View source for Black Book

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{{collapse|Original character: '''Ense Vardaman'''|
* '''Age:''' 13
* '''Trade:''' Assistant to his mother, the village hag
* '''Homeland:''' Iliesk - small state on the Hieriacca coast of Cerris, tropical climate, very pleasant all-year-round. Pre-industrial age, but magic and gods play a major role in daily life.
* '''Hometown:''' Varta (about a day's journey by foot to the nearest port city)
* '''Background:''' Always working to help make ends meet for as long as he can recall. No father or other family, just him and his mother and sister. Picked up a lot of basic skills - cooking, herbology, construction, medicine, animal husbandry and tracking. Mother always telling him he was meant for greater things, that he would one day go to Abearanoth and serve the gods directly; when she was killed in a pirate raid, he and his sister sold everything they had to try to start over and also send Ense on his way.
* '''Problem-solving approach:''' Apply grit and determination to see things through. Don't stop fighting, no matter how impossible the odds.
* '''Medical problems:''' Various common childhood ailments. Got pneumonia bad one year to they point where they had to get outside magic to fix it; were fortunate to be able to afford it at all. Rather small for his age as a result.
* '''Travelling experience:''' Prior to getting passage to Abearanoth on a trade ship, none.
* '''Weapons:''' Knife. Semi-capable in a fight, as much as a rather small boy with no real training can be.
* '''Vices:''' Pride - does not respond well to slights or insults
* '''Socialness:''' Somewhat of a loner, and awkward in social contexts. Good at small talk, but also very to the point, sometimes enough to alienate people. Does not make friends easily, but always remembers who they are.
* '''Hates:''' Does not like to be challenged. Despises those who consider themselves better than others, especially without any understanding of what those others go through. Hates nobles in particular.
}}
----
{{collapse|Stand-in replacement: '''Jennifer Mar'''|
* '''Age:''' 28
* '''Trade:''' Software engineer and designer, writer, miscellaneous hobbyist
* '''Homeland:''' Wyoming. Hot summers, harsh winters, thin air. Wind and grasshoppers possibly the prime inhabitants. Also contains some cities.
* '''Hometown:''' Casper (middle of nowhere; has a local airport, but it's tiny and very expensive, and the closest hub is about four hours away by car, so people usually just do that and save 400$)
* '''Background:''' Degree in software engineering, with studies in psychology. Grew up always reading and making things - drawing, painting, sewing, building little tiny huts for fairies. Had a difficult time getting into the job market due to unusual background - emphasis on open source and volunteer system administration and development, and the fact that as a software designer, she didn't actually have a degree in anything 'design-related'. Would constantly complain about how stupid this was because actual design degrees often didn't cover any of the important stuff - the software itself, or the psychology of the users. Puttered around doing freelance for awhile, then finally actually tried to make an actual job with grants, pulled it off, and loudly declared her life on track. Most of her spare time spent playing videogames, making stuff, writing, and surfing the internet.
* '''Problem-solving approach:''' Set things in motion and then wait and see what happens. Alternately, just step back and wait and see what happens. Pretty common for the field, where even the smallest changes can have unexpected impacts, and even the most successful propositions begin with essentially a gamble.
* '''Medical problems:''' Light sensitivity; can't see well in full daylight without sunglasses. Can't wear shoes unless it's cold. Possibly has various psychological problems, but never bothered to see anyone about it. Has trouble at high altitude getting enough air when doing anything remotely strenuous and has taken this to mean she's horribly out of shape, but is really mostly just fairly average. Often gets colds when travelling.
* '''Travelling experience:''' Occasional road trips, a few flights per year to visit friends, mostly in-country, a few in Europe. Ski trips, hiking trips, random trips on trains. Conferences all over the world. Has gone gallivanting off into random other countries just because she had a day to kill and no idea what better to do with it.
* '''Weapons:''' Six-foot pole (steel or pvc depending on mood/importance of not breaking anything). Mostly just carries it around using it as a walking stick, balancing aid, thing to poke stuff with. Sometimes has to smack wild animals with it. Also various knives and a sword, but these aren't really used as weapons.
* '''Vices:''' Laziness, apathy (somewhere along the way lost the ability to take deadlines and the like seriously and has major struggles with motivation), stories (can't put them down until she sees them through to an end), potted plants, especially ferns
* '''Socialness:''' Quick to make friends, but even quicker to totally forget who they are. Doesn't much care for normal socialising or small talk and prefers to focus on practical, interesting, or productive things. Very loyal to friends if something does come up (and she happens to notice), but unlikely to be the one to even ask about personal matters.
* '''Hates:''' Doesn't hate people. Doesn't even usually become angry with people, but will become unreasonably angry at poorly-implemented code, processes, tools, etc when she has to work with them and they cause problems, which can spill over into yelling at their creators. Takes far more issue with incompetence than directed ill-will, but also understands that people can just plain screw up at times.
: The only things she really ''hates'' are very specific products such as macromedia flash.
}}
----

__TOC__

<screenplay>

INT. House entryway downstairs - morning

It's a house. It's not terrible. It's full of plants. Someone upstairs, MORRIS, is yelling at his computer.

MORRIS
(upstairs)
NO! That is not what I told you do to!

There's some clonking at the door, and then a somewhat bundled-up woman, JENNIFER, manages to get it open and stumbles in with some bags. She drops the bags on the floor, kicks off her shoes, and hangs her coat and scarf on top of another coat on the wall.

A cat slinks out of another room and sniffs at the bags, nearly trips Jennifer as she picks them up again, and then wanders off.

MORRIS
(upstairs)
AGH! What?! No! Don't fucking do ''that'' now! Fuck you, don't... on top of... FUCK YOU!

A woman's voice responds, also upstairs, SHANNON.

SHANNON
(upstairs)
Hey, are you okay? What is going on?

MORRIS
(upstairs)
NO I AM NOT FUCKING OKAY! THIS FUCKING DATABASE JUST FUCKING DELETED ITSELF!

Jennifer fishes around the bags in the meantime and pulls out a large book. It's a thick volume, with ageing pages bound in black, looking like some sort of menacing fantasy thing. Its only label is a silvery symbol of a tree set into the spine.


INT. House upstairs - morning

The kitchen is also full of plants, mostly hanging, and also some actually useful-looking herbs and such on the counters/sills.

Morris is at the kitchen island/bar-thing with his laptop. On its screen are some tmuxes, a browser with something like a hundred tabs, the current one open to mysql documentation (the page on something really basic like JOIN or DROP), and some random videogame in the background.

He's staring at a tmux blankly.

Shannon is standing nearby, holding a pineapple, staring at him blankly.

SHANNON
(after a somewhat long pause)
That doesn't sound like something that's supposed to happen?

MORRIS
(loudly)
NO IT ISN'T.

SHANNON
(putting the pineapple down)
Could you please stop yelling?

MORRIS
NO.
Sorry. What?

Shannon shakes her head and gets out a frying pan and some random ingredients.

Jennifer comes in, drops most of the bags next to the fridge, and clonks the book down on the counter next to Morris' computer, shoving a potted plant out of the way.

JENNIFER
(leaning over right next to him)
HAVE YOU CONSIDERED USING THE RIGHT COMMANDS?

MORRIS
(leaning right back, putting his face right in front of hers)
NO. NO I HAVE NOT.

JENNIFER
Just tell me this wasn't production. 
(sitting next to Morris)
Also why are you up here?

MORRIS
Egh.
(indicating Shannon)
She bribed me. Said she'd make me breakfast if I came upstairs for a change.

JENNIFER
(opening the book)
But you haven't even gone to bed yet.

MORRIS
What's your point?

SHANNON
Nice book. Want some pancakes?

JENNIFER
Yeah, sure...

Jennifer flips through some of the pages, skimming them. Most of them don't really have much on them, though others are quite covered in various texts, symbols, maps. She stops on one page, flips back to the index, and then looks back at the page. It reads as follows:

: ''Backstory. Sidestory. Supposition, the antithesis of practice. Nevermind practice. This isn't practice. This is a treatise by the narrator, an examination of could-have-beens, an aside from the GM. We can talk about anything. Let's talk about anything.''

: ''You, for instance. Who are you? What do you dream? How far would you go? Do even you know yourself, or will you be just as surprised as all the others when, after all of this, it turns out it was all for jackfruit? For my own part, I can really only speak for me... and maybe, just maybe, for you.''

: ''Shall we go, then, you and I?''

This isn't the important part.

Morris mutters incoherently and starts cloning a backup database.

The frying pan sizzles as Shannon ladles in some batter.

Jennifer turns the page. This one contains even less.

: ''He was your favourite, your least understood. His world is yours, and yet he no longer is. Can you take his place? They will know you to be him, so long as you don't give up.''

She turns the page again, finding only a name.

: ''Ense Vardaman.''

And then everything goes dark as all the world is pulled out from under her.

{{hidden |

JAKKO
(indicating Vardaman and the Nereimens)
You four. Hold up.

They do, and Jakko confronts them as everyone else trickles out around them.

JAKKO
Why are you here?

JUANE
To become Deathdealers, of course.

JAKKO
That doesn't seem a bit far-fetched to you?

JUANE
I have no idea what you're talking about.

JAKKO
(indicating Leifos, Juane, and Kerka in order)
He's got potion sickness, you look like you've just come out of deep surgery and barely even made it, he's...

KERKA
In perfect health.

Jakko gives Kerka a dubious look, and then turns to Vardaman.

JAKKO
And just what the fuck happened to you?

VARDAMAN
I had to wash my cat.

JUANE
Since when do you have a cat?

VARDAMAN
Since I found one wadded up in a pile of debris last night.

KERKA
What...

VARDAMAN
At least I think it's a cat.
Look, I asked the Deathdealer if he thought it looked safe and he said yes, so I'm reasonably sure it's not related to all the other undead I ran into down there, at least.

JUANE
What Deathdealer?

LEIFOS
Undead? You mean besides the ghosts and junk?

KERKA
You still have it?

VARDAMAN
(to Kerka)
You know how if you wear like five pairs of panties, you can use them as a coinpurse?

JUANE
What...

KERKA
I think you need sleep.

VARDAMAN
Story of my bloody life.
But heeeeeey, free espresso and liquid insides!
Fuck me sideways this is worse than florida. Gin, curacao, vodka, soda water, limes. Or maybe mountain dew. Rosewater to make it taste like death. Maybe an orange.

KERKA
Vardaman.

VARDAMAN
Nwah.

KERKA
Stop talking.

VARDAMAN
Make me.

Kerka takes Vardaman's arm and starts steering her away.

JUANE
I think the real question here is... is this what she's like when she's drunk?

VARDAMAN
Mice stop needing pharmacological help with coping when the stress goes away so neither do I. This is my damn holiday and I refuse to put in the needful.

JUANE
...what?

KERKA
(to Juane)
Seriously, stop it.

VARDAMAN
Stop it your mom.

Kerka sort of push/pulls Vardaman out of the room, leaving Juane, Leifos, and Jakko staring after them.

LEIFOS
She... hasn't slept in a couple of days. It's been a rough week for all of us, but she's... uh...
We don't think that girl did something to her, do we?

JUANE
Naw, she seems fine. Just tired. Maybe drunk.
What girl?

LEIFOS
Oh, there was this ghost girl. Led us out, but seemed to want Vardaman for something, so she stayed behind and... something.

JUANE
What?

LEIFOS
Dunno.

JUANE
Why not? Did you ask?

LEIFOS
Of course we asked! Unfortunately there's this very minor detail that we couldn't hear the girl and the girl couldn't hear us and none of us can read lips. So it didn't exactly work very well.

JAKKO
The living and the dead exist in different realms. Only those on the boundaries can speak across them. To all others, they are silent.
You're saying your friend - Vardaman - went with a ghost?

LEIFOS
Yeah.

JAKKO
They are incredibly dangerous.

LEIFOS
Seemed harmless enough.

JAKKO
Many ghosts seem harmless, right up until they're not. As they're silent, you have no idea what their intentions are!

JUANE
Well, there's an obvious solution.

LEIFOS
Oh?

JUANE
All dead people should be required to learn sign language. Then we could just ask.

LEIFOS
We... did.

JUANE
Yeah, but then maybe it'd actually work!

