Quaraun and Unicorn, suddenly found themselves in another building, unlike anything they had ever seen before. Big as a town itself and filled with aisles of food. Fluorescent lights, blinking and flickering above them.


    "Where the Hell are we?" Quaraun asked Unicorn.


    "Does nah know. But people all is frozen."


    21st century Humans stood around the freezer department, loading their shopping carts, but time had stopped for them, so now none could move.


    A familiar bleating sound came from the next alise.


    "Sheep. GhoulSpawn."


    Quaraun and Unicorn ran down the aisle to the next, but GhoulSpawn was not what they found....


    "You!" Quaraun pointed an accusing finger are the ancient orange robed wizard, whom many centuries ago, used to be GhoulSpawn, but no longer was. "You did this!"


    The wizard did not answer them, instead, he sat in his red armchair and unwrapped Hostess Twinkies, breaking them apart and feeding them to his sheep.


    "Where are we?"


    "Earth. America. Maine. Biddeford. WalMart. Hostess Twinkie alise," The Gremlin said, not looking up.


    "What is tis place?"


    "It''s like a market. A big one. Merchants sell their food to WalMart at a discount and WalMart sells it to the people. The merchants name was, Walden or Walton or Waldorf or Waldo or something. Where''s Waldo? Hmmm. Haven''t seen a Waldo book in a while. I wonder if they still make those? It''s his market, thus the name WalMart. He also owns Sam''s Clubs. His name is Sam. Sam Walden. I think. I''m not sure."


    "What year is it now?"


    "2016. November."


    "Send us back."


    "No. You don''t want to go back."


    "Yes, I do."


    "No you don''t."


    "Send us back, right now!"


    "Twinkie?"


    Gremlin handed Quaraun a squishy yellow pastry.


    "What the Hell is that?"


    "Food. You''ll like it. Sugariest thing ever made."


    "Last time I took food from you it was poisoned."


    "Poisoned? I''m sorry, that should not have happened. What did I give you?"


    "Pink sugar cubes."


    "Ah! LSD. Oh dear. I should have told you how to take them. You melt one in Faerie Wine then drink the wine. Eating them like candy can be dangerous. I''m sorry. I had not meant to hurt you. You were in pain. As I recall, you were wounded. I gave them to you to help ease the pain. But a Twinkie is not medicine. It''s cake, with it''s frosting on the inside. The sheep love it."


    "You and your sheep. What are we doing here?"


    "Not dying."


    "What?"


    "I had to change your past again."


    "Why?"


    "I can''t let you die."


    "What?"


    "Had you continued on where you were, you would have died. Now you are here with me instead. Alive."


    Gremlin ate the Twinkie that Quaraun did not take from him.


    "What happened to all these people?"


    Quaraun pointed to the shoppers all standing frozen stiff.


    "I''ve stopped time. More or less. Or rather, time is moving so slow for them and so fast of us, that we move among them invisibly. A spell you taught me, when you killed my people. The day we meet. I''ve learned how to do it now. They can neither see nor hear us. Makes it easier."


    "Makes what easier? Stealing from them?"


    Gremlin shrugged as he pulled another Twinkie box off the shelf and began opening the cellophane wrappers and feeding more Twinkies to his sheep. The sheep, with pastel coloured wool, were all gathered around him begging.


    "It''s been how many hundred years since I meet you and your still a thief?"


    "Some habits die hard."


    "How do you keep bring us to these places?"


    "Portals."


    "You do magic I''ve never seen before," Quaraun said.


    "I''m a more powerful wizard than you ever was," Gremlin stated. "It''s called science. I use science with my magic and that''s why they locked me in White Rock. Solitary confinement for 400 years. Chained to the wall of a room, barely as big as a box. Not even tall enough for me to stand, not wide enough to lay down, I got too powerful. It scared them. They found a way to neutralize me and I couldn''t get out, not while the barrier was in place. They slid food in once a day, through a hole. I was taken prisoner after you died, locked in White Rock Asylum For The Criminally Insane and given a lobotomy, which damaged the Thullid living in my body. They put a needle in my eye and cut out part of my brain."


    "You''re a Thullid now?"


    "Yes. Like you. It would be nice if you could stop it. Prevent it from happening. I didn''t mean to kill your friend. I know you loved him."


    "What is White Rock? You mentioned it before. You said it was a place?"


