn the dark flow inside me into light flow.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “You can do that?”

“Sure you can,” Mihaly smiled. “It’s hard, and it’s unbelievably frustrating. But I did it, and I’m sure you can too.”

Jack looked away. “You shouldn’t be sure. You weren’t cursed.”

“I know. But… don’t you think it’s worth a try? I know you want to be a good person, Jack. I really think that could overpower any curse.”

Jack shook his head, but he stayed staring off into space. “I’m gonna find a way to get back in that building and stop her,” he said. “It’ll probably end in me becoming the next Eternyx overlord you guys have to kill, but… at least I can take care of some of the dirty work for you first.”

“No,” Mihaly sighed. “Come back to Sara’s with me. We’re doing this together.”

“I can’t. I’m the bad guy now. You don’t want me there. Who knows what I’ll do to you?”

A bus turned onto their street. Mihaly took a quick glance at the number. This was it. They grabbed Jack’s arm. “Jack,” they said. “I trust you. Even if you don’t trust yourself. And if anything does go wrong… I’ll take care of it.”

Jack let his eyes meet theirs for a moment. “...Promise?”

“Promise.”

Chapter Text

Jack meant to explain everything to Sara and Brezziana as soon as they got back. He really did. But when they stepped into Sara’s apartment to see the green-haired guy Jack found in the alleyway and a new danceverses-colored stranger sitting on the couch, there seemed to be a lot more to catch up on than he thought.

The Earth guy, apparently named Paul, was unfortunately Sara’s roommate for the time being. He couldn’t walk around in the open here looking like someone from another planet, and they couldn’t send him to the danceverses. He seemed to have a good attitude given his situation, but the others clearly weren’t big fans of him.

The other new person was a girl named Hoku from Cyberfunk. She’d stumbled through an unstable portal while Jack and Mihaly were home and was now stuck in the apartment for the same reason. If they didn’t get all this under control soon, they were going to run out of couch space. 

Of course, at least some of that damage could be undone if they had a certain deity-prince around to open up some portals. Wanderlust was missing. Thankfully, Hoku seemed to have brought with her a clue.

“What’s The Virtualscape?” Jack groaned. Honestly, he’d had enough news for the day.

“It’s a space in between Earth and the Danceverses,” Mihaly frowned. “It was supposed to be impossible to get in or out of these days.”

“How do you know that?” Brezziana asked. “Have you been there?”

“No,” Mihaly sighed before making a quick glance at Jack. Jack had agreed not to tell the others about Mihaly’s past. They were right—it really didn’t have anything to do with the person they were now, so it didn’t need to be anyone else’s business. But apparently, it was now. “Before access to The Virtualscape closed, it was run by Nithe Long—the one who raised me.”

Hoku’s eyes widened. “Nithe Long was your mom?”

Mihaly seemed almost ashamed to answer. “Sort of. My real mom left me, so Nithe took care of me. She’s… not exactly human.”

Nobody in the room was expecting that. 

“What- is she another deity or something?” Sara asked. 

“I mean everyone knows CEO’s are too evil to be real people, but come on,” Hoku muttered. “I mean- no offense.”

“None taken,” Mihaly almost laughed. “She pretended to be human for the public, but she was actually an android. She was made by The Night Swan to run Long Corporation as a front for her to study The Virtualscape.”

Completely excluded from the conversation, Paul spit out his soda. “There’s androids, too?!”

“Not on the couch!” Sara glared at him and hurried to get paper towels to clean up the mess.

Brezziana ignored him. “Of course she’s had her hands in everything for that long,” she groaned.

Hoku sat up. “Wait- if you’re Nithe Long’s kid, do you know where she went? Nobody’s heard anything about The Virtualscape since she disappeared.”

“Yeah,” Mihaly nodded. “Night Swan shut the operation down. I guess she found what she wanted somewhere else, so she didn’t care about The Virtualscape anymore. She closed down the company and… deactivated Nithe.”

Brezziana and Hoku were busy reeling from one reveal after another, but Jack noticed the slight sorrow in Mihaly’s tone at the end. Nithe Long was deactivated. For a robot, wasn’t that basically like murder?

Jack tried to change the subject. “If nobody’s gotten into The Virtualscape since that company shut down, then how did Wanderlust get there? Was it some kind of glitch with all the unstable portals?” He asked.

Sara finished drying off the couch and shooed Paul out of the room. “More importantly,” she said, “How do we get him out?”

“I don’t know,” Hoku frowned. “Nithe Long was the only one who could open and close it. If she’s really gone, I don’t know of anyone with that kind of ability.”

“Is she really gone?” Sara asked. Everyone looked at her. “I mean, she’s a robot, right? If she was turned off, couldn’t we just… turn her back on?”

“I… don’t know,” Mihaly admitted. “Night Swan could’ve done something to make her impossible to turn on. I never saw her after the swan soldiers took her away. For all we know, she could’ve been totally dismantled. Even if not, I don’t know where she would be.”

“Probably at Swan Tower,” Jack said. “Which is now under my control.”

There was a hopeful glimmer in Mihaly’s eye that made Jack squirm. “You think she’s in there?” They asked.

“Maybe,” Jack said. “It’s worth a look. Mother had rooms filled with all kinds of old junk.” He realized too late that he shouldn’t call Mihaly’s robotic mother figure “junk”, but they thankfully didn’t seem to notice.

“Only one problem,” Brezziana said. “Wander’s gone. We have no way to get there.”

Sara and Hoku sighed and looked at the ground. Mihaly looked at Jack. Jack went red.

“We… might have a way to get there, actually,” Jack said quietly. 

“How?”

Jack couldn’t look at them. Part of him had hoped they’d be so busy catching up on the whole Virtualscape thing that he wouldn’t have to confess his secret to them after all. But he promised Mihaly that he would. And even the dark thoughts consuming him didn’t deny the sudden attachment he had to them. Now that he had a long-lost sibling, he didn’t want to lose them.

“I have powers,” he said. “My mom’s powers. I have for a while now, but I didn’t tell any of you because…”

The room had gone silent. He couldn’t look at any of them but Mihaly, who gave him a nod. “I’ve been having trouble controlling them. Dark flow is really hard to contain, so… I got carried away. And I did some bad things. And… I didn’t want you to find out.”

Finally, the truth was out. Well, maybe not the whole truth. “I did some bad things” was sort of underplaying the terrorizing role he’d taken in Enternyx. But he couldn’t bring himself to say any more, especially not in the deafening silence that followed.

Jack finally looked back at Sara and Brezziana. They looked worried, unsure.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I’m- I’m trying to fix things.”

Was that really true? Did he really want to reverse what he’d become, or had he just followed Mihaly back here because he didn’t want to be alone?

Brezziana shrugged, not quite able to meet his eye. “Well… we’ve all done things we didn’t mean to,” she said with a forced optimism. “At least you’re telling us now.”

Sara smiled slightly, but she looked uncomfortable too. Great. “It’s okay,” she said, “I’m sure you didn’t do anything that bad.”

Jack only felt worse. What he’d done was absolutely worse than she could have imagined. He didn’t say that, of course. He just swallowed the lump in his throat and straightened his posture.

“The point is,” he said, turning back to Mihaly so he wouldn’t have to see Sara and Brezziana squirm at the sight of him, “I made a portal to get to Earth after Wander ran off on his own. So I might be able to open one that can send us back.”

Mihaly perked up. “That’d be great!” They said. “We go to Eternyx and look for Nithe. Even if she’s not there, the way into The Virtualscape has to be somewhere in the danceverses. We find a way in, rescue Wanderlust, and then we can come back here and finish dealing with Night Swan.”

Hoku shyly raised a hand. “And…?”

Jack had been trying to ignore Hoku. Without the personal connection to him that Sara and Brezziana had, she just looked frightened by his confession. She tried to hide it, but Jack knew fear. 

“We can take you back with us and get you home to Cyberfunk on the way,” Mihaly said to her before looking at Paul, who had at some point come back into the living room. “As for him…”

“I can stay here with him,” Sara said quickly. Paul looked a little too excited at the suggestion, and Sara rolled her eyes. “He probably shouldn’t be left unsupervised.”

Brezziana frowned. “He’ll be fine,” she said before shooting the guy a quick glare. “He knows not to touch anything. And we should stick together. Bad things keep happening when we try to split the party.” Brezziana and Sara shared a quick conversation with their eyes that Jack couldn’t read, but Sara eventually nodded.

“So?” Mihaly said. “We can use Sara’s TV again. You think you can open a portal?”

“I can try.” 

Jack stepped over to the television set and tried to summon up the feeling from before. He concentrated on the sparks of power awaiting him and pictured a passageway to Eternyx. But nothing happened. It just wasn’t the same.

The flow was much harder to access on Earth. Even Wanderlust had said it took much more effort to open a portal back to the danceverses than it did to get here in the first place. Reaching Jack’s power now felt like trying to breathe with a blanket over his mouth. Doing something as big as opening a portal felt impossible.

Even if it weren’t for Earth dampening his powers, he couldn’t recreate the drive that allowed him to use them in the first place. When he’d opened a portal to Earth, it was in a fit of vengeance. All he could think about was destroying his mother for what she’d done to him. Now, though that rage was still there, it simmered in the background instead of consuming his every thought.

“I can’t do it,” he eventually admitted. “I’ve only made a portal once, and it was in the danceverses. I’m not strong enough.”

Brezziana sighed. “Okay, well… maybe there’s another way. We could go back to that library? Maybe there’s some information there.”

They were about to give up and head to the library when Mihaly suddenly stopped. “Wait,” they said, “I might have an idea. If you could do it back home, you’re probably really close to being able to do it here. You just need a little more power, right?”

“I guess,” Jack shrugged.

“Then maybe I can give you a boost.”

It was worth a shot. Jack turned back to the TV. He concentrated again, calling up his power and tugging it as hard as he could toward the place he held in his mind. Nothing. He just couldn’t reach.

But then, Mihaly placed a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly, the tug-of-war between him and the danceverses snapped like a rubber band. A CRACK split the air and the TV screen erupted in a burst of pink light. They all gasped as a jagged window appeared, flashing glimpses of abstract colors and sparks. 

Jack instantly felt drained, but he used the rest of his strength to hold the portal open. “It worked,” he breathed, unable to believe it.

“That… doesn’t look like a regular portal. It isn’t even showing where it leads,” Brezziana said.

“It’s unstable,” Mihaly frowned. “Maybe dark flow isn’t supposed to be able to cross dimensions. Or maybe Jack needs more practice. But it’s the only chance we’ve got. If it does any damage, we’ll undo it later.”

Sara inched further away from the portal. “I don’t know…”

Jack grabbed Mihaly’s arm and nearly fell onto them. He was getting weaker. “Make up your minds before I pass out,” he strained.

“Okay. Let’s go,” Brezziana finally said. Nervous and holding their breaths, the five of them stepped up to the portal and took a chance.

Chapter Text

Sara probably wouldn’t have gone through the portal if it weren’t for Brezziana holding her hand. She never wanted to return to the danceverses. She certainly didn’t want to return to Eternyx. But Brezziana was right. They had to stick together. So Sara closed her eyes and squeezed Brezziana’s hand and stepped through.

One moment, she was trembling in fear in the middle of her living room. The next, it was a very different kind of shivering.

Sara opened her eyes. 

Snow?

The five of them were standing in a vast field of white. Mountains traced the skyline in the distance and smaller shapes made up some sort of village closer by. Sara quickly wrapped her arms around herself in a pitiful attempt to make up for her warm weather clothes. This place was freezing.

“Winterhaven,” Mihaly observed. “We’re a little bit off.”

“Just be glad I got us through, okay?” Jack snapped.

Mihaly laughed, but the edge to Jack’s posture didn’t quite go away. Something was wrong. Jack had been acting differently ever since Sara and the others were freed from The Night Swan’s mind control. Sara chalked it up to the years they’d been apart. But even since then, he seemed to get more and more distant. And after he found out his mom was still alive, it was even worse. He constantly looked like he was holding back some kind of explosive rage.

Jack had powers now. Apparently, he’d had them for months. Did that have something to do with it? If they were his mother’s power, was that her rage? Sara didn’t want to think about it. All she wanted was to stop thinking about The Night Swan.

“It should be easier to portal to Eternyx from here,” Jack said, raising his arms again to cast another spell.

“Are you sure?” Mihaly frowned. “You look exhausted.”

“Well I’m not standing here in the cold forever, so I better be.”

Brezziana looked over to the village. “Let’s just go straight to Eternyx then,” she said. “We don’t want you using any more energy than you have to. Hoku, do you think you can catch a shuttle back to Cyberfunk from here?”

Hoku shrugged. “Probably,” she nodded. “Even if there isn’t a station over there, I can probably get a ride to one.”

They said their goodbyes while Jack took another moment to compose himself, and then Hoku was off to the village.

CRACK.

Another portal. This one looked much more stable and properly showed its destination. Sara gulped. But off they went to Swan Tower.

“So where would she be?” Brezziana asked as they climbed a spiral staircase to the upper floors of what Jack was now calling The Rose Citadel. He seemed even more tense here. Sara was almost scared to cross him.

“There are a few different wings Mother used as storage,” he said. “If they’re organized, I don’t know how.”

“Maybe we should split up,” Mihaly suggested. “Brezziana and I can take the east side of the building, you and Sara can take the west?”

Jack hesitated. He made a quick glance at Mihaly, as if he was expecting a certain response. When he didn’t get it, he straightened his shoulders and nodded. “Alright,” he said. “If you find something, come get us.”

Brezziana and Mihaly went off in the opposite direction while Jack started down the hall. He didn’t check to make sure Sara was following, but she hurried behind.

“So… how have things been here?” She finally asked after enough awkward silence. Jack was the friend she’d kept up with the least since they were all in Eternyx together. All her communications had to be through Wanderlust since he was the only one who could make portals, and Jack had been hard to reach even for him. Especially with how strange he’d been acting lately, it felt like she didn’t know him at all.

“Alright,” he said, uneager to keep up the small talk. “Just… busy.”

Sara didn’t know what to say to that, and she was thankful when Jack turned into a room full of storage boxes. The hallways of the old Swan Tower shouldn’t have been as intimidating now that all the swan soldiers were gone, but the emptiness carried its own eeriness.

“Think Night Swan would keep Mihaly’s mom in a box?” Jack asked flatly, scanning the rows of identical containers.

“Probably,” Sara sighed. “But which one?”

“No idea.” Jack cracked the lid of one at random and seemed to find nothing of interest.  “They're labeled, but for all I know everything could be in code.”

Sara frowned. “I guess we just start looking, then.”

They each took a side and started rifling through boxes, one by one. There were uniforms, weapons, and all sorts of mysterious gadgets and trinkets. But nothing that looked like an android. Sara was about to propose they cut their losses and try another room when there was a sound outside.

Jack froze. It was a series of repeating thud s, like footsteps by some kind of giant. Sara was terrified, but Jack didn’t quite look scared. If anything, he looked conflicted.

“Jack? What’s that?” Sara whispered.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned toward the doorway where a pair of hulking stone figures stumbled in.

The monsters stopped in front of Jack. Sara held her breath. They stared blankly in front of them like zombies, empty pitch-black eyes sunken in on solid gray faces. Cracks ran all up and down the moving statues, sprouting thick, thorny vines that wrapped around their unnatural bodies. Sara took a step back, already imagining all the bones those stone arms could break if she wasn’t careful, but they didn’t seem to pay her any mind. They were looking at Jack. Standing at attention.

Jack let out a deep, shaky breath. He looked at her for a moment, and she saw a glimpse of a Jack she’d seen years ago. Humility. Guilt.

Jack closed his eyes and put a hand on each of the creatures. They didn’t react. There was a long silence, where Sara thought she should say something but didn’t have the slightest clue what. And then, like a faint whisper, the statues began to glow.

Jack squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth. The cracks in the creatures glowed brighter, brighter, disintegrating the trailing vines into ash. A tear rolled down his cheek and Sara moved to reassure him, but then the cracks began to expand. 

She gasped. Both monsters were shattering, the stone skin breaking and crumbling away. There was something underneath—there were people underneath!

Jack finally let go when the rock under his fingers fell away. He opened his eyes with a gasp for air at the same time as the two humans did.

They screamed. A blonde boy and a black-haired girl dressed in grungy Eternyx fashions awoke from a terrible nightmare, staggering out of the pile of gravel they’d emerged from and clutching each other for safety.

They looked at Jack. Jack looked away.

For a moment, they looked ready to fight. But seeing that Jack wasn’t moving and Sara was simply confused, they took the moment to run.

Jack didn’t stop them. They disappeared down the hall, presumably never to be seen again. Jack just stared at the rubble, silent.

“Jack,” Sara finally said again when it was clear he wasn’t going to snap out of his trance on his own. She tried to keep an even tone, but she couldn’t help it. She was scared out of her mind. “What was that? ”

Jack didn’t look up, but after a moment he finally spoke. “I did that,” he said. “I turned them into those things.”

Sara couldn’t believe it. There had to be some context she was missing. “What- who are they?”

“Their names are Blake and Liv. They were with me in the rebellion, and then they worked here for a while.”

“Until…?”

“Until they turned on me. They were right to do it. But I… I didn’t know what else to do. I just wanted them to listen to me. I lost control.”

Sara was quiet. She had plenty of experience with someone who turned innocent people into mind-controlled inhuman soldiers. It was a name both of them were thinking of, but neither wanted to say. So when Jack said he’d done really bad things, he wasn’t exaggerating. He had acted like her. But that didn’t mean he was like her… right?

“So… it was an accident.”

Jack sighed. “I don’t know. I thought it was, but… I think I wanted to do it. And I could never turn them back, but just now I did. So I must have wanted to keep them that way.”

Sara nodded slowly. 

Jack turned away. “You can leave,” he said flatly. “Someone should probably make sure they’re okay.”

She probably should leave, she figured. But it didn’t feel right. What Jack did didn’t match up with the way he spoke about it. He chose to turn those two human again. And he seemed genuinely upset.

“But… I want to make sure you’re okay,” she finally said. “You don’t look it.”

Jack looked at her like he thought he’d misheard for a moment. “Sara- come on. You heard me, I did that. I’ve done all kinds of messed up things like that.”

“And you just un-did it!”

“That doesn’t matter! I’ll just end up doing even worse! My mother’s magic is corrupting me. You saw how my hair turned black once we came back through the portal? That’s what it’s from. I’m turning into the new version of her and it’s already too late.”

Sara crossed her arms. “So what you’re saying is it’s some magic curse thing. It’s not you.”

