Crimson's Prophecy

Hitch-hiking

Ever since the creatures had come to the Province when Crimson's family had been killed Andrew feared they would try several times to take his life as well - they had tried that once already right after they had brought his friend, the survivor, to the Kathrenian universe. Of course the creatures had found out about Andrew and what he had planned on doing. He was aware of the might which they had managed to establish in the Province a couple of decades ago and which had grown most of the time since then. He had taken the risk, had loaded it onto his shoulders and wanted to get Crimson out of the Cult, no matter how much it cost. Now he had to face the consequences.

But Andrew was prepared: Deric and Fiona were on his side, two of his friends, and both of them had volunteered to get involved into all the problems they were therefore confronted with together. They had had two cars to flee which belonged to Andrew's friends he knew from college, and one certain path they would have followed - if only Crimson was with them. The path would have led them through the North side of the Erithian Forest which was way bigger than the part Crimson had known. He wouldn't get a chance to return to earth though. If he isn't dead already, Andrew thought. Usually he had quite a lot of optimism, but not this time. Still, that didn't hold him back from trying to get to the Kathrenian universe just to see if Crimson was still alive - and to help him get out of the underworld. There were other ways to get to this hell of a place than being brought there by the creatures while falling asleep and waking up in that other world again.

Andrew knew about this alternative; he had read about it because he had been in contact with Lilith as well who had given him all the literature she had found on that topic. Now that Lilith was dead, Andrew would also fight so that the loss of her life and especially the ones of Crimson's parents weren't for nothing.

He had a plan - they had a plan: At the edge between the Kathrenian universe and earth there appeared thick lines in a purple color only for a millisecond before the transitions between the two worlds ended. Barthen had it under his control and Fiona had found out where he lived. It was a secret place because no one was supposed to get into Barthen's way while he did his job of helping to destroy the earth piece by piece, taking toxic responsibility for the Province. The problem was, where he was there also were creatures who wanted to kill them; they had tried to kill Andrew already, anyway, and they had refused to bring Deric and Fiona to the Kathrenian universe. So they would get in there by themselves right before the gateways to the underworld collapsed on earth. Their next problem - if they ever got to this step - was that they would fall from the non-existent sky in the Kathrenian universe. Deric had focused on that problem and had found out that the only solution for that would be to use jetpacks - which was unrealistic because they lived in the Province were such machines or what you needed to build them weren't available on the market - or to use a material which couldn't be found on earth but only in the creature's world: small crystals called skiths.

They had thought about their plans for weeks and Deric did research by reading books and asking others questions about what they needed to know (without going into detail since they were talking about the Cult), but without coming up with anything satisfactory. Some of the people Deric had asked for information didn't even want to get a conversation going with him because they didn't want to know anything about the creatures - those people had heard that the beings of the underworld killed you once you knew too much and therefore either ignored Deric right away or said they couldn't help him.

In the end, they had decided to get to a place where you could buy some jetpacks - it was impossible to get skiths if you weren't in the Kathrenian universe unless you got in contact with humans who worked as slaves of the creatures on earth, that's what Deric had eventually figured.

For Fiona's research on where Barthen lived they had stayed in Andrew's apartment whenever no new creatures wanted to kill them; they came back every once in a while and the weapons they used to defeat them they had stolen out of Gerald's weapon room - Crimson had told Andrew about it. When they had been at the house of the friend's family they hadn't seen Crimson's parents or Lilith, only some sprinkles of blood on the wall and tons of dried blood on the floor and the table in the dining room. They all had taken maces and each of them two knives. Andrew had looked into the room of his friend where he had seen his Walkie Talkie. He took it, hoping that they would meet in the Kathrenian universe where Andrew could give him the device; whenever they weren't together they could stay in contact with each other again, in the world of creatures that just had to be possible as well.