}}

</screenplay>

{{hidden | 1=
{{ story as written | 1=

''Backstory. Sidestory. Supposition, the antithesis of practice. Nevermind practice. This isn't practice. This is a treatise by the narrator, an examination of could-have-beens, an aside from the GM. We can talk about anything. Let's talk about anything.''

''You, for instance. Who are you? What do you dream? How far would you go? Do even you know yourself, or will you be just as surprised as all the others when, after all of this, it turns out it was all for jackfruit? For my own part, I can really only speak for me... and maybe, just maybe, for you.''

''Shall we go, then, you and I?''

== Part 1: Induction ==

It's almost noon. Springtime is coming on in force, and most of that force, naturally, is the wind. But you're out of it now. You can stop, for a moment.

You Dream.

=== 0 ===

Your name is Jennifer Mar. You're you. You've always been you, lived your life, dreamed your Dreams. And yet... when you turned the page, you did not expect it to happen. You did not expect to suddenly be... ''here''.

You're standing in a street in a shadowed region of the city, the overhang of the higher levels glistening wetly in the reflected sunlight. Abearanoth. You'd always imagined it a bit like a layer cake, but here it's more like a deep, echoey cave full of chatter and magelights, the roar of the waterfalls a hollow sound behind it all, with a wide shelf of even more city sticking out into the sun. And if you walked out into the sunlight, you might see the other layers, all stacked on top of each other, lined with trees, the waterfalls crashing down through the middle of it all with misty abandon.

You make your way out of the shade, and the sun hits you in a wall of dripping heat, blinding. Your sunglasses aren't helping, but then you realise you're wearing safety glasses, not sunglasses; your sunglasses are still up on the top of your head. You swap them, and look around. This is it, all right. The next level up hangs out in a tangle of elaborate architecture, buildings sticking out hanging extensions and connecting to the taller buildings from the layer below. Trees poke out seemingly at random. It looks decidedly unsafe, a pinnacle of drunken elven architecture.

You know this place implicitly. It's your city, your world. You've been writing it for years, always drifting in the shadows of the higher levels as you followed your characters from story to story, loitering about the temples, laughing at the breweries. The whole joke had been that the place really didn't make sense - and it was because of the beer. The ancient elves had built so many breweries that they'd subsequently just gone ahead and made the rest of it like this anyway, sense be damned.

People pass you by, many more humans than elves, some giving you curious looks. You stand out, you realise, in your linux t-shirt and sunglasses and safety glasses and long, layered skirts. And your belt, with sword and purse, done out in a quality unfitting this world. Everything about you is pristine and modern, unnaturally even; everything they're wearing is simple and to the point, loosely-hanging and providing shelter. Even the nobles are wearing fairly simple clothes, making up details in finer fabric and jewellery. They don't double up their seams. They don't use lace as a filler material. They're not wearing relatively warm clothes meant for a brisk spring day in central Wyoming.

The page had been simple enough. A repeat of the index line: ''You find yourself in the world of your favourite character.'' Below it, the catch: ''This character is gone, disappeared. But as long as you are there, the world will know you to be them. How do you proceed?'' Vardaman had come to mind. Always an interesting one, you never did quite know what was going through his head. So how indeed, you wondered. And then you turned the page...

You regret this already.

You, frankly, have no idea how to proceed. You take stock. You're here, in the world. You're... who are you? Still you, as far as you can tell, still wearing exactly what you were before. Your hands are the same, your hair is the same tangled blob wadded up on top of your head with a pair of collapsible chopsticks...

And Vardaman? Can you believe the Black Book, that he is really gone? Can you risk it if he is? Without him, the whole world might fall... and what else can you do?

So what are you doing here? Or would Vardaman be doing here? You really don't know. Vardaman's early life never factored in that much. He was always the grizzled old man, never someone your age. He never was in your shoes. He wore boots.

You look down. You're not even wearing shoes. You're barefoot. Your toenails glitter in the sun, sparkling in shades of blue.

This isn't working.

But this is your story. Vardaman is your character. What do you know? He was a Deathdealer, a warrior priest of Kyrule, the local god of death. But before all that, perhaps that's why he would have been here: to join the temple in the first place. And the Great Temple of Kyrule is here, in Abearanoth. You could do this.

You're a woman. If you're really going to be a Vardaman, you're going to be a genderbent Vardaman. A very lazy genderbent Vardaman with weird health problems, no hand-eye coordination, and a general inability to... wear shoes. Because that will ''totally'' work.

But on the other hand, you don't really have any other leads as to what you can even do here, do you? None of your own skills are likely to be the least bit valuable. Your skills are ''weird''.<ref>Including, but not limited to, getting useful feedback out of online users; designing dresses that stand up to 50 mph wind; making perfumes with the delightful scents of ''Putrescence of Orchid'' and ''These Mushrooms Are Secretly Onions''; opsec; grantmaking; and carpentry in which your wood stock is entirely comprised of old doors.</ref>

Or you could just go to the temple and see what happens. You turn in the direction you feel like it should be in, to the north; there was always a sense of going in this way, though you never wrote it down. The whole city is north-south, built into the mountainside, jungle all around. It's big, noisy, full of people, with streets winding around under towering buttresses and suspended tarps casting welcome shade from the tropical sun. You never really grasped how big it really was, or how dense, or warm.

You don't know where you're going. The Temple is probably not even on this level.

You stop at the side of the road, trying to get your bearings. None of this makes sense. How is it even possible? How are you here? Your world has no magic, no gods, nothing but the harsh, cold reality of being alone in a vast and uncaring universe. Or so you believed. If this is real, if you're actually here now - and it sure feels real; the humidity alone makes it feel like you're swimming in the air, and the smells are a wonderful combination of leaves and humanity and garbage quite unlike anything you've experienced before - then you were wrong. About everything. Magic was real there, too.

Either you've finally gone totally barking mad and fallen into your own story, or everything you understood about the nature of your own world was wrong... and you've fallen into your own story.

"Excuse me," you say to a passerby, except it doesn't come out right, and you realise you're trying to speak a language you only half know. But half is... something, at least. You'd forgotten the language barriers, and yet somehow you do seem to know at least a little bit of Daesh. A quirk in the magic, teach you the languages Vardaman would have known?

The woman pauses and looks at you curiously.

"Directions?" you ask.

After a bit of finaggling, you manage to communicate what you're after, and she points you in a direction, and up a level. You try to thank her, and go on to get a little lost, and a little confused at the teleporters, before someone else just activates it for you.

And then you see it. The Great Temple of Kyrule - it turns out to be a partially walled-off complex of similar, but not quite congruous, architecture to the rest of Abearanoth. A grand archway frames the road as it continues into the complex itself. Embedded into either side, in some grey metal, is the insignia of Kyrule: the mask and skull that you had managed, once, to put onto a disappointingly low-resolution raster image of a coin. Writing in a script you don't recognise at all is engraved down the stone. A couple of guards, wearing the same insignia, are loitering beneath it. They regard you, and a few others also headed in, disinterestedly as you approach.

You stop beneath the arch, looking up, and then around. One of your other characters had been unable to pass this after being turned into a vampire, and now you're curious - where would that point have been? How did that work, exactly? You poke at the ground with your foot. One of the guards asks what you're doing, and you almost freeze up trying to come up with the words before managing to just force yourself to try, and ask him where the edge of all this is. He comes over and shows you, indicating the outward side of the walls and archway. You step out and nudge at the space in the air with your hand.

"Interesting," you say.

"What is?" he asks, almost laughing.

You shake your head, and resist the urge to squee. "Really big story," you say. This is real. You're here. So many of your stories converged at this temple. Began here, ended, waypointed. You could take a lifetime exploring it, retracing all your characters' steps, and for the first time, you think you understand how the pilgrims in Jerusalem felt, remembering as you'd walked among them in the shadowed temples, the open sun. Touching the wall, the rock, the altar. This is it. This whole world is your Jerusalem....

But you can't afford to just go pure fangirl here. You have a role to fulfil, a part to play. You're Vardman. You're... a kid in a strange and unfamiliar place, with nothing, having left home for the first time in your life in order to begin anew. This is all new to you. You're not at home at all, and you've certainly never seen anything like it.

...you're a bloody writer who's travelled the world over. You've spent your whole life exploring new places and cultures, first in books and film, and later on, even in person, with friends from even stranger places along as your companions. And now you're in an ancient elven city on the mountainous coast of the equivalent of the godsdamn Amazon. You're at a temple to a god you made up. It has featured in your dreams, in your stories, showing up time and again in all the different fragments, becoming a fixture in your imagination. And it's right here.

You squee, just a little, and run off, grinning, almost giggling, into the courtyard beyond.

You force yourself to slow to a walk, to pretend you're normal, calm, just like all the other people here. Most of them seem to be headed for the main temple building just ahead, so you go that way too, passing other courtyards mostly walled off, and myriad buildings of sundry function. You find yourself wanting to comment, wishing you had people with you to talk to, a group of friends, with all the in-jokes. The ones who would understand the comparison you really want to make about all this being like walking into a big damn furry convention. When you're the biggest furry of them all.

The threshold is a wall of coolness, the thick stone blocking out the tropical heat, and inside, in the entryway, is a statue of a shrouded, kneeling figure, holding before it a tattered cloth. Some of the folks ahead of you touch the cloth, a couple whispering prayers, and you brush your fingers across it as you pass as well. Your fingertips tingle with a strange warmth as they come away, but you hardly notice. You've stopped. You're staring at the mural on the far wall, a vast painted relief depicting what looks like the entire abbreviated history of Kyrule - including quite a few things that definitely haven't happened yet.

At least... not if the year is what you think it is.

You go over, getting close enough that there's no one in the way, and read it like a story, piecing together the ideas and events - the old gods, the ascension, the fall, the slaying of Eapherod, the breaking of magic, the Exodus. You're guessing, but it's a fun game. Winged cats following a masked figure - Kyrule when he tried to shoo them out of Eapherod's garden, most likely. The Guardians kneeling around one, who's sacrificed - you're not sure who it is, but you have a worrying feeling it might be you, or perhaps the other character, Coraline. A dragon, spreading its shadow across the world. A Dead soul in chains held up as judgement is passed - definitely Coraline. The return of Eapherod. The Keepers, speaking, telling the stories. Something you are absolutely convinced is a hovercraft full of eels and badgers, though it looks more like a sailboat and the figures aboard appear more elven than badger. Worlds breaking. Tendrils seeping. The final battle where all the gods gather and face the dragon with their armies before them, and above it, almost hidden in the clouds, two robed figures before an enormous throne, guiding them. At the end of the battle, and the mural, more winged cats are practically falling off the edge.

You realise you're gaping at it and quickly shut your mouth. How did this thing go from 'dragon!' to 'entire damn story written in stone from the start'?! The only way it could be more accurate is if the sphinxes - the cats - at the ending had formed a giant ball.

It was just supposed to be a mural. Ambience. Plot contrivance.

You sidle off into the main chamber, now almost afraid to see what you'll notice there. The excitement is gone, now, replaced with worry, and doubt. You set it aside.

It's a vast hall, with more reliefs on the walls, and elaborate decor on the pillars. At the far end is an immense shrine with statues and altars and candles and all the things, with much smaller shrines around the hall as well. The place is packed, in particular around the main shrine, and people pushing toward it even as others squeeze their way out, but you stop closer to the middle of the room, looking up. The ceiling is oddly plain, but with shapes of circles forming an unusual architecture of their own. It almost matches the rest of the hall. Almost, but not quite. The real ceiling is higher up.

In your mind, you picture it - a couple of the circles just crashing down out of the ceiling in a shower of masonry, two elves falling down with it and scrambling away. Neither of them are terribly concerned about the damage. Both are total nerds. All the other non-nerds they crash down into the midst of, however, are understandably far more concerned, because they don't know what's going on or why the ceiling would even have been breakable...

"This isn't the usual attraction," someone comments. You glance over and find a priest standing next to you, and he gives you a curious look. "Whatcha looking at?" he asks.

"The..." you say, pointing up. You motion circles with your finger. "The thing." On the plus side, you probably don't need to worry about blurting out spoilers when you can't even explain a circle.

"What... thing?" he asks, peering up at the ceiling.

"Is a piece of history," you reply. "I... think."

