Yoake shook her head in reply to Adja's question. "Lixi did though, I think." She replied.

Martin sat back against the raised wall of the fountain and sighed. As always, the words that he wanted to say were right there in his head, but had trouble getting them out of his mouth. Hand gestures did not suffice, though he did try them. Lying usually worked in this sort of situation, but he just couldn't bring himself to lie to her even if it made things go more smoothly. Even briefly, he turned to the voice in his head for help. But as much as she would have loved to see him flounder and ruin his relationship with her, even she had little to say on the matter: I'm not helping you fix your ridiculous fling, no matter what it means to the fate of the world. Upon hindsight, he realized that asking relationship advice from the disembodied voice of a very bitter and ill-meaning deity in his head not only sounded crazy but was also simply a horrible idea to begin with.

"Yes," he said finally, quietly. He refused to look at her to see how she reacted. He knew that it would not have been something that he wanted to see. "Ever since you came back from Iron City, you've been... I mean...," he rubbed at a spot on his forehead, as if words were being held there and needed to be released. "Its just... this is about how sis was actin' before all the weird shit started happenin'. She'd get all moody and withdrawn... and... it just ain't a pattern I wanna see again. Especially not in you. I love you, Lixi. But that don't mean I can't be scared of what might be going on in your head."

---

However uninformative that may have been, it at least rekindled a small bit of hope that she could at least see her father one more time. In the back of her mind, she knew that it was useless information: that since then he could have been killed. And as silly as it may have been, it helped, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

She got a rather eerie feeling when Crowley handed her the letter. Before she even saw the illegible chickenscratch that was Martin's handwriting, she knew immediately who it belonged to. She couldn't imagine what he would have to say to her. He said he had some kind of plan, but she doubted he intended to tell her the details of it in this letter. She opened the letter with care, as if it might contain explosives.

It wasn't addressed. It just said the following:

Don't fucking worry so goddamn much. I got this.

"I wish I could tell you you were wrong... that I was fine." she sighed quietly, the reality of things setting in. "But I'm not, and I can't. As for IronCity... you don't understand what's there now Martin. You don't know what I had to do..." her hands glistened alabaster white as she pulled them out of fountain and pressed them to her forehead. "You just... don't understand how bad it is there."

The reminder of IronCity refreshed her brothers message to her in her mind. Now wasn't the time for this. She needed to think for a moment, try to sort the truth from the bullshit. She needed Crowley, his scrying specifically. She needed to see the truth. But there was no way of getting to him right now. She'd have to make do with sorting things out on her own.

"Look... I'm really confused right now. Between the zombies, Miah, and now... well... I'm just really starting to wish dead things would stay dead. I don't care how strong Joel is, they still don't come back right." Lixi lay a frigged hand on Martin's shoulder to steady herself as she slowly stood, then extended the same hand to him to help him up, though she knew full well he didn't need any assistance. "Should we go begin what we need to do? I can tell you more there than I can now. Things are clearer there."

------

Crowley read over the details of Lixi's letter a few times before folding it back up and tucking it in the breast pocket of his shirt. Despite it's short length, it said more than the words alone did.

"Yoake, please forgive me, but Adja and I will need to speak for a while before sending a message back with you. Please, make yourself comfortable. We will let you know as son as we're ready to reopen the portal and send you back. Adja, best you wait to open that other letter when you're alone. Come, walk with me and lets discuss what to do next."

Martin took her hand, still quite unconvinced that this was going to go as planned. It seemed that each time he got over a mental hurdle in this relationship, another one was abruptly introduced. The last time he had entered her mind, she had been close to losing it. She didn't seem as crazy now that she was away from Iron City, but how much of it was just an act? She had just stabbed her own bother in the throat. He couldn't imagine that her mind was a particularly stable place right now.

He grated his teeth at the thought of Miah. Okay, so the jerk had put the idea in his head that she was losing her mind and he vaguely realized that. But he could not imagine the hell that he'd had to go through to order his sister to stab him in the neck. Jerk though he was, that had to take guts.

Although, the reputation Lixi had probably gained from such an act would probably last longer than the wound. He imagined that they might be spending quite a bit of time behind the protected walls of the Thelema Temples.

