Nothing is left, right now. Only the wind, he blows over the city, uninhibited, through broken structures and empty ruins. Once there was life, and even if it only was a dying life, there was life at this place. Now all that is left is death. Crosses are everywhere, at every corner, rising in every street. Blood is everywhere and the whole planet is drenched with corpses. The wind carries dust and grains of sand through the broken streets and in the distance a dust-storm is slowly approaching, its dark-brown clouds rolling over the barren wastes outside this concrete sepulchre. Before the collapse, an undying amount of rain struck down from angry clouds upon this city. I remember standing high in HeadOffice, looking through a panoramic window upon the city below, the glass stained and steamy by the perpetual barrage of drops of rain, Slayer in the twilight behind me, sitting in his chair like an idol, drinking an ancient brewage from an equally old crystal goblet. The air was dark above Mort, condensed into a mournful gloom, and below me the lights of Central stretched forth, almost reaching the horizon, a never-ending, sparkling sea of lights. Aspiring to pierce the clouds, the slim twin towers of DarkLement rose high above the roofs of the city, far in the distance; a statuette of Ebon knowledge and spirit, revered by the chosen race, feared and viewed upon with suspicion by the others. Miles below the twin towers the chaotic structure of the ThirdEye MediaDome squatted in the deeper regions of Central, towering above the GrandPlaza, neon lights and monitors surfeiting its surface, showing a barrage of ever changing pictures and sending a constant stream of propaganda to the crowd below; all of them under the watchful gaze of the deep red iris of the company's ThirdEye; scintillating infernally, its lids half closed, as if near sleep, the sphere hovered huge and bloated before the Dome, suspended in the air above the plaza.

And there was Slayer's cruel voice coming from the depths of his office, "These are dark times, old friend." I let my gaze wander away from Central, to the almost invisible deeper regions of Uptown, a maze of concrete housing blocks, dull in their monotonous cascade. Wave upon wave of reinforced concrete, packed full with lost souls, all belonging to Slayer. And further my gaze strayed, only shortly resting upon Suburbia, the incubator of apathy, until it met the darkness of DownTown, stretching out beyond and below the inner city, a chaotic mass of rusted iron and rotten stone, level upon level, heaped upon each other and forgotten about. And further beyond, outside the city, I felt the evil presence of the five Cannibal Sectors, lifeless like the withered petals of a dying black rose.

I nodded, bathed in the silvery light from the city below the office. "Everything is falling apart, old friend. The people say, I have lost control, and I fear they might be right." Never before had I seen my friend, the most powerful being in the Known Universe and soul owner of the greatest corporation in history, so harassed and tormented by grim thoughts.

I turned away from the window to face Slayer's cadaverous features, "I understand that your brother has come to Mort?"

"My brother ...", his voice was distracted, lost somewhere and I smelled the arid air of an endless desert and heard the crash of waves against a foam-tormented rocky shore. "Banshee has failed you, didn't she?", trying to change the topic, his gaze snapped back into focus and he held me with his feral eyes.

"It is in her nature."

He paused long, watching the rain splattering against the window behind me, before he replied, "And now you know."

I nodded, "But nothing more that I didn't already suspect before."

I could almost hear his thoughts then, "Suspicion, old friend, is even more dangerous than knowledge", but he remained silent for a long time, instead saying, "So how do you expect me to punish her?"

"You have punished her before", I paused, "It's in her family; she can't help it. Do not punish her any more. Show mercy."

He began to laugh silently, "I cannot show mercy, old friend. Only one being in the universe can show mercy, and that is neither me nor my beloved brother. She failed you and in doing so, she failed me", his voice rose, cool anger dripping from his tongue, "She failed to bring in Seduction alive. No, she not only failed to bring her in alive", his voice raging and dripping with hate, "she showed the arrogance to act against my orders and killed her in a futile attempt to rescue her lover's life!"

I waited until his fury had abated, "Her mother has done it, too. Their disobedience grew out of love."

"How can you try to protect her? She betrayed you as she betrayed me!", he shouted, spitting out the words and I felt their impact crashing against my very soul, remembering the days when I taught Banshee in Meny, the long days when we walked together under the domed roof, the days I wished she would love me. But she didn't, choosing someone else, an unknown operative from an unknown squad. "Please, do not punish her. There is enough suffering in her soul."

He watched me long and thoroughly. "Why?"

"Because I still love her", I turned around, watching Mort, lost in the rain, "Because I will always love her."

The dust-storm has enveloped the dead city. Squalls of wind carrying brown sand and ashen dust race though the empty streets, the choking hand of the storm trying to erase all memories of days bygone, scratching at broken stones, filing poles of rusted iron protruding from crumbling concrete away to nothingness, and rubbing sore dying flesh nailed against dry wood. I watch the phenomenon from the shelter of my cave, close to the White, in the part of the city that once reminded me of the withered petal of a dying rose. Now the petal has burned to ash. In the distance I can glimpse the broken remains of HeadOffice rise in the fury of the raging storm and there is a light flickering in its pinnacle. Something that is not quite dead - and I feel his spiritual presence still haunting his office.

A moving spot of blackness, with a humanoid shape approaches through the racing dust-clouds, leaning on a walking stick seemingly unaffected by the storm. Then she stands in the opening of my cave, her raven hair fluttering in the wind and her charred eyes, shockingly white, expectingly look at me and I wave her in.

"Alice?"

She sits before me, her eternally youthful face towards me, eyes closed, and from nowhere produces her black top hat, its green jewel set in a hat-band of thorns staring at me like an eye. "You are still alive?"

She opens her eyes, a look of sadness swimming in them, her voice only a whisper, "I am as alive as you are, Eldritch."

I only look at her, there is nothing I can say. She belonged to SLA, but went rogue and worked for Slayer's brother and then she betrayed him too, working solo afterwards, dealing drugs and promising redemption. "All we worked for is destroyed. And still we loiter here, lost in our memories."

"What do you want, Alice?"

She looks at the ground of the cave, taking a handful of dust.

"I have something for you. The truth."

"You never told the truth, Alice. You always were the Queen of Lies."

"There is no need for lies anymore. I have been to White Earth, Eldritch. She calls for you. Can't you hear her voice?"

"Who are you talking about? Nobody goes to White Earth and returns."

She opens her hand in a waving motion and the dust gently floats to the ground, settling on the glistening surface of thirteen translucent spheres that have not been there before, something like a rainbow coloured membrane, not unlike a soap-bubble, moving inside each of them.

"Listen, Eldritch, listen to the ripple of her voice. It's in the storm and everywhere." Now I am sure that Alice has gone mad, unable to bear the mental burden of the collapse. "Who, Alice? Who are you talking about?"

She points at the thirteen spheres embedded in the dust between us. "These are dreams, Eldritch. Learn from them and follow me. There is no reason for you to stay behind. Necronatirian."

The last word impales me like a blade. I close my eyes, thrown back in time. Once I wrote about Necronatirian; a heretical cult of an obscure Ebon religion and Slayer almost killed me for it. And when I open my eyes again, Alice is gone like a dream, only the thirteen translucent spheres still glitter in the dust, but I can hear her whispering fading voice, "The Spiritual Whore, listen for her voice, lis-"

And then the whisper dies and I am alone.

I touch one of the spheres and I feel a crawling sensation in the tips of my fingers, almost like a slight electrical current. Almost like a voice, whispering of Banshee. I take the sphere and I am lost in a memory of rain, love and death.