He gives you a somewhat more confused look, and you just shrug. Your stomach growls, and you drop a hand to your purse - it's a small one, just an extra pocket on your belt, really, but you find half a protein bar amidst some random tools and a thing of glue.

You take a bite and immediately recall why you didn't just eat it all in the first place.<ref>Great Value Chewy Protein BARS! The entire wrapper is a hodge-podge of mismatched fonts and jarring colours, except the fact that it's a Wal-Mart store brand protein bar ''isn't'' the problem. The fact that it's a ''protein bar'' isn't even the problem. The fact that it's a half-eaten, half-melted, well-beyond half past-expiration protein bar, however, is.</ref>

"So, er," you say to the priest, "If I want to join me with the temple, how I do?"

"Oh, is that why you're here?" he asks.

"Yes." You try to look convincing, but you're dressed like a weirdo and trying to eat a protein bar.

He seems to buy it anyway. "Follow me," he says.

He takes you to a room with a mish-mash of other random folk in it. A woman is in front giving some sort of speech, prattling along about the temple and great things and purpose or whatever, with some other priests also around. "Just pretend you were here all along,"  he tells you quietly, winks, and slips back out.

You nod, and turn to the front, vaguely listening as you unhappily finish the protein bar, trying not to crinkle the wrapper too much, though you can only really understand some of it.<ref>It reminds you of your university orientation, and probably is the general equivalent. And probably about as useful.</ref> So you look to the people, instead - there's 20-some of you here, mostly random younger folk, kids, really, mostly peasant-looking, with a couple who might have been tradesfolk, or failed tradesfolk, and in the back, next to you, three much better-dressed guys of rather varying heights who look more like nobles of some kind, and have swords. Nearly everyone has bags of some sort. Some of the folk seem enthusiastic, others fearful, though it's hard to tell exactly from behind. There's a bit of shuffling about. The sword guys seem downright disinterested, and talk quietly amongst each other in covered whispers.

The woman finishes and one of the other priests starts talking instead, saying something about spools and service and something about a tree, but his thick accent makes him almost impossible for you to follow. The sword guys, however, actually start listening to this. One of them notices you looking at them and gives you a slight salute. You return the gesture with a somewhat unintentional flourish.

Later, when the priests are done orientating, or whatever it was they were even doing, they ask if anyone has any questions. You have many, of course, not the least of which is if anyone here speaks a language you actually know. But asking that doesn't strike you as likely to be particularly useful in practice. The sword guys, meanwhile, start nudging each other, telling each other, 'you ask', 'no, you', 'go on, ask', even as most of the room turns to eye them.

"We can hear you, you know," one of the priests says. "If you have something to ask, ask it."

They stop. They exchange glances. "When can we pledge our swords to Kyrule?" the tallest one asks.

The priest sighs. "In time. Does anyone have any more... immediate questions?" he asks.

"Is there food?" you ask. A sword guy sniggers.

The priest turns away, throwing his hands in the air, but the woman who had been speaking earlier puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and steps forward. "All who serve Kyrule will be fed and clothed. We look after our own."

Some other folks have more normal questions, and these are quickly addressed as well. Then you're all escorted to a dormitory of sorts, given bundles of clothes and such, and told to report to the initiation chambers in half an hour.

The others start divvying up beds and arguing about who gets what. A few stand around timidly, unsure what to do. You ignore them for the moment, and instead eyeball the folded grey bundle in your hands uncertainly. You shake it out and a pair of trousers and some other random things flop out onto the ground. You scoop them up, realising maybe randomly in the middle of the room wasn't the best place for that.

"You. You're with us." One of the sword guys, who is very short,<ref>Though really you consider anyone shorter than you 'very short'. You're not even short. You're just used to everyone normally being taller than you for some reason.</ref> is looking up at you expectantly.

"What?" you say.

"We've got the corner," he says. "We saved a bed for you."

"Why?" you say.

"Because you're cool," he says.

You glance down at your linux shirt and only barely manage to avoid giving him a very dubious look. ''Linux,'' it says. ''Under-priced and overqualified (as am I)''. Not exactly the shirt you would have chosen to wear to another planet, and in light of your current predicament, you're sort of glad nobody is likely to be able to read it, let alone understand it.

"Oh," you say. "How many years are you?"

"Sixteen," he says proudly.

You try to remember when you were sixteen. First you draw a blank, but then a bit of math tells you that would have been mid-high-school, and you vaguely recall being a total nerd, sleeping through calculus, wearing a cloak, and painting in every class but art, at which point you put away the entire set of paints you'd been hauling around... and pulled out a history book. You weren't exactly a rebel, but you certainly didn't do what anyone said, or what made sense, or that fit in, in any way whatsoever, with what everyone else was doing, either.

"Oh," you say. The sad thing is, you haven't really come that far since, either. Also you're almost twice that age now.

"What?" he asks.

"What year it is?" you ask.

"Screaming leopard, wasn't it?"

You stare at him blankly, not even recognising the words as words, before you remember that all the years had weird animal names for some reason. "Ah, the count?" you ask.

"Count?" he asks. "Oh, you mean the number? 1864," he replies. "And that I am actually certain of."

You have him repeat it just to be sure you're understanding the number correctly, and try to remember. The story began around the year 2000-ish, after the Exodus. And Vardaman was pretty old, which means... this could actually be around when Vardaman's journey would have begun. Maybe? You're not sure.

"I know, I know, the names are so weird," the guy is saying. "And random. And they give no context at all! How is anyone supposed to work with a dilapidated badger or seventeen muskoxen or the grey blight? It's nonsense."

You nod blankly. "They are... really not good when you do not know the language," you point out.

"Ah! Yes, I can see why that might be a problem, too," he says. "So... will you join us? We'll teach you the language."

You shrug and follow him over.

The other two sword guys are getting into their robes, but they nod at you as come over.

"You're not much like these other folks, either, are you?" the tall one says, putting his sword back on over the whole ensemble. "I'm Juane of Atkis, that's Kerka, and he's Leifos da Nereimen." He indicates the small 16-year-old who had been sent to fetch you last.

"Leifos," you say to him.

"Yeah," Leifos says, and then starts stripping off his town clothes right there. He's the shortest of the lot, and very lanky. You look to the other two and note them as the tall one, who is actually rather well-built in general, and the wide one, about the same height as you. Their brown hair and similar features, however, suggest they might all be related.

"Vardaman," you say, though you've frankly already pretty much forgotten all their names. You dump the bundle onto a bed, shaking it out for real this time, and find a tunic and an outer robe among a bunch of other various sundries. You put them on over the clothes you're already wearing.

"You know, aside from the colours, that almost works," the tall one says.

You switch which skirt is on top, tucking the bright green-blue-purple one into the black one underneath, and then put your belt on again over the tunic. It's a wide circle chain belt, and it stands out, terribly bright and shiny, against the very plain robes, but the belt that came with the bundle is too simple to clip anything to. You give it an annoyed look.

The tall one gives it an amused look. "That does work," he says.

You really want to loudly exclaim 'Fashion!' in response, but have no idea how to actually say it. The guys, meanwhile, move to regard the rest of the room. Everyone else is also changing, and even the more timid stragglers seem to have found spaces to call their own at this point.

"So what do you make of them?" the wide one asks.

"They lack purpose," the tall one replies.

"They'll get it," the small one says, trying to get his tunic to stop bunching up. You give him a hand, straightening it out so it at least hangs better, but it's at least three sizes too big for him.

"You are really small," you tell him.

He bats you away and pulls on his robe. "Well, we're doing this," he says.

"Yes," the tall one says.

"They are also," you say.

"As well," the small one corrects.

"Right."

=== 1 ===

Initiation happens. Half the initiates are late, apparently because they couldn't find the room, and arrive in a big gaggle while the rest of you stand around waiting,<ref>Aside from your group. You and the sword guys are sitting down on the floor.</ref> with the head priestess woman standing by an altar of sorts, looking very disappointed.

Then the rest show up. Things get on with. She makes another speech. Everyone sort of queues up in front of the altar, and somehow your group winds up in front, possibly because all of the others shrank away, and you lot didn't.

You glance at the sword guys enquiringly, and the tall one gestures for you to go first with an elaborate flourish. You give him a dubious look, but step up to the altar.

"Name?" the priestess asks.

"Vardaman," you reply.

"Place your hands on the altar," she says. When you do, she continues, "Do you now leave behind all you possessed, to begin anew in the Light of the God Kyrule, taking him as your only patron?"

"Er... what?" you say uncertainly, trying to buy time to parse her words.

"Is there a problem?" she asks.

"Not my shoes. These are good shoes," you say, and then immediately regret not just admitting what the real problem is.

She gives you a quick look, and says, "You're not wearing any shoes."

"Yes."

"Why are you here?" she asks flatly.

For a moment, you panic, trying to come up with the right words, and then even doubting the ones you think should be right. The priestess frowns. So you just start talking anyway, hoping it's right, hoping it even makes sense. "I will to give my life and soul at the Kyrule," you reply.

"And should Kyrule not want it?" she asks.

"I will serve him no... so much as I can," you say, surprised. You think you got that right, at least, but that feeling. That strange flutter in your heart, that feeling is Vardaman, to you. But why? What is it? You don't even know. It feels a bit like dying.

There's a long pause. The priestess eyes you consideringly, before finally giving a slight nod. "You are witnessed, Vardaman," she says, and places a small wooden disc with a cord on the altar in front of you. "Welcome."

You pick it up and back away. It seems to be some sort of necklace, and you realise she's wearing similar, though with several more discs under the top one, each one a different colour and larger than the previous. The other priests also have them, but where they all have two or three, she has five.

The tall sword guy claps you reassuringly on the shoulder as he goes up.

"Name?" the priestess says.

"Juane of Atkis," he replies, and places his hands on the altar.

"Do you now leave behind all that you possessed, to begin anew in the Light of the God Kyrule, taking him as your only  patron?"

"Yes," he says.

"You are witnessed, Juane of Atkis," she says, and passes him his disc. "Welcome."

"Easy," he tells you, and puts on his disc, as the wide one goes up.

You just shake your head, and tie the cord of your own around your neck, putting it on over the ankh you're already wearing under your tunic.

Once the small one is also done (his name is apparently Leifos?), the four of you squeeze your way back and spill out into the corridor. As soon as the door shuts behind you, Leifos turns on you with his face shaped half in incredulity and half wonder<ref>Bottom left and top right, respectively.</ref>. "What was that?!" he asks.

"Grammar," the tall one says, snickering.

"I..." You try to find the words to even express your exasperation. "I wish they do not talk so... proper!" you say. "It's difficult to understand. You are... easier."

"Ah!" Leifos says. "Right, maaaaybe you shouldn't have gone first."

"Well, not everyone here is from Daeshland," the wide one says. "Just... mostly, from the look of it."

"Right," you say.

"You'll get there," Leifos says. "And she seemed happy once you explained yourself."

You look away, embarrassed.

"So apparently our indoctrination starts tomorrow," the tall one says. "We've got all evening to... I dunno, eat food? Explore? Get hopelessly lost and have to be inevitably rescued by the local constabulary?"

"Except for that last bit," the wide one says, "sounds like a fine night out."

You can't argue, mostly because you have absolutely no idea what he was saying with most of that, but nobody else disagrees, either. You all head off in a direction. The light coming in the various windows is rosy and angled, and supplemented now by soft blue magelights glowing slightly out from the wall. You wave a hand through one as you pass, and your fingers go right through it.

"And you, Vardaman," the tall one says, "where are you from, anyway?"

"Iliesk," you reply. That's where Vardaman was from, at least, but it's an easier sell than central Wyoming.

"That's a long way to come," he says, "but you're doing well enough. You just need to talk more. And hear more. So we'll talk. And hear things. Go on, say something."

"Something," you say.

the small one sniggers.

"I walked right into that one," the tall one says.

"Yes, you did," the wide one says.

You amble along, talking, clarifying phrases, peering into random rooms. They explain their situation a bit, saying they're nobles from up north, a region of Daeshland called Seldarch. They're all cousins, part of the same noble group, which had a bit of a complication in which the group was ousted in some manner that doesn't really make sense to you, and they were supposed to be exiled and leave Daeshland outright, but they decided, naw, let's make trouble with the temples instead. And they like Kyrule well enough, so here they are.