“Sara.”

“You aren’t a bad person. You’re arrogant and annoying sometimes, but you’re not whatever The Night Swan’s powers want you to be. You’re my friend. So I’m not giving up on you.”

Jack softened, finally looking her in the eyes as if he could use them to read her mind and see if she was telling the truth. He must have seen something, because he let the tension in his shoulders fall.

“But…” his voice lost its edge, one of his many walls melting away to reveal uncertainty. He got quieter, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. “Aren’t you scared?”

Sara had to think about it for a moment. When he first told them that he had his mother’s powers, she was scared. She didn’t want any kind of contact with the things The Night Swan could do. Hell, she barely wanted any contact with the danceverses at all. But this was Jack. This was the boy who rebelled against his mother and spent years trying to free his planet and get his friends back. Even though all logic said she should be at least a little wary, she couldn’t be. The magic he couldn’t control? Sure, that was a bit scary. But she could never be afraid of Jack .

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m a little scared for you, but not of you.”

Jack was quiet for a bit. Sara finally moved to give him a hug, but then they heard a familiar voice calling their names in the hall.

“There you are!” Brezziana said, sticking her head into the room with a big smile. “We found her.”

In one of the storage rooms on the opposite side of the tower, Mihaly was sitting on the floor with a silver, broken-down robot. A few parts were missing, part of the face plate removed and an arm lying off to the side, but it seemed to be working—partially, at least.

“Forty-six percent online,” a monotone robotic voice said from some speaker inside what must have been Nithe Long. “Seven hundred and twenty tw- seven hundred and twenty three missing files reported.”

It kept talking, repeating statistics over and over with the numbers slowly climbing. Mihaly’s eyes stayed firmly locked on the flashing lights where it’s eyes would be. Sara had never seen them this serious.

“Is it- is she okay?” Sara asked.

“Sort of,” Mihaly said without looking away. “I don’t know how to get her back in proper working order, but at least she’s booting up. And she’s been able to answer some questions.”

Jack knelt down next to them, scanning the android for anything familiar. “Are you the one The Night Swan sent to control The Virtualscape?” he asked her.

“One hundred and fifty five missing memory files reported.”

“Fantastic,” Jack frowned.

Suddenly, Nithe’s eyes flashed red. Mihaly squeezed her hand.

“The Night Swan,” Nithe repeated. A flickering hologram lit up over her face, covering the metal panels with the disguise of a scared human face. Mihaly gasped. The face’s eyes flashed with rage, just like a human’s would, as an audio recording started to play.

“You can’t do this,” a voice said, timed with the hologram’s lips. “I’ve been here for years. We’ve made breakthroughs in there. You can’t just shut it down now.”

A second voice came through, quieter as if farther away. “I can do anything I want, actually,” it said. A shiver ran down Sara’s spine. The Night Swan. “And what I want is to focus on more promising initiatives. I don’t need The Virtualscape anymore, and I certainly don’t need any loose ends.”

“But what about Mihaly?” Nithe said. Mihaly looked down sadly, their fingers slipping away from Nithe’s hand.

“Mihaly?” The Night Swan repeated, like she’d never heard the name before.

“The child,” Nithe said sternly. “They’re still young. Who’s going to take care of them?”

“What do you care? I didn’t program you to fake emotions for it.”

Nithe scowled. Another flash of red shone through the hologram, and it began to flicker even more. The audio started to break.

“You told me—bzzt—I only—bzzt—protect them—”

The hologram stopped.

Mihaly was pale. Sara and Brezziana stepped closer to put a hand on their shoulder. Out of the corner of Sara’s eye, she saw Jack move a hand toward theirs, then pull it away.

After some silence, Jack spoke to Nithe again. “You want revenge on The Night Swan,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Something underneath the metal casing of Nithe’s chest whirred and clicked.

Jack frowned. “Can you nod your head if that’s a yes?”

Slowly, her head tilted up, paused, and tilted back down. Jack smiled.

“We can help with that,” he said. “But first, we need you to open up The Virtualscape.”

Chapter Text

Wanderlust had seen a lot of portals in his life, but he’d never seen one split open in the middle of the sky thirty feet up with a magic glowing staircase unfurling out of it.

“Is… that your dad?” Freyja asked, staring up at the phenomenon with a bit of reasonable concern.

Wanderlust hadn’t totally thought out their “rescue plan”. He managed to send a message through to Earth, but what happened next really depended on who received it. Ideally, someone getting sucked out of the danceverses would see the note, see it was from him, and contact his dad. Hopefully, his dad would have some way of getting into the mythical “world between worlds” that was The Virtualscape and pull him out. 

It wasn’t his dad who poked their head out of the portal at the top and spotted him, however. 

“Mihaly?” Wander gasped when he saw the unmistakable pink-haired head peeking over the edge.

“That’s definitely not The Traveler,” Clementine frowned. But Wanderlust was already sprinting up the stairs.

“Wander!” Mihaly stepped through the portal to attack him with a hug at the top. “How did you get here?!”

“It was one of the unstable portals,” he tried to explain once they let him go. But before he could continue, he caught a look at where the portal had come from. The dark room on the other side looked sort of familiar. But sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall with one glowing eye, was… a robot?

Wander pointed behind Mihaly. “What- how-?”

The robot started beeping. Mihaly frowned and stepped back through the portal, ushering him to follow with a newfound sense of urgency. “I don’t know how long she can hold this open,” they said. “We should hurry.”

Wander waved down to Clementine and Freyja. “Come on!” He shouted. “It’s my friends!”

The two hurried to catch up and the three of them stepped through—out of The Virtualscape and back into the real world.

On the other side, Freyja took a deep breath and Clementine laughed as if she were feeling the warmth of the sun for the first time. They’d been trapped in that place for twenty years . Wander was about to smile back at them when the portal suddenly fizzled out and he saw the three people standing behind it: Sara, Brezziana, and-

“Jack?!”

Wander sputtered and took a step back. He wanted what happened earlier to have all been a dream. He wanted leaving The Virtualscape to somehow have brought him to an alternate reality where his sort-of-boyfriend hadn’t inherited his mother’s penchant for dark magic and turning people into mindless bird-monsters. But as soon as he saw the jet-black hair and knowing expression in Jack’s eyes, he knew that wasn’t the case.

Freyja suddenly stepped in front of Wander, eyeing his friends. “Jack? ” She repeated threateningly. Right. Wander had told Clementine and Freyja all about Jack. All about who he apparently was.

A spark of anger flashed in Jack’s eyes at the disgust on Freyja’s face. Wander tensed, but Jack seemed to visibly soften and turn his attention back to Wander.

“Wander, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t-“

“What do you want with him?” Freyja snapped. She looked ready to cut him if he dared make a move, but Wanderlust stepped in front of her. As much as he appreciated her wanting to protect him, this wasn’t her fight.

“Do they know what you did?” Wander asked as calmly as he could. He wanted to cry. But he’d seen his father handle difficult situations too many times to count. He spoke evenly, reserving all personal feelings for later when there was time for them. If Wander wanted to be the leader he was meant to be, he had to follow that example.

Jack didn’t answer, his posture weakening. He looked so guilty. How could Wander not trust that? But how could he trust his own instinct to trust him?

Sara and Brezziana looked at Jack with a mixture of concern and possible mistrust. Mihaly, however, took a step between Wander and Jack.

“He’s on our side,” they told Wander. “He made some mistakes, and maybe there’s a lot to work out here, but I promise you he’s with us.”

Wander was taken aback. “How can you say that? He-!”

“I know what he did,” Mihaly interrupted with a pointed nod. “We talked while you were gone. I trust him. And I understand if you don’t right now, but you can at least trust me.”

Wander couldn’t look at Jack anymore. The regretful helplessness on his face was too confusing and too painful. 

“For all we know, he’s capable of everything The Night Swan is,” Wander said.

Mihaly took Jack’s hand. “Maybe so,” they said. “But that’s a conversation for another time. For now, at least focus on the fact that we can’t stop her unless we have all of us. We’ve made that mistake too many times already.”

Wanderlust sighed. They were right. And even if he’d been wrong in trusting Jack, he’d never been given a reason not to trust Mihaly. 

“Okay,” he said. Freyja scowled at his resignation and Clementine gave a sad nod. But the three of them eased off of Jack and the tension in the room dissolved into a low simmer. “Okay, we can put a pin in that. Right now we need to stop The Night Swan. And you guys need to explain how you got me out of there.”

Mihaly gestured to the static robot on the floor. “She got you out of there,” they said. “This is Nithe Long.”

Freyja and Clementine immediately snapped back on guard.

“Nithe Long? ” Clementine gasped “Long Corp Nithe Long?”

“It’s a long story,” Mihaly sighed. “But she’s also with us. She wants revenge on The Night Swan too.”

“She’s a robot?!”

“A robot built by Night Swan to access The Virtualscape and take over Cyberfunk. But once Night Swan was done with her, she decommissioned her and abandoned her here.”

“Sounds like a theme,” Wanderlust muttered. The Night Swan used people and then she threw them aside. She must have been doing it forever.

“Wait,” Sara interrupted. “Nithe Long is the only one who can get into the Virtualscape, right?”

“I did, technically,” Wander corrected. “But it was an accident. I was trying to investigate one of the unstable portals and some sort of glitch pulled me in.”

Sara nodded. “Well if Nithe can open up The Virtualscape, what if we could trap Night Swan inside? If Nithe doesn’t open it again, and she can’t make any more portals from in there…”

Jack’s eyes widened. “She’d have no way out,” he finished.

Brezziana finally smiled. “That’s genius!”, she said, turning back to Mihaly. “Do you think we could do that?”

“Maybe,” Mihaly frowned, “But I wouldn’t count on it. Not in the state she’s in.” They knelt down beside the automaton, waving a hand in front of her face. No reaction. “We were lucky enough to get her to open the portal once, and that took a lot of work. I’m not sure she could do it again, at least not as reliably as she’d need to for us to trap someone.”

“Could we fix her up?” Wander asked. He looked to Freyja and Clementine. “You guys are from Cyberfunk. Do you know some kind of… robot science?”

Freyja raised an eyebrow. “Robot science?”

“I could maybe go through some of her programming,” Clementine offered hesitantly, “but not without working hardware. And I don’t know anything about fixing that.”

“Actually,” Jack interrupted, “You said she was built by Cygnus, right?”

Mihaly nodded. “A mix of his robotics and The Night Swan’s magic, but yeah.”

“Cygnus had a lab here,” Jack said. He was avoiding eye contact. Undoubtedly, he knew what Wander was thinking about Cygnus. “A lot of his stuff should still be in that room. I wonder if he’d have any documentation on how to fix her.”

Sara and Brezziana nodded, no sense of the same discomfort in their eyes. They couldn’t have known what Jack did. They never would have let him say Cygnus’s name otherwise. 

Mihaly was unreadable. “Can you go check?” They asked. “We’ll try tinkering around a bit here until you get back.”

Jack nodded and turned to the girls. “Does someone want to come with me?”

Wanderlust suddenly spoke without thinking. He had to stop doing that. “I’ll go,” he volunteered, surprising even himself with his own stupidity. But he didn’t want to back down. Instead, he scrambled for a justification. He just didn’t want Jack wandering around alone, right? The man might have been dangerous. And if he was dangerous, a real leader would take the responsibility of escorting him instead of letting one of his friends do it. That was the reason, Wander decided. It definitely wasn’t because he missed him.

Chapter Text

The first part of the walk to Cygnus’s old laboratory was uncomfortably silent. Jack hadn’t planned for what he was going to say if he saw Wanderlust again. He assumed Wander would hate him. By the look on his face when he first laid eyes on him again, he certainly did. He assumed Wander would tell everyone what he did and turn the others against him. He did try to, but Mihaly stopped him. What Jack wasn’t expecting was for Wander to volunteer to walk with him alone.

Maybe Jack should have been on guard. The only reasonable explanation for Wander wanting to get him alone after what he’d done was that he was planning to kill him in secret to protect the others. Maybe Jack should have been preparing for an attack. But what would he have done? Would he have hurt Wanderlust back?

No, he wouldn’t. With all the fluctuating guilt and dark urges muddling Jack’s brain lately, he could barely tell what he really wanted anymore. But he definitely didn’t want to hurt Wanderlust. That much was clear.

What was less clear was what he wanted in the long run. He wanted to stop his mother, yes. But then what? He said he wanted to stop himself from slipping down the same dark path, but he reveled in the memory of using his magic to make his subordinates bend to his command. He said he wanted to guard the throne in Eternyx at any cost, but he felt sick at the sight of his eyes becoming more and more like hers. He was a mess of contradictions, dangerous and powerful. But did he really fear that, or was he right to embrace it?

Suddenly, Wanderlust’s voice broke through the insufferable silence.

“I shouldn’t have blown up on you back there,” he said. There was still hesitation in his voice, barely detectable to anyone who didn’t know him as well as Jack did. Nothing was fixed between them, but Wander was trying to be professional—humbling himself with an apology to coax out something more sincere in return. Jack had studied The Traveler’s methods of diplomacy in an effort to find a leadership style of his own. Wander wasn’t extending an olive branch out of a genuine desire to connect; he was just taking a page out of his father’s book. Jack’s mother always called that kind of emotional pantomime cowardly and unnecessarily manipulative. She said brute force was much more direct and effective. After the past year of ruling Eternyx, he was starting to think she was right.

Jack didn’t want to use force here, though. Not with Wanderlust. So all he could do was play along.

“It’s okay,” he sighed. “You’re right to be mad at me.”

“Yelling isn’t going to solve anything, though,” Wander said. He tried to meet Jack’s eye, but Jack stayed laser-focused on the hallway. He didn’t want this to turn genuinely emotional. If Wander got past his walls this time, Jack had no idea what he would find. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “I’m the one who messed up. But I meant it when I said I was sorry.”

Did he mean it? It felt like a lie. But everything that came out of Jack’s mouth these days felt deceitful, no matter what it was. How could he tell the whole truth when he didn’t know the whole truth?

“I want to believe you,” Wander said. “But… it just doesn’t add up. How could you do something like that by accident? And even if you did, why wouldn’t you fix it? It wasn’t that difficult to heal Cygnus; and I wasn’t even the one who cast the spell! The only reason you wouldn’t have reversed it is if you didn’t want to.”

Something in Jack’s throat tightened. He couldn’t answer either of those questions. He’d been trying to for weeks, and it was driving him crazy. “I don’t know,” he said in the even tone he had so much practice forcing, “I’m not as used to magic as you are. I tried to fix it, and it just wouldn’t work.”

“But then why not tell us? Why leave him locked up there? He wasn’t dangerous; he still had his mind! I could’ve helped him sooner! If you’d just said something-”

“Then what?” Jack snapped. “All this would’ve happened sooner? You would’ve told the others what I did and had them all hunt me down like you hunted down my mother?”

“No!” Wander said, but it was weak. 

Electricity prickled under Jack’s skin. “You’re lying,” he growled, the accusation falling out of his lips without control. He could feel the venom seeping into his voice, the unbridled well of anger crawling up into his lungs. Wanderlust wasn’t here to make up; he was here to stop him from going off the edge and doing something terrible again. He’d already seen the monster Jack was hiding, and stopping monsters was his whole job. He knew what Jack was, and he hated him. He hated him and he hated that they’d been close and he was just waiting to drag him back to his father so he could watch the king of the danceverses lock him up and rip everything he’d worked to build away from him.

Wanderlust caught Jack’s wrist.

Jack caught his breath.

“I’m not lying!” Wander said. His voice was shaking, but it was weighted heavily with intention. Either what he was saying was true, or he just really wanted it to be.

Jack stopped walking and took a deep breath. His power was getting to him; he could feel it. And he didn’t want to hurt Wanderlust, he reminded himself. He didn’t.

“I don’t want to talk about this right now,” he said, adding an artificial calm to the carefully-mastered even tone. He couldn’t control the bitter voice echoing through him. If he kept talking, it was going to make its way out and he was going to wind up giving in to something he couldn’t take back.

Maybe Wander was lying as much as Jack was. Maybe he still wanted to trust him. Maybe neither of them knew what to think anymore.

“Sir.”

By the grace of some god, one of Jack’s older recruits saw them in the hallway and interrupted the moment before it could get sappy.

Jack straightened his jacket and turned to the man awaiting him.

“Yes, Foxx?”

“We caught Cygnus fleeing to Cyberfunk. He’s been returned to the cell he was in before.”

Jack went pale.

“What?!” Wanderlust gasped. There it was again: that gut-wrenching look of betrayal. Luckily, Jack didn’t have to see it for too long. Wander was already pushing past the two of them to go find Cygnus’s cell.

“Dammit Foxx,” Jack hissed as he took off after him. “Wander, wait!”

Wanderlust didn’t slow down until he’d reached an unfamiliar lobby and had to stop to choose a direction. “Which way is it?” he demanded without looking at him.

“Just listen to me, please.”

“Which way?”

“I’m gonna let him out, I swear! I just want to explain before you run away again!”

“Explain what?!” Wander snapped. “Explain how your apologies are just more lies?!”

“No! I-” Jack swallowed the lump in his throat and took a breath. “When you left, I freaked out. I want to be a good person. At least I think I do. But when we found my mom’s spell book after she died… I think it put some kind of curse on me. And now I keep getting more powerful and that power just… takes over.”

Wanderlust was quiet. He let his shoulders relax, but he still wouldn’t look at him.

“I’m trying to be the person you all want me to be,” Jack continued. “But something happened to me- or is still happening to me. I’m trying to fix it. But it keeps getting worse, and everything’s been so chaotic the past couple days that I haven’t been able to reverse all the damage. I would’ve called off the search for Cygnus; I swear. I just didn’t get the chance.”

“If all of that is true,” Wander said cautiously, “why wouldn’t you have told us earlier?”

“I was scared,” Jack finally said. Admitting it out loud felt like choking himself to get the words out of his throat. “All of you are just normal, good people. And you- you’re a demigod! You’re The Traveler’s son, and you’re the chosen one, and you’re perfect! Why would you of all people put up with this ?”

Wanderlust sighed. “You know I’m not perfect. I’ve done bad things too.”

“You did bad things when you were brainwashed. That doesn’t count. This isn’t- even if it’s a curse that’s doing this to me, it’s still me. It feels too real. It’s like the magic is just bringing out the ugly parts of me that were already there.”

Wander didn’t say anything again. Jack stepped closer to try to catch his eyes, but he just looked away. Jack’s heart broke.

“I didn’t want you to see those parts of me,” Jack said quietly. They both stood there in silence, staring absently at the marble flooring stretching in opposite directions. “But I guess now you have.”

