No wonder my Enemies were so diminished. To have to live like this, all the time, never free from fear, never knowing when they might be discovered and killed… Not unlike the life they made for me, really. But it was hard for me to feel any real sense of revenge, or satisfaction. No-one should have to live like this.

"All that remains of Humanity now," said Jessica, "is small groups like us. Those who survived the War by hiding, like frightened mice in their holes. We're still hiding, hanging on, surviving, doing what we can. Hoping against hope… for a miracle. But we haven't heard anything from the other groups for months now, and when we call out, no-one answers. So perhaps… we're all that's left. The last Redoubt of Humanity, pinning all our hopes on the death of one man."

"Who would have thought it would come down to the likes of us, to be Humanity's last hope," said King of Skin sadly, from his corner.

We all looked at him, waiting, but he had nothing else to say. He still wouldn't look at me. But at least he'd stopped crying.

"Outside, all that lives now are the last few remnants of Lilith's children," said Larry Oblivion. "Mutated and monstrous, and quite mad. Roaming the ruins, killing everything they find, including each other. I sometimes wonder if they even know the War is over. They won't last much longer. The energies loosed during the War, by you and your mother, are still abroad in the night, changing everything, mutating everything. Soon enough they'll all be gone… and so will we, and what's left of the world will belong to the insects."

"But now I'm here," I said forcefully. "And we've talked, and that changes everything."

"Does it?" said Jessica.

"Yes," I said. "I have to believe that. And so do you. It's our only hope. Humanity's only hope. Use your power. Send me back into the Past, back to the time I came from. And I promise you I'll find a way to stop Lilith that doesn't involve raising an army. There won't be any War, to cause all this."

"You want us to trust you?" said Count Video. "Trust the man who damned us all?"

"Why should we believe in you?" said Larry. "Why should we trust in you, John Taylor, Lilith's son?"

"Because your brother Tommy did," I said. "Even though he had good reason not to."

Count Video rose abruptly to his feet, turning to face me. "We could kill you," he said. "Now you're here, finally, in our grasp. We could kill you, even if it meant all our deaths. It might be worth it, to know you were dead. And then maybe we could all rest peacefully."

"Do you want revenge, or do you want to stop the War?" I said. "If I die, here and now, who's going to stop Lilith? You must know she plans to remake the Nightside in her own image, kill everyone who stands against her, and remake Humanity into something more pliable, to serve her all her days. I think I'd rather be dead, than that. I'm the only chance you've got of stopping Lilith. Of stopping this. If I can find a way to bring her down, without fighting a War… that has to be more important than revenge. Doesn't it?"

In the end, they only argued for about ten minutes before reluctantly agreeing. Annie Abattoir opened a vein in her arm, and used the blood to draw a pentacle on the floor, while the others worked together to raise what power remained to them. Jessica Sorrow used her teddy bear as a focus for the right place and time. Count Video swept his hands back and forth, leaving sparkling energy traces on the air, weaving description theory and binary magics, while his necrotech sparked and sputtered on his wrinkled flesh. King of Skin stood tall and proud, doing what he was born to do, evoking powerful magics with ancient Words of Power. And Larry Oblivion took it all in, his undead body the conduit for the terrible energies they were raising, absorbing all the punishment so the others could concentrate on the Working.

Annie Abattoir gestured sharply with her bloody arm, and I stepped inside the pentacle. She closed the pattern with a final flourish, and the spell ignited. The crimson lines of the pentacle blazed with power, and the world outside it began to grow dim and insubstantial to me.

And then King of Skin lifted his head, his