You rather approve: religion out of spite, a good cause if you ever heard one.

Eventually you find food. It is, in fact, a disturbingly ordinary-looking cafeteria. There's tables and chairs and people eating, and even a great big window in the wall with a counter with trays of food laid out, complete with a very irate-looking fat woman on the other side now glaring very pointedly at your group.

You all go over to her.

"Hello!" the wide sword guy says brightly.

The woman makes a disgusted noise and withdraws back into the room on the other side of the counter.

He give her backside a wounded look, and you all grab some trays and sit down. The others proceed to dig in, but after struggling a bit with your fork, which seems to be solely useful for poking things, you suddenly remember you actually do have a pair of chopsticks and pull them out of your hair. It falls down in a total mess.

You shake your hair out a bit and then start properly shovelling food into your mouth.

The wide one is watching you dubiously.

"Is that proper?" the small one asks.

You pause, holding up a giant wad of meat and tubers. "Yes," you say, and shove it into your face. After a bit, you manage to swallow it all, and add, "It's fast. Can... eat without see."

"But you're... picking your food up like with tweezers," the small one says.

"That's fairly typical in some areas," the tall leader guy says. "They're chopsticks. Even some groups around here use them."

"Yes, chopsticks," you say. "Good."

The wide one bursts out laughing.

You finish eating far more quickly than any of the others as the conversation shifts to swords. You follow along as much as you can, noting the different words. Many are totally new, but you piece quite a few of them together from context. Deathdealers come up, and you particularly follow this discussion, but it turns out to be mostly just speculation on how they're actually formed. You tell them it's water. They make Deathdealers with water.

"Vardaman?" a woman says next to you. You look up - it's the priestess from before, looking down at you with piercing blue eyes, her discs dangling over what, from this angle, you realise is a very large bosom. You don't even know what to call that cup-size. Videogame? Fanart? Anime?

You realise you're staring and attempt to stop. It only sort of works. "Er... yes?" you reply.

"I feel we should speak about your initiation," she says. "Your response was... unusual."

"Sorry," you reply. She's still standing over you. You wonder if you should maybe get up, or she should sit down, or something should actually happen, but she's given no indication one way or the other what she seems to expect of the situation either, at least as far as you can tell.

"Why didn't you simply answer directly?" she asks.

"I... I don't understand," you begin, but then the tall leader guy answers for you.

"She's not from Daeshland," he says. "She's still a bit new to our language, and had a hard time figuring it out right away."

"Yes," you say, "that."

"And where do you come from?" she asks, staring at you, piercingly.

"Iliesk," you reply. "I arrived to today."

"Then perhaps this will be easier?" she says, except now she's speaking a language you understand perfectly. Lesk, all neatly tucked into your brain like you've known it your whole life.

"Aye," you say, surprised, slipping into the same. "Much, thank you."

She nods. "Why come here?" she asks. "All this way, when there are temples closer to home, surely."

...and that's the problem. You don't actually know. You're here because of a magic book you found in a thrift shop.<ref>At least, you hope so. You still haven't ruled out the possibility that you've just gone insane.</ref> But Vardaman? Why would he be here? He would have needed to be here at some point because this was where they trained the Deathdealers, but why did he actually come here in the first place? Because his mother told him to? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time? Because talking pigeons tricked him into it?

On the other hand, you're a writer. And you don't just write fiction - you also write ''grants'', which are a whole other level of combined bullshit promises and qualified prognostication.<ref>In which the qualifications typically consist of little lists of potential reasons why it may be totally wrong in order to show that you'll be able to mitigate them when it inevitably turns out to be totally wrong, and thus also mitigating the associated liability. Or... something.</ref> You always had this saying about writers, that they didn't need to be the smartest one in the room, just the biggest bullshitter, and you are very good at bullshit.

You open your mouth, and lies come out.

"I came via Ord," you tell her. "I was lost, and some folks helped me, but I... I didn't really fit in there. Everything was so big and... I don't know." You stumble a bit, putting on a sort of confused face for emphasis, but in this language you have no worry at all that the words, at least, are exactly what you mean them to be. "Anyway, they got me to a Gateway and I... came here."

"Why not go home?" she asks.

"I... don't really have a home to go back to," you reply, looking a bit embarrassed. "Not anymore. But here, maybe I can be of use. Do something good. For once."

She gives you an appraising look. The sword guys are watching intently, leaning over, waiting to see what she'll do as well. You eye her uncertainly.

"You meant what you said," she says. It's almost a question, but not quite.

"Aye?"

She stares down at you for a long moment, and you stare up at her and her enormous bosom. Then she simply turns away without another word and leaves.

You give the sword guys a confused look.

"Well?" the small one asks. "What'd she say? What'd ''you'' say? That sounded really interesting."

You tell them, only leaving out the bit where you made it all up. You make up a couple of other bits - Vardaman's mother might have been a hag of some sort, so you just go with that as your general background - but it's all a bit mangled because you don't really know the words. You figure that's how you'll get away with this, however: if you contradict yourself later, you can just blame a miscommunication.

All in all, they're not really sure what to make of her response either, but they think it's really cool that you've been to Ord. You haven't really, of course; Ord is a part of this universe that just happens to be more science fiction, but this makes it a good excuse to explain your clothes and whatnot, as Abearanoth is on the fantasy planet.

Later, when you all get back to the dormitory, a tired-looking old man is arguing with one of the other initiates. He turns to you as you approach.

"You four," he says, "you missed the chores assignment, so you get what's left after everyone else picked. You're on roof duty." He almost sounds gleeful as he says it, like some secret victory has taken place here.

"Interesting," the tall leader guy says.

"Roof duty?" you ask.

"Yup," the man says.

You turn to the others. "What?" you say.

They briefly explain the words, in particular 'roof' and what 'duty' actually probably means in this context, with the old man confirming/clarifying. Apparently you need to report to some guy tomorrow afternoon and... repair the roof. Or something. Even the clarification doesn't seem particularly clear.

"Oh," you say. You're still a bit confused, frankly. "Should... not somebody with experience do this?" you ask.

"Of course you've got experience," the old man says. "Only a team with experience would choose this task."

"But..." the small one starts, but the old man just ambles off, humming to himself.

"Yup," the wide guy says. "We've pissed them off already and now they're trying to kill us."

"I'm sure we'll manage," the leader guy says.

"Maybe," you say. "Roofing is... simple, mostly. Need to... not fall?"

"Yeah, see?" the leader guy says, clapping you on the back. "We'll be fine."

Only as you're getting to sleep, using your blankets as extra pillows, do you finally stop to really think. Even if all of this works - and that is a mighty big if - what then? How far do you really intend to play this out? How can you really play it out, when you're... you, and not Vardaman? And what about Vardaman, for that matter? What if he's still here? What if nothing happened at all? What if he's lost somewhere, and needs help? What if he never existed in the first place and this isn't even the same story?

You make yourself stop thinking about that. It really isn't helping. Things are happening, and so far, nothing has gone totally wrong. You can handle it. Probably.

You finger your disc. It's an emblem, very simple, a single large symbol pressed into it, and beneath it, a single word in a script you don't know. The symbol, though, you know. A circle with a line through it, like a ϕ. A symbol for ''Kyrule''.

=== 2 ===

The next day starts fiendishly early. You get out of bed, comb your hair at some point, put on the rest of your clothes, and refuse to really wake up until you walk into a bed, two tables, a wall, five random other people, and the same door twice in a row.

Somehow you got all the way to a cafeteria and are in fact holding a bowl of some kind of porridge in the middle of eating it. The door isn't even closed, but instead propped open sticking out from the wall and doorway, such that you apparently got stuck behind it somehow.

The wide one is watching you, head cocked.

"Oi. Are you okay?" he asks, looking rather amused.

"Yes," you reply. "I... need sleep. More?"

"Uhuh," he says, taking your arm and steering you out. "Sure. We're sitting over there."

You sit down with the leader and the small one, also eating their porridge, and glare at them, daring them to comment.

"No comment," the leader guy says.

"So what were you saying when we were doing those rituals earlier?" the small one asks you.

You give him a blank look and then add, for emphasis, "Huh?" You don't even understand half the words he just said.

"After we got up, we washed, we went to one of the shrines and they had us go through the tenants and we started to learn the rituals?" he says.

"I... what?" you say. You don't remember any of that. You don't remember what any of that might have even been.

"You don't remember any of that?" he asks.

You shake your head.

"Wow," the wide one says.

"Well, you were mumbling something along with the rest of us," the small one says. "Sounded pretty strange, too. Very... I don't know."

"I don't as well," you say.

"Either," the leader guy corrects. "You don't ''either''."

"I don't either," you say after him. You're starting to think you don't much care for this language, nor having to learn it on the fly like this. And this is ''with'' an apparent friend group willing to help you through all of it. Did Vardaman have this? What was he thinking, coming here? Why did he do this? Why couldn't he have been lazy like you and just seek out the path of least resistance?

The day is taken up by lectures. You, and quite a few other initiates besides the group you joined up with, pile up into a room, and various priests and the like go on at length about things you can't quite make out. The large space and diverse accents make them even harder to follow than the previous.

Then you pile into another room.

You're toward the back, at the tables. Further down, in front, it's all chairs, but quite a few others are also back here with paper and pens. The wide one is apparently the scholar of the group, taking notes. The leader guy peers over his shoulder with a sort of disapproving curiosity painted across his face, and you've borrowed some paper as well, though you aren't really sure what to put on it. A doodle of Coraline. Some notes of things you need to find out. A rare item you actually understood from the speakers, all written down in your tiny, scrawling English, all over the page.

The small one gets up from the other side of the other two and scoots in next to you. "Are you getting any of this?" he asks.

You shrug. "Some," you tell him. "A little." The problem is, you're not even that good at understanding people in English a lot of the time. You were always better at following words on a page, or screen, than a verbal conversation or presentation, and you'd always look for that first. Skip past the videos, find the write-up, and scan it with uncanny speed... you peer over at the wide scholar's notes, but the written language here is totally foreign to you, all squiggles and angles. It looks like Nuskhuri, or a bit like Hebrew,<ref>Not the handwritten form. The handwritten form of Hebrew tends to look like a bunch of lines, only surpassed in 'how can anyone read that?!' response from the non-literate by handwritten Cyrillic, which tends to look like a bunch of ''parallel'' lines.</ref> if Hebrew had more squiggles and some random serifs attached.

"What?" the small one asks when you give him a somewhat desperate look.

You try to figure out how to explain it. You want the alphabet. You want to know how the written form of the language works. Finally you wind up just borrowing a sheet of the scholar's notes and pointing to what look like the individual characters and asking about the sounds, hoping it even is a phonetic language at all.

The small one writes down the alphabet and runs you through each character as you both cease to pay any attention whatsoever to the lecture, and you write down the equivalent letters and sounds in English. He explains that words are usually divided up by spaces (showing you some examples when you don't initially follow) in common contexts, but in more official documents, not so much. They just jam all the words together, apparently. He tells you some of the weird letter combinations, and you write those down as well.

The two of you spend most of the subsequent lectures going through a couple of pages of the scholar's notes, you sounding out words, the small one explaining their meaning. You write them down, starting to build a dictionary, familiarising yourself with writing the characters as well as reading.

The notes, it turns out, are a rather terse combination of summaries of the lectures, and various totally arbitrary comments and criticisms about the speakers and anything else their writer happened to notice in the room. You painstakingly translate several lines of strangely-directed complaining before you realise it's probably intended for the leader guy, who's still not really doing much besides pestering him, and continuing to read over his shoulder.

You glance over at them, and the tall leader sword guy gives you a very innocent look. Like a young bunny caught in a garden, with no way out.

The wide scholar is still taking notes. A lot of notes.

"Why," you ask at one point, "is he write this much?"

"So much?" the small one says. "That's just Kerka."

In the afternoon, after a couple more lectures, you report for roof duty. You finally sort of know Kerka's name. Maybe.

A cranky-looking muscular middle-aged guy in worker's clothes<ref>Grey ones.</ref> eyes the four of you as you enter the indicated room. "So," he says. "I'm told you lot might actually know what you're doing."

Kerka gives him a dubious look.