“Let’s just go get Cygnus,” Wander finally said.

Jack nodded, and he led Wanderlust back to the prison block.

Cygnus sat on the bench in his cell, sadly studying the cracks in the walls until Jack and Wanderlust came in. He was still in the same torn clothes he wore as a magically-mutated prisoner. Something seemed different about him, though. He wasn’t pacing, or fidgeting, or staring off into space in the middle of some frighteningly genius scheme. In all the time Jack had known the inventor, he’d never seen him this grounded.

“I’m back,” Cygnus smiled sarcastically. Normally, he’d have some sort of a sing-songy amusement in his voice that undermined the situation. Instead, he seemed perfectly aware of the trouble he was in.

Jack didn’t have time to question it. He made sure to step up to the cell before Wanderlust so he had the chance to unlock the door first. That was the best he could do to prove that he did mean to let Cygnus go.

Cygnus raised an eyebrow. “Oh is my time up already?” he huffed. “I guess you’re still letting the prince pay bails.”

“This isn’t about him,” Jack said as he gestured for Cygnus to leave the cell. “I don’t want to keep you prisoner.”

“Sure you don’t.”

Cygnus stepped out like it was no big deal, but noticeably moved closer to Wanderlust. That made sense; Wander was the nice one. The good one. But it still stung.

“I don’t,” Jack repeated. “You’re free to go.”

Cygnus squinted at him—not in the way he used to, like he was studying a machine that wasn’t working quite right. This time, it was suspicion. “What’s the catch?” he asked. “Gonna let me hop on another shuttle so your hunters can go track me down for sport? Chain me to my workbench and make me build killer robots for you?”

Before Jack could answer, Wander suddenly cleared his throat. 

“Actually,” Wander said, “we could use your help.”

Jack and Cygnus were equally surprised.

“You don’t have to,” Wander quickly added, “but speaking of robots, we’re trying to repurpose an automaton you apparently built back in the day. Do you remember Nithe Long?”

Cygnus hesitantly nodded.

“Well we found her and had her open up a portal to The Virtualscape, but she’s in bad shape. If we can get her working again, we want to use her to open it up again and trap The Night Swan in there for good.”

Cygnus blinked. “Leda’s alive?”

“It’s a long story,” Jack grumbled.

“The point is,” Wander continued, “we were going to look through your old lab for notes on how to fix her. Now, if you want to just leave, that’s totally understandable and I won’t let anyone stop you. But if you want to help… having the inventor around would be much more help than a couple of old notebooks.”

Cygnus thought about it for a moment. He looked at Jack, and Jack looked away to avoid the inevitable hurt.

“I’ll do it,” Cygnus finally said to Wander. “The prince of the danceverses would be an excellent client to have on my resume, after all. And I’d love to contribute to keeping that kind of evil locked up.”

That kind of evil. Cygnus didn’t say he meant Jack, and maybe he didn’t, but Jack absolutely heard it that way. Not that he could blame him.

“Awesome!” Wanderlust grinned. “Thank you so much.”

“You can take any of the guest rooms,” Jack offered. “There should be some extra clothes in them if you’d like to change. Get yourself comfortable and we’ll be waiting in the lab to see what you need. If you change your mind, you can absolutely leave instead.”

Cygnus went to get settled in a guest room while Wanderlust and Jack got a head start looking through his old equipment. Even though he had no idea what he was looking at, Jack kind of liked flipping through all the old indecipherable scribbles. It made the silence in the room feel like it was from concentration instead of discomfort. It was certainly better than the awkward walk he and Wander took to get there, at least.

“I think this one has something to do with automatons,” Wander said, tossing a journal onto the cleanest workbench before turning back to the shelves. “Might help.”

“Great,” Jack said. His eyes lingered on the back of Wanderlust’s head, a burning urge to say something more. But what else was he supposed to say? He already apologized as best as he could. He already gave as close to a genuine explanation as he could muster. There was nothing left unsaid except the true depth of the dark feelings corrupting him. But Wander certainly didn’t want to hear about the way his senses buzzed when he used his powers or how often he thought about tearing the heart out of any soldier that disobeyed him. 

No, there was nothing to do but look through journals. Look through journals and think. But thinking brought solutions.

“I had an idea,” Jack finally said.

Wander turned around.

Jack almost didn’t want to say it. But the more he thought about it, the more he knew it was the right thing to do. Maybe Wander would forgive him if he did the right thing. No, that wasn’t the point of doing the right thing. He wasn’t supposed to be a good person for Wander, he was supposed to be a good person just for the sake of being a good person. But did he even really care about being a good person? It was undeniable at this point that a significant part of him wanted to be a bad person. Did good people want to be bad people?

“And?” Wander prompted. “What’s your idea?”

Jack snapped out of his spiral. “Right,” he said. He sat down on a stool by the workbench and ran his finger along the edge of the wood. “When we open the portal to The Virtualscape and get Night Swan inside,” he sighed, “I’m going with her.”

Wander paused. “What?”

“You’ll close the portal and leave the both of us in there.”

Wander put down the book he was holding and came closer, the movement raising hairs on the back of Jack’s neck. The attention felt like concern for him, and Jack didn’t want that. He didn’t want to coax it out of Wanderlust when he didn’t deserve it. “What?” Wander said again, like he didn’t hear it the first two times.

Wander was standing right beside Jack now, but Jack drilled his eyes into the table. If he looked at Wander and saw some kind of hurt, he’d wind up taking it back. He couldn’t take it back. He had to do the right thing. “I have her powers,” he explained instead. “I’m just as dangerous as she is. If we want to keep everyone safe, you have to lock me up too.”

“You’re not-” Wander began, but couldn't find the words to finish. 

“I am trying to be a better person,” Jack said. “But I don’t think it matters how hard I try. Eventually, I won’t be able to fight it anymore. I’ll be just like her. So it’s better to put me in there now while I’m still willing to go peacefully.”

“Jack…”

“You know I’m right. If you didn’t believe I was dangerous, you wouldn’t have so little to say.”

“I don’t- that’s not- I don’t know, okay?!” Wander burst. “I want to trust you. But I’ve messed up so many times, and you-”

“You don’t have to trust me. I get it. And if you can’t decide, I get that too. But when it comes to this power, I don’t trust myself. So I can’t be out here free to hurt people when it finally takes over.”

After more silence, Jack finally glanced at Wanderlust’s face, but he quickly wished he hadn’t. Wander didn’t even look angry anymore. There were tears in his eyes.

The door swung open. Wanderlust quickly wiped his eyes and Jack sat up to see Cygnus saunter in like he never stopped owning the place.

“Alright, kids,” the inventor grinned, looking around at the rusty tools and piles of books like old friends who had a lot of catching up to do. He grabbed a pair of gloves and flipped on a big lightswitch that started six different machines whirring to life. “Let’s get to work.”

Chapter Text

“Well look who else is back from the dead,” Cygnus laughed.

The remains of the automaton servant known as Nithe Long laid half-functioning on the floor, unearthed from the back of a storage room by the five kids who just couldn’t stay out of Leda’s business. Cygnus was impressed. When the swan soldiers brought the deactivated robot back to the tower years ago, she was in pieces. The fact that these kids managed to put her back together at least this much on their own was no small feat.

Then again, they had Cygnus’s son with them. The boy must have inherited some of his father’s intelligence.

Cygnus shook the thought out of his mind. He almost wished he hadn’t remembered who Jack really was. Even if he had some of Cygnus’s mind, he also had Leda’s power. Leda’s vicious hunger. It hurt too much to look at Eternyx’s newest ruthless tyrant and know that he was his son.

“So can you fix her?” Jack asked impatiently. Cygnus didn’t flinch at his tone this time. Knowing what he knew now, he just couldn’t be as afraid of him. No matter what he’d done, there was some ghost of paternal softness he couldn’t get rid of. It was dangerous.

“Of course I can,” Cygnus smiled, pulling an old journal out of one of the many pockets in his coat he’d stuffed with equipment from his lab. He knelt down next to the robot and started sifting through the loose pieces lying around. “She was built by a genius, after all.”

While the kids rolled their eyes, Cygnus chuckled to himself and got to work analyzing the damage. There was a loose familiarity to the parts and mechanics making up the machine, but it all felt like memories from a lifetime ago. In a way, it was. Cygnus had spent the last however-many years working with a different mind, one that was shattered from surviving The Night Swan’s brainwashing spell. Though his recent inventions were still ingenious, the processes that made them were disjointed and nonsensical. His old self would have called his new journals the ramblings of a madman. Now that the prince had healed him, the threads of his mind were tied back together and his reality was finally realigned. But he still wasn’t quite used to what that kind of stability felt like.

He powered down Nithe and opened up the back of her head. Parts of her main storage board were loose or had fallen out. That could be a good place to start. He flipped through the journal, scanning the pages for an inventory of her memory hardware. He started to compare sketches to the actual piece, but he was finding it oddly difficult to concentrate. 

The one with the pink hair knelt down beside him. “What’s that?”

Cygnus instinctually shut the book and yanked it away from them. They startled, and Cygnus took a breath. He couldn’t focus with all these children looking over his shoulder. “Private, that’s what it is,” he snapped back with his best fake smile.

The pink-haired one scowled.

“Now, if you could all-” a sudden buzzing stopped Cygnus in his tracks and turned his attention back to the automaton. It wasn’t supposed to make that sound.

“Oh- sorry, that’s me!” the prince pulled out his cell phone. Cygnus groaned. He was about to tell him to turn it off when the boy looked at the screen and gasped. “Shoot, I’m in trouble!”

“Did he just say ‘shoot’?” the Earth girl muttered.

The prince got increasingly worried as he looked through his phone. “I haven’t been getting any service from while we were on Earth,” he said. “My dad’s been trying to get ahold of me for days! He’s gonna kill me!”

Cygnus raised an eyebrow. “You really thought your phone would take calls from another dimension?”

The prince didn’t answer that. “I’ve gotta go,” he said instead, popping open a portal next to him as if that were something any normal person could do. “I’ll be right back!”

He disappeared, and the rest of them just shrugged. The pink-haired one went back to looking over Nithe’s missing parts. Cygnus swatted their hand away.

“Hey!”

“Can you all just-!” he took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I need to concentrate. I’m sure you all have other things to take care of, so please leave me to work for an hour or so. Okay?”

“You’re sure you don’t need help?” the pink-haired one said.

“I’m sure. I didn’t create the time-space clock tower with an assistant.”

They scowled, but reluctantly got up and followed the others as they left the room. Cygnus closed his eyes and took another moment to compose himself. He didn’t mean to snap at them; he was just frustrated. Fixing Nithe Long would take a lot of thinking, and he was just starting to break in his new brain.

But with the distractions gone and his unshakable insistence that he was indeed a genius, he finally got back on track. He found the missing parts of the memory storage board and tightened everything, then moved on to the other head functions. There were a few dents, but nothing he couldn’t work around. Clearly, she was taken apart by someone who had no idea what they were doing.

After getting the facial projection resynced to the main computer, he powered her up for a test. Before he could even get a word out, the false human image of Nithe Long lit up over the metal shell.

“Cygnus?” the old voice said. “What are you doing here?”

“Perfect!” Cygnus clapped. “A little bit of static on the vocals, but I can fix that later.”

Nithe’s illusory face scowled. “Answer the question. Why are you here? What does she want with me?”

Cygnus laughed. “Oh she has no idea I’m here.”

“She- what?” Nithe raised an eyebrow. “I know that’s not true. You only do what she tells you.”

“You’ve been gone a long time, darling.”

“Don’t call me darling.”

“Since when are you particular about nicknames?”

“When they come from you. We aren’t friends. None of her puppets are my friends anymore.”

“Well then it looks like we have something in common,” Cygnus smiled. “I don’t work for her anymore. There was a whole rebellion, actually. I was a war hero. Leda died, and then she came back to life somehow, and now I’m helping out these kids who want to stop her a second time.”

Nithe took a moment to answer, and Cygnus wondered if he’d missed something in her programming or if it was just a lot to take in. “You’re really not under her spell anymore,” she finally said.

“Nope. Lost years of my memory and went a bit crazy for a while in the process of getting out of it, but I’m all better now. Tip-top shape.”

If Nithe had the ability to look suspicious, she probably would. But she didn’t bother to say it. “They want me to open up The Virtualscape to trap her,” she said instead. Motors whirred in her legs, doing nothing but making clicking noises like nails on a chalkboard.

“Stop!” Cygnus help her in place. “I’m not done yet. Keep trying to get up and you’ll burn out the motors.”

The whirring stopped.

“Thank you,” Cygnus sighed. “Just hold still. Should I shut you back down until I’m done or do you want to stay awake while I’m working?”

“Keep me on. You need to catch me up on everything.”

Cygnus chuckled as he got back to work. “Well everything is a bit much. But I can try to give you the cliffnotes. I’m not sure when they shut you down. But Leda had another kid, in case you missed it. He was the cranky one with the red hair who was here earlier.”

“Your son,” Nithe said.

Cygnus blinked. “You knew?”

“You didn’t?”

“I… I must have known at some point. But everything when I was under Leda’s control was a blur for a long time. I only really got my memories back very recently.”

“I’m sorry,” Nithe said. Cygnus wanted to tell her that wasn’t true. She couldn’t be sorry; she wasn’t programmed to have real, human emotions. But he appreciated the sympathy, even if it was fake.

“Jack is probably the reason she had you decommissioned, actually. She found a dark power in The Melosia Realms that became her new plan. Eventually she realized she could pass it on to Jack after she died, so-” Cygnus stopped. He suddenly felt sick.

“What?”

“She died. She passed on the curse.”

“What curse?”

Cygnus put down his tools. It was all clicking into place too fast. During the rebellion, Jack was good. He had the same cunning his mother used to build her empire, but he used it to save people and fight back. It wasn’t until the war was over that he’d started doing terrible things. After Leda died.

“The new power Leda found turned the rest of her soul dark. It corrupted her even more than the dark flow already had. But Jack wasn’t like that. He was a good person until Leda died. Now, he’s becoming like her. Because she gave him the curse.”

“I think I’m missing some things here.”

She certainly was, but Cygnus was too busy having an epiphany to fill her in. “Gods,” he suddenly said. “I’m a terrible father.”

Nithe rolled her eyes. Cygnus didn’t even know she could do that.

“What does any of that have to do with you being a bad father?” she asked.

“I’ve been treating him like a criminal! I called him terrible things and- now I know it’s not even his fault! I’m his father; I should be trying to help him!”

“You’re not a bad father for acting on the only information you knew,” Nithe said. Her tone was usually fairly flat, but now she just sounded annoyed. “Now get back to fixing me.”

Cygnus sighed and went back to work. “What do you even know about being a father?” he muttered.

“More than you,” she said. “You didn’t even know you were one. I’m a mother.”

“A mother?” Cygnus laughed. “What, because you were in charge of babysitting Leda’s daughter?”

“Child,” Nithe corrected. “I raised Leda’s child. Mihaly.”

“Mihaly…” Cygnus repeated. The name sounded familiar. “Wait- that’s the one who was just here! With the glasses! That’s Leda’s first kid?!”

“Yes,” Nithe said. “And I was able to recognize them because I’m their mother.”

“That’s… wow. But- do you really consider yourself their mother? No offense, but you aren’t exactly… nurturing.”

If it was possible, Nithe sounded almost sad. “I tried to be,” she said. “It wasn’t fair of Leda to abandon them. They deserved a mother, so I researched what mothers do and tried to be that for them.”

Cygnus nodded. It was fascinating, really. Nithe wasn’t human, but she tried her best to emulate one. All for Mihaly. In a strange way, wanting to try was the most parental thing she could do in the first place. How could she have done that without having some sort of emotions?

Cygnus was quiet for a little while. Nithe dedicated herself to being the best parental figure they could be for Mihaly. Cygnus was Jack’s actual father, and he’d never acted like it a day in his life. Sure, he couldn’t really be blamed when he didn’t know, but it still felt wrong. It felt like he’d failed.

“What… do mothers do?” he finally asked after plugging in one of Nithe’s arms. “Or- parents in general, I guess.”

“They protect their children,” Nithe said, like she was reading a definition out of the dictionary. “Provide for their basic needs and watch out for them.”

“Well it’s a bit late for me to do that,” Cygnus grumbled. “Jack’s a grown adult now; he doesn’t need someone cooking him dinner and making sure he eats his vegetables.”

Nithe raised an eyebrow. Did Cygnus really program her to be so sarcastic? “Are you asking me for parenting advice?”

Cygnus groaned. “I don’t know!” he sighed. “I just feel like I need to make up for all these years. Even when he was younger, I was barely present. I was there physically, but I was under mind control. Now, I’m finally back to myself again, and all I’ve done is treated him like a monster. I’ve been… scared of him.”

Cygnus was disgusted. In all fairness, he’d never really known his own father. There weren’t many big happy families in Eternyx. But he knew what parents were supposed to do. He never thought he’d be one, but more so he knew he didn’t want to be a bad one. 

“You should talk to him.”

Cygnus’s fingers slipped and he got a small electric shock from one of the wires in Nithe’s side. “Derkes!”

“Watch what you’re doing.”

“I am! I- I can’t talk to Jack about this. He doesn’t even know I’m his father.”

“You could tell him.”

“He’d be devastated! After everything I’ve said to him?”

“Then apologize.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

With a mechanical grinding noise that couldn’t be good, Nithe slowly turned her neck to look at Cygnus.

Cygnus hurried to check the gears in her head again. “I said keep still!”

Nithe ignored him. “Do you want to have a relationship with your son?”

“I don’t- I mean-! He’s… yes. Yes, I do.”

“From all my research, I’ve found the most important thing in a relationship is communication and connection. Especially with parent and child bonds, you need to be open about your feelings and be dedicated to working out emotional challenges.”

Cygnus stared at her dumbfounded. He certainly never programmed her with all of that. Maybe there was a future project in creating artificial intelligence for psychological support…

“Pay attention,” Nithe snapped. “You have an opportunity here to support Jack in a way I never could with Mihaly. I was always limited by emotions. You’re lucky to have this chance. And if he’s really going through a hard time, it could help him more than you know.”

Cygnus went quiet. She was right, wasn’t she? Her advice was based on research, after all. And if he doubted the quality of her research abilities, he’d have to be doubting science itself—or worse, doubting the intelligence of her inventor. Maybe if Jack was only going down a dark path because of The Night Swan’s curse, there was a chance to save him. Maybe if Cygnus could repair their relationship, he could help him.