"I'm still not sure what we're doing," he said nervously. He was starting to feel the heat of the sun, after days of being in Egypt it was finally starting to dawn on him that he wasn't dressed properly. Between the heat and the constant worrying, he was tired. Even though they'd had a time to rest, the knots in his stomach were making him weary. He wondered if either of them were really in any good sort to do anything metaphysical.

----

Adja folded the letter that she assumed was from Lixi in half for later, though her curiosity as to what she could have to say to her had peeked.

For the first time, really, Adja got a good look at Yaoke. The color was missing from one eye. She tilted her head sideways thoughtfully, coming to several conclusions and voicing the most likely of them in an attempted tactful manner. "And yourself? Did you find anything out about you?" She was having a hard time, now that she noticed it, not staring at the sightless white ball that was Yaoke's eye.

"We're going to rest. With any luck, the next day or two should be fairly easy on our side. Our bodies rest, somewhere safe and quiet, while we talk about things in the oasis. You should still wake feeling refreshed and healthy, as long as Vulture will let your body rest while you're out, which I imagine she realizes it badly needs to." Lixi held his hand for a few moments, leading him quietly toward Crowley's sitting room. Even as she talked, she was sensing his uneasyness more and more. The worst part was, she couldn't blame him. He was right to feel that way. Maybe it's better this way. It won't be so bad in the end if this is already over.

Reluctantly, she let go of his hand. Feeling his unrest toward her was more than she could stand right now, and it was making her loose focus. Quietly she finished the course, forcing her mind to plot what was yet to come. It snapped back to the man she'd been leading when she glanced out over the garden outside Crowley's chambers where they'd sat and talked in various languages of love and desire. Lixi let her body pause as her mind lingered on ghostly memories of a night so recent, but that felt as far away as the ancient days here when priestesses of Sehkmet still roamed the now sand filled halls below.

"It's not fair, you know... having to remember as much as I do. No one should have to." She mumbled quietly as she leaned against one of the pillars and looked out over the little rock garden "It's such a cluttered mess in my head, stuffed full to the brim. Then joel has to go and find ways of sticking his fingers in and stirring it all about. Nothing is where it should be anymore. Something from 2 nights ago feels like it was thousands of years ago, while the tourture of centuries is as new as the walk down this hall."

----

Crowley left the girls to their talking, and strode quietly to the edge of the roof to think and clear his mind.

Maybe it is me, the thought wandered through Martin's head. Maybe I am making her crazy. He couldn't imagine how he would have been doing much to help. He'd already established a long time ago that people did stupid things for love, and he was no exception to this rule. Love was the most confusing thing in the world, and some people were smart enough to stay far, far away from it.

In this, Martin was very, very dumb. The distance between them seemed to grow the longer they were apart. It left him feeling colder than her touch. He wished he could help her: filter out the important memories and put them in a box to keep them safe forever. He never thought his ability to forget would be considered a luxury.

"At least," he said slowly, closing the gap between them. "At least you won't forget me."

He was moving closer... she felt that before she fully registered his words. Even in all of this, he still didn't seem like he was about to just let go. Weakness gripped her, and the strong, confident killers facade melted away, leaving the girl who'd hid from the world in her lovers arms a few nights before, the girl who spoke of love in ancient tongues rather than of the fate of the world.

"I'd never forget you, even if I could. I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't let it happen." She sported a quivering smile, as though she weren't sure if it belonged there, but didn't know what else to do as she turned to face him once again. She took one faltering step toward him, extending her hand toward him as though she wanted to touch him, but the doubt still hung in her mind, causing her to let her hand drop back to her side nervously. "Besides, it'll be kinda hard to forget you if I fail to outlive you. I'm still skeptical that this will end with all of us alive." It occurred to her that this was not a comforting thing to say, and she quickly tried to counter it with something more light hearted, so she shot him another half hearted smile and tried to sound pleasant as she spoke. "But, I guess that's just all the more reason to enjoy what time we have before the bad things start."