"Certainly," the sword guys leader guy says, "If it's something we know how to do."

"And do you?" the worker guy asks.

"Maybe?"

The guy gives your leader guy a flat, unamused look, and then sighs. "Okay, what did you do?" he asks tiredly.

"What?" your small one says.

"Harrik keeps sending me incompetent people who pissed him off," the guy says. "Because he's still bitter about that... well. What did ''you'' do?"

The sword guys exchange uncertain glances. You, meanwhile, are totally lost at this point.

"We were late to the assigning," Kerka says.

"Missed it entirely, I think," your small one adds.

"No, no. Late," Kerka insists.

"I... see," the guy says. "Have any of you been on a roof before?"

You all affirm and nod. This question you understood, too.

"That... wasn't two feet up and thatch?" he amends.

"Certainly," your leader guy says. "The castle's roofs were much higher. And tile."

"Thatch?" you ask your nearest sword guy, who turns out to be the small one.

"Grass," he says. "Hay. Filler. Shrub plant peasant roofs." You give him a blank look, and he gives up. "Nevermind. I'll tell you later."

"Okay, fine, whatever," the guy says. "We'll work with it. I'm Jim. Grab some tiles. Don't die."

=== 3 ===

"I have never seen a man so happy," the small sword guy is saying, "to see people put tiles down in the correct direction. Which makes me wonder... what sort of total ''morons'' was this guy getting?"

It's later, evening. You're all at dinner, now, in another cafeteria, eating your plates of food, somewhat exhausted after the long afternoon. It had been a very simple task, it turned out, just going up on some of the lower buildings and replacing all the broken tiles. The hardest part had been getting the boxes up the ladder in the first place, and once up there, not breaking any more tiles, but you'd all gotten the hang of it pretty quickly, with the older overseer guy trodding around below directing where to go next. And, as the afternoon wore on, looking more and more absolutely overjoyed.

"Total morons, apparently," Kerka says. "The kind who don't know how to put tiles down in the correct direction."

"I must say," the leader guy begins, "had someone told me, two weeks ago, that Seldarch would be lost and we would be exiled and wind up here and take up roofing as a hobby for fun and profit... I would have thought it pretty damn hilarious. And likely challenged their honour."

"It is," Kerka says.

"Well, true," the leader guy agrees. "He was really happy."

The small one shakes his head, sniggering. "Seriously, what kind of morons...?"

"Tomorrow we'll have to ask," the leader guy says, stacking up everyone's used dishes. He's doing a terrible job of it, just building a heap, so you confiscate the entire pile and sort it so it fits together.

"Well, fine," he says, confiscating the now better stacked pile back.

As you head out, he dumps it all in the bin and it slides back into an unordered heap.

You go exploring again. None of you really agree on what you're looking for - Kerka seems to be after books, the leader guy combat or some such, and you and the small one keep getting distracted by any odd thing<ref>And distracting each other with any odd thing.</ref> - but you wander about, finding out what there even is to find, passing the odd passerby, or groups of passersby. Most of them are dressed much as you are, but a few are wearing somewhat different attire - darker robes with shrouded cowls, armour, activewear. One group you pass is dressed all in white, their heads shaved.

The main temple building is immense, built up of many different colours of stones, cool and echoey, the ventilation always well above. Even some of the closer buildings are attached by covered walkways, which you discover by winding up in one, finding it to be a bit of a dead end, going outside, going back inside, and resuming the exploration of the main building.

You find a library, separate from the main libraries.

You find bathhouses, far better than the one you'd all been ushered to in the morning.

You find a room, twenty meters across, containing only a single, large crystal on a pedestal at one end.

The leader guy dares Leifos, the small one, to touch it. Leifos dares Kerka to touch it. Kerka tells you you probably shouldn't touch it. You give him an entirely unamused look, and then turn to the leader guy and suggest he touch it, instead.

He gives you a look, shrugs, and goes over and pokes it. He immediately tenses up, yelping, and then tries to withdraw his finger, but it's stuck. He yells, and the rest of you hurry over.

"Hey, what happened, man?" Kerka asks, grabbing his arm.

"Help!" the leader guy yells. "It's trying, it's..."

You and Kerka pull him away, and for a moment, the leader guy just looks utterly stricken.

"Juane?" the small one asks.

Kerka flicks Juane in the ear.

"Agh!" Juane yelps, recoiling a bit, except now he's laughing, too. "Oh, I can't believe you fell for that!"

"What?" Kerka asks, irate. "You were faking that?"

"Yeah, man," Juane says. "It's just a crystal! Even if it did do something, it's not doing it now."

Kerka smacks him.

"Oh, that's just..." the small one says, but then he's laughing, too.

You go to the crystal. It's a soft translucent purple, about half a meter tall, the pedestal placing it at an easy height, almost as if it's ''meant'' to be touched. You place your hand on it, feeling its sharp, smooth edges, and it feels to you as if it has a slight charge moving through it, a faint fuzz, an almost intangible vibration just beneath the surface, moving up your arm. You follow the feeling, focusing on it, letting your thoughts slide into the crystal's amethystine depths.

There is a question on your mind, beneath everything else, all the distractions presented in the immediate problems of the day-to-day in a new world, a new cult. A bigger question, behind it all, tinged with doubt: ''Is this real?''

The room around you falls away, fading, leaving only you and the question. There's no answer, only the darkness around, the vague concept of space. Only you and the question, and something else. It approaches, slowly, out of nothing, long and distant, and then there: a deeper darkness pouring in, as if into a room, around the shapes of walls, through cracks and crannies. It is enormous, formless, shapeless. It has no substance, no mass, and yet here it is, filling in like goop, gleaming black as it stretches out, nigh infinite, before you. It reaches out in tendrils. It fills corners. It grows.

You know this darkness. You gave it a name, once. ''SteveGeorge''.

Another name niggles in the corners of your mind. ''Vardaman. Where is Vardaman?''

There is no light, here, only black and more black. It rises up before you in a creeping flow and makes, almost, the shape of a person. You turn away as it starts to speak, but it is not speech so much as the barest concept of speech, and immediately your mind recoils, shutting down amidst the sheer horror of it all, as it starts to fill ''you''.

Before you lose coherence entirely, you think you see someone else behind you, hip-deep in the eddying black. Someone normal, really. A boy.

You're screaming. You're not even sure where you are, or what, or who. You're screaming and your mind is a cacophony of confusion and pain, unrelenting, but the screaming. The screaming helps. It's real. It's you. Isn't it?

The tall leader guy is yelling at you. Mostly your name. Well, Vardaman's name. But you're Vardaman, aren't you? As much as you're anyone. They've pulled you away from the crystal. You're on the ground now. It's sort of coming back. You stop screaming.

From down here, the tall and short ones are both towering as they looming over you. They stop yelling. The silence is deafening. The wide also looms.

Finally, the tall one asks, "Vardaman?"

"Juane," you reply. That's his name, right?

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Just a crystal?" The wide one says accusingly.

"Unless she was faking that too..." the small one says.

"No," you whisper. "No faking." Your throat hurts. Your mind just feels... wrong. But the boy. Wasn't there a boy there too?

"What was that?" The wide one asks. "What happened?"

You touch your head. It's just a head. You shake it about, but everything seems to be working, at least as much as usual.

"I... begin thinking," you tell them. "I don't know. Was a feeling. I'm there. I'm not there."

"Where?" the wide one asks.

You tap your head, and point uncertainly toward the crystal. "Shadows," you whisper.

"Hey, is everything all right in here?" a guy asks from the doorway.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the wide one tells him, getting up quickly, putting on an incredibly innocent face. "Just had bit of an accident, but it's all fine now, everything's fine."

The other two help you up as well, while the guy in the doorway asks, somewhat dubiously, "Is it?"

You nearly fall over. The wide one helpfully pokes you, and then you do start to fall over before the tall one grabs your arm.

"Totally," the tall one says, looking utterly unconvincing.

"Yeah, fine," you say, batting them off. You're stable. This is... you don't know.

The small one backs way, holding up his hands disarmingly, but the tall one just gives you a concerned look.

"Really?" the guy asks.

"Yes," you say.

The small one goes over to the crystal. "You know what this is?" he asks the guy.

The guy comes over. He's an older priest, with some sort of weird trim on his robes. He give you another look before responding. "It's a vision crystal," he says. "Used in some of our higher rituals."

"Yeah?" the small one says. "What's it do?"

"With preparation, it allows its user to see," the old priest guy says. "Visions of possible futures or events. What is happening in the world, or what must be done. The very shape of one's problems..." he places his hands on the crystal, closing his eyes, and sighs. "To do so requires immense focus and concentration, however," he says.

"Hey, do you have immense focus and concentration?" the wide one asks you.

"I have no idea what mean these words," you tell him flatly.

"Did you see something?" the guy asks you curiously.

"Something," you reply.

"What?" the small one asks.

"It... nothing," you say. "It's not important." They're all still staring at you, though, so you add, "What?"

"You were screaming," the small one says.

"I'm fine now," you reply.

"Are you?" he asks.

"Yes?" you say. At least, you hope you are. You're not really sure they'd be able to help you much even if you weren't, though, even with magic. SteveGeorge does not play well with magic.<ref>Or minds. Or people. Or anything, really.</ref>

"So what was it?" the wide one asks. "Or do you just not have the words to actually tell us?"

"That," you say.

"Can you draw it?" he asks.

"No."

"What is it in Lesk?" he asks.

You pause, trying to come up with something that even describes it, and then say, in Lesk, "The backside of every universe."

He nods slowly, says, "Okay," and then turns to the priest guy. "That. That's what she saw."

=== 4 ===

The days pass, and normality ensues, at least as far as you can tell. At some point you start remembering everyone's names, or at least those of your three sword guys. You get better at the language, collecting words, practising letters. The lectures happen, going over matters of history and philosophy and faith. They separate out the literate and the illiterate a few days in, and you manage to get yourself lumped among the literate, barely, by sneaking in your notes and using them to help translate, and writing a very crappy paragraph of 'essay' explaining that you don't actually know Daesh and you're working on it, and then repeating it in English after just in case that might help make your point. Maybe it does. Your paper comes back with a check on it, which is apparently good, and also with a somewhat alarming number of the Daesh equivalent of a question mark all over, which apparently isn't.

"Niiiice," Juane says, taking it, and then, reading what you wrote, bursts out laughing.

"I know, I know," you say, grabbing it back.

"Hey, it works," he says.

"You just started learning this language ''a week ago''," Kerka says, taking it and reading it as well. "Which," he adds, "I note you neglected to mention. 'Generally new to the language' suggests you've maybe had a few months, and probably weren't new to both spoken ''and'' written forms..."

"I used the words from your notes," you say. "I had a... paper." You demonstrate, folding a sheet in half and hiding it up your sleeve, turning your wrist up to show it, and turning your arm down to hide it in the extra fabric.

"Hah!" Juane says. "Now there's a useful skill."

You nod. It's not something you ever had to do in school, since on most of your tests bringing notes had not just been allowed, but generally recommended,<ref>The open-note tests were hard. There had also been open-book tests. Those were even harder. The open-book, open-note, open-friend tests where you were to form small groups and work your way through the exam together didn't even bear thinking about. In fact you'd pretty much entirely repressed the memories of these, and probably couldn't if you tried.</ref> but you'd had to at least try it here. You aren't actually illiterate, after all, just not from this planet.

You learn the rituals. You say the words. You play your parts as proper cultists.

The roofing happens. You all finish tiling several buildings, and move onto more complex things, even some repairs involving rafters, to your overseer's intense delight.

You begin to pick up the written language more than the spoken, reading it more and more easily, getting by in lectures on Kerka's notes.

At one point you catch Leifos pestering one of the other initiates, and give him a very disappointed look. Juane, seeing this, flicks Leifos in the ear, the initiate runs away, and you all move on.