“Now stop staring off into space and get my leg back on,” Nithe said. “You’ve got to learn to multitask.”

Cygnus asked one of the guards to help him track down Jack, but where he eventually found him was where he least expected: back in Cygnus’s lab. He was alone, scanning over one of the messy bookshelves with his hands in his pockets.

“Interested in engineering now?” Cygnus smiled. There was still a current of fear running through him with Jack in the room, but he tried to drown it out with a somewhat-forced warm heart. He couldn’t be scared of his own child, right? He could be proud of him, though. Especially if he was following in Cygnus’s own footsteps by taking in interest in science.

Jack startled and turned around. “Oh,” he said, quickly straightening up and assuming a more professional pose. Now that Cygnus knew who Jack’s father was, he could see resemblances he couldn’t before. The cold, practiced posture was Leda’s influence, of course, but the slight slouch when he thought nobody was looking was all Cygnus. The way he’d tap his fingers on the table when he was impatient was just a more presentable version of Cygnus’s own nervous tics. Before the curse turned his hair black, even it was the same red that Cygnus’s was when it wasn’t dyed. Really, it was silly that he hadn’t made the connection sooner.

“Sorry,” Jack said, running a hand over his hair to make sure it was perfectly in place. “I was just seeing if you had any books on magic.”

“Ah,” Cygnus nodded, trying to conceal his disappointment. He was interested in magic, not science. Like his mother. “Looking for a way to break the curse?” he asked.

Something in Jack’s eyes flinched. His eyes were a lot like his mother’s, but from a long, long time ago. Cygnus used to be able to read Leda’s true feelings in her eyes, back when they’d first started working together and she still had good intentions hiding inside them. 

“You know about that?” Jack asked, trying to hide his nerves as he drifted over to one of the workbenches and leaned against it slightly. There it was—his fingers started softly drumming on the edge of it. Cygnus smiled to himself.

“I was there when she had the idea to pass it on to you,” he said.

Jack’s fingers stopped. Something flashed in his eyes—the dangerous, white-hot anger Cygnus had seen before. Cygnus instinctively braced himself, but it was gone as fast as it appeared. Jack shifted, tried to cover it up. Cygnus tried to forget about it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jack asked.

Cygnus sighed. “I only just remembered,” he admitted. “Remember when I told you your mother put a spell on me that I eventually undid?”

Jack nodded. It was something they’d talked vaguely about a while ago, during the rebellion. “You said it damaged your brain when you got the spell out,” he said. “That’s why you’re…”

“Not entirely all there?” Cygnus chuckled when Jack trailed off. “It’s okay,” he said to spare Jack from having to apologize. “But that’s pretty much right. I was brainwashed by her for years. When she decided she was going to pass her curse on to you, I was so angry that I woke up enough to experiment on myself to break free. It worked, but it left everything scrambled. I barely remembered anything that happened while I was with her. Then, your little prince friend healed me a few days ago.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” Jack said quickly. “You don’t have to forgive me. You probably shouldn’t. But- I’m sorry.”

Cygnus smiled again. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t forgive someone who turned him into a mutated bird-monster. But now that he knew about the curse, now that he could see all the little tics and tells Jack had gotten from his own DNA, he could read him better. He really did seem sorry.

“I know you are,” Cygnus said. “We don’t have to talk about that. My point is that when the prince reversed that spell, he somehow reversed whatever I did to my head, too.”

Jack’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I won’t pretend to understand the flow,” Cygnus laughed. “And I don’t want to. But I have to admit, whatever magic deity thing he did did save me. And I’m still getting my bearings, but… I remember everything now.”

Cygnus could see Jack’s brain turning a mile a minute. “So- if she told you about the curse, do you know how to reverse it?” he finally asked.

“I don’t, unfortunately,” Cygnus sighed. “But… I know I tried to protect you from it. And I’m sorry I failed to.”

Jack deflated. “That’s okay,” he said. “It wasn’t your responsibility.”

Cygnus hesitated. Maybe it would be better if Jack didn’t know. Maybe he’d come to terms with not having a father in his life. Maybe he didn’t want one. He certainly wouldn’t want one who failed him so catastrophically. But again, a robot of Cygnus’s own brilliant invention told him that wasn’t the case. And if there was even a chance of the truth helping Jack, he had to give it to him.

“Actually,” Cygnus said, “it was my responsibility. Leda was never interested in being a real mother, but… parents are supposed to protect their children.”

It took a few seconds for Jack to realize what he was saying. Once he did, his eyes went wide.

“Wait- you don’t-”

Cygnus nodded, swallowing a lump in his throat.

Jack paled. “But- what- there’s no way.”

Cygnus’s voice shook. “I couldn’t remember anything until the prince healed me. But back when I was under Leda’s control, she wanted a new heir. I was loyal to her, so-”

“No,” Jack said, the horror sinking in on his face. “But I- this whole time, we worked together in the rebellion and then I-”

He was crying. Cygnus’s heart jumped up in his throat. He hadn’t prepared himself for tears. He should’ve expected tears. Sure, his mind was back now, but he’d never been good at emotions in the first place.

“It’s okay,” Cygnus said before his eyes started watering too. “I didn’t know, and you didn’t know either. It’s not your fault.”

Jack sank into the chair next to the workbench and nearly collapsed onto the table. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I didn’t- I don’t know what happened to me, I just got so angry and it- I should’ve at least been able to reverse it!”

“It’s okay,” Cygnus said again. It wasn’t really okay, but it had to be. “It was the curse, it wasn’t you.”

Cygnus moved closer to Jack. This was the part where a parent would hug their child, wasn’t it? Cygnus wasn’t sure if he’d ever hugged someone in his life. He really didn’t want to. But his son was in distress, and that was how parents were supposed to comfort their child in distress, right?

“I don’t know anymore,” Jack choked. “I’m sorry; I’m really sorry.”

Cygnus hugged him. Well, he was pretty sure he hugged him. It felt awkward and uncomfortable and he wasn’t sure if he was doing it right, but he was going to call it a hug. “I know it wasn’t you,” he said after he pulled away. How could he really say that? He barely knew this kid, but something in his heart felt like it was tied to his. Weirdly, he believed it. “I knew her, and I know you’re nothing like her.”

“But I am,” Jack said. He wiped away tears and tried to hide his face before more could fall. “After what I did to you, and to everyone else, I’m just like her.”

Cygnus squeezed Jack’s shoulder. “No, you’re not,” he said with inexplicable certainty. “You’re a little bit like her, and a little bit like me, and a little bit like everyone you’ve ever come across. You couldn’t be just like her, even if you tried. You’ve saved this planet twice. There’s more good in you than there ever was in her, and you’re strong enough to fight for it.”

Jack looked up at him. In that moment, it made sense. He didn’t look like Leda, and he didn’t look like Cygnus, but he looked like a totally new, brilliant person who Cygnus knew could get past whatever strange darkness was haunting him.

“Thank you,” Jack said weakly. “I just… don’t know how.”

Cygnus smiled at him. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “And I owe you twenty-something years of helping you do it.”

Chapter Text

Wanderlust stepped out of Eternyx and into his bedroom. The portal snapped away behind him and he took a deep breath. It felt like years since he’d been home. How could visiting Earth, finding out his sort-of-boyfriend was evil, and getting trapped in an interdimensional anomaly have all happened in such a short amount of time? He wanted to just collapse onto his bed and nap for a week. But no, he still had a job to do—and an overprotective dad to get yelled at by.

Wander hurried out of the room to go find his parents. His mom wasn’t home, but a guard pointed him to the library where his dad was in the middle of research. Wander threw open the doors, startling the poor librarian who worked for them, and quickly saw The Traveler levitating a stack of tomes down from one of the higher shelves.

“Sorry!” Wander gasped, way too loudly for a library. 

At the sound of his son’s voice, The Traveler lost focus on his spell and let all the books slam to the ground behind him. The librarian yelped and rushed in to pick up the mess while The Traveler ran over and nearly crushed Wanderlust in a hug.

“You’re home!” The Traveler said, letting out a sigh of relief. “Where were you?!”

Wander hesitated. He knew he needed to get back and check in with his dad as soon as possible, but he didn’t think about what he was going to say when he got there. Just about everything he’d done in the past week was something neither of his parents would approve of. He’d need a very convincing lie to avoid getting in trouble.

Wander wasn’t very good at lying, however. And he definitely wasn’t good at hiding things from his father. Before he could even come up with an excuse, the look on his face gave him away.

The Traveler quickly caught on and narrowed his eyes. “Wanderlust,” he repeated, “Where were you?”

Well, it was nice while it lasted. 

“I went to Earth,” he blurted.

The Traveler went from anger to concern to disbelief in less than a second. “You what?!”

“It turns out you can still use magic there!” Wander quickly explained. “At least enough to get back and forth. It might have something to do with Night Swan being there? We don’t really know. But we did a lot of research, and we think we have a way to stop her for good this time, so-”

“Wanderlust!”

Wander stopped talking immediately. Yeah, there was no talking his way out of this one.

While The Traveler sputtered trying to figure out which part to yell at him about first, the librarian cleared their throat behind him and put a finger to their lips.

Wander gave them a sheepish grin. “Sorry,” he half-whispered. He pointed to the door. “Maybe we should go outside if you’re gonna yell at me.”

The Traveler sighed. They stepped outside, where he finally seemed to have gathered the start of his lecture.

“I told you to leave the Night Swan business to us this time! And I’ve always told you not to risk crossing over to Earth! I don’t even know which of those things is worse! You could’ve died, Wander!”

“I’m a deity,” Wander said quietly, “We don’t know that I can die.”

“We’ve talked about this several times! Any time I tell you not to do something, it’s for your safety! You know that! Especially now that you’re still readjusting to your powers!”

“I’m basically readjusted,” Wander said. “And I’m more powerful than before! Just the other day, I-”

Wander stopped himself before he could mention reversing the spell Jack cast on Cygnus. Even if it would prove his point, he couldn’t mention that without his father asking what the spell was—or who cast it. His cheeks grew hot trying not to give away that he was hiding something, but luckily his father had too many more words for him to notice.

“This isn’t about how capable you are! We know you’re strong; but strong doesn’t equal invincible. Your mother and I have been through big threats like this many times. You’re still healing from your last one!”

“I’m fine!” Wander said. Was that really true? No, it wasn’t. But he was sick and tired of waiting around for it to be. “As fine as I’m gonna get, at least! And I’ll be even more fine if I can actually defeat her for once!”

The Traveler pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re not thinking this through. You’re angry and you’re letting that guide your decisions. This is exactly what I mean when I say you need to let us handle it! You just aren’t ready!”

Wander’s stomach churned. Maybe his dad was right. But he had to be ready. He had to make up for what he’d done and become the hero the danceverses needed soon, or he never would. Whatever darkness The Night Swan planted in him was still there, and if he couldn’t smother it with true virtue, it was going to burn him alive. 

“I have to stop her,” he said. He tried to sound like an adult, like the real, righteous chosen one he was meant to be. But the pity in the sigh his dad gave him in return just made him feel like a little kid.

“Why?” The Traveler finally asked, gently putting his anger to the side. “You know we can do this, and you deserve a break after everything you’ve been through. Why do you have to be the one?”

Wander didn’t want to talk about this. But there wasn’t exactly a way out of the conversation, especially if he wanted to get away with how much he’d disobeyed. “I’m the chosen one,” he said carefully. “It’s my job to stop things like this and help the people.”

“You do help the people. You’re already a hero. You don’t need to be the one to stop everything.”

Wanderlust shook his head. “I’m not a hero,” he said quietly. “All I’ve done the past few years is hurt people.”

The Traveler’s face crumpled. “Wander,” he sighed, “You know that’s not true.”

“You saw what happened in Eternyx!”

“That wasn’t your fault. You were under her control.”

“I was under her control because I couldn’t stop her! Because I was an idiot, and I fell into a trap, and I failed!”

“Making a mistake doesn’t make you less of a hero.”

“Then why didn’t my crown come back?!” Wander burst. “Why is it still gone?!”

Instead of answering, The Traveler hugged him tight. It was comforting in a way, but it was also the final straw that broke the dam holding back Wander’s tears. He started crying on his dad’s shoulder, and his dad rubbed his back, and once again he felt like a child. A useless child that couldn’t do anything to fix all the things that were messed up inside him.

When Wander finally pulled away and tried to wipe away his tears, The Traveler kept a hand on his shoulder.

“Magic works in mysterious ways,” he said. “I’ll admit, I don’t know why your crown hasn’t returned. Even if I studied it for years, I may never know the answer. But what I do know is that you are a hero. No mysterious crown will change my mind about that.”

“Heroes don’t let themselves turn into evil sidekicks that terrorize entire planets,” Wander sniffled.

“Sometimes they do,” The Traveler said. 

Wander looked at him like he was crazy.

“Heroes are people, too,” he explained. “And there’s no person who hasn’t made a mistake. Heroes save the world, but they also mess up sometimes. They do the wrong thing, they lose battles, and they go down the wrong path. Because everyone does. Being a hero isn’t about being perfect; it’s about trying your hardest to make things right.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Wander said. “You’re a god. You’re all-powerful and perfect or whatever.”

The Traveler laughed. “You think I’ve never made a mistake?”

Wanderlust shrugged.

“Come here,” The Traveler said, moving the two of them over to a bench down the hall. “You’ve earned yourself a story. A long time ago- stop rolling your eyes, you started this.”

Wander crossed his arms instead.

“Close enough,” his dad shrugged. “A long time ago, there were two planets in the danceverses that nobody talks about today: Terra and Westin.”

A lightbulb switched on in Wander’s brain. “The two that combined to form Wasterra,” he remembered.

The Traveler looked impressed. “How did you know that?”

“I read about it when we were investigating what’s happening on Earth. A bunch of unstable portals made the two planets blend together into one.”

The Traveler nodded. “Well, at least your little adventure taught you some things. Yes, that’s how Wasterra was formed. But in order for that to have happened, there had to have been portals.”

“Some people from Terra came to you and asked for the power to make portals so they could travel to Westin and stop the war between the two planets, but then they used that power to make it all worse.”

“Who’s telling the story here?”

“Sorry.”

“Terra and Westin were at war, and a group of officials from Terra came to visit me. Up until then, I refused to get involved with the conflict. Intervening would only cause the tension to build, so I needed to let them sort it out until they were at a place where diplomacy would be effective. I told them this, but they insisted they weren’t asking me to help them win the war. They said they wanted peace, and that in order to initiate negotiations they needed a way to travel there. Nobody could get past the fleets Westin set up surrounding the planet, so there was only one way for them to get there-”

“Portals,” Wander nodded.

“Yes, portals. Now shush. They asked me for just a smidgeon of my powers, enough to portal back and forth between the two planets for a few months. I’d never done something like that before, but I was just so excited to hear that they were heading toward peace! I thought about it for a bit, and then I agreed.”

The Traveler’s tone grew solemn as he thought back to that time. “The very next day, all hell broke loose. They’d lied to me. They sent tanks, airships, and entire armies through those portals. Westin soon started capturing people that could travel and forcing them to open portals to Terra to do the same thing. It was even worse than it was before. I tried to take back the power, but it was too late. Westin’s scientists somehow imbued it into technology to magnify their portals and keep it out of my grasp. The portals grew unstable, and there were so many of them that nobody could shut down the operation. After a few weeks, the planets had bled so much into each other that they became one. Sharing a planet finally led the people to a truce after a few years, but the damage was done.”

Wanderlust was quiet. Hearing it from his dad, someone who was actually there, made it so much sadder than reading about it in a textbook. And it made sense. His dad believed in the goodness of humanity so much that he was willing to believe the people who came to him actually wanted peace. He’d been naive. Wander would have done the same thing.

“And then you never shared your powers again, I guess,” Wander said.

The Traveler frowned, hesitating for a moment. “Well,” he sighed, “That wasn’t actually the final lesson. But I wish it was.”

“When did you do it again?”

The Traveler seemed to debate with himself for a moment. “I suppose you should know one day,” he finally said before looking Wander in the eyes with what he knew was a look that meant business. “But if I tell you, you have to promise you won’t tell anybody about it, okay? Your mother is the only other one who knows.”

Wander was a little scared, but he nodded. “I promise.”

“Okay,” The Traveler sighed. “Before you were born, I discovered the way to travel to Earth. I was fascinated by the existence of a place the flow doesn’t touch, and I thought we could do great things if we could establish an alliance with them. So I reached through one day and I brought someone from their world into ours.”

Wander’s jaw dropped. “Like I did with Sara? But- you told me never to do that again!”

“And this is why,” The Traveler nodded. “This woman was enchanted by the danceverses. She wanted to know everything. So I figured, what better way to make a connection with Earth than to give one of their people access to the flow? I gave her a little bit of power and started teaching her how to use it. She was excellent at it. I was so proud, until she discovered dark flow.”

“Oh no.”

“She was attracted to it instantly. I tried to pull her back to the light, but it was all she wanted. It was all about power for her, and I didn’t see that until it was too late.”

“So you took her power away? And sent her back?” Wander guessed.

The Traveler looked ashamed. Wander didn’t think he’d ever seen him like that. “I wish I had,” he said. “But I’d let her get too powerful.”

“What? But then- what happened to her?”

“She betrayed me and ran to Eternyx. Years later, she became…”

Wanderlust’s heart stopped. “The Night Swan?!”

The Traveler nodded.

“Holy-!” Wander didn’t even know what to say. The Night Swan was from Earth? How was that possible?! Except his dad had just explained exactly how it was possible, and it all made sense. How else would she have powers that rivaled The Traveler’s? Why else did nobody seem to know anything about where she came from? And why else would the resurrection spell have made her wake up on Earth instead of in the danceverses?

“Now remember,” The Traveler said, “You can’t tell anybody about this.”

Wanderlust was already out of his seat ready to go. “Wh- but- I have to tell the others!” he said. “This could be important to help us stop her!”

The Traveler grabbed the back of Wander’s cape and pulled him back to the bench. “You promised,” he reminded him.

“But it could be important! I won’t tell them you gave her her powers! I’ll just tell them she’s from Earth; I promise.”

The Traveler raised an eyebrow. “It’s not going to help you stop her; because you’re not going to stop her. Just because we had a good talk doesn’t mean I’m going to change my mind about you staying out of this.”

“But dad,” he whined, “You know I can’t mind my own business!”

“That’s not helping your case!”

“The others are already well into this. Even if you could stop me, you can’t stop them.”

“And who are these ‘others’?”

“You know; the others. Sara, Brezziana, Mihaly,-” Wander started to say, but stopped when he remembered he didn’t want to mention Jack. “-them.”