    "It hasn''t been built yet. Not in your time at least. Here. In my time. White Rock rounded up the non-Humans partly to protect the non-Humans from the Humans and partly to allow the Realm of Fae to remain hidden from Humans, by not allowing the 7 billion Humans to ever encounter a non-Human. This was due to in the 1980s, a pharmaceutical lab, gathered up a bunch of non-Humans to do tests on them. Most of the test subjects died in horrifically agonizing ways, specifically via the Draize Eye Test. While the Fae who run White Rock had the right idea in mind (rescuing and protecting the non-Humans from the Humans), there were far too few workers to deal with the large amount of ''inmates'' and thus their methods were questionable at best, overcrowding a serious problem, and in many cases the Fae treated their captives far worse than they would have been treated by Humans."This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "Seven billion Humans?"


    "Seven billion Humans. That was in the 1980s. It''s 2016 now. There are 8 billion. Soon 9. They are vastly over populated. And not enough food to feed them all. Even with places like this. This WalMart, and all it''s food, tens of thousands of Humans starve to death every single day. Only the wealthy can afford to shop at place like WalMart."


    "Why?"


    "This is the world after Ongadada. After the Humans gain full control. And White Rock stepped in. The solitary confinement cells in White Rock are very small. Little more than a closet, with only room to sit or stand and not big enough to stretch out or lay down. They have no windows. The only door is airlock sealed. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all padded and blindingly white. Inmates put in these, often go mad, from lack of anyone to talk to and having nothing but blank whiteness to look at. I went mad. People called you insane, but I actually am. There is a slot at the bottom of the door, which food is slid into each day. The person inside never sees their guard. The rooms have the ability to gas the patient, knocking them unconscious, so the guards and bath them and clean up after them. (There are no toilets or buckets in these cells.) If the inmate shows signs of waking up before the guards are done, they are injected and unconscious again. Some long lived inmates, like myself, have been in solitary confinement without ever seeing a person for more than a century. Solitary confinement is reserved for very dangerous criminals, or high risk of escape persons, such as wizards."


    "I''m sorry."


    "The worst part about White Rock, is no one knows it is there. It exists behind a Faerie Glimmer spell and is invisible to the world. Someone who has been inside, can see it after leaving. Once in a great while, someone escapes or is released, and when they try to tell people what they''ve been through, no one believes them. When they try to take people to the location where White Rock is, all they see is a forest covered hill, with a large white rock/boulder on top of it. It''s in Bridgetown, Maine is you ever want to see it. The big white rock. No building. No guards. No fence. No dogs. If you try to tell any one it is there, no one believes you and thinks you are crazy. This is why you''re GhoulSpawn became a recluse after his release... why he becomes me."


    "The Gremlin?"


    "The Gremlin. Yes. At first I had tried to tell people, but no one believed me, because no one could see it. I  can still see it, but no one who had never been inside could. I tried to tell people of the others trapped inside and in need of help, but, everyone just laughs at me. Human psychiatrists diagnosed me as having schizophrenia. Realising the Faerie glimmer spell would never allow Humans to see the building, and thus no one would ever believe what had happened to me, I retreated into the forest and left society completely. I have a sheep farm now."


    "Who runs White Rock? Can''t you go back to his past, change his life, so White Rock doesn''t become?"


    "White Rock is run by a Phooka, a type of Faerie not known for their sensitivity or compassion. While he, Harrier, is more compassionate and much kinder than the average Phooka, his ways are still harsh and brash. One of his doctors, Checka, is lobotomy-happy, and if any inmate proves too feisty or tries to escape, the solution is simply to give them a hack and slash lobotomy that is often done incorrectly and does serious brain damage. Harrier is constantly at odds with this doctor as Harrier has a strict non-lobotomy policy and does not like to see his inmates harmed, as keeping them safe from Humans was his intended goal."


    "So Harrier is not the problem? Checka is?"


    "Yes. Don''t trust ZooLock. Never trust ZooLock."


    "Why ZooLock?"


    "The fact remains, Harrier, though his intentions are good, simply does not have the manpower or resources to handle the mass amount of overcrowding. Guards fearing that too many inmates together, make a strong crowd, will frequently beat inmates without any real cause. Inmates being beaten to death by guards happens more often than Harrier would like to admit. Starvation is a problem for some sectors of the building, as there are not enough guards and what few guards there are, and not good with keeping records. Some sections get forgotten or the guards will assume another guard already did the rounds or an illiterate guard may accidently mark the wrong place off in his record book. Some cell blocks have been known to go without food for days on end, before it is noticed they were forgotten at meal time."


    "What has that to do with ZooLock?"


    "Checka is easily frightened. It makes him do cowardly things."


    "Checka?"


    "You''ve not met him yet. You won''t meet him for a few hundred years, still."


    "I don''t understand."


    "There may be a dozen or more people in each cell. Each cell being small and shouldn''t have more than 4 people in it. Rarely do they have beds or blankets, often the concret floors are simply covered in hay. There may or may not be a bucket. None has a toilet or sink. Only a rare few have windows. The cells are made out of steel bars set in concrete and escape is near impossible."


