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"So, who is it?" I asked

"It’s someone I can’t talk about Someone very old Someone I’m not supposed to have contact with"

I frowned "Why? Is it like a double agent?"

After a pause, Blondie nodded "In a way, yes You could definitely say that… a double agent"

I wasn’t entirely satisfied, but at the sa her tattoos I trusted her, damn it I felt I’d seen what she was made of And I also really liked her

I want to trust her, I realized For better or worse, I want her to be a friend

So instead of arguing, or pursuing more answers, I merely nodded

Blondie ser at her

"You had better be tellingone step behind you If there’s so I need to knoanna kno"

"I know," she said "And I’y Then, as one, we turned back toward the silent, ghostlike figures Blondie took ether we stepped forward As if we’d flipped a switch, the four figures before us started to move

There was no sound, but there didn’t need to be The e statues took shape to create a translucent, sinister landscape Behind the figures, swirls of iant beast, which looked like the love child of an angler fish and a giant squid Tentacles and teeth and weird dangling eyes were everywhere as the -hued flesh

Cal-dead Alfar confronted the beast, and atched as they bested it after what had to be a vastly abridged version of a fight While the creature, lashing and gyrating, fought what looked like itself, the Alfar calhosts laid down, obviously slain in the battle, but it was done in the say, as if its strings had been cut It slowly settled to earth, but its tentacles rapped around a glowing sphere, as if it were dragging the sphere doith it to its grave The Alfar tried to wrest the sphere away froave up and used their combined power to bury the creature and its sphere in the sea, before covering it all up with land Upon this natural prison, they set locks… the very sigils we’d found here and beneath Gus’s house We watched as four sigils floated up into the air above where the creature was bested, and then flen to nestle in various places on an otherwise unreconizable landscape that appeared under theain, raising their ar," Blondie whispered, translating

"Or you’re all fucked," I added My own little spin on the sitch

We studied the four figures, one still fallen, standing in front of us

"So they captured the creature and locked it away, along with its power They tried to get the power froave up I’ that’s the power that canWhen Blondie nodded, I continued "But as it? It looks like a kraken"

"Krakens are sot a weird feeling of déjà vous at her mention of eyes Before I could explore that sensation, the Original kept talking "But it is so here besides the Earth herself Very big, very powerful, and very prone to destruction"

"So what happens if it wakes up?" I asked, pretty sure I didn’t want to know the answer

"Well, first of all, we’ll lose e chunk of the Eastern Seaboard"

I gulped, staring at her "And?"

"Isn’t that enough?"

"I meant, like, is it evil? Will it destroy even ?"

Blondie frowned "Evil doesn’tfor this world"

"So hoe destroy it if it wakes up?"

"I dunno I dunno if it can be destroyed If all that lot could do was contain it…" she said, pointing at the ghostly ancient Alfar

"Shit," I repeated

"Yep But if it makes you feel any better, we kno to unlock the actual locks," Blondie said