Still near the room where Stefan was being held prisoner, the mayor gave Rosario a moment to compose herself. He knew how hard it must be for her to know that, in the Convergence, she could never hold her loved ones again. Despite this, he wished he could have been in her place, because she would never have to see those kids harmed by accursed crystals. For a brief moment he thought of his children, gone soon after the Collapse; then, his expression hardened. As much as it hurt him, he knew the best that could have happened to his family was to have met a quick end, because everything that followed after the Collapse had been an extended agony disguised with hope.

But Rosario’s thoughts were elsewhere. She was racking her brain trying to find a way to get out of that situation. She was also worried sick about Franziska, who was now by herself in a strange town. The mayor had said she was as visible as Stefan, and Rosario couldn’t help but look in the direction of the town. He noticed it.

“Are you concerned about the girl?”

Rosario cursed inside for having drawn attention to Franziska, but it was too late now. She nodded, “You said she looked like us and Stefan in the Convergence, so I thought it would be easy to see her, but there are so many shapes overlapping I can’t distinguish anything past the first row of houses. How can you make out anything like this?

“It’s by no means easy. I’m more accustomed to it, but even I can’t see her.”

Rosario didn’t exteriorize anything but felt relieved, and hoped Franzi had thought of going to the smithy to get help. Still, the words of the mayor made her frown, “Mr. Conrwell, then how did you spot us two days ago? We were not near the town; we were far out there in the mountains.”

“I happened to be in the area,” was his response, as his gaze went from the town back to the crystal hunter. “But please, there is no need to be so formal. Anyway, about your little girl; my men will find her soon and bring her here. She will join her brother and you can reunite with them later.” He paused for a moment and gave her a questioning look. “It is the first time I see children so young in the Convergence; I had theorized that stepping even partially into it only happened after either years of effort, or after… how do I say this, a considerable loss in reasoning. Neither one seems to apply to you. Have you really never seen the Convergence until today, Ms. González?”

“No, I hadn’t,” she responded, looking at him straight in the eye. “And you can call me Rosario, if you want.”

They stood in silence for a moment, until he chuckled. “Very well, Rosario. I apologize for not believing you. Now, about the children, I worry they might be too naive to accept humanity’s fate. I would advise against sharing the news of what you saw with them, at least not yet, but it is up to you. All I can say is that, in my experience, the mind is very fragile, and living in ignorance might be the most compassionate thing to do. It is enough for us to bear the weight of knowing what’s to come. In the meantime, until the time comes, I will do all within my reach to ensure you and the children’s safety. After I’m done with my task, you will be free to go. I would like, however, to share with you as much of my knowledge as I can; I am sure it will be useful for you later.”

Rosario’s head was spinning. What news? And safe from what? If there was any threat here, it was him! She doubted that he would just let them go. She wasn’t even sure if this was all just insanity, or if he really meant something. She worried that, in her confusion, she had missed something important, and she had to understand the situation as best as she could if she wanted to have a chance of escaping. She took a deep breath, straightened her back, and did her best to calm her mind.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cornwell… Bill, but this is a lot to—?” She interrupted herself when she noticed a ghostly human figure in a floor above Stefan’s cell; a man had just entered a room, and was now sitting at a desk and writing. What distracted Rosario was that, while the body was almost fully transparent, there was something very distinguishable near the neck of this person. She recognized it as one of the maggots of the monster plant below the keep, the ones the mayor had called offshoots.

“What’s wrong with this person? Why is that thing there?”

Cornwell smiled. “I knew you would have many questions and, if I’m honest, I’m not even sure what’s the best way to start, but maybe we can start with this.”

He again placed a hand on her shoulder, and both were now one floor above, behind the man who had no clue he wasn’t alone in that office. Once again, she felt her balance slightly off; she didn’t know how to explain it, but they hadn’t moved fast or appeared there. They had moved, but in a way she didn’t know how to put into words.

Cornwell walked towards the man at the desk, and invited her to take a closer look. “You see, the creature you saw in the cellar, and the one you killed at the power facility, are from a very particular species endemic only to this region. I only learned about it some years ago, when a local who researched mutated species mentioned it; he called it paractus. Anyway, this plant can produce little parasites that are meant to infest animals, to help it feed and disperse its seeds. Maybe you have heard of the tropical fungus that infects ants and makes them hang off tree leaves while it uses the ants’ bodies as substrate to propagate itself. But I digress. You see, one problem that beings who aren’t attuned to the Convergence have, is that you can’t control them. Basically, if you’re not part of the Convergence, I cannot reach you. But mutated life forms, on the other hand, are a part of the Convergence as much as we both are.”

He made a gesture with his hand, and the man with the parasite on his neck stood up and began walking down the hallway, then up two flights of stairs and to a large balcony that overlooked the courtyard. Bill and Rosario followed him, and once they stood behind the man, after another movement of the mayor’s hand, he stepped on the handrail.

“What are you doing? Stop!” screamed Rosario. The mayor halted the last movement of his hand, and the man stood still. “I understand now. You are controlling people through the parasite.”

“Very good,” he praised her.

While Rosario couldn’t hear a sound of what happened in the physical world, she understood from his body language that the man had regained control of himself and managed to climb down the handrail, and was now standing disoriented, probably shocked after suddenly finding himself in that situation.

After what the mayor almost did, Rosario lost her calm demeanor and fear betrayed her voice. Cornwell had done this on purpose; he clearly didn’t trust her and was testing her. “So… Emilia and Noah are unconscious because the parasite is anchoring in them now. You plan to control them later, just like this person. Is that it?” The mayor nodded in response, and was about to add something when Rosario cut him off; she suddenly remembered the terror in the kids voices as they were being shot at while trying to leave the road blocked by a fallen tree, and the impact left by a gunshot so close to the passenger seat. “Did you also order the people at the power facility to attack us yesterday?”

