Day woke up before she could even open her eyes.
Her eyelids felt heavy, and it wasn't the usual laziness or lethargy of having hours of sleep to catch up on. No, this was something different.
It wasn't just her eyelids. It was her whole body. A numbness in her limbs. She felt she could move them, but the effort to do so would be like trying to walk while under pressure at the bottom of the ocean. The only sign that it was temporary was the growing tingling sensation in the ends of each finger and toe.
But all her other senses were awake and alert. She might not be able to open her eyes yet, but her sense of smell, hearing, and touch more than made up for it. The advantages of lycanthropy.
It was a trick her mom had taught her. How to determine where you are by pretending you're still unconscious. Enid had approached it as a game, but it was clearly a lesson for the future. And as wild and rebellious as she was, Day was a good student.
So she allowed herself to relax, let her body recover little by little, and focused the rest of her senses on everything around her.
She was lying on a bed. A hard mattress full of lumps and prickly bits, providing a comfortable level of discomfort that was always appreciated by many members of the Addams family. She was covered with a simple blanket.
From the air, she could tell that she was in an enclosed space... a room. Although it was well ventilated and had a familiar scent. That instinctively put her at ease... she wasn't sure where she was, but it was a familiar place.
And there was someone next to her... she could feel the warmth of another body sitting right next to the bed and a steady, strong breathing and...
Oh, yes, she was definitely being watched.
Finally, she regained enough strength to open her eyes. She blinked a few times until her vision adjusted enough to make out the other person in the room with her.
A young, muscular woman with short blonde hair dyed red and black at the tips, watching Day with a smile of relief at seeing that the child had woken up.
The little Addams recognized her instantly.
“Cousin Dora?”
“Hello, puppy,” greeted Pandora Addams, “How are you feeling?”
“Like I've been hit by a truck, but without the fun parts.”
In reality, Day and Dora weren't cousins. Dora and her twin brother Theo were the children of Eamon and Friday, a couple who were variants of Enid and Wednesday. In a way, that made the two girls sisters in a ridiculously indirect way on a multiversal scale.
Or perhaps they were, relatively speaking, distant variants. Or rather, variants of the same concept. After all, Dora seemed like a mixture of Day and Rissa rolled into one, but without the more unnatural elements of the latter, and neither of the younger twins was a clear equivalent for Theo.
For this reason, and to simplify matters, Day, Rissa, Dora, Theo, Varadi, and Geraint had always referred to each other as cousins.
Unbeknownst to them, they were also continuing an old joke between their mothers, who had referred to each other as cousins when they accidentally visited Day and Rissa's parents' dimension for the first time. The only exception was Aunt Shark, who referred to everyone as Brothers or Sisters.
Dora laughed softly when she heard the girl's answer. “Well, if you had been hit by a truck, we would have been less worried,” her face turned serious, “You have suffered from silver poisoning.”
“Oh, that's bad. Really bad.”
“Luckily, it was an airborne dose and didn't go straight into your bloodstream. Being an Addams also helps, adding an extra degree of resistance. You'll recover, but you'll feel like you've been beaten up for at least a day.”
“Cousin Dora... I think I've been wolfed out.”
“It seems so. And in broad daylight and without the moon!” said Dora, rubbing the girl's perpetually tangled hair. “It looks like you've inherited a few extra quirks from your wolf mother. I feel a little envious, I won't deny it.”
“Will you drown in your envy, consumed by a raging inferiority complex?”
“Of course!” laughed Dora. “Anything for my favorite cousin!”
“Oh, please, say that in front of Rissa. She's been trying to develop a complex of her own for a long time, but she can't because her sense of self is too strong.”
“I'll keep that in mind,” Dora replied, stifling a laugh.
“Where are we anyway?” asked Day, glancing around the room, “Wait, is this your...?”
“My childhood bedroom, yes. We decided to bring you to our dimension for safety. Cousin Intruder stayed behind to guard your house and wait to see if anyone reappears to let us know.”
Before Day could ask anything else, a noise coming from her stomach like the roar of a particularly pitiful animal cut the conversation short.
“Hmm, looks like someone's hungry,” said Dora. “That's a good sign. It means your metabolism is working and needs to replenish its energy. A good meal will help you recover faster.”
“I think I can get up...” said Day, sitting up in bed and freezing when she saw the pajamas she was wearing.
“Oh, yes, your clothes were completely torn during your transformation, so when you came here I had to put one of my old pajamas on you.”
“It's... it's...”
“Hehe, sorry... I went through a phase in my childhood where I tried to imitate my mother in almost everything,” said Dora, “Although I never thought you had a problem with the color pink.”