Martin stared at her outstretched hand, tight-lipped and unsure. He loved her, yes, but he couldn't just look past insanity when it had become so prevalent in his life, and certainly not when he thought he might be the cause of it. The way she was talking about dying just now, as if she were planning on not making it through, it scared him.

"I wanna help you," he said finally. The very thought that she might be planning to die because of him made him feel ill. "Miah thinks that Vulture is somehow making this happen," he said. "That being near me... and her... that's what's fucking with your head. I can't stand bein' away from you, but... god... if bein' away from you is the only way you can stay sane..." He didn't finish his thought. He didn't know how. And in all this, he still didn't take her hand, as if simply touching her would usher her over the edge.

Lixi shook her head no, and looked at the ground between their feet. "No... no no." She shook her head again more fervently as she reaffirmed her statement. "I've been around the bonded before. There's no reason for you to make me crazy. He wanted us apart. Wanted you to push me away. Wanted me away from you, from everybody. I may not be functioning with all my resources right now, but I know a plant when I see it. It's a trap. He was a trap, Miah. I was stupid to bring him back. Heaven is stupid to take him back. He's just a trap."

The familiar feeling of not knowing what she was saying came over Lixi, about the same time she realized the last two sentences were in her angelic tongue. Her hand pressed to her forehead gently for a moment, and shook her head n a different way, as though she were trying to shake off some fog, or dizziness.

"I'm... I'm sorry... I want to explain. I need to explain, because you need to know. You've seen the oasis, you know I'm myself there... please, can we just go there? I'll explain everything. I'll tell you everything. More than you want to know perhaps, but need to know. Please? Please can you trust me just a little longer, just long enough to know the truth?"

"Yeah," Yoake said, suddenly self-concious about her blind right eye. She placed a hand over it. "I've really gotta get some colored contacts for that now, so that it doesn't look so strange.

"But I traded it for some info as to why I was created." Yoake continued. "Apparently...." She shivered, grasping her arm behind her back, "I'm....supposed to hold open the gates of hell, once Joel opens them or something. And that's something I do NOT want to do. I rather like the world intact, thank you."

Martin had to stop and remind himself that the garbled language that came out of her mouth was her own language. Of course, he'd only heard it a few times and its generally easier for someone to recognize a language if they speak it... and those were sounds that he couldn't physically make, so it stands to reason that he had a bit of trouble registering the sound as anything other than clearing her throat.

She rarely spoke the language, and he had come to associate the gutteral noise with her wavering sanity, with the distant look in her eyes, with the worried feeling he got when he thought about her. He wanted to say something to let her know that he did still trust her, and that he wasn't just going to drop her because she scared him.

Words were stupid.

He took her hands in his and guided them down from her face, and pulled her close.

---

Adja was unconvinced. Or rather, she was displeased. Where before her dislike of Yaoke had been powered by paranoia, it was becoming more and more clear that the girl was just stupid. Where Adja hadn't known much about Lovecraftian lore or Thelema in weeks prior, something that she had absorbed quite well was the dynamics of Deal Magic. She sat, tight-lipped, trying to think of ways to approach this more tactfully.

Of course, she'd already done that once. She'd managed to fill her quota of tactfulness for one day. "You... traded half your sight, which you use as a marksman, for information?" She supposed that she couldn't have blamed her for not knowing the intricacies of the system that was in place, but for her it just seemed common sense. "You do realize that you could have traded information. What you lost has more worth than what you gained."

A heavy sigh slipped through Lixi's lips as she suppressed a sob when she felt herself relaxing into his closeness. She hadn't even realized he'd taken her hands at first, having been to preoccupied with trying to make the words coming out of her mouth make sense, so by the time she new what was going on, her body had already instinctively softened and leaned in be closer to him still. He was warmth, he was comfort, he was love, and in that moment, as much as she knew she needed to be strong, and focus on what was going on all around them, all she wanted was to melt into him and forget the rest. She wanted to hide in his arms till the insanity that clouded her mind rolled away.

"I... I need to lie down. I need to do this. We should go to Crowley's chambers. It will be the safest place. We can talk more in there... lets just, get there." She leaned in close enough to rest her head against his chest, letting the sound of his heart calm her own frantically pounding heart.

