The world was shrouded in constant downpour, and the things that moved through it were low to the ground, with skin coverings or something that hung off of them like drenched cloaks or ponchos, masking all features. I saw glows here and there as they drew on powers.

A great beast lurched through the rain, pursuing those glows. In the process, it scattered what I’d thought was uneven ground, and was actually a horde of the slithering life, piled atop one another.

They swarmed up the great thing.

“It’s entirely different from what we’re doing,” Sveta said. “We all fight one another. They’re ganging up against… Endbringers?”

“I don’t see how we can use this,” Chris said.

“This cycle, final fight,” I said.

Again, they were interconnected, tied into one another, the slithering things more like a net than a pile of poncho-wearing snakes that were barely visible in the rain.

“Is that their equivalent of clusters?” Rain asked. “Is the idea supposed to be that we all form a cluster, and we can’t pull ourselves free?”

The question elicited an image of Contessa, dealing with a Case Seventy Case Fifty-Three, two young men, both existing as a tangle of cords, knotty branches, or bones, it was hard to tell in the lighting, all bound up together.

I saw Byron look away, his expression changing. Sveta did much the same.

“I would be wary about drawing correlations,” Number Five said.

“Show us the point in time this thing…” I stomped on the black crystal, “…encountered the thing that destroyed much of the world back in June of two thousand and thirteen.”

We watched as two creatures, similar to the slithering black thing, things that had been depicted in the portraits and paintings that people had tried to draw from memory, slithered through space. They were larger than some moons and planets.

The ‘view’ followed the black thing, and the background of stars pulsed with images, abstract and vast.

“There, did you see?” Number Five asked.

“I didn’t,” I said, not taking my eyes off of things.

“One of those pulses—it was the Andromeda Galaxy. You can look at the stars and see which way the third one is on.”

“Maybe you can,” Chris said.

“He’s going to the Andromeda galaxy. Passing through. I wonder why. A rendezvous with others of his kind?” Number Five asked.

“You’re asking us like we know,” Chris said, frowning.

“If you’re scared it will come back, you don’t need to be. That thing’s not coming back for a long, long time, at its current course.”

“I’m not scared,” Chris said. “I’m wary. Scared is the result of stupidity. Wary is the result of knowing the situation.”

“You can certainly put that wariness to rest,” the Number Boy said.

“Nothing is certain,” Chris said.

“I am.”

Chris frowned at the boy, who pushed his glasses up his nose, smiling slightly.