“I have no problem with the color pink,” replied Day, “But what's the deal with the pony pictures!”
Dora looked at her very seriously, “That's a very dark part of my childhood that we're not going to talk about.”
“They look deformed!”
“It was an artistic decision!”
After a failed attempt to interrogate Dora about animated series that were the result of grotesque commercialization in the 1980s and a quick search for more suitable clothes for Day, the two finally went downstairs, with Dora helping the youngest girl walk step by step, allowing the child to gradually regain her strength.
When they reached the main living room, a small blonde human missile rammed into Day, enveloping her in an unrelenting hug. The only thing that prevented the girl from falling backwards was the fact that Dora was right behind her to hold her up.
“Oof! Rissa! Let go of me! This is very unbecoming of you.”
Rissa separated from her sister, but without completely breaking the embrace, keeping her hands resting on the other girl's shoulders. Her ever-present smile remained on her face, but her brow was slightly furrowed. She raised the index finger of her right hand while arching her left eyebrow with a slight tilt of her head.
Day responded with a roll of her eyes, “I'm fine, I'm fine, really. Just a little tired and hungry.”
“Cousin Friday,” said Geraint, approaching the two. The face of the young prince of the House of Adamo looked unusually stern and respectful. “I am glad to see that you are feeling better after your ordeal.”
This time it was Day who raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“Okay, what's with all the respect? Normally you'd be laughing at me for getting knocked out and proclaiming your superiority.”
Geraint didn't respond, simply looking away and crossing his arms.
“I think seeing you decapitate someone with one bite has earned you some brownie points,” added Varadi, also approaching to greet the recovering girl.
“See me decapitate... I decapitated someone??” asked Day.
“Don't you remember?” asked Varadi.
“No! Wait, I remember transforming and being really angry because...”
Day fell silent for a moment, suddenly remembering the reason behind her transformation.
“ATTIE!” she shouted, “Where's Attie!?”
Rissa patted her on the shoulder and made a circular gesture with her hands. Day tilted her head in a dog-like manner.
“At his house?”
“We left Atticus with his parents. We thought it was the safest option for him,” Theo interjected. Until then, he had simply observed the scene from one of the armchairs in the main living room. “He's a brave boy, but he's not ready to embark on our family madness, at least not on certain levels.”
“That's... yes, I suppose it's safer,” admitted the girl, though the words left a bitter taste in her throat.
“And now?” asked Geraint.
“Now, we're going to try to get some information out of our prisoner,” Theo said, a smile forming on his face that would have been worthy of Fester Addams in his most criminal endeavors.
Day looked up, her spirits rising again, a hungry gleam in her eyes. “We have a prisoner?”
“One of the intruders, yes,” Theo continued, “and I took the liberty of calling in an expert at extracting information from tough individuals.”
§§§
Sam L. Hilliard couldn't suppress a shiver as he descended into darkness.
Among the Normalcy Nine, it was an open secret that Crackstone believed himself to be the leader, or at least aspired to that position. Constantly barking orders, imposing his opinion on others, and turning every decision-making meeting into an arduous verbal battle to try to keep him satisfied.
They usually let him live out his fantasy, because everyone minded their own business and let others do their own thing.
And because, at the end of the day, the only word that mattered was the Mistress's.
Her ways of communicating with them were often indirect and impersonal. Messages, forced visions, dreams, a disembodied voice floating in the back of their heads... There was only one, a single person among the Nine who had the honor of dealing with her in person. And that was Sam.
This honor, on the other hand, meant that Sam was also the only one with the terrible duty of appearing before her if required.
And that was rarely a pleasant experience.
Things seemed to have returned to normal after the death of the first Norman Prime. Sam had spent the last few days indulging in some of his few remaining personal hobbies, leaving the work to his most capable variants.
But just a few hours ago, the new Norman Prime had reported that of the three agents he had sent to investigate the risk dimension where his predecessor had died, two had lost their lives and the third was out of reach.
Sam and the others had barely received the news when, in the meeting room, a raven with a single crimson eye descended from the shadows and landed on his shoulder with a loud caw.
The Mistress was calling him.
So Sam descended to the most remote, dark, and hidden place in the fortress outside of time and space where the Normalcy Nine resided. A room that only he had ever seen.
He was completely surrounded by shadows, and only his memory and the psychic guidance of the bird perched on his shoulder led him directly to his destination. At some point, a door opened... or perhaps the room materialized around him. It was difficult to tell, as his senses and perception of reality always became warped in Her presence.
The room hadn't changed. It was always the same. A circular room with high walls that rose beyond the eye could see, as if the entire place were the interior of a giant cylinder.