The Traveler furrowed his brown, again seeming to fight himself on something. “If I get you to agree not to mess with this, you’re just going to go do it anyway, aren’t you?”

“...Probably, yeah.”

“Well…” The Traveler rubbed his temples. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he grumbled. “You five have accomplished quite a lot together. You’ve certainly proven that you have each other’s backs, even that boyfriend of yours.”

Wander’s stomach turned again at the mention of Jack. Don’t say anything, don’t say anything, don’t say anything.

The Traveler suddenly raised an eyebrow. “Wait,” he said, “You usually try to correct me when I call him your boyfriend.”

“Uh-”

The Traveler's suspicion melted away and turned into a way-too-excited dad-grin. “Unless he’s not your not-boyfriend anymore,” he teased. “Has there been some update on that situation that you haven’t told me about?”

Wander’s cheeks were burning. He couldn’t say anything. If he told his dad what happened with Jack, he would kill him. Or he’d kill Jack. He’d kill something. And there was no way he’d let him go stop The Night Swan. “You could say that,” Wander mumbled, trying to avert eye contact at all costs.

Luckily, his obvious avoidance came off more as embarrassment. “Ooh, you have to tell me what I missed!” his dad practically squealed.

“It’s… complicated.”

The Traveler leaned back, playfully elbowing Wander in the side. “Come on, you know you can talk to me about boys,” he said.

“No offense, but I talk to mom about boys.”

“Okay, well you can talk to me about girls at least.”

“Also mom.”

The Traveler frowned. “You’ve gotta talk to me about something!”

“I talk to you about plenty! I just cried on you!”

“Okay, fair, fair,” The Traveler laughed. “But just remember; if that boy does anything to hurt you, I will-”

“I know, I know, you’ll make him regret ever being born,” Wander groaned. He tried to force the same laugh he usually made when his dad threatened one of his crushes, but this time it hit a little too close to home. Failing that, he changed the subject. “Does this mean you’ll let me get back to stopping Night Swan, though?”

The Traveler sighed again, mumbling what was definitely either a prayer or a string of swear words. “Okay,” he finally said. “But you have to promise me, promise me, that you’ll be extra careful. Alright?”

“Promise,” Wander grinned.

“And you can tell them The Night Swan is from Earth, but not about how she got her powers. I can’t have that getting around.”

“Got it.”

“And if you need anything, you’ll call me, and if I run in at the last minute to save you, you won’t put up a fuss about it?”

Wander rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, all that.”

The Traveler took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. He pulled Wander in for a hug one last time—a long hug, one that was meant to try to make up for a lifetime of hugs if they never saw each other again. The Nova family had a lot of those hugs. They pulled back and The Traveler smiled a sad but proud smile. “Go ahead. You can do this. You’re a hero.”

When Wanderlust portaled back to Eternyx, the storage room he left from was empty. He must have missed Cygnus’s whole robotics session. That was a bit of a bummer, but he shrugged it off and left to find the others.

On the way to Cygnus’s lab, he ran into Mihaly.

“There you are,” they smiled. “Nithe is mostly fixed now, but Cygnus sent me to grab some flashdrive from his workshop to tune up a few things.”

“Awesome,” Wander smiled back weakly. Back to work. Back to trying to save the world for the millionth time with his friends who maybe weren’t all his friends anymore.

“Something happen with your dad?” Mihaly asked.

“Nah, it was fine,” Wander sighed. “He’s just worried about me. As usual.”

“He told you not to do this, didn’t he?”

“Yeah…”

Mihaly laughed. “So much for the obedient prince.”

“He gave in eventually!” Wander insisted. “He feels better about it knowing I have you guys with me.”

“Really?”

Wander followed Mihaly into Cygnus’s lab. “Yeah. Power of friendship or whatever.”

“Can’t argue with that, I guess,” Mihaly laughed.

Wander almost laughed back, but he wasn’t really feeling it. Their team wasn’t as strong as it was last time. 

Mihaly looked back at him when he didn’t respond. “Seriously, what’s wrong?”

Wander sighed. Was there anyone he could hide his feelings from? “I didn’t tell my dad about Jack,” he admitted.

Mihaly’s smile fell. “Oh,” they said.

“I mean- what am I supposed to tell him? Yeah, Night Swan is back, but also her son is evil? The one I’ve been kind-of-sort-of dating?”

Mihaly frowned. “First of all, you are definitely dating. At least you were before all this happened.” Wander tried to protest, but they didn’t let him. “Second, yeah. Don’t tell him; he’ll freak out. But Jack isn’t evil.”

Wander felt sick. He’d had this argument many times, but he’d always been on the other side. It felt terrible to say bad things about Jack after all this time. But he couldn’t let himself be naive again. He had to keep his guard up this time. “He tried to turn Cygnus into a swan soldier,” he said, feeling even more like a horrible person once it left his lips.

“He didn’t mean to,” Mihaly sighed. “Can’t you see that? What’s happening to him isn’t his fault; and it’s scaring him, too.”

Jack had mentioned a curse. “But how can you be sure about that? How do you know it isn’t all an act?”

Mihaly found the drive they were looking for and headed back out of the room. “I don’t know… I can just tell? I trust him.”

“But I trusted him too!” Wander said. Was that it? Had he just never trusted Jack as much as he thought he did? Did that make him a bad friend? Or did that just make him smart?

“Mihaly sighed. “I guess… okay, I guess I can tell because I sort of understand how he feels.”

Wander’s heart stopped for a second. Wait, was Mihaly evil too? Had he been tricked by two people?

“I kind of got into dark flow, too, a long time ago,” they continued. “I don’t use it anymore, but it was hard to escape. Once it’s inside you, it takes a lot of work to stop giving into it, even if you know you want to. I can’t imagine how hard it is when it was forced into you.”

Wander relaxed a little. He couldn’t believe he never knew that Mihaly used to use dark flow. Then again, they rarely ever talked about their past. He didn’t know they had a robot mother either.

Wander nodded. If Mihaly used dark flow and eventually gave it up… did that mean Jack could, too? He was feeling hopeful again, but that only made him unsure. Was it the kind of hope a leader had, or the kind of hope a fool had? Was there a difference?

“How did you escape it?” he asked.

“A lot of training,” Mihaly said. “When I realized the dark flow wasn’t worth it, that’s when I met Master Panda. He taught me how to balance out my feelings and make room for them in healthier ways, and then he showed me how to change the power I had into power that could help instead of hurt.”

Wander had never heard of anything like that. “You can turn dark flow into… light flow?”

“I don’t know if light flow is a thing,” Mihaly laughed, “But regular flow. Neutral flow? You know what I mean. It’s all the same, really. Dark flow is just flow that’s corrupted by anger and greed and all that. If you can work through all that negativity, you can use the same power for anything you want.”

Wander nodded along. He was almost surprised his father never taught him about things like that. Was it possible that he didn’t know? He said he taught The Night Swan how to use the flow, but she turned around and got into dark flow instead. Had she corrupted her own power herself? Could she have been good instead? And if so… could Jack?

As if reading his mind, Mihaly answered his question. “I believe in Jack. He wants to be a good person. Night Swan’s curse is strong, but… I want to try taking him with me to meet Master Panda. I think he could learn to filter the darkness out of his power, too. He’d probably be really powerful if he did.”

“Maybe,” Wander said, but he still wasn’t sure. Could it really be that simple? Even if it was, would Jack agree to it? Jack already seemed to have a plan of his own. The last time they talked, Jack told him he wanted them to trap him in The Virtualscape with his mother. 

That was another thing Wander didn’t want to think about. Even if Jack wasn’t on their side anymore, could they really trap him there forever? Or, more realistically, could Wander trap him there? If anyone was going to do it, it had to be him. None of the others would, no matter how bad he got. That was why Wanderlust was the prince—he had to make the hard decisions. He opened his mouth to explain that to Mihaly, but stopped. If it really did come down to that, Mihaly would try to stop him. He had to keep it a secret. He had to make that decision all on his own.

“I know how it looks,” Mihaly said. “But really, I think he can come back from this. We just need to give him the chance.”

Wanderlust nodded, but even nodding felt close to a lie. Part of him would’ve been on board with this even if Mihaly didn’t believe in it. But that was the part of him that was a child, the part that trusted people blindly and had fallen head over heels for the son of his father’s worst enemy. 

Maybe his dad was right—being a hero wasn’t about never making mistakes. But it was about trying as hard as possible to do the right thing, and that meant not making the same mistakes again. Wanderlust was older now. He had to change. If he wanted to be the chosen one he was supposed to be, he had to do what a real leader would do.

So what would a real leader do?

Wanderlust’s heart sank. A real leader wouldn’t potentially endanger the whole universe just to give one man a second chance. A real leader wouldn’t take a risk like that.

A real leader would lock The Night Swan’s son away with her.

Chapter Text

“It’s called a cravat ” Jack rolled his eyes, trying to look relaxed on the couch despite his restlessly bouncing leg.

“Nah, you’re just making up words,” Brezziana laughed. She leaned against the wall by the fireplace, clearly trying to get a rise out of Jack on purpose. It was working, of course, but Jack couldn’t help but smirk. He missed their ridiculous bickering.

“I’m not making it up! It’s a real word!” he insisted, looking to Sara on the opposite couch for backup.

Sara just shrugged with a smile. “I don’t know, I think she’s onto something. Looked like a ‘fancy bib’ to me.”

Brezziana cackled and Jack hid his smile. “Whatever,” he groaned. “I don’t dress like that anymore anyway.” He adjusted the collar on his coat and leaned back, crossing his arms like a teenager trying to express that the conversation was over. It wasn’t.

“True, true,” Brezziana said. “You’ve gone from pretentious fancyboy to wannabe street hacker.”

Jack tossed a pillow at her.

The pillow narrowly missed flying straight into the fireplace, but before he could be laughed at for it, two more joined the room.

“I’m gone for like ten minutes and you’re attacking each other already?” Mihaly shook their head. Jack would’ve thrown some sassy comeback their way, but he got caught off guard when he saw Wanderlust walking in beside them. He immediately tensed and his face fell, suddenly hyper-aware of the way he was sitting and the look on his face and anything Wander might have heard him say coming in.

In that moment of weakness, Brezziana chucked the pillow back his way and hit him square in the face.

“Brezz!”

The room dissolved into giggles, but that didn’t do anything to ease Jack’s mind. If anything, he felt worse. Did he yell at her too harshly just now? Was he coming across too cold? Even though Wander had already seen Jack be as cruel as he really was, it terrified him to let him see it again. 

“I was just putting it back on the couch,” Brezziana laughed. “It’s not my fault you were in the way.”

Too scared to risk sounding too mean to her back, Jack just scowled and put the pillow back in the corner of the seat where it belonged. “Whatever,” he grumbled. Brezziana’s smile fell a little. Dammit.

Before awkward silence could ensue, Sara changed the subject. “Is your robot mom working again?” she asked Mihaly.

Mihaly raised an eyebrow. “You can just say my mom,” they said. “It doesn’t have to be robot everything.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is that, like… offensive?”

“I don’t know?” Mihaly shrugged. “Not the point. She’s pretty much fixed, though. Cygnus is running a few more final tests to make sure and then she’ll be ready to go.”

Sara smiled. “Awesome,” she said before looking to Wanderlust. “And is everything okay with your dad?”

“Basically,” Wander said with a sheepish smile. Jack hadn’t seen him smile in a while—at least, not at him. He missed it. “I’m kind of in trouble, but… I’m a grown man. He can’t tell me what to do.”

“His dad gave him permission to do this,” Mihaly said. Wander scowled at them.

“Alright,” Sara laughed. “Does that mean we can set up our plan now?”

Mihaly was about to respond when they were interrupted yet again.

“Sir?”

Arleen was standing in the doorway, a tablet in her hands and a nervous look on her face. Jack’s stomach twisted. He was surprised she was still here, honestly. Last time he spoke to her, it ended in her coughing up blood with thorns growing in her throat. She had every right to run away from the citadel and never come back. Why would she stay?

“Sorry, I’ll be just a moment,” he excused himself and followed her into the hall.

Arleen was usually pretty excitable, but now she just watched him cautiously as he shut the door behind him. She was walking on eggshells with him, just like the old soldiers used to with his mother. 

“Sorry to interrupt, sir, but-”

“Arleen, I’m sorry,” Jack said, his voice hushed to avoid the sound carrying back into the parlor but laced with as much sincerity as he could muster. “I shouldn’t have hurt you like that. I wasn’t myself, and I- I understand if you don’t want to work here anymore. You’re more than welcome to leave.”

Arleen was speechless. She looked at him wide-eyed, nodding nervously. Something was wrong. She didn’t look relieved at all. If anything, she looked more afraid. “Y-yes, sir,” she finally stammered. “I- uh- thank you.”

No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t turning to leave. Was she shaking? Jack’s insides twisted as the look in her eyes clicked and he realized exactly what was going on. Not all of The Night Swan’s underlings stayed because they were brainwashed. Many of them still had free will. A few truly believed in her cause, but the rest stayed out of fear. Even if they thought they could run, even when they knew they could walk out of the building and nobody would stop them, they knew she would find them. They knew there was no real escape.

“Arleen, I’m serious,” he said. He wanted to sound genuine and human—he was trying to. But he didn’t know how. “You can leave. It’s okay.”

“Thank you,” Arleen said again, but still nothing changed. “I won’t abandon The Rose Citadel, though. I’ll stay loyal, I promise.”

She didn’t believe him. Of course she didn’t believe him. He’d made an example of her in front of his other agents. He reinforced his rule the way his mother did. Why would anyone trust him not to do it again? He wanted to beg her to believe him, but he knew it was no use. The damage was done.

The nerves caused a few loose sparks in his chest, so he steeled himself to hold them back and slipped back to the emotionless tone everyone was used to from him these days. He looked away from her and cleared his throat. “What did you come to tell me?”

Arleen seemed to relax a bit once the conversation shifted away from her loyalty. “There’s a protest going on outside,” she said.

The sparks suddenly jumped to attention, magic filling his veins. “What?”

“I know Blake and Liv were declared missing in action a while ago, but they just showed up again out of nowhere and are telling people… bad things about you. I think they’re organizing an uprising.”

Fear welled up in the back of Jack’s throat, but the electricity that came with it quickly turned the feeling into something else—anger. 

Jack stormed down the hallway, his vision tunneling and his thoughts racing. He freed Blake and Liv. He let them go. He didn’t have to do that, but they still had the nerve to turn on him the second they left the citadel. And now they were gathering more people to turn on him? Enough to form a whole protest? Didn’t they have any respect for him? Didn’t they know how much he’d been through to make Eternyx a better place for them?

Arleen followed at his heels, tapping away at her tablet. “I’m monitoring the situation on the outside cameras,” she said. “It isn’t a huge crowd yet, but they’re attracting a lot of attention.”

“Have the guards been given any orders yet?” Jack asked impatiently as he headed for the stairwell.

“Just to protect the citadel in case they start trying to come inside. We wanted to wait for your decision.”

“Great,” Jack scoffed. He had to do everything around here. “Double the security around the perimeter of the building. It needs to be clear that they won’t stand a chance if they try anything. And send extra people out to break up the crowd. Whatever they’re saying, I don’t want it getting out. If any media outlets show up, tell them they’ll be shut down if they try to report on any of this.”

“Yes, sir,” Arleen said. She must have scurried off to deliver the orders, because the extra set of footsteps behind him finally disappeared. 

Jack headed upstairs to one of the upper balconies. His whole body was buzzing like something was trying to break out of his skin. He could already picture the disaster: the central plaza flooded with angry citizens, banging at the doors and breaking into the citadel. A whole task force hunting him down just like he and The Rose Rebellion took down The Night Swan. An image he could still remember in perfect detail flashed in his mind: an explosion of power blowing through the airship, throwing his mother backward out the open wall into the eternal night sky. She looked afraid, truly afraid, as she desperately reached for something to grab hold of. She fell.

Jack’s reign was being threatened. A citywide uprising was much worse than a few overconfident criminals. If he didn’t get this under control, it would be him falling, plummeting countless stories through the dark to his death. He killed his mother. Now his people would kill him. 

He didn’t even have to lift a finger; the doors threw themselves open as his rumbling power approached. Jack could hear it in his eardrums—a growing thunderstorm inside him that burned rage into more and more unbridled dark energy. 

Flickering pink sparks trailed down the metal handrail when he clutched it tight to get a look at the scene. Sure enough, there was a crowd. Blake and Liv, his old friends, were manning the center, shouting to the others and egging them all on with what was undoubtedly the story of their last few months trapped as his monstrous stone bodyguards. People were yelling, chanting, and spray-painting messages across the ground. It was working, too—others from the city came to see what was going on and joined the herd. It hadn’t turned to violence yet, but that didn’t excuse it from being what it was: a witchhunt.

Lightning crackled and swirled around Jack’s hands and wrists. It felt like he was burning, everything white-hot and out of control. The light caught a few people’s eyes and they looked up. Some of them screamed.

They were ungrateful. Jack lived his whole life in this tower, watching Eternyx sink further and further into Hell. He’d been helpless for as long as he could remember, forced to play his mother’s puppet and chain himself to her throne. Finally, she couldn’t pull his strings anymore. It was his throne. This was his city. For the first time in his life, he was in control, and now an army was forming to take it from him.

Someone in the crowd moved to where Jack could finally make out one of the messages sprayed on the concrete. Something inside him finally snapped.

DOWN WITH THE NIGHT ROSE.

Jack broke, the deep pain shattering his paper-thin walls of control and erupting out of him. The lights in the plaza suddenly exploded, bursting into pink and white sparks and flashing in and out as thunder boomed all around them and Jack was surrounded by light. The scene on the ground turned into nothing but chaos, people screaming and running and guards just trying to contain the mess.

The cacophony of sound rang in Jack’s ears, dragging more and more out of him. The words ran over and over again in his head. DOWN WITH THE NIGHT ROSE. DOWN WITH THE NIGHT ROSE. They were practically begging him to be like her. He wouldn’t be like her. He would be worse.

Black smoke pooled around Jack’s feet, pouring off the balcony and down to the plaza below. They ran. They couldn’t run fast enough. DOWN WITH THE NIGHT ROSE . The cloud rolled over the message, but it wouldn’t disappear. Not until the people who wrote it did.

A hand touched his shoulder.

“Jack.”

Jack whipped around, the surprise dissipating the smoke and letting the streetlights flicker back to their original state. 

He half expected to see Wanderlust, but it was Mihaly instead. Somehow, that made him even more mad. Of course Wander wouldn’t be up here. He’d be down in the plaza leading the charge against him.