Strangely, the mayor didn’t seem to know what to say for a moment, but she barely noticed it. “I’m afraid that was an oversight on my part—"

“Oversight?” Rosario’s anger, pent up since the day before, suddenly took over her in a way she didn’t know was possible. “You know, Bill, that this game of yours could have ended in Stefan and Franziska dead. I don’t care about your plans, just leave them out of this!”

For a brief moment, Cornwell’s eyes went wide and he took a step back. His reaction made Rosario snap out of her anger. What had just happened? It wasn’t like her to react like this.

The mayor regained his cool demeanor and continued after a brief pause. “If you let me elaborate: I had that specimen of paractus planted there so it could take care of unwanted visitors, but other than that, I let the plant do its regular life cycle.” He shook his head. “Its helpers detected your presence and it triggered its survival mechanism, making them come after you, especially after you attacked the plant. When I tried to stop the infested humans, it caused confusion in their nervous system. I lost all command over the offshoots, and when I saw you surrounded, I tried to control you to get you out of the ordeal, but it only caused you to pass out. Thankfully, your student reacted so well to the situation and you escaped unharmed. I deeply apologize for the damage I caused.”

Rosario felt disgusted, but bringing it up would not help. “You were trying to hide the monster forest, is that it?”

“You are once again correct.”

Rosario frowned. “Shouldn’t the town know about it?”

“I’m just getting to that.”

The mayor put a hand on her back and pointed towards the west, where the mountains that marked the entrance to the Valley of the Simme were visible in the distance. In a blink, they were now standing in the clearing where Rosario and the kids camped the day before, near the entrance of the road tunnel where they found the red crystals.

A half day journey in a split second. Rosario thought it would have affected her balance in a more dramatic way, but even if she still couldn’t explain how it worked, it seemed she was getting used to it.

*****

Even through the Convergence, Rosario could see the tire marks her camper left in the clearing through the shape of the crushed vegetation. The rockfall blocking the tunnel, which had seemed impenetrable, now looked like a sheer curtain, and the tunnel behind it appeared as open as it would have been before the rocks blocked its entrance.

Just as everything inorganic she had seen so far, the mountain itself was semi-transparent, but the behemoths growing over it were not. She distinguished their long roots extending deep into the mountain, going around large boulders, nesting inside small caves, and reaching into the road tunnel through cracks in the concrete. The monsters the siblings had told her about were also there: a network of morsus, and a patch of dust roses.

She looked around and noticed the dark behemoth with the red crystals; it was a rather small tree, but had a large root system. A few other identical behemoths grew nearby, in the direction of the valley.

The mayor walked towards the tunnel and Rosario hesitated; she didn’t understand why he’d taken her there or why he was giving her all those explanations, but without another option, she followed. She expected to feel something as she passed straight through what was meant to be solid rocks and pieces of concrete, but just like when she had tried to touch Stefan, it didn’t cause her any physical sensation at all. As they entered the tunnel, however, she didn’t dare go closer to the roots of the behemoths; what would happen to the trees if she touched them? Attempting to reach Stefan before had hurt him, the same way the mayor’s attempt to reach her through the Convergence had caused her horrible headaches.

“Go on, order them to move,” said the mayor, indicating the root Rosario was still looking at. “You did it yesterday, after all.”

She gave him a puzzled look. Just what did he mean by that? She looked around and noticed the emergency exit door past the patch of dust roses. The children had told her, that a root had broken through the ceiling just as they were trying to open the door, and it had conveniently given them more time to escape. The mayor couldn’t possibly mean that she had done that?

Bill Cornwell then looked up, past the mountain and towards the white sky. “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth,” he recited.

“What?”

“You kids didn’t have to study the scriptures in school, didn’t you? I wasn’t a big fan of it, but those were different times,” he shrugged. “It has been a solitary path since I began walking in the Convergence, and my mind often tries to rationalize what it sees here. That verse I mentioned describes this situation quite well, if you ask me.” He looked back at her and walked closer. “God created men and gave them authority over all other species of His creation. Some say it’s an allegory for us humans having a more developed reasoning, and I used to think that made sense. But now I believe perhaps whoever wrote it could also step into the Convergence.”

Rosario didn’t want to play along, but feared that her safety depended on understanding what he was trying to tell her, and she needed to stay alive if she wanted to help her apprentices. “I… already understood you are controlling people using the parasites from the plant under the keep. So now you’re telling me others can also have this power.”

The mayor looked disappointed. “Yesterday, after your students wandered inside the cave and you waited outside, the creatures that live here attacked them. I thought this could be a perfect learning experience for you, so I tried to pull you into the Convergence, the reasoning being that an emotionally charged moment would help you embrace your abilities and ignore the limitations imposed by your rational mind,” he sighed. “But it was in vain. I could not bring you in and only caused you harm. Still, it was enough for you to perceive your students and manipulate the behemoths to protect them, although you seem to have forgotten about it. You are too rational, Rosario, and it’s holding you back, but the rules you knew before don’t apply to us, beings of the Convergence.”

With a gesture similar to when he controlled the infested man at the manor, he made the root of a behemoth retract, causing part of the tunnel to collapse.

Rosario instinctively ducked and put her arms over her head, yet the ghostly boulders passed through her without a sound. The mayor looked at her even more displeased than before.

*****