Light and shadows danced in a constant dance. The only source of light in the room were the spheres.
Hundreds, thousands... hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of spheres covered the walls, from the base to the unreachable heights. Flashes of different colored lights escaped from them intermittently, sometimes accompanied by faint sounds, the ghosts of a cry waiting to be screamed out.
And in the center, floating by itself at that moment about fifteen meters above Sam L. Hilliard's position, was the throne.
Sam had no idea what it was made of. Sometimes it looked like black rock, other times it looked like metal. Or, most commonly, a solid mass of shadows, full of sharp edges, pointed ends, and hanging chains with hooks embedded in them, where the crimson of blood could sometimes be seen.
And sitting on that throne was The Mistress. A figure cloaked in a black cape and hood, almost indistinguishable from the platform on which she was perched.
Her cloak and hood looked like a mass of living, shifting black feathers, almost as if it were breathing. But at other times it was as if the fabric were a mass of tar or pitch. The raven on Sam's shoulder flew up to the figure above. As it landed on her, it sank into the cloak as if absorbed or dissolved, letting out a final caw.
From the folds and impenetrable darkness of the cloak emerged a naked arm, its skin unnaturally white and marble-like, through which the blue of the veins could be seen. A delicate-looking hand with long black nails opened, and one of the spheres on the wall flew directly toward it, landing on the palm of the hand with a faint, gray flash of light.
The voice that spoke was that of a woman. Or at least Sam had always perceived it as a woman's voice, even though he could sense that The Mistress had long since left the limitations of humanity behind.
“This one was strong,” she said, holding the sphere. She sighed, inhaled, almost as if trying to get drunk on the scent of something, “But it doesn't have much left. I've been savoring it, taking my time.”
Sam just did what he always did. He bowed his head and replied quietly.
“Yes, my Mistress.”
Silence. Sam couldn't see her, but he could feel her gaze on him. The almost extinct sphere flew back toward the wall from the hand that held it.
“Samuel,” said The Mistress, “There's something new.”
“My Mistress... I fear that irregularities have arisen in one of the universes under the supervision of...”
“Norman,” interrupted the woman in the shadows, “I know, Samuel. I know everything.”
“Mistress?”
“All of this was foreseen.”
“It was?” Hilliard dared to ask.
“Of course. The multiverse is infinite in its impossibilities; it's the most twisted of surprise boxes.”
Suddenly, she was no longer on the throne. It happened in a split second. Sam L. Hilliard felt his whole body freeze with terror when two pale hands rested on his shoulders and a breath as cold as the air in a crypt caressed the skin on the back of his neck.
“It was only a matter of time before a stitch went wrong in the embroidery of my plan,” she said, almost whispering in his ear. The feeling of terror he always felt in her presence was growing, as if multiplying with every passing second.
Sam L. Hilliard couldn't suppress a pitiful whimper, and somehow he could feel the twisted satisfaction emanating from her when she heard it.
“You and the others will continue as you have before, dear Samuel,” continued The Mistress, “But stay alert, focus thoroughly, be vigilant.”
“Yes, my Mistress.”
“I worry that so many years of unstoppable success have made you arrogant. Oh, worry. That's not the right word. I knew it would happen, it's all part of the fun.”
“F… Fun?”
“Of course, my dear Samuel,” the pressure disappeared and Hilliard found himself breathing heavily as if he had just lifted an immense weight. The female figure shrouded in shadows stood once again on her throne. Her cloak twisted and moved in a grotesque manner. Ravens began to emerge from it, fluttering around her with a growing cacophony of cawing.
“Don't you understand what this means, Samuel? Someone is standing up to us,” said The Mistress. “This means a challenge.”
Sam didn't see it, but she smiled. He knew because he felt it. He felt it in his knees, suddenly buckling with an abrupt lack of strength in his legs, almost causing him to fall. He felt it in the back of his mind, in the image that appeared in his head when he closed his eyes, of red lips and teeth of unnatural perfection broken by centipedes emerging from the gums.
Sam L. Hilliard found himself once again in darkness, standing before the stairs that would lead him back to familiar, normal rooms and corners. He knew that this was her signal telling him he could leave.
But even as he began his ascent, he could still hear the voice of the creature to whom he had sworn allegiance echoing in the emptiness around him.
“A challenge, Samuel. I can never refuse a challenge.”
And whoever those Addams were (because they couldn't be anything else) who had been stirring things up recently and attracting her attention...
Well, they were enemies.
But Samuel L. Hilliard prayed for their souls anyway.
NOTES
Well, we are now up to date with Day and co., and we have our first true glimpse of the new Big Bad. I hope you like it.
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