Mihaly opened their mouth to say something. Jack thrust out a hand and let his powers throw them back through the doors and across the room.

They landed on their side, scrambling to their knees and raising their hands as if to prove they meant no harm. Jack stepped toward them, the inertia in his body ready to make them pay for interrupting him but some leftover scrap of humanity hesitating.

“Jack, please,” Mihaly said, “It’s okay. Just breathe.”

He didn’t understand the look on their face. He knew fear well at this point, and they were definitely afraid. But it didn’t look like the terror he induced on all the people in the plaza. It was softer, more empathetic—almost like it wasn’t him they were scared of.

He stopped, breath catching in his throat. This didn’t feel right—none of this felt right. While Jack clambered to make sense of what was happening and why he wanted to hurt them, Mihaly had the time to get to their feet and slowly move closer.

“It’s okay,” they said again. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. You just need to take a break for a moment, okay? I’m not going to do anything.”

The electricity fizzled out, Jack’s adrenaline fading as he came back to reality and the thunder in his ears melted into harsh, heavy silence. He could hear his own shallow, rattling breaths.

Mihaly’s shoulders relaxed. While he stood there recollecting himself, they closed the balcony doors to shut out the scene outside. It felt like years until they finally came back and wrapped their arms around him.

Jack burst into tears. Guilt caught up to him like a punch to the gut and tore him open, taking any possible composure with it. His knees gave out and he collapsed, but Mihaly knelt down with him, rubbing his back until he found words again.

“I knew it,” he croaked. “It’s too late for me.”

“That isn’t true,” Mihaly said. But what just happened was all the proof he needed. He was about to do something terrible to all those people in the plaza. He almost killed Mihaly. All of Eternyx thought he was the new Night Swan now, and he’d just showed them they were right.

“Yes it is. You saw that- you saw what I did.”

“I know. But it’s never too late, I promise. You can still fix this.”

“No I can’t!” Jack sobbed. He looked back to the closed door, where the city he loved was gathering with pitchforks and torches to rightfully take him down. Eternyx was a cold and unforgiving place. No one would argue with that. “Everything they’re saying out there is true. They know about everything I’ve done. There’s no fixing that!”

“Okay, maybe not right away. But we can fix some things.” Mihaly took out their phone and sent a quick message. “I’m telling the others that everything’s okay.”

“But it’s not. I’m going insane and- what if you hadn’t stopped me?! What if I did to all of them what I did to Blake and Liv?!”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mihaly hushed him, “because that didn’t happen.”

“How can you be so calm about this?!”

Mihaly sighed. “I don’t know if calm is really the word,” they said. “This is scary. I know. But I said I was going to help you, so I’m going to help you.”

Jack wiped his eyes, trying to regain his composure, but there was barely anything left for him to hide from Mihaly. “There is no helping me,” he insisted.

Mihaly ignored him. “You can’t stop the protest; at least not right now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to fix your mistakes. We’ll start small. You reversed the spell Blake and Liv were under, right? Is there anything else like that you can go back and fix for now?”

Jack huffed, but answers to their question drifted into his thoughts nonetheless. There was so much he was ashamed of. Even facing some of the things he’d done for the purpose of fixing them terrified him. But Mihaly was right—if he could free Blake and Liv, he had to be able to at least make a small dent in the mountain of his crimes.

“The cryptkeeper,” he finally said. Echos of his argument with Mothigan rose in his mind. “I was mad at her for bringing my mother back and… I lost it. She’s probably still trapped in there.”

Mihaly couldn’t possibly have had the context for that, but they nodded as if they understood. “I told the others we needed a little time,” they said. “I’ll come with you. Think you can fix that?”

Part of Jack didn’t want to. He may have gone overboard in punishing her, but she was still a criminal. She’d still brought The Night Swan back from the dead and set off a possible apocalypse. It was satisfying to imagine her still sealed inside the thorn-wrapped coffin he left her in, uselessly banging on the walls to get free. But that was just his anger talking. Logically, he knew what he did was wrong. He knew she didn’t deserve that. And if there was any hope of him getting better or at least slowing his descent into madness, he had to cling to what he knew was right.

Jack took a deep breath and met Mihaly’s eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “I think I can.”

Jack was starting to get the hang of making portals. It was exhausting, but he brought himself and Mihaly back to Mothigan’s crypt where the necromancer’s prison was right where he left it. Forcing himself past the rage, he called back the vines around the coffin and left it free to open. Ideally, part of making things right would have been to apologize. But Mothigan was dangerous, and she was loyal to The Night Swan, so he and Mihaly both agreed it was better to portal out of there before she could realize Jack was there and try to attack him. Worn out from all the magic, Jack took the two of them just outside the cemetery to the front steps of an abandoned apartment building—an old entrance to the underground base his rebellion used back when his mother was in power.

Jack closed the portal behind them and took a seat on the steps right away, his legs weak from the overexertion. When his powers took over and activated themselves, it wasn’t this difficult. But when he consciously tried to use them for things other than revenge and violent threats, it was like straining a muscle he didn’t even know he had. Did Wanderlust have the same problem with his powers? How did he manage?

There he was, thinking about Wanderlust again. He sighed and buried his head in his hands until Mihaly sat down next to him.

“You did a good job,” they said. “I know it might not feel like much, but I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks,” Jack replied half-heartedly. It really didn’t feel like much—not in the grand scheme of things, at least. He’d basically just changed his mind about letting a woman starve to death buried alive in her own mausoleum. And it was hard to do. How did that make him any less of a monster?

Jack stared at the ground, running the edge of his boot along a split in the concrete. “This doesn’t matter, though,” he said. “I’m still the one who trapped her there in the first place. And I know I’d do it again.”

“It’s progress,” Mihaly said. “Baby steps.”

“Baby steps toward what?” Jack groaned. “I’m getting worse. I could run around the city doing a million good deeds and it wouldn’t stop the fact that I’m cursed to be like this. Mother wanted a demon for a son, and even in death she always gets what she wants. I’ll never get this out of me.”

“You don’t have to get it out. That’s not how dark flow works—all that negativity doesn’t go away.”

“Then what do you expect me to do?”

“You do what I did—you learn to balance it out.”

Jack laughed, sort of—it was more of an annoyed exhale. This was all just a bunch of Mihaly’s crazy flow-master shaman nonsense. Sure, it seemed to work for them. But Jack wasn’t going to magically turn back to the light because of some deep breathing and meditation. His problem ran too deep.

Mihaly went quiet for a bit. Maybe they were mad at him for not taking their suggestions seriously. Or maybe they realized he was right.

Finally, they said something he wasn’t expecting. “Once this is over, I want you to come to the temple with me.”

Jack raised an eyebrow and gave them a sideways glance. They couldn’t possibly be serious, but they looked it.

“I know it sounds ridiculous to you, and I can’t blame you for that. But I was in a really dark place when I met Master Panda, and he pulled me out of it. It’s all about understanding your emotions and learning to be in control of your relationship with them. Sure, you’re a lot stronger than I am, and it’s going to be difficult. But I can tell what kind of person you are, Jack. I really believe we can help you.”

Jack didn’t know what to say. His gaze drifted away from theirs back to the ground, trying to imagine it: practicing the flow, making peace with himself, unraveling all the things in his past that made his soul a perfect home for The Night Swan’s magic to nest inside. If it were anyone else he knew, it would sound like a great idea. But when it was him, it just felt like a big joke. He was happy for Mihaly, but they weren’t the same as him. As much as he wanted to believe them, it just didn’t feel possible.

Jack put his hands in his jacket pockets, his fingers bumping up against a small box in the left one. Oh thank Selios. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes he didn’t even remember putting in there. He didn’t have a lighter, but he’d figured out a little trick when he was first practicing his powers. He took out a cigarette and ran his finger quickly along the side like lighting a match. A soft pink flame appeared on the end, fading to normal red as a small smile crossed his lips.

“You smoke?” Mihaly asked, thankfully more surprised than judgmental.

“No, they’re just fun to hold,” he said before taking a drag and then blowing the smoke in their direction.

Mihaly dramatically coughed and fanned it away from their face. “Hey!”

Jack laughed. “Don’t tell Wander,” he smirked, but the smile fell away quickly. He meant it as a joke, but thinking about what Wander would think only made him more sad.

“I won’t,” Mihaly said. “But I’m sure he’ll smell it.”

Jack tried to laugh again, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“He still cares about you, you know,” they said. “He’s just confused.”

“Sure,” Jack muttered. Wander had seemed conflicted, but it didn’t matter. He was a good person—the best person, as far as cosmic fate was apparently concerned. No matter how confused he was, he would always do the right thing. That’s what made him the chosen one. That’s why he was the only one Jack told to leave him behind in The Virtualscape. None of the others would have the guts to do it. 

“Come on,” Mihaly frowned. “He’d never turn on any of us that easily, especially not you.”

Yes, he would. Wander never outright said no to sealing Jack away with his mother. He may have danced around an answer, but that was as good as a confirmation. Mihaly couldn’t know about that plan, though. “He barely looks at me anymore,” Jack said instead. 

“Yes he does! All the time! You two keep trading obnoxiously longing looks every time the other one isn’t looking!”

“I don’t long,” Jack scowled.

“You absolutely do.”

Jack blew another puff of smoke in their face.

“Jack!”

He sort of laughed.

“Just- use your brain for a second,” Mihaly said. “Your smart brain, not the emo one. You know Wanderlust. He doesn’t give up on anyone. He’s questioning things right now, but that’s just because he’s trying to play hero like he always does. When it really matters, he’ll come around.”

Jack didn’t answer. He took one last drag of his cigarette and snuffed it out on the side of the steps. The thought of Wanderlust finally deciding to trust him after all was intoxicating. He wanted Wander by his side so badly . But he also wanted revenge on his mother. He wanted total control of Eternyx. He wanted to punish that crowd of traitors rioting outside the citadel with a fate that would make them beg for death. So he couldn’t listen to what he wanted.

What he needed was what really mattered—or rather, what the danceverses needed. And what the danceverses needed was for him to disappear. They needed their chosen one to save them from him.

“Why do you care so much, anyway?” Jack asked, flicking the burnt-out cigarette onto the ground. Gross, sure, but this was Eternyx—nobody cared. “Even if you could fix me, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”

“You’re my friend,” Mihaly said. “It’s absolutely worth the trouble. You don’t deserve this. And I’d like to think I don’t deserve to lose a friend.”

“Or a half-brother,” Jack added, trying out the word on his lips. It tasted strange. He still couldn’t believe he had a sibling.

“Yeah,” Mihaly laughed. “I wish I’d told you sooner, honestly. I never really thought it mattered to me. I mean, I don’t think we’d ever even been in the same room as kids. But I keep realizing I don’t know what matters to me as much as I thought I did.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

They laughed again. “Okay, yeah—it’s confusing. But I’m onto something, I swear. After retraining myself in the flow, I thought I was past all the angst and abandonment issues with Night Swan. Even when we fought her the first time, it didn’t feel that personal. But then she brainwashed us, and I realized I really wasn’t over it. She gave me up as a baby because I wasn’t good enough for her. And now, even as an adult, with full control over my powers, I was still so far from what she wanted that she had to hijack my mind and jack up my power to make me worth her time! She probably didn’t even recognize me.”

Jack nodded. He hadn’t really considered that whole situation from their side. He was sort of jealous of them, honestly. They didn’t have to grow up with The Night Swan forcing perfection down their throat like he did. But abandonment was painful, even when it was from someone you were better off without.

“It was sort of the same with you being my brother,” they continued. “I didn’t think I cared that much, and I didn’t think you’d care either, so I just let it go. But then when I saw you struggling… suddenly it felt important. I realized we did have something in common after all, and it was something I could use to help you.”

Jack almost smiled. “Thanks,” he said. As much as he’d dismissed their idea of training him, he couldn’t forget it. He’d love to stop the darkness in him and have a chance to finally be the person his friends thought he was. But again, it didn’t matter what he wanted. If the safest thing for everyone was to lock him away, that’s what had to happen. They couldn’t waste time and risk people’s lives by trying to fix someone who couldn’t be fixed.

“Think you’re up for one more portal?” Mihaly finally asked.

Jack got to his feet with a groan like an old man. He wasn’t really up to it; he was exhausted. But he was better than he was five minutes ago, so that would have to do. He yanked up his magic again with the little energy he had left. Without the blind rage fueling it, it was like trying to walk an enormous dog that wanted to stay put. But despite the struggle, he was able to open up one more flickering portal back to the parlor in The Rose Citadel.

The others jumped when they saw Jack and Mihaly walk back into the room. Wanderlust stared at the portal wide-eyed. Was he a little jealous that he wasn’t the only one of them who could make portals now? Jack couldn’t help but smirk a little.

There were two others in the room that weren’t there before. Cygnus had finally returned with a blue-haired woman that must have been the fully-repaired hologram appearance of Nithe Long. Jack’s stomach sank at the sight of Cygnus. He hadn’t thought the guilt over what he did to the man could ever get worse, but that was before he found out Cygnus was his father. 

Mihaly smiled at Nithe. “All fixed up?” they asked.

Nithe nodded emotionlessly. “I seem to be,” they said.

Cygnus moved past them and dropped himself comfortably on the couch. “Took you two long enough,” he said. “I ran three extra tests just out of boredom and you were still gone.”

“Is everything okay?” Sara asked. Mihaly said they’d texted the group, but they probably didn’t give much of an explanation.

“Fine,” Mihaly answered quickly, before anyone could catch on to Jack’s unease. 

“Well it better be,” Brezziana said. “Because we already made eighty percent of a plan while we were waiting.” She gestured to the two open seats on the couch. “So sit down. We’ve got the other twenty to sort out.”

Chapter Text

They portaled back to Earth with an even bigger team this time—in addition to the five of them finally being together, Cygnus and Nithe were tagging along. At first, it was just going to be Nithe. Cygnus definitely earned the right to stay home after everything he’d been through, but he changed his mind at the last minute, insisting they’d “need his technological expertise”. At the same time, he stuck closely to Nithe’s side with an air of protection that suggested his decision was more than that.

Using Mihaly and Jack’s knowledge of The Night Swan’s new headquarters, Wanderlust’s portal spat them out of a computer screen in the strangest office Brezziana had ever seen.

Brezziana was far from an expert on Earth, but she was fairly certain it wasn’t supposed to look like this. The computer lab seemed to have exploded into a billion pieces, floating in space and flickering in and out of existence. It felt like they were standing on solid ground, but there was barely a floor. Impossible fractals of an infinite office building stretched beyond them in all directions like an industrial version of The Spacetime Hotel. Screens scrolled past them, twisting and disappearing before their eyes and phasing through the hovering computers. The images on them changed and glitched too fast for Brezziana to make out.

“Hey, Jack?” Wanderlust called over the deafening static and electrical hums that filled the room. “There’s no way this is the right place.”

Jack stepped further into the room, looking around concerned but unsurprised. “No, this is it,” he said. “It’s worse than it was when I was here before, but this is definitely it.”

Mihaly looked down at their hands. “But look,” they said, “we haven’t changed.”

Brezziana looked at the others. Mihaly was right; they still looked like they did in the danceverses. Jack was still wearing his bad-boy rebellion leader coat, Wander was still very blue, and even Sara still had her blue hair and stark-white skin.

“The worlds must be getting closer together,” Wander frowned. “We’re running out of time.”

Cygnus had started wandering the room, barely watching his step over the skeleton of a floor while he investigated one of the flickering screens. “This looks like some sort of hell from The Virtualscape,” he said.

“Don’t touch that!” Jack quickly warned when Cygnus reached out to it. Cygnus’s hand froze, but he looked back at Jack confused. “Night Swan is trying to change the danceverses through… changing its code?” Jack tried to explain. “I don’t really get it, but it’s given her powers that can basically disintegrate us. I think it causes some sort of paradox or something.”

Sara’s eyes widened. “The game’s programming is what made you all, so you can’t handle interacting with it,” she said. “Meta.”

“I guess?” Jack said. “But if you try to mess with it, it hurts. A lot.”

Brezziana nodded along, but it was a bit much to wrap her head around. “How come Night Swan can mess with it then?” She asked.

Wanderlust sighed. “Because she’s not from the danceverses.”

The others all turned to look at him at once with varying levels of disbelief.

“What?” Brezziana asked.

“When I went to talk to my dad, he gave me some more information,” Wander frowned. “Night Swan was originally from Earth. That’s why the resurrection spell sent her back here.”

The others looked shocked, but Jack and Mihaly looked at each other more horrified.

“Holy…” Jack paled like he’d had some sort of realization. “She told me I was ‘a mix of the two’. That must be what she meant.”

Brezziana’s jaw dropped. “So you’re half… Earthian?” she said. “Or… Earthite? Earth…?” She looked at Sara for a word. Sara just shrugged.

Jack turned sharply to Cygnus with a slight edge to his tone. “Did you know about this?” He asked. His voice was tight, like there was an emotion he was straining to hold back.

“No, I swear!” Cygnus said before second-guessing himself. “I mean- I don’t think I did! My memories are still fuzzy. But I feel like I would’ve remembered something like that.”

Jack was still tense, and Brezziana couldn’t help feeling the need to keep a close eye on him. She’d made up her mind to trust him, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t wary of his powers.

Before things could escalate, Nithe spoke up, either oblivious to the anxiety in the room or choosing to ignore it. “You said altering the danceverses through these screens is what gave her these new powers,” she said to Jack. “Could they be tied to them?”

Jack gave her a confused look instead of answering, so she elaborated with what might have been a hint of sass. “If her powers are tied to this computer system, that implies that disabling it would disable her powers. Cygnus and I can do that, and then she would be easier to subdue and send into The Virtualscape.”

“Maybe,” Jack nodded. “I’m not sure if that’s how it all works, but it’s worth a try.”

Cygnus reached out to one of the screens again and Jack jumped to stop him. “No, don’t-!”

Cygnus took his hand away just in time.

“That’s definitely going to hurt you,” Jack scolded him. “I really, really don’t recommend touching anything in here.”

“Then how are we supposed to shut off the system?” Cygnus frowned.

Mihaly shifted between the two of them. “There are other computers up here,” they said. “This is probably just the main hub. I’m willing to bet all her computers are connected to the same server. Do you think the ones in other rooms would be safer?”

“Maybe?” Jack sighed. “It should at least be less chaotic outside of here.”

Cygnus flexed his mechanical fingers and checked a few of the bolts. “Well, that’s good enough for me to accept the risk. I don’t like the idea of sending you kids after someone who can erase you from existence.”