Martin had a hard time holding back the tears, which is a tough thing for a man to admit. But he was choking on them as she fell into his arms. He hid his face in her hair, drowning himself in her scent to hide the tears that were welling up in his eyes. He held her a moment before letting go. Reaching for her hand, he let her stand, and smiled.

"Yeah," he said, finally deciding on words. "Let's go." They walked quietly, purposefully, towards Crowley's chambers.

The brief moment between them was pure serenity to her, and it did more to calm her frantic mind than anything she'd been trying for the last several hours. She pondered the calm that he gave her, the escape he provided, as she let herself walk with him the rest of the short path to Crowley's quarters.

Quar had already left to clean up the breakfast area, so she whispered a silent message to him from across the compound, telling him they were about to start, and was quite pleasantly surprised to find a quiet, linger wish of luck to them coming back from him. It only took Lixi a few moments to find the jar of red dirt and sand that would serve as a barrier to keep Vulture from straying to far with Marin's body, though she knew she wouldn't be able to use it to protect her own body, as she required physical contact with him to lead him out without causing him distress.

"We should change the sheets on his bed and set up in there. Most of his supplies are in this main room, so I want to be sure Quar can access it without disturbing us." She lead the way into Crowley's room with it's still disheveled bed, and wrinkled her nose a little as she thought about what had happened here when last it was slept in. "Fresh Linens are in the cabinet beside the bathroom. I'll strip the old ones if you'll put the new ones on, then I'll set up the circle as you make the bed."

"Yeah, I kind of know that now." Yoake replied icily. "No need to give me a lecture on making deals; I already got one from Lixi. However, the last thing I think I need now is being told how much of a moron/idiot/anything else indicating low IQ right now. Especially from someone who, at least in my mind, thinks I'm better off dead anyway." She cracked one of her wrists. "Anything else so obviously wrong with me that you want to point out? Or are you satisfied with reminding me of how much of a neophyte I am?"

Martin suppressed a gag from thinking about what Crowley did in this bed... with his sister, and shuddered. Even though it was three days ago, it made him feel very very unclean. Thankfully, he didn't have to touch the sheets. He might have treated them as though they would catch fire. Failing that, he would have set them on fire himself.

The linens in the closet were identical to the ones that were being pulled off, making it very easy to go forth with his usual haphazard approach of simply throwing the sheets on top and rather lazily tucking the ends in. Regardless of whether or not the sheets had been changed, the thought of being on this bed made him queasy.

That particular feeling fell into the background when Lixi arrived with the sand. He still had no idea what was in that jar, but the earthy scent of it made him feel as though he were suffocating. He held his breath to avoid the stinging feeling as it reached his nose, inhaling only in short spurts. Within him, Vulture shook, and he forced himself to stay put while Lixi closed the circle.

---

Adja quirked a thick eyebrow at Yaoke's misunderstanding of her actions towards her. "You think that's why I don't like you," she said. "Wait, let me guess: you think that I'd rather you be dead because you're a demon. Is that it?" She suppressed an urge to roll her eyes. That would have been a very Patriece sort of thing to do and she would rather not begin to act like a woman she hated.

She set the sickening feeling that she and Patriece might share something in common and indicated the empty seat where Crowley had sat. " Please, take a seat." Whether she sat down or not, she was going to continue talking, and she wasn't in any sort of mood to sugar-coat anything.

"Remember that I thought you benign when you joined us. The only reason I didn't think you should come along was because we were dealing with dangerous business and I didn't want anyone else to get involved. And I still think that letting you tag along wasn't the best of ideas if for no other reason than that you are young. Not because of what you are, but because I don't think you can handle the fate of the world. I can't handle the fate of the world and I'm a decade older than you. Lixi can't handle it and she's several millennia. I don't think you're better off dead. I think you're better off out of the way. " She took a deep breath, that rant having exhausted all of hers. "And considering this new information, about what you are, you might want to consider staying as far out of the way as physically possible."