Your group's exploration of the temple complex continues, not just the main building, but the surrounding ones as well. You wind up in some awkward conversations, apparently having wound up in places you ought not be, and point out that maybe someone should post a sign. You find some more odd rooms, touch some more odd things. You go back to the crystal, but you're too afraid to touch it again. You find a room full of what appear to be discarded dowels and other random bits of old wood, and Juane collects some for possible later use as training implements. You also grab a six-foot pole while you're there, for use. As a pole.<ref>To replace the pole you normally carried that you hadn't managed to take with you. That one had been steel, made up of three two-foot sections of pipe connected by joints. You also had two others: a wooden one, and a PVC one. They all served a singular purpose: use. As a pole.</ref><ref>Alternately, as a stick.</ref>

Throughout the main temple you find a series of staircases going down from what is ostensibly the base floor, as well as quite a few hatches, and in a few cases, just plain holes, all of which are marked off, boarded up, hidden, or flat-out locked. These have signs. Then you find some more, outside, and in some of the other buildings.

"We're going down there," Juane says. You and Leifos are on a roof, detiling a section so you can assess the state of the materials underneath, with Juane on the ladder, and Kerka holding it in place at the bottom. There's another one of those hatches in plain view from up here, tucked away into a corner between buildings, and Juane keeps staring at it. You've been staring a bit too. You have an idea what's down there, but it's a vague one, and you would very much like to find out specifically.

"Yeah?" Leifos says, passing him some more tiles, which Juane piles up off to the side.

"Tomorrow, let's see what's down there," Juane says.

"Is that a good idea?" Leifos asks. "Place seems pretty clear about it not being intended for general entry."

"Agh, you sound like Kerka," Juane says.

"I'd want to go," you tell them.

"Vardaman says yes!" Juane announces. "It's a go. We'll do it tomorrow."

Leifos sighs. "Fine," he says. "But if we get in trouble, it's your fault."

"What stupid thing did we decide this time?" Kerka yells up at the rest of you.

"Nothing, mom!" Leifos yells back.

=== 5 ===

Tomorrow comes around, your weekly day off. You get up early, which is to say the same time as usual. You do the usual morning things, and also get food and pack up some supplies. Juane brings a sack of dowels. Kerka prepares a whole bag of stuff. You take your pole, put on your safety glasses, and even wear some shoes.<ref>Technically sandals, but they have proper soles attached to the bottom. This is practically industrial-grade, for you.</ref>

You go to one of the locked staircase doors, neatly tucked away underneath a perfectly ordinary, not doored, not locked staircase up. Kerka picks the lock. You get out your lightsticks, let the door shut again behind you, and head down into the dark.

Mostly it's just dark. As you head down the corridor, you shine your lights around like torches, a directed beam coming out like the modern version, but diffuse glow also sent out around like the old-fashioned, burning kind. The architecture down here is much the same as above, but with no windows, no hovering magelights. The sockets hang empty.

Some of the doors you pass are boarded over. Some of the walls are crumbled into piles of rubble, the ceiling propped up with haphazard supports. You eye them suspiciously. They do not look standards-compliant.

It's quiet, down here. Your footfalls echo even as they're muffled by the thick dust.

"Step one," Juane says quietly, his voice still entirely too loud in this strange, empty place. "Get utterly, unarguably lost."

Kerka stops and shines his lightstick in Juane's eyes, Juane shines his right back in Kerka's eyes, and Kerka blocks it with his notebook. You and Leifos stop as well.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Leifos asks.

"I dunno," Juane says, turning and shining his light around some doorways. "It just looks like more temple, really."

You head over to a random door and try to open it. The latch sticks, so you fiddle with it. Just an old door that doesn't quite fit its socket anymore. You know those well. It creaks, scrapingly, as you push it open. Somewhere in the dark behind you, another noise echoes the creak, a skittering, almost. You shine your light back, and then Juane and Leifos add their beams as well when you quickly point yours back at the room, but there's no sign of anything in the corridors behind you.

The room, on the other hand, is half-filled with stacked furniture, pushed up against one wall, old chairs and tables and desks forming a precarious pile, some collapsed under the weight of the rest, tumbling down around it. Bits litter the floor.

You go in and poke the pile with your pole. Bits of furniture break with a dry, brittle crunch, almost papery, as the pile settles further.

"You think maybe this has been here awhile?" Kerka asks from the doorway.

"Maybe," you say.

You move on. You check more rooms. You get hopelessly lost, though Kerka at least seems to be taking notes. Some are locked. Many are empty, or full of rubble. Some are collapsed entirely. Kerka tries to pick a couple of the locks, but they're different than he's used to. Mostly it doesn't quite work.

You play with echoes, and chatter and talk.

You find graffiti, some with colours, some painted, some chalk, in many different styles. You find a room smelling heavily of piss, but stale and wrong. You find words, and copy them down.

You find an almost functional bathroom. The toilets flush. The taps run, but don't seem to drain. There are no lights but the ones you brought with you.

You find more broken furniture.

Sometimes, you hear sounds. A soft scuttle, a breath of air. Wisps and whispers. Memories of chatter. Only Leifos seems to notice, but he tries to hide it.<ref>Badly.</ref>

"What do you think of beans?" Leifos asks at one point.

"Beans?" Juane says.

"Beans," Leifos says.

"They're fine. Make some decent dishes."

You stop for lunch in a room full of dummies, some more refined, better shaped like dress forms and mannequins, others far cruder.

"Creepy," Leifos says.

Juane knocks a couple over with a dowel.

Kerka passes around the food, and you use the toppled mannequins as chairs. Leifos falls right through one before he finds another that actually works.

"This place is probably haunted, you know," Kerka points out while you eat.

"Oh, shut up," Leifos says.

"I'm serious," Kerka says. "They locked it up for a reason. There's noises in the dark. If ours were a smaller group, we might not be expected to come back."

"What noises?" Leifos asks.

"Well, maybe they're just critters," Kerka replies. "But maybe they aren't. After all, have we seen any signs of life down here, any at all?"

Leifos stares at him.

You slowly lower your spare hand behind your dummy chair and scrape your nails along its side, tapping a bit, catching on its texture.

Leifos jumps up in a panic, shining his light about, and even Juane stands up, before Leifos stops, pointing his light at you.

You give him a big grin.

"Agh, you guys!" Leifos yells.

Juane laughs.

"Sorry," you say.

"Okay, so is this haunted or isn't it?" Leifos asks.

Kerka shrugs.

"Probably," Juane tells him. "But Kerka's not wrong about the group size. All the noise we're making, we're more likely scaring anything off than attracting it."

"I... guess," Leifos says. He doesn't really look convinced.

Juane goes and plants the light sticks around, and then puts one of his dowels in Leifos' hand and goes to haul Kerka up. "Come on," he says. "This is a good place for a spar." He hands you one as you get up as well, and you grab a second just for good measure.

Juane drops the rest of the training dowels on the floor, pairs off with Leifos, and they quickly adopt stances and start dancing about, smacking at each other.

You and Kerka, meanwhile, just sort of stand there for a moment, staring at each other.

Kerka waves his dowel at you vaguely. "Do you fight?" he asks.

"Fight?" you ask, uncertain exactly what he means, and then indicate Leifos and Juane and give Kerka an enquiring look.

"Yeah," Kerka says.

"No," you tell him.

"Oh, good," he says. "Neither do I. They're the ones always practising," Kerka goes on. "So I just... don't."

"You have a sword," you point out.

"So do you," he says.

"We... should try?" you suggest.

Kerka nods and raises his dowel. You take a swing at him, and he evades and does much the same. You're both terrible, it turns out. Mostly you just miss. When you do manage to hit each other, it's usually totally by accident, or the other's fault in the first place. Kerka overcommits at one point and careens into an array of dummies. You trip over someone's bag and wind up on the floor.

It all ends when Leifos runs into the both of you, knocking you over, Juane stops chasing him just in time to not run into you too, and instead runs into several mannequins, and you all call that a lunch and get back to exploring.

=== 6 ===

You notice prints in the dust, tracks of boots and feet and... other things. Critters. You check more rooms, and then find a particularly narrow passage behind a door you fully expected to be a closet. It's just wide enough for a single person,<ref>With difficulty, in Kerka's case.</ref> long and empty and straight, full of gloom, leading seemingly into nothing, but the stones are worn down in the middle as though by many, many feet.

"Hey, check this out," Leifos says, gesturing the others over.

"What's it?" Juane says, coming and shining his light down the passage.

You shrug.

"There's some writing over the doorway," Kerka says, further back. "Anyone know ancient elven?"

"Is that what that is?" Juane asks, pointing his light up at it.

"Write it down," you suggest, waving your pad. Kerka gives you a dubious look, so you do it yourself, doing your best to transcribe the shapes of the characters.

Kerka shrugs and does the same in his notebook.

"You two done?" Juane asks when you both seem to be done.

"Onward!" Leifos says, and heads into the passage.

"Yup," Juane says, and goes after him.

You gesture for Kerka to go after, and take up the rear, closing the door behind you.

The air is dry and earthen. Your footsteps are a loud patter in the silence, and the only thing you hear. You walk for... awhile, and encounter absolutely nothing. The passage is just straight. There are no meaningful features, no doorways. The most notable thing about it is just how utterly unnotable it is.

"Oh look is that a door?" Juane says suddenly, very loudly.

"It is a door!" Leifos replies, also loudly, but not as.

You actually reach the door a bit later, at which point Leifos finds it apparently locked. Kerka squeezes past him and Juane.

"Oi, you're fat," Juane tells him.

"Shut up," Kerka says, and tries to find a lock to pick. Finally, he says, "Yup, there's no lock."

"What?" Leifos says, confused, craning over Kerka's shoulder. "Then why won't it open?"

Kerka tries to unlatch the door and push it open, to no avail.

"Agh, let me," you tell them, and push past the lot of them, and then push them back a bit when they get in the way. You stand back and assess the frame. It's all stone, even the trim, with the door on the inside of the doorway. Opens inward, hinges on that side. You can't tell how well it fits because all the fitting would be on that side as well. The door itself looks like some sort of... you tap it experimentally. It knocks like plastic, and it's reinforced with metal, like it's meant to withstand a siege if it came to it.

You glance around at the walls. There are holes between the stones, and gaps in the grout in the floor.

You try the handle. A simple squeeze mechanism to unlatch it, from the type. It doesn't squeeze. You try to turn it, but it isn't that kind of handle. You pull on the entire thing, putting your weight on the door, not trying to push it open, but pull it more shut, and try unlatching the squeeze again.

Nothing happens, but then you try doing all this while also kicking it, and it unlatches with a click. You give it a nudge and the door swings open, taking you with it.

You're in another corridor, like the ones you'd been traversing all day.

The others spill out behind you.

"What, is that it?" Leifos asks.

You shake your head, confused. This had not been what you were expecting.

"Well, that was different," Juane says.

"Did we... miss something?" Leifos asks.

"This whole place is built like a labyrinth," Kerka says. "Twists and turns, and dead ends. The passages back up seem far fewer from down here, than we've encountered down from above."

"So what you're saying," Juane says, pointing to a nearby stairwell, "Is we should go down even more."

"No," Kerka tells him. "I'm not."

"Oh," Juane says, looking disappointed.

"But we totally can," Kerka goes on, strolling over to the opening, a big, dark pit of gloom. "Can't be any more stupid than the rest of this, after all." He shines his light into the stairwell, but he's looking at the writing over the opening - more ancient elven script. "Vardaman?"

"Yes," you say, and transcribe this as well.

"Nerds," Juane says.

You all head down, pointing your lights around the staircase willy-nilly. It's a staircase. It's made of stone. It has a huge nest of giant spider-things, about the size of gerbils, stuck to the ceiling over the next landing down. Mostly the spiders just scatter when you shine your lights on them, scuttling away into various cracks and shadows, several others dropping to the ground and down the stairs. You all stop and wait for them to get out of the way.

"Creepy," Leifos says.

"I want one," you say.

"You do?" Leifos asks.

"Yes," you tell him.

"Okaaaay," Juane says, "we're not here to collect pets." He stops. "Are we?"

"Preferably not... these," Kerka says.

You give them your best disappointed look, but they don't actually look at you again, so it's totally wasted.

The stairs continue on, looping down again past the landing, but the passage down further is blocked by rubble and even more spider nest. And spiders. A lot of spiders.

Fortunately there is also a doorway on the landing, so you all rather quickly scoot out that, instead.

You wind up in another hallway, not unlike all the others.

"So that's full of spiders," Juane points out, gesturing back toward the stairway with his light.

"Yeah..." Leifos says.

"I've noted it," Kerka says.