“Cygnus,” Jack warned.“

“I’ll be careful,” Cygnus promised. “I’m not trying to get myself killed.”

Nobody else wanted to argue with him. The dissonant sounds in the room were starting to give Brezziana a headache and Nithe was staring into the dangerous screens a bit too closely for everyone’s comfort, so they needed to get out of there.

“Alright!” Brezziana finally called. “Let’s go find another computer then. This place is freaking me out.”

Corralling Cygnus and Nithe away from the screens before they could do something stupid, they all followed Jack out a set of double doors that seemed to appear out of thin air. As Brezziana passed through the doorframe, her vision blinked out for a second and a strange electric shiver ran through her body. Something was very wrong with this place.

Speaking of wrong, the other side of the door brought them to the middle of an empty room, the walls extending past where the computer lab should have been. Spatially, it couldn’t exist .

This time, Jack looked just as baffled as the rest of them. “Okay, this… was a hallway last time,” he said. There were no windows or doors in this room—only four plain pink walls lit with no light source and the exit they came through.

Mihaly turned back to the computer lab. “Okay, maybe we try a different direction,” they said. But when they reached out to the doorhandle, the entire exit collapsed into a pile of tiny blocks on the floor.

Wanderlust yelped. Mihaly quickly put their hands up like they’d done something wrong. Jack said a rude word he couldn’t possibly have learned inside the danceverses.

“Okay,” Sara whispered. “Cool. We’re stuck in here now. That’s awesome. Great.”

“I guess I could portal us out of here…” Wander frowned.

Brezziana crossed her arms. “Well don’t give up that quickly,” she said. “This whole place is broken, right?” 

The others nodded.

“Then why would this room work like a regular room?” She asked pointedly.

“I guess there could be a hidden door,” Jack said.

Wanderlust nodded. “Everyone start feeling the walls for a door,” he said. 

Most of them raised their eyebrows, but Wander walked right up to the wall behind him. He reached out, but instead of hitting it, his arm went straight through.

Wander’s eyes widened. He waved his arm around inside the wall. “Huh. Guess I found it.”

Mihaly went up to another wall and tried the same thing. Just like Wander, their hand disappeared. They walked all the way down the wall, not hitting anything in the process.

They took out their hand. “Actually, I think all the walls are fake,” they said.

“Of course,” Sara groaned. “Imaginary rooms and magic walls.”

Wander shrugged. “I dunno, it’s kind of cool,” he said before disappearing through the wall. The others scrambled to follow him before they could lose him.

They exited into a hallway that looked like it was floating in space. Sharp stone points and menacing statues clipped through the walls like chunks ripped out of Swan Tower in Eternyx. The floor was almost totally gone, leaving nothing but a few floating tiles.

“I think I remember where this is,” Jack said. He started down the hallway, but once he stepped off the tile they were on, his foot found no solid ground. Everyone screamed as his other foot slipped off the edge and he fell, but a pair of hands reached out at the last second and caught him, dragging him back to safety.

Jack turned around wide-eyed to face a terrified Wanderlust still holding his hands out in case Jack fell again. The two of them looked at each other, froze for a moment, then quickly made it awkward and looked away. Absolutely insufferable.

“Thanks,” Jack mumbled. 

Mihaly pushed past the boys and leaped to the next tile down the hallway. 

“Come on,” they waved back. But before the others could follow, there was a flash of light at the end of the hallway behind them. They jumped and turned around to see a horribly familiar silhouette.

“She heard us!” Jack gasped.

The sight of The Night Swan was all it took. They took off after Mihaly at once, jumping from tile to tile in a display of athletics Brezziana was surprised her friends could pull off. The tiles weren’t that far apart, but nobody wanted to know how far down they would fall if they missed one.

Cygnus almost found out when he slipped and grabbed onto the edge of the tile with his metal arm, dangling in the abyss. Brezziana hopped back and pulled him up. The man was heavier than he looked.

“I’m too old for this!” He panted, but he kept running and thankfully didn’t make another mistake. He followed close after Nithe, who of course made each jump with inhuman precision. The seven of them slipped into a room at the end of the hall and locked the door behind them, but Brezziana noticed something before it shut. Night Swan was still at the other side of the corridor. Why hadn’t she followed them?

“Go go go go go!”

Brezziana jumped out of the way as Wander directed Nithe to push a big chair in front of the door. They were in a larger room full of cubicles and an empty meeting area at the front. Chunks of the walls and bits of furniture were still missing or flickering different colors, but it at least looked like more of a solid room than the others they’d been in.

Cygnus sat down at the closest desk.

“Careful!” Jack shouted before he could touch the computer. But Cygnus ignored him and woke up the screen. Jack winced, but nothing bad happened. The screen flashed incomprehensible bright colors and symbols, but Cygnus simply frowned like he was solving a crossword puzzle and adjusted his mechanical eye.

“Fascinating…” he said to himself before calling over his shoulder. “Nithe, darling, a little help? This is quite something!”

Brezziana took over barricading the door so Nithe could take the computer next to him and start investigating herself.

Wanderlust peeked over Cygnus’s shoulder and squinted as if that would help him understand what he was seeing. “Can you shut it off?” He asked.

Cygnus pushed him away without looking away from the screen, completely missing the face of a startled prince who rarely had anyone dare put their hands on him.

“Give me a minute, your royal impatience,” Cygnus said. “Of course I can shut it off; I just have to figure out what in the thirteen hells I’m looking at.”

Brezziana couldn’t tell if Wander was more offended or confused. “Thirteen-?”

Suddenly, a blast of electricity exploded from the door and threw Brezziana and several pieces of furniture across the room. A wave of energy shot through her body, eliciting a terrible pain she’d never felt before. The sensation was brief, but it felt like being torn apart. She screamed and threw her hands over her face as the chair by the door flew toward her. There was no way that would’ve blocked the impact, but it didn’t have to. Before the chair could hit her, the blast exploded it in midair, reducing it to a shower of multicolored pixels that fell around her.

Mihaly and Sara rushed to help her up, but the danger wasn’t over. The air in front of them split and crackled and a shape stepped out of nothing atop the pile of rubble. 

Sara shrieked. The Night Swan was half humanoid and half ghost, parts of her body deteriorated into pixelated particles floating in midair and swirling around her. Her skin was made up of geometric patches of alternating tan and white—the parts that were visible, at least. A hole ran straight through her chest where her heart should be. Half of her mouth was gone, exposing polished teeth and bone. One of her arms looked almost mechanical, a low-polygon representation of a human arm blending into a wicked, twisted claw. Her eyes glowed neon pink while the rest of her flashed and flickered like some sort of cosmic error.

Brezziana stared in horror. “What in the…”

Just as she was starting to get back up, another wave of energy slammed into her from behind, rattling the walls and bathing the room in golden light. She caught herself and watched as The Night Swan grimaced and threw her hands together, blocking the blast.

His spell having failed, Wanderlust let out a rage-fueled scream and charged at her. His eyes flashed and power radiated off of him in tendrils of purple smoke. This wasn’t his usual blind-confidence-induced recklessness; it was untamed fury. Brezziana hadn’t seen him like that since they’d awoken from The Night Swan’s mind control.

Brezziana was unnerved, but The Night Swan couldn’t care less. She simply laughed to herself and then flickered out of existence again right as Wander was about to reach her.

“What-“ Wander gasped, but then someone else behind them screamed.

The Night Swan had reappeared right behind Jack and yanked him into her grasp, keeping him still with one of her massive talons placed gingerly beneath his chin. Mihaly and Sara froze. Wanderlust started to run for her again, but Brezziana scrambled to her feet and held him back. Wander nearly growled in frustration, but he didn’t resist. He could see what she did—any wrong move could result in Jack getting hurt.

Jack was paler than usual, but he didn’t cower. He gritted his teeth, hatred in his eyes. 

The Night Swan shook her head. “What are you doing back with these four, Jack?” She sighed. “I’ve seen how you’ve been handling Eternyx. Have they?”

Jack jammed his elbow into her stomach. She was surprised, but didn’t break her hold. Instead she grabbed his shoulder with her other hand and spun him around, letting her talon scratch a thin line across his chin before forcefully shoving him to the ground. She pinned his arm to the floor with her heel so he couldn’t get up and summoned a buzzing screen above her head.

“Maybe I should show them,” she smiled. The static cleared to show an image of the plaza in front of The Rose Citadel. It was full of people, but Brezziana didn’t get a chance to look any closer.

Mihaly suddenly rushed The Night Swan, twin pulses of magic forming in their palms. The Night Swan caught them and their power fizzled out, but the distraction was enough for Jack to free himself. He slid away from her and his eyes lit up, glaring daggers before he yelled and slammed his fists into the floor.

The concrete ruptured upon impact, splitting a long crack across the floor below The Night Swan’s feet. Vines shot out from the gap like the arms of an enormous, writhing monster and stretched toward her.

From there, the room erupted into chaos. Brezziana let Wanderlust loose to attack while she began a charge of her own. The Night Swan was able to dodge the vines for the most part, but they at least slowed her down. Mihaly sent blasts of magic her way and Sara even overcame her fear and jumped in to serve as a distraction. They knew there’d be some sort of fight ahead of them, but this was definitely not part of the plan.

The Night Swan kept turning her attention back to Jack. Jack was throwing everything he could at her thanks to some sort of emotional violent outburst, but he couldn’t keep that up forever. Sara ran up from behind and jumped onto The Night Swan’s back to give him a moment to breathe, but she couldn’t even hold on for half a second before she was thrown off and slammed into the ground. 

“You had your chance to be a part of this,” The Night Swan leaned down to growl at her. “Now mind your own BUSINESS!”

The Night Swan’s inhuman hand clawed at Sara—no, through her. It reached inside like a ghost and drove all the way through her chest; and immediately Sara started to scream.

“Sara!” Mihaly shrieked. They grabbed for The Night Swan to pull her away, only to end up with The Night Swan’s other hand punching into them. They were instantly overcome with the same unbelievable pain as Sara, only this time, Brezziana could see it. Mihaly’s body started flickering a glowing blue. They became a screaming optical illusion of a shape, parts of their body dismantling into pixels and shaking as the pieces tried to escape each other. It looked like the way Brezziana felt when The Night Swan’s first burst of magic went through her—like she was coming apart.

The Night Swan cackled, drunk on the power of having two victims writhing in pain under her fingertips at the same time. Jack finally hesitated at the sight of them, genuine fear showing on his face for the first time in the fight. But Brezziana couldn’t let that stop her.

“Wander!” she shouted before grabbing Mihaly and trying to pull them back. To her horror, she couldn’t get any sort of grip. The particles of Mihaly’s body simply moved around her fingers.

Wanderlust had interpreted the call differently, though. Instead of trying to pull Sara away, he summoned a cannonball of magic and shot it forward at top speed. It slammed into The Night Swan and sent her flying, freeing Sara and Mihaly and slamming her into the front of the desks where Nithe and Cygnus were still desperately trying to break into the computer system. The both of them ducked out of sight when she was sent their way. They hadn’t given up yet, but they kept frantically looking away from their screens to witness the fight. If it weren’t for Brezziana and the others keeping The Night Swan occupied, they’d be dead by now.

With another frustrated scream, The Night Swan exploded in anger and set off a burst of electricity that destroyed half the desk and pushed her back to her feet. 

Her eyes locked onto Wanderlust. “And the prince?!” she scoffed through gritted teeth, “You still want to side with him? You know you’re the next one on this brat’s hit list.”

Wanderlust charged at her again right as she moved toward him with more magic coalescing around her. The others ran to help, but Brezziana took the moment to dart behind the computer desk and check on Cygnus and Nithe. 

Both computers survived the blast, but Cygnus was shaking and one of Nithe’s arms had been knocked off by flying debris. 

“Are you okay?!” Brezziana asked.

“Perfect, fine, just dandy,” Cygnus grumbled sarcastically as he slid back onto his chair. 

Brezziana grabbed Nithe’s arm and tried to offer it back to her.

“No use,” Nithe said plainly. She got back in her seat and turned her attention back to the computer, now typing somehow just as fast with only one hand. “I’ll fix that later. I think we’ve figured out most of the organization on here, but there are multiple backups to prevent someone from shutting it all off.”

Brezziana flinched at another loud bang from where the others were still fighting. “But you can handle the backups too, right?” she said.

“Of course,” Cygnus said, “It’s just a matter of how long-”

In the middle of his sentence, Cygnus suddenly stopped and practically flew out of his chair.

“Cygnus-!” Brezziana tried to stop him, but he was gone too quickly. “What is he-?”

She stepped out from behind the desk to see him running away—not toward the exit, toward the fight. Brezziana almost screamed when she realized why.

The Night Swan had another captive in her horrible, glitchy death-grip, so far past the point of terrified that they couldn’t even scream. Jack.

Brezziana ran to do something. Cygnus was charging right at her, and she was simply smiling at him. There was no way he could stop her. He wasn’t even trying to be unseen.

“LEDA!” Cygnus screamed. Before Brezziana could stop him, he grabbed The Night Swan’s other arm and tried pitifully to pull her away. Jack took in a sharp gasp of air as The Night Swan’s claw pulled back out of him and whipped around to pierce through Cygnus’s chest instead.

It wasn’t the prolonged torture it had looked like for Mihaly or Jack. Cygnus could only scream for a moment before his voice cut out and his body went limp.

“NO!”

Jack summoned two of his thorned vines to grapple The Night Swan’s arms and force her back. It got her away from Cygnus, but it was too late. Half of Cygnus’s body collapsed into particles, and the rest of it fell to the floor with a lifeless thud.

Chapter Text

Wanderlust ran to what was left of Cygnus’s body. The Night Swan was slammed into the wall behind him, but he stopped paying attention and let the others take care of her while he slid onto the ground so carelessly his knees slammed against the concrete.

Cygnus was half disintegrated. No blood, no gore, nothing—his body simply stopped in a jagged line like a marble statue. The rest of it was gone, shattered into a pile of useless particles all over the floor. Wander couldn’t even check for a heartbeat. His heart had been the first thing to go when Night Swan shoved her hand inside.

“Cygnus!”

Jack came up behind Wander, breathing heavily and trembling at the sight. He started to kneel down beside them, but Wander held him back.

“I’ve got this,” Wander said. “Go help the others.”

Jack wouldn’t move for a moment, but finally left them alone and ran back to the fight.

Wanderlust placed a hand on Cygnus’s chest and closed his eyes. Whatever this was, he had to be able to fix it. He undid Cygnus’s curse. He’d healed people before. He’d come so far with his powers; he had to be able to do this.

Wander focused, taking as deep of a breath as he could manage and trying to block out all the yelling and chaos behind him. When he reversed the curse Jack cast on Cygnus, he’d been able to sense the spell and follow a trail back to it’s source to pull it out. He tried that again, calling his own magic to the surface and casting it out like a magnet to coax out whatever had been done to the man this time. But as hard as he tried, he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t find anything. It was as if this wasn’t a spell at all. 

“Come on, come on! ” Wander shouted to no one. He tried pushing piles of the inanimate pixels toward Cygnus’s body, willing them to magically reform themselves. It was useless. Wander was useless. And Cygnus was gone.

“Prince Wanderlust! ” a voice hissed. Wander finally looked up to see Nithe peeking out from behind the computer desk on the floor, whispering and waving to get his attention. She gestured for him to go to her, so after a moment of hesitation he left Cygnus and ran behind the desk with her.

“What is it?” he panted, his voice trembling. Cygnus couldn’t be gone. Wander couldn’t have let him die. 

“I can’t get the system down in time,” Nithe said. “Without two of us working at it, it’ll take hours.”

Wander groaned and put his head in his hands. Everything was going wrong. He was going to fail again, and this time it would result in two entire dimensions smashing into each other and all of his best friends dying.

“Then what do we do?!” he asked, exasperated. 

“You’ll have to find a way to push her into the portal even though she still has her powers.”

“How?! You saw what just happened; she’s gonna kill us!”

Nithe just shrugged. Who programs a robot to shrug?

Wanderlust made a frustrated noise and hit his head on the back of the desk.

“Well I can’t imagine that’ll help,” Nithe said.

“Just- aagh!” Wander rubbed his temples, hoping that would turn on some secret genius part of his brain that wasn’t working. He couldn’t give up. He had to stop freaking out, stop thinking about Cygnus dead on the floor, and come up with a plan.

“Okay,” he finally said. “We’ll figure something out. Just be ready to open the portal. When I signal you, snap it open right under her feet. Can you do that?”

Nithe nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He took one more deep breath and ran back into the fray.

The others were struggling. Brezziana had picked up a chair and desperately hurled it at The Night Swan, only for her to raise a hand and stop it in midair. Jack screamed and pink electricity crackled in his hands, but The Night Swan seemed untouchable. There had to be some way to at least get her where they wanted her to go.

As soon as the others seemed a safe distance away from her, Wanderlust planted his feet and thrust as much power as he could into a shockwave in The Night Swan’s direction. It managed to make Sara and Brezziana stumble as it blew past them, but The Night Swan didn’t move an inch.

“Oh come on! ” he groaned. How were they supposed to push her in if even his power couldn’t make her budge?

Maybe there was another way. Before Wander could put his theory to the test, Jack charged at her with glowing eyes and lightning in his fists. 

“No, wait!” Wanderlust ran to block him before he could get too far. If this worked, nobody could be close to her. Thankfully, Jack stopped himself before he could slam into Wanderlust and electrocute him instead. He wasn’t happy about it, though.

“What are you-?!” Jack scowled, but Wander didn’t have time to explain.

“Now!” Wander shouted to Nithe. 

A bright blue portal exploded open beneath The Night Swan, exposing the impossible limbo space of The Virtualscape below. But The Night Swan’s reaction time was too fast. She vanished out of thin air again.

For a moment, she was just gone. Then, there was a flash of light, and she was standing right in front of Wanderlust.

Wanderlust screamed as she grabbed him by the throat. Everyone else screamed and ran to help, but she held out her other hand and all of them were thrown back.

She smiled at Wander. “Stop toying with my son,” she whispered as her grip tightened. He could barely breathe. He tried doing some kind of magic again, but it was useless. In his panic, he couldn’t concentrate. He grabbed her wrist and tried to wrench them away, but that only made her claws scrape against his neck. There had to be something. There had to be something that could distract her enough to fall into a portal.

Wait , he realized. Maybe this was the distraction.

In one last desperate attempt, he grabbed her wrist with both hands and pushed just enough for her grip to loosen and afford him a quick gasp of air. 

“Nithe!” he screamed.