Once she'd stripped the bed, Lixi set about sealing all the doors and windows. Only after she'd made sure that Vulture would have no avenue of escape, but would still have enough freedom to wander the room did she place one thin dusting of it along the base of every wall, completely encompassing the suite with the barrier. All the while she whispered a chant of purification that she'd heard Crowley utter thousands of times, though she doubted it worked coming from her.

When she felt confident the room would be completely cut off from the rest of the world by the dust, she moved to lie down on the freshly made bed, and smeared the last of the dirt from the jar across the top of her chest, taking care to span her heart. Panic filled her for a moment when she realized how much the choking dirt burned her own skin now, and a pained, shrill, squeal escaped her lungs. The mixture never had done this in the past. Lixi began to wonder how much the deal in IronCity really had affected her. The terror subsided with the pain did a few moments later, though her breathing remained difficult.

"Come.... lie down with me Martin, please. We can begin." she called to him through raspy, difficult breaths. "We will be safe now. You need only lie down, close your eyes, and take my hand. I'll do the rest this time."

"He's wrong... you know." Her mind wandered as it darted back to the prior conversation about what Miah had said to Martin. "I know he's wrong. How can you be the thing making me crazy, when the only time I feel even remotely sane, is when I'm in your arms?"

Vulture made her presence known by the seeping need to flee. Martin's breathing became heavy as she began to panic, and once he'd recognized why he was feeling this way it was a bit late to stop it from taking root. He coughed, breathed in a sharp painful breath, and coughed again. The room began to swirl, and he clung to the headboard of the bed to steady himself. He felt nauseous, he felt the need to leave the room but nowhere to turn. All of a sudden he felt like a trapped animal.

It wasn't until Lixi spoke again that he was bought back to reality. Her voice found the ground for him, and reminded him who he was. He fought through the stinging in his lungs and took a breath to steady himself before climbing onto the bed with the woman he loved. Shaking, and feeling the fever of the spirit within him fighting for control, he took her hand.

"That's pretty funny," he said vaguely through the haze in his mind. "You're showing me just how crazy my life is." He tried to lean in and kiss her, but the dirt she had adorned herself with stung him when he got close. Cursing silently, he allowed himself to become lost in sleep.

Lixi lay in silence, feeling Martin lay beside her, and slowly let the comfort of sleep take him. Once she was confident he'd fallen under, and Vulture was now the one listening to her physical words, Lixi rolled to her side, and draped an arm smugly across his body, well aware of how much worse her proximity would make things for Vulture.

"You'll want to stop pissing me off now. I've been informed of your function and the rules that bind it. You do your job, and keep the Mayhir's safe, and stop trying to make a mess of things. I told you from the start, I'll make things easier for you if you don't make life harder for me. That offer stands right now, but it won't much longer. Stew on that a while. When we surface next, I'll adjust things here to make them more comfortable for you. For now, just lie still, and let him rest."

She didn't give the old god the chance to answer before falling back onto the bed. As she did, she let her body go limp, and slowly worked at forcing her mind out of her body. She'd locked her fingers into Martin's as she lay down, so as she slipped out of one plane, and into the other, it was easy to drag him along in tow, filtering the comfortable energy of her love out of the noxious energy of Vulture to let him slip effortlessly away from her and his body.

Moments later, the comfortable light of the oasis greeted her eyes, as the soft sand pressed between her toes. Her usual soft white gown clung to her frame in it's familiar way, and the awareness of her love standing right beside her, set her completely at ease. Things felt perfect here, as though nothing outside mattered. Lixi glanced back at Martin, shooting him a comforting smile.

"Better now?" She whispered to him as she pulled him in closer. The ambient light of the oasis didn't cast any shadows, but the air still felt comfortable and cool under the dense foliage as though it were shaded. "Should be much easier to talk now."

At least it's not the fact that I am what I am that makes her not like me. Yoake thought. "Well, I'm stuck in now." She said in a neutral tone. "And trust me, if I didn't wind up finding myself in IronCity, I'd prefer it. But...according to what Snakey said when me and Lixi were back there, I might've gotten invovled anyway, whether I liked it or not."