You shine your light down the various options - of three passageways, two just look dark, and a bit damp. The third, on the other hand, has a tumble of what looks suspiciously like ice blocking it a ways down. You head toward it, and lacking any other initiative, the others follow.

"What is that?" Juane asks when you get closer.

"Rocks, isn't it?" Kerka says. "Wait..."

You poke at it with your six-foot pole. It's almost soft, and underneath a layer of grime, it very much does appear to be ice. And it is also definitely colder down here. You can sometimes see your breath.

"Ice?" Kerka asks.

You shrug. You don't recognise the word.

"Is it just me," Leifos asks, "or does this keep getting weirder the deeper we go?"

"So what you're saying is we should go even deeper?" Juane asks.

Kerka snorts.

"...maybe?" Leifos says.

You continue on down a different passageway, and check some rooms, finding some more bits of text, and recording that as well. They seem to have been some sort of living quarters, for the most part, full of furniture, destroyed furniture, and in one case, a pile of bones. You go to investigate the bones. The bones start to come together and get up. You hit them with your pole a few times, knocking them back apart before they can.

Juane gives you a disappointed look. "What'd you do that for?" he asks.

"You want to fight them?" you ask.

"Maybe?" he says.

"Next one," you say.

Another room has a big pile of blackness in it. When you shine your lights on it, it's just dark.

When Leifos approaches it hesitantly, it starts to get up as well, opening a set of glowing purple eyes, in sequence.

"Oh, no, no, no, don't get up, that's fine, you don't need to get up," Leifos tells it, hastily backing away.

It gets up anyway.

The floor groans, and then, with a crash, gives way entirely under much of the room, the creature tumbling down with it, scrabbling. Leifos falls on his butt and almost slides down as well as the floor beneath him cracks and tilts horribly, but manages to catch himself at the edge of the rather gaping hole.

Juane hurries over to help him, and Kerka starts as well, but you grab Kerka, holding him back. You try to yell at Juane to stay back, but all you can come up with is, "No, this!"

There's a crack, more groaning, and then the floor gives way under both of them, and Leifos and Juane tumble down as well, along with even more floor.

"What," Kerka says, trying to move toward the missing floor again, but you pull him back.

"No," you tell him. "Here. Don't follow."

You drop your pole and extra stuff, put up your hair, get down on your stomach, and shuffle yourself over to the edge from around one of the sides, where it looks more sturdy. The floor creaks, settling a bit, but holds your weight as you crane your head over the edge and shine down your light.

There's some yelling below. Leifos is on his feet, maybe ten meters down, waving a light stick, but you can't see Juane anywhere. There's a lot of rubble, and no sign of the darkness creature, either.

"Are you okay?" you call down.

"Uh, yes. Maybe?" Leifos yells back. "Where's Juane? Kerka?"

"Kerka is up here," you tell him. "Juane... down with you. The... animal?"

"Hardly an animal!" Leifos says. "But it went. Fled out through a wall, somehow."

"Gone?" you ask.

"Yeah!"

You finally pick yourself up a bit and yell, more loudly now, "Juane! Are you there? ...Sound!"

There's some muffled noises from the rubble, and Leifos immediately hurries over.

"I'll see if I can get him out!" Leifos calls up to you. "What about you and Kerka?"

"I... yeah!" you tell him, and then shuffle back to the doorway, where Kerka's waiting. Only once you're under the frame do you get up again.

"So they're alive?" Kerka asks.

"Yeah, but Juane..."

"Hurt?"

You nod.

"And I suppose you want me to decide what to do, because you won't be able to communicate why any of your ideas anyway..." he says. "You know this would be a lot easier if you knew more Daesh. You're clearly way smarter than most people here."

You give him an appropriately blank look. "Sorry," you say.

"No, I'm sorry," he tells you. "Um. Yeah. We should probably get down there too, unless... you said it's safer to crawl to the edge?"

"Down," you tell him, gesturing what you mean. "Spread... heavy, less in single spot. It won't break, probably. You're heavy."

"Right, I see what you're getting at," Kerka says, and then, like you had, drops his pack in the doorway, starts to get down on his stomach, then changes his mind and then just walks around the edge of the room, hugging the wall, until he's at the closest wall point to the hole. "Leifos?" he yells down.

You, meanwhile, take the opportunity to go through his bag and see what supplies you even have up here. He brought some rope, though it doesn't appear to be enough. Some snacks, a spare water bottle. Books, a first aid kit...

"Okay," Kerka tells you, coming back, "so it looks like there are ways out, Juane is pinned down, but probably not seriously hurt, and we should get down there as well, use your weird engineering skills to get him out, and try to find an exit from that level."

You stare at him blankly, only understanding pieces of all of that. Finally, you say, "Eh?"

"We need to get down there," Kerka tells you, gesturing down.

"Yes, okay," you say, and get out the rope.

Kerka gathers all the bags and such while you look around for somewhere to fasten the rope. There's some wall... fixtures. And the door. Some broken furniture. The fixtures don't look terribly sturdy. The door is annoyingly distant from the hole itself, but it looks reliable, at least.

You grab some metal lengths from some of the furniture, lay them across the other side of the doorway, tie the end of the rope around them, and then crawl back out the the edge, taking the other end of the rope with you. It turns out to only go down about halfway.

"Do we have more?" you ask.

"Rope? No..." Kerka replies. "And here I thought I was being paranoid bringing that much. Could look around here, see if we can find some?"

"No," you tell him. "We'll use this. Come after me."

With Leifos staring up at you, you try to manoeuvre yourself around so you can get over the edge feet-first, wincing as the floor groans some more and stones tumble down. You've just gotten your legs over the edge when the whole section gives way entirely underneath you. You cling to the rope, trying to grab it with your legs as well, but you totally miss, and swing wildly as it jerks taut with your weight. But you manage to hold onto it anyway, hanging now rather lower, your hands burning.

"Vardaman?!" Kerka yells above you.

"I'm okay!" You yell back.

"I'm okay, too!" Leifos yells, now somewhat further away off to the side.

"What just happened?" Juane asks. His voice is a bit muffled, but other than that he sounds fine.

This bought you almost two more meters of rope. Easy. You grab onto it with your legs as well, now, and lower yourself down stiffly, your muscles not appreciating this at all. You get to the end, and then continue, lowering yourself with arms only, and for the briefest moment, find it absolutely hilarious that you actually have the upper body strength to do that at all. Unless that's normal. You don't know.

Now you really are at the end, just sort of hanging off. The floor is still worryingly far away, and rather uneven with rubble. If you just drop, you'll probably break an ankle or something. If you try to do something fancy, and do a roll or something, you might even break your neck.

"Feck," you say, and proceed to just hang there.

"Um, are you... going to come down?" Leifos asks.

"Yes," you say, "when my hands..."

"What?" Leifos says.

You take a deep breath and let go, letting your legs buckle a bit as you land, and then tumbling into a rolling sprawl onto a bunch of rubble, banging up your back, and finally hitting your head as you stop.

"Ow," you say, getting up.

"Smooth," Leifos says.

"Kerka," you yell up. "Come now! Bring our stuff."

"Yeah, le'me just throw it down," Kerka yells from above. A bit later, the bags come down.

Meanwhile you go to check on Juane, and find him mostly dug out, now, but pinned down by the leg behind a particularly large heap of rubble, and a very precarious section of half-suspended floor. There is, in fact, quite a lot of stuff on top of his leg, and even more on top of bits of that, some of which seems to be holding up the section of floor.

Any view of the hole itself, or whatever Leifos and Kerka are doing now, is completely blocked from here.

"Oh," you say.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?" Juane says. He's very pale. "After all of this, you're just going to have to leave me here to die."

"We can remove your leg if we need to," you tell him.

"Er, well, I'd rather you didn't?" Juane says.

Most of the rubble on his leg seems to be supported by a single metal strut. You just need some way to raise it enough to pull Juane out... some of those car hoist things for doing stuff with wheels would be great here. Or some levers.

"How much are you hurt?" you ask him.

"What, you mean besides my leg?" he asks.

"Yes."

"I'm fine. Peachy!" Juane says.

"I need to know if it can be moved," you say. "If you can. In safety."

You hear Kerka yell on the other side of the half-suspended floor, shortly followed by a loud crash.

"Show off," Leifos says.

"It worked, didn't it?" Kerka says.

"Oi, come here!" you yell.

They come.

"Oh dear," Kerka says.

"Leifos, go to his..." you stop, and then just point to Juane's shoulders. "Pull him when I say. If it works, keep going."

Leifos gives you a confused look, but goes and picks up Juane's shoulders, gripping him under the arms.

"Kerka," you say, and gesture for Kerka to get on the other side of Juane's leg. "When I say, lift... this." You wrap your fingers under the beam, trying to get a good grip. When Kerka appears to have done the same, you say, "Now!"

You lift. Kerka lifts. Leifos pulls. The rubble pile shifts a bit. Juane wails... and remains stuck.

"Shit!" Leifos says, and jumps away.

"Was that...?" Kerka asks you. "Should that have done something?"

"Something," you say. "We need more. Length."

"No, that almost worked," Juane croaks.

"No it didn't," Leifos says.

"You look horrible," Kerka says.

"I'm great!" Juane says.

"Um..." you say, and then decide to not even try commenting. You grab some metal rods, and start shoving them under the beam, passing the rest to Kerka to do the same.

Then you try again, using the rods as levers while Leifos pulls - this works, Juane slides out and starts blubbering incoherently, the entire heap of rubble starts to settle in a loud rumble, and the section of floor makes some really unsettling noises and starts to come down even more.

You all run for it, grabbing Juane and half-carrying, half-dragging him out into the corridor.

Dust follows you out, along with some bits of floor. Everything settles.

"We good?" Leifos asks.

"Except we left the bags in there," Kerka says. "I'll just... get them. If they're not buried."

Juane whimpers as you start cutting off his pant leg with your tiny scissors, which takes entirely too long because your tiny scissors are very tiny.<ref>The blades are about 2cm long. This is not what they are for. You're really not sure what they're for, in fact, and just carry them around because they're tiny.</ref> What is revealed is a surprisingly non-bloody, but heavily discoloured and misshapen lower leg, which you proceed to nudge at to get an idea just how bad it is. Juane screams and tries to recoil away, but Leifos pins him down.

Apparently it's bad.

"What are you doing?!" Leifos asks you.

"You're not dead," you tell Juane. "Good sign."

Juane just whimpers some more.

"We need to... tie it. With... things," you say.

"Great," Leifos says. "Because he's not breathing right either."

You pull off your outer robe and cut/tear some strips off it and start wrapping Juane's leg tightly. You're fashioning a splint with some sticks when Kerka returns with the bags.

"Plan?" Kerka asks.

"I don't know," Leifos says. "I don't know."

You borrow Kerka's notebook when you finish, and sketch out a basic stretcher, indicating Kerka and Leifos carrying it, with you scouting ahead. "You carry, I... look ahead, find a path. We need... branches? Handles... no. Um."

"Lengths? Slats?" Kerka asks, indicating a potential length with his arms.

"Yeah."

"See what you can find. I'll look, too," Kerka says, and adds to Leifos, "You stay put."

Leifos nods blankly.

You head out in opposite directions, lightsticks out, weapons ready. You check a few rooms, don't find much of anything, find some potential slats, find some other supplies, dump them in piles in the hall to grab on your way back. After a bit, though, you just stop, and listen. It's very quiet down here, pressingly, cloying, but there's almost a fuzz to it, like something is muting the sound. Even the darkness feels closer, heavier.

You hear a clatter, somewhere. Juane's moaning has stopped, which may not be a good sign. Some scratching. Settling walls, trickling water. A soft echo like the wailing of distant wind.

You turn, and the shadows scurry away like rats.

You continue on, gathering possible supplies in piles.

You notice a couple of hatches in the ceilings, but with no way up to them, they're useless to you.

You think you hear a noise from a room, and stop, listening, waiting to see if it happens again. It happens again. A faint cry, sounding almost like a kitten squeak. You squeak back, but it comes out wrong. You try again, repeating, changing, remembering the sound. Boxes of kittens, purring. The squeaks. The mother. The happy.

The squeak sounds out again, tiny, lost, distant.

You head in, shining your lightstick around, eyeing the broken furniture and heaped dirt and piles of chitin and skulls. There is nothing ominous about the room at all.

