As Max floated in nothingness, he had a lot of time to reflect on his life, lives, both of them.

  According to Saliron, who had a good sense of these things, time didn’t flow correctly in this place. It sort of didn’t flow at all, but that couldn't be entirely true, because Max wasn’t constantly being layered upon himself. This wasn't some sort of quantum entanglement dimension...at least he hoped not. At first, he’d had a terrible headache and felt extreme nausea, but it had gone away in what he thought was around two days.

  Wherever he was, flesh and blood living people could not survive here. The spirits were not alive, but neither was Max…technically. If he had been, and was still a flesh and blood being, he would have been destroyed as quickly as the adjudicator who’d ambushed him.

  Now time itself was not a concern. And luckily, he was never too bored.

  Being outside of time would have been an unimaginable experience if not for all the things Max had to ponder and practice. On top of that, with his spirits in his head, he had plenty of people to talk to…whether he wanted to or not sometimes.

  Max wasn't sure how long he'd been drifting in the void, but he was absolutely sure that it would have driven him insane, if not just killed him, if not for some of his natural advantages.

  For one, he didn't actually need to eat or drink. Having a Quartet body meant that Max could indefinitely sustain himself with nothing. He’d realized pretty quickly that he didn't even actually need air. It was a little uncomfortable not being able to truly breathe, but he soon got used to it.

  He felt low level hungry and thirsty all the time, but not too unbearable.

  And, of course, the other advantage he had was all his spirits. As best as he could figure it, several years into his drifting, he'd truly heard Saliron’s story about an elephant bone graveyard way too many times.

  "Saliron, nobody cares about the field of elephant bones. Stop telling the story," he said.

  "I have to agree," said Lavinia. "Even though you try putting variations on it, either intentionally or not, it's really not that interesting of a story in the first place. Saliron, you saw a television show about the elephant bone graveyard, and you've made our contractor promise to take you back to Earth so you can see it, if you can help him return or contribute in any way. We’ve covered this at least several hundred times now. Has anything changed?"

  The dark spirit evenly answered, "No, but the bones are calling me, and sometimes we must speak of the bones so the bones know that our thoughts are with them."

  "What the heck does that even mean?" asked Max.

  A text screen from Slick popped up. [I don’t think he knows either] it read.

  Anansi spoke up, saying, "You know, this is why we've been drifting so long."

  "Oh really? And why is that?" asked Max for about the ten thousandth time.

  In an annoyed voice, like he'd taken offense all over again, Anansi complained, "It's because you are all, all of you, doing everything but trying to find a way out of here. Did I ever give up on living again after being killed?"

  "No, you didn't," Max sighed.

  Anansi appeared to Max's vision and kept speaking, going off on a rant. The dead spider god stalked around the empty space like there were platforms to walk on everywhere.

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  Lavinia suddenly appeared to Max's vision behind the divine remnant and flapped her thumb and fingers like a puppet hand, matching everything Anansi was saying. They’d heard his ramblings so many times sat this point, she knew what he was going to say before he said it–they all did.

  Max became aware that Anansi was about to ask another question. He really had heard this a lot.

  "And did I give up after I was cut into multiple pieces and put in raggedy-ass knives?"

  "No, you didn't," said Max.

  Anansi began passionately ranting again about his trials and tribulations. It went on a while, and Max was content to just let the dead god wear himself out a bit. After all, they had plenty of time.

  Finally, there was a pause and Max could get a word in edgewise. "Stop complaining, Anansi. I'm pretty sure that we've been over all the possible things we could do in this place, though. I mean, I can definitely work with you all much better now, but that doesn't exactly help us escape, now does it?"

  "There's still the ral’tek," said Lavinia.

  Max shook his head. "Those were some of the first things we used, trying to get out of here."

  Lavinia didn’t back down. "Have we truly explored every option? It's not every day we get priceless artifacts from the Quartet to to learn about, or to destroy and study, or cannibalize."

  "That's exactly my worry, though," said Max for about the thousandth time. "If I mess around with a ral’tek and break it, I might destroy our only chance of getting back."

  Lavinia said, "And has anything else you've tried so far worked?"

  "No."

  “Well, then give it another shot. What have you got to lose?”

  Max grimaced. He couldn’t deny the logic, especially when the black ral’tek had been looking more and more interesting. He didn’t mind spending a long time in limbo with his spirits, but not forever. If he couldn’t get out, then maybe he would have had to consider something more permanent.

  Finally, his breakthrough came about almost by accident. He was waving around two of the ral’tek in the void, trying to see if he could make something happen by shaking them, when something unexpected happened.

  The two ral'tek hit each other.

  The resulting force blew him away in one direction with great violence, but never actually hurt him. “What the heck was that!?”

  Lavinia was equally as confused and excited

  Eventually he was able to recreate the phenomena, and discovered that he could actually generate effects by hitting two ral’tek together hard enough.

  From here, it took a few months, or maybe a few years, it was hard to tell, as he and Lavina did simple experiments, leading up to bigger experiments.

  Finally, on a very important day, or time, or moment in time, he floated as usual, but was screwing up his resolve to do something drastic.

  Saliron chuckled. “To think I can see the bones again!”

  Lavinia politely said, “Saliron, can you please let us focus. You’re going to ruin our luck.”

  “There is no such thing as luck, only bones.”

  Max ignored Saliron and said, “You ready, Lavinia?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be. I mean...this could save us, or could annihilate us. And…it likely wouldn’t work anywhere else in the universe. So...all we can do is roll the dice. This might end up sending us to the middle of the void in space somewhere, or even back to earth, or to hell.”

  “It’s a Hail Mary,” said Max,

  “Sure, whatever,” replied Lavinia.

  “Want to take a little bit before we give it a go?” asked Max gently.

  “No. There isn’t any use in waiting. We don’t know for sure what will happened, but the longer you take to do this, the less connection any of us will have with the real world, and the less chance we’ll make it back.”

  “Alright, you sold me.” Max could feel his power uncurl a bit, and without waiting any longer, he hit the red ral’tek against the black ral’rek. Then he put the black one away, and hit the purple one with the red one. Then he put away the red ral-tek and hit the black and purple one together. Last, he sliced through the air with the purple ral-tek, created a wound on the fabric of the universe. It was just a big, gaping wound, but Max dove towards it.

  “I hope we aren’t destroyed!” shouted Lavinia.

  “Me too!” yelled Max.

  Anansi whooped. “This is fun! It makes you feel alive, even when you’re already dead!”

  Then Max and his spirits were sucked through the rip in reality before it closed again, and the void’s silent, eternal peace was restored.