Evermore

Prologue You Went Dark On Me

Prologue

"You're wrong!"

The voice rings out across the firepit area. The voice's owner stands over an older man her anger clear in her clenched fists. The man, dapper despite his current appearance(he looked as if he'd been in a scuffle at some point though it also looked like he might have been rolling in dirt), smirked at her.

"Your desires won't change the facts, Firestarter. When the throne claims someone it destroys who they are. By the time its done nothing remains but a dim echo of what they once were. You can't save him, it's too late. The man you knew is gone by now."

"I refuse to give up!"

The older women with a book on her lap spoke up. "Denying the truth will not help us, especially in this place. Let it be Willow. We must prepare in case a change in ruler causes this hellscape to shift as well." The others nodded.

The woman called Willow stomped off to stare into the darkness, pulling out a small lighter as she did. She flicked the lighter on and stared into its tiny flame. Willow thought of Wilson, trapped now on the Nightmare Throne, doomed to become the new puppetmaster of the Shadows. The others had no idea. They don't know how guilt had eaten at Wilson everyday for agreeing to help Maxwell. She remembered when they had sat around one night listening to how some of the other survivors had ended up in the Constant. There seemed to be a theme of Maxwell luring them in one by one in different ways. The scientist had wandered off after a bit. As it was a full moon night, no one noticed or seemed to care. Except for one woman with pale grey eyes.

Wilson was staring out at the nearby woods when she wandered up.

"Are you ok?"

"I'm fine Miss Willow just...thinking." She snorted.

"Thinking is all you ever do. What's on your mind? Besides the fact that forest would be far lovelier on fire?" She peeked at his face but for once he didn't smile or sigh, or even react at all. Most of the time her love of fire amused and intrigued him greatly. She settled down and waited silently. Her lighter came out and she studied the small flame, flicking it on and off. It took a few minutes before a sudden outburst broke from the scientist.

"It's all my fault! Everything! If I had never listened to Maxwell none of us would be in this mess!"

She nearly dropped the lighter is surprise. "Wow, I didn't know your ego was that big Mr. Gentleman scientist."

"You don't understand," Wilson insisted. "I built it. I built the portal that allowed him into the real world!"

She frowned. "What are you going on about?"

Wilson explained how he had been desperate for success in his scientific endeavors when Maxwell had made his offer through an old radio. He told her how he had built the machine Maxwell had wanted in return. He yanked off his gloves, for the first time in the almost full year they had known each other, and shoved his hand at her. "I was blinded enough to put my own blood into it!"

Willow reached out and gently ran her thumb over the scar on his palm. "So you're human, congratulations." she said dryly.

"What? No! Don't you see if I hadn't built it he would never have gained the power to escape."

The firestarter rolled her eyes. "He would have found another way I bet. You're not the sole reasons for this mess Wilson. He's slime, Maxwell wanted us all for playthings. All of us came because we wanted to." Wilson frowned at the scar on his palm seemingly unconvinced. Willow sighed. 'I swear for a genius he's an idiot sometimes.' And he was brilliant, if she'd learned anything in the time she and Wilson had been here she'd learned he was the genius he boasted he was.