This time, The Night Swan was too busy with him to jump away in time. A circle of blue appeared beneath the both of them. The floor disappearing was enough to make her let go of him, but everyone screamed as they both fell in.

For the second time, Wanderlust opened his eyes to a shifting, holographic sky and an aching back. The Virtualscape. Only this time, it was much more crowded.

Despite his sore bones and the wind knocked out of him, he scrambled to his feet to see that the battle wasn’t over. The Night Swan was there of course, but so were Jack, Sara, Mihaly, and Brezziana. Wander gasped. The portal had only opened between himself and The Night Swan. Did they follow them in there? Why would they do that?!

“Wander!”

While Mihaly and Jack blasted increasingly violent flashes of magic at The Night Swan, Sara slid over to where he was and looked him over to make sure he hadn’t broken anything. “Are you okay?!” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m- what- did you guys jump in after me?”

She nodded.

“Are you insane?!”

“We weren’t gonna just leave you to fight her alone!”

“You were supposed to close the portal as soon as she was inside!”

“And leave you?!”

Wander didn’t have an answer to that. As prepared as he was to sacrifice himself, he should’ve known the others wouldn’t have allowed it. He looked over at Jack, murder in his eyes as he stood against his mother. If the opportunity presented itself, they had to leave him in here. That moment was coming soon, and it didn’t feel good.

“Nithe is waiting for us,” Sara said. She pointed up above to a hole in the sky where Nithe stood at the edge looking in. “I’m assuming she has some sort of plan to get us up there?”

“Okay,” Wander said, recalculating the plan. “The flow doesn’t work in here, unless there’s a portal open. As long as it stays open, we have magic and so does she.”

“I think it’s weaker, though,” Sara said. “Or Night Swan took some kind of damage from the fall.”

Wander looked back at the fight. Brezziana slammed into her and knocked her sideways this time. She quickly recovered, but there was at least some sign of weakness. 

“Well at least we have that going for us,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He ran back into the fight and threw another charge of golden energy. Sara was right—his magic felt weaker. But the blast actually reached its target this time. Night Swan was knocked off her feet. She flickered for a moment, then let out a frustrated growl. She was trying to teleport.

Brezziana pinned her to the ground with her foot. “Not this time, old lady,” she scowled.

It was a satisfying moment, but it only lasted a second. Night Swan exploded with power again, throwing Brezziana off of her and lifting herself to her feet. Brezziana landed much less gracefully this time, and Mihaly rushed to her side. That might have broken something.

Wander was about to go check her out himself, but The Night Swan’s eyes landed right on him. After Jack, Wander was probably her biggest target.

Wander stood his ground, pulling his muted power to the center and concentrating it into a timebomb to set off as soon as she got close. She came at him, and right as she was about to grab him, he let go.

There was a flash of light that hit her once again, but not quickly enough. The Night Swan swiped at him as she was blown away, and her mutated arm clawed right through one of Wander’s outstretched hands.

It was the same computer-glitch power she used on the others. Unbelievable pain exploded in Wander’s hand. He jerked it back, but not before it could spread all the way up to his shoulder. He fell down screaming and instinctively tried to grab his hand, but he couldn’t.

There was nothing there.

Blue and purple particles fell to the ground. His whole arm was gone, just stopping at the shoulder like Cygnus’s body had. A flickering buzz remained at the edge, but that was it. 

The Night Swan laughed, but Wander could only stare at the pieces of himself scattered around his feet.

“Wander!”

Jack was suddenly next to him, reaching out to tend to the wound but not knowing what to do. Mihaly and Sara had grabbed The Night Swan’s attention again for now, but it was only a matter of time before she did even worse to them.

Wander’s voice shook. “What- wh-”

The anger was gone from Jack’s eyes now. Now, he just looked scared. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I- I should’ve stopped her.”

Wanderlust was too much in shock to comment on how little sense it made for him to apologize for that. With his remaining hand, he gathered the fragments on the ground into a pile, silently willing them to reform like he tried with Cygnus. It was stupid. If he couldn’t fix him, he certainly couldn’t fix himself.

“Here-” Jack helped him with trembling hands. “Maybe- maybe after we stop her, we can-”

Wander looked up at him. He was really scared. This couldn’t have been an act—what would be the point if it was? 

“It’s okay,” Wander said unconvincingly. It certainly wasn’t okay. But that was what he wanted to say whenever he saw Jack like that. He wanted to make things okay for him.

Wander started to get up. It was strange that the whole rest of his body was fine.

Jack grabbed his other shoulder. “Don’t move.”

“It’s fine, it doesn’t hurt,” Wander tried to smile.

Jack didn’t let go. Was he about to cry?

A pang of guilt ached in Wander’s chest. He didn’t want to worry him. Wasn’t it pathetic how even if Jack was a traitor, Wander still couldn’t get over his feelings for him? He tried to stop believing in him, but no matter how hard he tried, part of him never could.

But maybe it wasn’t pathetic at all. Maybe that instinct was right all along. Jack did want to be good. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be here with him on the verge of tears. He couldn’t look that sincere. This was the Jack Wanderlust knew. Maybe Wander’s real mistake was ever doubting that.

“Jack…”

While Wander searched for the words to apologize, Jack gently put a hand on the spot where his shoulder cut off—carefully, as if more of him could still fall apart. Suddenly, an electrical buzz flitted through the leftover nerves.

Wander jerked back, instantly making Jack yank his hand away in response.

“I’m sorry!” Jack quickly gasped, pulling his hand against his chest. “I don’t know what-“

“Wait,” Wander interrupted. The buzzing was gone as soon as Jack pulled away, but he could swear he saw some kind of movement in the particles on the ground. “Do it again.”

Jack looked at him like he was crazy. “Do what again?”

“Whatever you just did! I think… it was about to fix itself?”

“What? ”

“Just-!” Wander grabbed Jack’s hand and put it back where it was. Jack didn’t look too convinced, but he humored him, closing his eyes to concentrate.

For moment, nothing happened. But then the buzzing returned. Wander tried not to flinch this time and looked to the ground—sure enough, the pieces were moving. They shook in place before lifting and reforming themselves in midair, right where they were supposed to be. The strange feeling spread down until it filled his whole arm—his arm that was back.

Jack opened his eyes. “What the-?!”

Wander simply grinned and flexed his fingers. It felt like nothing ever happened. “You fixed it!” he said.

Jack blinked a few times as if it were all a hallucination. “But- that doesn’t make any sense.”

“You don’t make any sense,” Wander smiled.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re half from the danceverses and half from Earth,” Wander explained. “Nobody knows what that means, so nobody can predict what you’re capable of. If anybody could access whatever weird, glitchy, trans-dimensional magic your mom is using, it’d be you!”

Jack was speechless. It was crazy, but that was the only explanation. The Night Swan had to hack into some complex system and half-destroy herself to get powers that transcended the divide between worlds, but Jack was naturally something in-between. For all they knew, he had that power all along—not just the power to destroy, but the power to heal.

Wanderlust stood up and offered his newly-reformed hand to help Jack up. “Do you know what this means?” he asked him. Jack was too stunned to figure it out, of course, so Wander had to spell it out for him. “You can undo what she did,” he smiled. “You can fix all of this.”

Chapter Text

Jack Rose had powers. Not even just the powers his mother forced upon him—he had his own powers, ones even his mother couldn’t get her hands on without nearly ripping herself apart.

Wanderlust was right: nobody could predict what Jack was capable of. Not even The Night Swan.

Jack turned back to the fight and felt his fists heat back up with electricity. Wanderlust almost lost his arm. Cygnus died. And all of it was at the hands of The Night Swan, the same woman who let him believe for his entire life that he was nothing but a powerless disappointment. 

He glared at her monstrous form, metallic feathers and points blending into holographic pale skin. She was a nightmare, now finally visible as such to anyone who laid eyes on her. Jack had killed her, but she’d come back. This time, she would be gone for good.

Lightning exploded through the prism of ground beneath him. He was burning, an uncontainable weapon zeroing in on the one target he’d never been able to shake. His mother smiled at the hatred in his eyes, but she’d regret it. This was how powerful she wanted him to be, the kind of thirst for blood she spent over twenty years drilling into him. She wanted a monster and she’d gotten one, but now it was going to tear her apart.

Jack charged at her, screaming, a roar like thunder that scraped his throat. He let his power take over and it poured out of him like wild, bursting out of the ground between them and blowing the others out of the way. The Night Swan counteracted with a blast of her own that exploded against his magic and only provoked more.

A flash in the sky above momentarily caught Jack’s attention. The same holographic material making up the ground suddenly formed a structure in midair—a ladder leading all the way up to Nithe’s portal out of The Virtualscape. 

But Jack didn’t care about getting out. He’d told Wanderlust he wasn’t going to, anyway. All he cared about was seeing his mother finally get the ending he deserved. He threw everything he could at her, over and over, only to be blocked or hit back by one of her spells. But she was growing weaker; he was sure of it. While she could only expend so much of her power, his fire was never-ending. 

The others had either already escaped up the ladder or just had enough sense to stay well away. Jack felt like he could level an entire city, no matter who was in his path. It was worth it. Anything would be worth it for this.

With fading energy, Night Swan managed to teleport herself one last time before Jack could slam her into the ground. She reappeared at the bottom of the ladder. She was trying to escape. 

Jack didn’t even let her grab on. Two vines ripped out of the ground and snatched both of her legs, tearing her away from the ladder and back toward him as she uselessly reached for it with desperate claws.

He pinned her to the ground and she snarled, trying to rip the vines apart. He only made them stronger, thickening tendrils digging into her. 

Her body started to flicker.

“You ungrateful little-“

Jack didn’t want to hear any more from her. If he had powers like hers, he could do what she did. He suddenly forced his magic up and a thorn burst from the ground beneath The Night Swan’s back and through her body.

It didn’t kill her, somehow. Maybe she didn’t have enough of a physical form for it to pierce. But she couldn’t move anymore. She only screamed, trapped in the pain like she’d done to him and Mihaly. 

She was helpless. Finally, there was nothing she could do to hurt him. She just kept screaming, and Jack kept watching. He was smiling.

Black smoke gathered at his feet. It covered up the holographic ground, creating a thick fog like the hundreds of memories of the throne room where she tortured people in front of him. Like the balcony where she made a spectacle of turning innocent Eternians into swan soldiers. The same balcony where he almost destroyed a crowd of protestors rallying against him.

DOWN WITH THE NIGHT ROSE.

That crowd would be back. That crowd would be right.

Jack could see his reflection through the fog. He could see the anger, the way the people around him choked under the iron grip of his need for control. He’d been the one trapped before, and he’d never wanted anybody else to take his place. Defeating his mother shouldn’t have been about inflicting his pain onto another person. It should have been about making it all stop, once and for all. He couldn’t continue her cycle of torture. He couldn’t kill her.

The thorn retreated back into the ground. The Night Swan took in a sharp, pained gasp of air, but she was still held down by the vines around the rest of her body. Her struggling was weaker. She looked almost human with her life flashing before her eyes.

Part of Jack wondered if he was making a mistake. He didn’t want to show her mercy. But he did at the same time. None of it made sense, so he just had to pick a voice to listen to and stick to it.

“Jack!”

Someone else’s voice called out to him instead. Behind him, Wanderlust was clinging to the bottom of the ladder and waving at Jack to follow him. The others must have made it up already, but Wander was waiting for him. Of course he was waiting for him.

Jack held his magic tight, refusing to let go of his mother. Even if he wasn’t going to kill her, he was still a monster. It wasn’t safe to let him out into the rest of the world.

“I can’t,” he called back.

Wander shook his head. “I’m not leaving without you,” he said. “I don’t care what you told me to do; I won’t do it.”

“You can’t let me out there,” Jack insisted. “I’m too dangerous.” 

The Night Swan fought harder at the vines. She was already regaining her strength. If Jack stayed behind but refused to finish her off, the two of them would fight endlessly here for eternity. 

“Everyone out there needs you, Jack!” Wander said. “You’re not a bad person. And I’m sorry I treated you like one. I got so caught up in my own problems that I let myself doubt everything I knew was true. But you are a good person. And I can’t let someone like you disappear.”

Something knotted in Jack’s stomach hearing Wander apologize. He didn’t realize just how badly he wanted him back on his side. But it was wrong . Jack didn’t deserve any of it. “You know what I did!” Jack said. “It’s too late for me!”

Wander reached out to him one more time. “It’s never too late,” he said firmly. “I know it feels like that. But heroes make mistakes—even really bad ones. Being a hero isn’t about being perfect; it’s about trying your hardest to make things right.”

There was something about the way Wander said it that was different from everything else he’d said the past few months. He sounded so strong, so sure of his words. Wanderlust truly believed Jack could be a hero. He believed he already was one.

Jack had made so many mistakes. He’d continue to—that much was clear. But he could fix some of them. And even the ones he couldn’t fix, he could try to. He wanted to make things right. Even if that voice was sometimes overshadowed, it was strong. Strong enough to listen to and strong enough to nurture, especially beside people like Wanderlust and Mihaly who believed that he could.

Maybe he was stupid. Maybe he was putting everyone in danger. But maybe he could be the person he wanted to be. The only way to know was to keep trying.

Jack tightened the vines one last time, pulling them toward the ground with as much strength as he could, and then he ran. 

Wanderlust took his hand with a big, beautiful smile and hoisted him up to the ladder. The Night Swan started to break free just as they reached the top, but the others waiting for them were too fast. Nithe caught it just in time. The ladder disappeared and the portal snapped shut.

As soon as they were through, Jack and Wander collapsed to the ground to catch their breath. The others rushed to help them up, but Jack was still reeling. He could have killed her. He almost killed her.

The room was still in shambles. Even with The Night Swan locked in another world, the glitchy aftermath of her powers didn’t go away. The worst of it, of course, was still there—Cygnus’s body, reduced to practically nothing.

Jack didn’t get a moment to take it all in. With nobody actively attacking them anymore, he ran right over to Cygnus. 

“Come on,” he pleaded. Just like with Wanderlust, he pushed the lifeless particles on the ground together toward the remaining half of Cygnus’s body. If he could fix Wander’s arm, surely he could fix this, right?

The others gathered around him with bated breath. He put both hands on the edge of Cygnus’s crumbled torso and closed his eyes, concentrating. When Wanderlust’s arm was destroyed, Jack thought there was no undoing it. He was grieving, and he was sorry, and he thought all of it was his fault if not just because he hadn’t be able to prevent it. Those feelings were there again for Cygnus, only worse. Jack had only just found out Cygnus was his father. He’d only just found out he had family who cared about him. He couldn’t have lost that already. She couldn’t have taken this from him, too.

Jack reached and reached for some sort of magic, some thread of life leftover that he could will back into existence. The electricity returned to his fingertips, but dimly, more of a soft prickle than a powerful spark. His heart sank deeper and deeper with every moment that he couldn’t feel any new energy, but his fingers finally felt something change.

Jack opened his eyes, and the body had reformed. He gasped, almost about to smile before his relief was cut short. Cygnus was in one piece again, but he wasn’t moving.

Mihaly knelt down next to him and put two fingers on the side of Cygnus’s neck. The room was dead silent for a moment while they waited for a few seconds too long.

Mihaly removed their hand and tried to look back at Jack, but they couldn’t meet his eyes. “Nothing,” they said.

“No,” Jack said. “But- I just fixed it! He can’t-!” he couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Night Swan drove her hand through his chest,” Sara said quietly, scared to say it. “That probably stopped his heart. You may be able to put it back together, but that doesn’t mean you can restart it.”

Tears burned in the back of Jack’s throat, but hearing his mother’s name again only made him angry.

“No,” he said again. He didn’t even realize he’d been clenching his fists until his nails started digging into his palms. His mother was sealed away now. She couldn’t control his life anymore, and she couldn’t keep showing up and ruining things again and again. She didn’t get to take anything else from him.

Jack put his hands over Cygnus’s heart and gritted his teeth. He had the power to undo what she’d done. Like Wanderlust said, he had the power to fix this. All of this. He squeezed his eyes shut and reached as far as he could—farther even. Farther. His body ignited with electricity, flashing through his eyelids and burning in his hands. He strained so bad that it hurt, even more than it ever hurt trying to hold his powers back. But he kept trying. 

He had to find it.

His fingers went numb.

He had to bring him back.

The pounding in his head devolved into a scream.

It couldn’t end like this.

But there was nothing. Nothing, nothing -

Jack’s magic cut out without warning. He’d been pulled away, into Wanderlust’s arms and the tightest hug he’d ever felt. The outpouring of power caught up to him all at once and his body gave way. Jack melted into a mess of trembles and tears on Wander’s shoulder. He’d missed the feeling of Wander’s arms around him so badly, but he couldn’t even appreciate finally having that back. All he could feel was his own failure.

Jack started to pull away. “It’s not working,” he said before turning to try again.

Brezziana blocked him with an arm. “Absolutely not,” she said.

Wander pulled him back. “Please,” he said softly, “Don’t. You’re hurting yourself.”

Jack choked back a sob. “You said I could fix everything. I came back out here so I could fix everything.”

Wanderlust just looked at him sadly. Of all people, Wander knew how it felt to try everything to save people and still come up short. He knew there were some problems that just couldn’t be solved. “You can’t bring back the dead,” he told him.

Jack collapsed back into his arms in sobs. All his life, he’d been taught never to let anyone see him cry. But what was the point now? His mother was gone; she’d never know. And his father—his father —was lost too. What else did he have to lose?

His shameful crying was the only sound for a few moments until Sara knelt beside them and interrupted in a tone so soft it made Jack feel like a wounded child.

“That may not have brought him back,” she said, putting a gentle hand on his back, “but look.”

For the first time, Jack looked away from Cygnus and Wanderlust. He looked up at his friends, but his breath caught when he saw the rest of the room.

It was normal again. The cracks and holes in space had disappeared, strange colors washed away into boring grays and browns and all the edges steady and restored. While most of the group was still in their regular bright color palette, Sara was back to the pastel clothes and brown hair she usually sported on Earth.

Even Jack’s tears were too stunned to carry on. He stared in awe at the mundane office, much happier to see the dismally ugly room than anyone had probably ever been. It wasn’t like that when they’d first returned form The Virtualscape. Did that mean he was responsible for it?

But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. He’d just used more power than he ever had before. It didn’t do what he wanted it to, but it had to have gone somewhere. And if this was the core of where his mother unraveled the world, it had to also be the place where it could be stitched back together.

Wander looked around too, and for a moment it felt like the two of them were gazing at the stars. “You can’t fix everything,” he smiled. “But you fixed all that.”