Issue 1 Downtime

The day after Regan's little excursion with Mallory the blonde woman is sitting in her apartment when the shadows grow deeper and longer across her apartment. The sound of a million cockroaches slithering out of a sewer drain fills the air and a looming shape coils out of nowhere until a white mask is staring at Mallory.

"You are straining my patience..." the creature hisses.

Mallory doesn't say anything and just flips what looks like a rolled up piece of paper between her fingers. After a while she looks up at the creature.

"Am I now? For something so old I would have thought a couple weeks would pass in no time."

"You borrowed them." it hisses, it's face changing to that of a young man. "And then you send them off! Into the realms of the Morrigan where you know I can't take them back!"

The creature pulls itself all the way out of the space between spaces and towers in front of Mallory. "I should take back the one in my reach!"

Mallory glances up at the creature for a moment, then seemingly loses interest again.

"Are you about done? Good. Because I think you're forgetting who is in charge here." she says, slowly rolling out the piece of paper she's holding. It unfolds with the sound of a knife sliding into flesh.

The creature twitches and unfolds some of it's legs as if contemplating trying to snatch the page from Mallory's hands.

"Oh yes, I know you'd love nothing more than to take this, wouldn't you?" she laughs, holding out the page.

"You're stalling! She listens to you, fulfill your end of the pact now or they'll take that page from you again."

"Oh don't worry, I'll hold up my end. But I think I'm getting used to this face." she smirks, getting up and making the centipede-monster back off.

"You should. Or no amount of your little puppets will save you."

"Of course not. They're just playthings, right?"

Though maybe you shouldn't have placed so much importance on the girl made of pure thought... she smiles to herself.