Martin's eyes snapped open, drowned in the distant look that indicated that he wasn't there. She made no attempts to hide her presence, but did suppress the urge to, while the angel slept, reach forth and throttle her by the neck until it broke with the delightfully resonant sound of a snap. The thought of the sound made her grin, but once she realized the repercussions: just how long in the Void she would be doomed to serve if she carried out this whim, it subsided.

"Make no mistake," she said into the angel's ear. "I have no plans to kill you when you seem so bent on doing that yourself." Whether Lixi heard it was beyond her, and it was clear that she had fallen completely to sleep.

---
Martin knew exactly where he was. It was difficult to forget a place like this, even as easily disoriented as he was. The feeling of sand beneath his toes, the sound of water nearby, gentle breeze. As he regained his sense of self, and hence feeling in his spectral body, he was aware that he was holding Lixi's hand in his and gave it a squeeze to let her know that he was there still. The sense that he was alone in his head remained and it still filled him with an emptiness that he could not define, but it scared him less now.

What felt like a dream now seemed normal, so natural. As if he had been dreaming all this time and this was what it felt like to finally wake up. "Mon amant," he said to her, letting go of her hand only so that he could place his on her waist. "Can we stay here forever? I don't wanna go back."

---
Adja tilted her head to the side both in curiosity and frustration. There was something about the way that Yaoke talked that put her off: as if she expected her to know immediately what she was talking about despite her having been across the Atlantic during the entire course of the situation. "Snakey?" This was generally a downfall of being any sort of mystic: people assumed that since you were one variety of magical you were therefore all varieties. She was an energy worker, not a psychic.
"You're going to have to explain who 'Snakey' is."

"It's the name I gave to what turned out to be a fallen god," Yoake replied. "I started calling him Snakey because 1) He was in the form of a snake when Lixi and I first ran into him, and he reminds me of one even in a human form and 2) He may have been a god once, but man was he creepy."

Adja's brain was running a catalogue of possible deities that were associated with snakes. There were thousands of them: being associated not only with evil, but with wisdom, immortality, creation, and many a number of things. This managed not to narrow down the list of people that their escapade had lead them to. She let that simmer in the back of her mind while also putting two and two together.

"So you gave half your sight to a fallen god that can turn into a snake in exchange for information," she said, summing up Yaoke's side of the story. She was done scolding, though she could feel a headache coming upon her quickly. "What about Lixi? Did she strike any deals with this... 'Snakey?'" She could only imagine what kind of trouble she'd have managed to get into. When Yaoke did something without thinking, it seemed she at least picked it with something fairly small. When Lixi was stupid, she was stupid in leaps and bounds.

Lixi let herself melt into his touch, and soon had her body pressed to his. She smiled warmly at his request before pressing her lips to his passionately. "I wish we could love... believe me, I wish we could. Unfortunately, if the world ends, and my body dies, I die right along with it. Lack of an immortal soul has a very negative effect on the 'forever' thing."

She knew they needed to talk about important things, the fate of the world, what she'd learned in IronCity, but right now, all she wanted to do was hold him. Things were calm here, and it made her calm. Finally she could think clearly without being bound by the limited capacity of her earthly body. Relaxing was a possibility here in away it wasn't anywhere else. Her focus was on the mad in her arms, the man she loved,,, as it had been far to often in the recent days.

"I wish things could be as simple as they are here all the time though." Lixi lay her head against Martin's chest and closed her eyes, letting her mind wander to their current predicament, and she almost opened her mouth to tell him about what Miah had told her that helped her piece part of the confusion with him together in her cluttered mind, but the look in his eyes when he'd spoken to her moments before made her change her mind. Time moved differently here. A few minutes in the real world was an hour here. They could afford to spend a few moments away from the stress of it. They both needed it, but Lixi had a feeling Martin in particular did. Deciding to let things go till Martin seemed ready to get back to business, she smiled at him again and stood on her tip toes to kiss his cheek before whispering a soft "Te Amo" in his ear.

Yoake nodded. "She did an information exchange with him." She replied. "In short, she was getting information on Snakey, or Shad as is real name I guess, in exchange for letting him ask for information about her. From listening into the conversation, Joel is trying to wipe out the human race. And he's crazy." And he wants me to help him do it. She added silently.