    "In White Rock?"


    "Yes. In White Rock. Should one manage to escape, getting past the taser toting guards is difficult. If one gets out of the building, getting out of the yard alive in next to impossible. A massive double fence outlines the perimeter. Barbed wire at the top. The whole thing electric and controlled by an off planet space ship, that will incinerate you with lasers if you get over the fence. Inside the fence however, roaming the grounds, are fierce Hell Hounds that you''ll have to get past."


    "Hellhounds? Like the ones that bit me?"


    "No. Not like them. The very same ones. White Rock is where they came from. Black Shuck and White Wolf."


    Gremlin absently rubbed his wrist, as though it hurt.


    "What''s that?" Quaraun asked, pointing to the silver band on the Gremlin''s arm.


    "You don''t want to know."


    "Why?"


    "Forget you saw it."


    "Why?"


    "Because you loved GhoulSpawn and you really don''t want to know everything that has happened to him, since your death. It would break your heart."


    Tears filled the Gremlin''s eyes as he clutched his wrist.


    "I must go. I''ve been away too long."


    "Are you in pain?"


    "Very much."


    "That thing''s hurting you."


    "Yes. It is."


    "Is there something we can do. In the past. To prevent your suffering?"


    "I don''t think so. Not unless you can keep GhoulSpawn alive. And I don''t think you can. I think his death is a point in time that is fixed."


    "If you can come back in time to change things, can not that too be changed?"


    "No. Because if GhoulSpawn doesn''t die, I never exist. And I''m the one who invents time travel. Without me, there is no way to come back in time and keep him alive, so that I don''t ever come to exist."


    "There must be something we can do."


    "You have already set foot in Black Tower. I think is too late."


    "What is this?"


    Quaraun took hold of Gremlin''s wrist to examine the silver band, and was horrified to see that it not only went around his wrist, but was drilled through it as well.


    "Because of my ability to bypass locks and open portals, I was given a lobotomy to reduce my ability to control magic, then had this special kind of shackle put on my arm, allowing the guards to have some level of control over me."


    "It goes through your arm."


    "It goes through my bone."


    The silver coloured metal band fit seamlessly around his wrist, and had a bar in it''s center that passed through his wrist, piercing the bone.


    "It is made of silver plated Faerie Iron, a special metal that neutralizes magic and making it difficult to impossible for the wizard to cast spells. It''s imbedded with a microchip homing device (GPS) that can locate the wearer no matter where they are, even if they go through a portal. It also holds an electrical charge, which shocks the wearer, should they walk out of the assigned range of the band."


    "Electric charge?"


    "Like the blue lightning bolt from your Rainbow Wand.  After the band was put on/through my arm, I was next straightjacketed and put in a solitary confinement cell, where I would remain for several centuries. The last thing I saw before being put in the padded cell, was my two best friends being viciously and brutally murdered by one of White Rock''s guards. I was not allowed to grieve, before immediately finding myself with a Faerie Iron band piercing my wrist bone, wrapped in a straight jacket and being locked in a padded cell."


    "This can''t happen."


    "It must happen. It will happen. It already has happened."


    "We must be able to change it."


    "If you can, please do. Please end my suffering. I believe, enough time has passed, that you may go back now. But I must warn you, don''t trust ZooLock, stay away from HellBorne..."


    Gremlin turned to address Unicorn for the first time: "Should the chandeliers come, there''s a cave, not far from Black Tower. Go there. You''ll find a friend. You''ll need him. I don''t know if you can prevent what''s coming, but if you can''t, Quaraun is gonna get hurt very badly. Very soon. If he does. Take him to Crystal Cave, at the edge of Crystal Lake, under Crystal Falls, beside Suicide Island, and the mouth of Blueberry Gorge. You''ll find an old friend living there."


    "Who?" Quaraun asked.


    "Not someone you know. You haven''t meet him yet. But Unicorn has. He''s an old friend of Unicorn''s, from a long time ago. In a place far away. He came here searching for his father, but never found him, and so now he lives in Crystal Cave. With at least one of his sons. If you can help me now in my time, to not suffer so much, it''ll be through him and his son. Find them and perhaps, you can change your GhoulSpawn''s future."


    Before Quaraun had a chance to respond, WalMart whirled around him, and vanished, leaving he and Unicorn back where they had started.


    "What happened?" GhoulSpawn asked, seeing them back.


    "I don''t know," Quaraun said looking around very confused. "I think you of the future just saved my life. Would I have died had we not vanished?"


    "Yeah Maybe. I think so."


    GhoulSpawn pointed to the chandelier on the ground. A massive structure weighing several hundred pounds. Now shattered on the floor in the spot Quaraun and Unicorn had been in moments before.