You squeak, and the squeak replies, and you follow it to a pile of broken furniture. You start digging at it, tapping at various bits, and the squeak starts going constantly, like the better part of half a conversation: eow, ew, neow, eow, eow new new neow.

You don't have time for this, but you follow it down regardless, unearth a drawer, pry it open with your knife. A small black wad, barely any bigger than the spiders in the stairwell, scrabbles out and buries itself in your tunic.

"Eeow," it says, in a squeak, as you pick it up. It appears to be some sort of three-legged, headless, hair-clump creature.

"Uh," you say, but then give it another meow-squeak back. It occurs to you that you hadn't really thought this through.

You take it with you, and head back, re-collecting the best of the supplies.

Kerka is already there working on building a stretcher when you get back. There's not much left of your robe, so you tear off a length to use as a scarf and stuff the creature in that for the time being, and get to work helping.

"He's not waking up," Leifos says, hunched uncertainly over Juane. "He's still alive, but worse. Just getting worse."

You try to hurry, getting the stretcher fastened together, pulling Juane onto it, tying him down. Kerka and Leifos pick it up.

"Which way?" you ask.

"I didn't see anything promising. You?" Kerka says.

You shake your head, but head down the same way you'd gone earlier regardless, scouting ahead, taking the forks you hadn't tried earlier, chalking Xs on the walls. The others follow behind you. Sometimes you double back, catching them before they go down the same path, and telling them, "No, other way." Mostly it's just whims, sometimes grounded: blockage, a bad smell, unstable-looking architecture.

You shine your light into a side corridor, and it illuminates a little elf girl, simply standing there, holding a doll limply in hand. Her eyes are white. Her skin is mottled. She stares at you, through you, as if unseeing.

You flick your light off her, and then flick it back. She's still there, but doesn't seem to notice. Her mouth moves, shaping soundless words. She takes a step forward, and then disappears.

You shake your head and continue on, passing the side corridor by.

Whispers follow you, scuttlingly, lingering at the edges of corners. You can't make them out, if there's words, or even what language it might be.

A darkness, full of purple eyes, watches you as you pass from a room with no door. You give it a wide berth. It reaches out a tendril of black after you, but then withdraws it a moment later.

You go back periodically to direct the others.

Wraiths, like towering wisps of ratty fabric and mangled limbs, their faces thankfully shrouded, drift out of a side corridor and block your path, three of them. You all just stop and stare at them, hoping maybe they'll go away.

They don't.

You continue to stare at them. You don't particularly want to turn your backs on them, either.

You turn your own back on them anyway, watching the other direction, letting Leifos and Kerka stare at the wraiths for you.

The figure of a woman, also shrouded in black, drifting rather above the ground, glides purposefully out of the darkness toward you, and toward the wraiths.

"Oi, back. To the wall," you tell the others. They do, getting up against the wall, taking Juane's litter with them, and you get out of the way as well, against the other wall.

You can almost hear her speak: a soundless mangling, an idea of words, reverberating in your skull. A wrongness, not unlike...

Leifos cries out in pain and drops his end of the litter, clutching his head.

She passes you all by without acknowledgement, and stops in front of the wraiths. The wraiths... something, as well. It hurts. Your head hurts. She's speaking. They're... speaking? It's all soundless.

And then they all turn and head back down the corridor.

You continue on.

You scout ahead. You report back. You scout ahead.

You find more strangeness, more ghosts flickering in and out of space and soundless, more questionable architecture, and navigate around the worst of it.

You find silence and darkness.

You hear voices, footsteps. A vague glow guides you toward them, and they stop in surprise as you round the corner: three guys in robes not unlike your own, but cleaner and all there, with swords out and magelights hovering over their heads. They raise their swords warningly.

"Stay back!" one of them says.

"Hello, excuse me," you tell them, stopping a safe distance away.

"Uh, who are you?" another asks. "How'd you get down here?"

"Fell," you tell them. "Accident. I need directions, a path up. Can you help me?"

"Yeah, back the way you came, take a left about sixty paces on," one of them starts, but then another interrupts him.

"What are you doing?" he asks incredulously.

"What?"

"We don't even know if she's alive!" he says. "Don't just go talking at her. This might be a pretext to eat us or something!"

"I'm no ghost," you tell them. "I don't believe you'd be able to hear a ghost."

"What?"

"Why not?"

"I saw some," you tell them, gesturing back. "At times it appeared how they were trying to speak, but I couldn't hear them."

"What, actual ghosts?"

You shrug. "I believe so? Sixty paces?"

"Yeah, take a left, down that way until you get to the avenue - you can't miss it, it's really wide, has some fountains and shit, go right and you'll get to the stairs at the end."

"My thanks," you tell them, bowing slightly, and back away, keeping an eye on them to be sure they don't try anything, before hurrying off in the indicated direction.

You scout up to the avenue before you turn around again, and nearly run into the pile of detritus that turns out to be a shape of a man suddenly getting up next to you, in tattered fabrics hanging off in layers.

"Oh, sorry!" you tell him, backing away even as he turns to try to grab you. His flesh is grey and craggy, his face a shadowed ruin. You smack at him with your pole, but all it does is slow him down a little as he reaches ponderously forward.

You smack at him again, harder this time, and jump back, into the avenue itself, dropping both pole and lightstick. He lumbers toward you, and you draw your sword and evade as he lunges at you. You swing at him, and your blade hits his arm, slicing, stopping at the cloth and bone, so you yank it back and swing harder, bringing your sword around in a wide sweep. You miss, but he's not even trying to avoid you, so you keep trying, hacking, slashing, swinging, evading his awkward grabs. You chop at him, manage to hit joints from time to time, hack off an arm, through his torso, at his legs, his other arm, before finally getting his head. He topples, finally, hitting the floor with a sickly, dusty crunch.

You hurry back to grab your lightstick and pole, and find the three guys at the entrance to the corridor, staring at you. You stop.

"Did you just...?" one of them asks.

"You are so badass!" another says.

Apparently they followed you back. "Er, what?" you say, watching them worriedly. You wipe off your sword on your pants.

"You just killed a walker!" a guy says. "Just like that, you killed it."

You glance back to the corpse uncertainly. "Yes?" you say.

"Well, I mean," the guy says, "weren't you afraid?"

Another smacks him.

"I'm sorry, I really don't have time," you tell them, "I don't!"

You hurry past them, back the way you came.

=== 7 ===

It's late<ref>You don't know how late. It's just late.</ref> when you all finally make out the stairs ahead after traversing the long, wide avenue. They're grand and ornate, as wide as the avenue itself, leading upwards, illuminated by the magelight over the head of a man standing at their base, almost as if waiting for you. You go to him ahead of the others, and he nods at you as you approach.

"You aren't who I was expecting," he says. He's wearing a light armour over his tunic. His swords are worn comfortably at his side. His discs are different. You don't recognise them.

"Can you help us?" you ask him, and gesture back to the others. "He is hurt."

The man strides past you, and you sit down on the steps in relief. Rest. Finally.

"Put him down," he tells them.

Kerka and Leifos back away as the man places a hand on Juane's chest, and then he gestures, casting a spell. A light spreads over Juane.

The man gets up. "Get him rest," he tells them. "He will live."

"Thank you, sir," Kerka says, bowing.

Leifos just stares.

"Now," the man says, his tone becoming much graver. "More to the point. Who are you, and why are you here?"

"We fell in a hole," Kerka tells him. "Total accident."

"Six levels down," the man says. "And you fell in a hole."

"Yes," Kerka says, looking totally innocent. It would almost be convincing were it not for the circumstances.

The man turns back to you. "Do you have anything to add to that?" he asks.

You give him a blank look, and then shrug. "We fell," you tell him. "We walked. We saw some ghosts. It was a beautiful afternoon." You pull yourself up again, using your pole as a crutch. "And what is all this?"

Kerka, meanwhile, flicks Leifos in the ear, and Leifos finally stops just staring and smacks back at him.

"This?" the man asks.

"You're here with the kids, right? I talked to a group for directions..."

He nods. "Guardians in training. I'm one of the instructors, overseeing their task. How they respond on their own in an unknown environment, how they handle situations that arise, and how effectively - and quickly - they can accomplish their task."

"How are they doing?"

"They only just began."

"And what is 'badass'?" you ask.

"It means 'cool', 'tough'. 'Impressive'," Kerka says. "Did they call you badass?"

"Er," you say. "No. We should... go."

"Onward!" Kerka says, and Leifos looks at him in surprise.

You turn, and find the girl with the doll on the stairs in front of you, staring at you with her blank white eyes. She mouths words, but you hear nothing.

You stare right back at her for a moment, and then poke her with your stick.

She flickers and vanishes.

You glance back to the others. Leifos and Kerka are picking up Juane's stretcher again, apparently not having noticed, but the instructor has - he's watching, alert, sword half-drawn.

You glance back and the girl there again, but now several steps up, further away.

"A ghost," the instructor says.

You wave at her.

She says something else, and gestures a bit.

"All right, look," you tell the girl in english. "I'm not a deader. I can't hear anything you're saying, and I can't read lips."

She stops, and then says something else, rather insistently.

"And you can't hear me, either," you say. You try again, this time using signage: covering your ears, shaking your head, gesturing to your mouth that you cannot speak. Deaf-mute. Essentially true, to her.

The child looks at you curiously, and then does the same. You nod, gesturing between the two of you, but then gesture from yourself to your others and shake your head, and gesture to her and off to her other side and shake it again. You have no idea if the meaning of this is even remotely clear.

She just stares at you, and then holds out her doll toward you, mouthing a word: it looks like 'ovi'.

You shrug, smiling helplessly. You have no idea how to tell her 'And even if I could hear you, I still wouldn't be able to understand you because of language barriers.'

She come a bit closer, mimes sleeping, putting her hands together and leaning her head on them, using the doll like a pillow, and gives you a desperate look. She gestures to herself, and then mimes it again, shaking her head.

"You want to sleep?" you ask her, not that she can hear you.

She sighs, sagging her shoulders and head, and puts on a look of total weariness.

You nod. You're pretty tired too.

Suddenly she's standing right next to you, at your side. She pushes her doll at you.

She gestures back down the avenue, and starts to move that way herself, indicating for you to follow her.

"Uh..." you say. You turn back to the instructor and ask, in Daesh, "Oi, person what knows things, she wants that I go with her. Bad idea?"

"Very bad," he says.

The girl tugs at the hem of your tunic, looking up at you pleadingly, and tries to give you the doll again.

"How bad is very bad?" you ask, taking the doll, really not sure what to do with it.

He gives you a flat look and moves a bit toward you. The girl shrinks away from him, hiding behind you, and then vanishes entirely when he continues.

He stops, and she reappears, clinging to your belt and tunic, using you like a shield to peer around. Her hand is on your sword's handle, so you drop a hand over it guardingly. It doesn't feel right, like jelly, almost, but cold and dry.

She looks up at you in surprise, her white eyes wide.

"Okay," you say. "How do I explain to girl who can not hear me that I am sorry and I can not help her?"

"You... don't," Kerka says, staring at her. "We should just... go? Maybe?"

You give the girl your best apologetic look and shake your head, trying to pull away, and try to hand her back the doll.

She comes with you, holding on, and refuses to take it.

You press it into her arms and back away up the stairs, shaking your head, and she lets go, just standing there. The doll falls to the floor. She stares at you pleadingly. She repeats the mouth cover gesture, and then signs seeing you... and seeing back. She gestures to herself again, and everything around, then just stops, shaking her head.

She picks up the doll, and holds it out to you again.

"Perhaps you ''should'' go with her," the instructor says.

"Er, what?" you say.

"Okay, you work that out, we're going to go... go," Kerka says. "Is this a straight path back to the main temple?"

"Stairs, all the way up," the instructor says.

"Right," Kerka says. "Thank you. Don't die." He directs that last bit at you.

"Yeah, um, good luck," Leifos adds.

"Okay," you say.

They head up the stairs.

You stare after them dubiously, and then, lacking any better ideas whatsoever, take the doll back from the girl. She beams at you. With totally empty white eyes. It is incredibly disturbing.

"Take this," the instructor says, handing you a small round object, brownish, a bit flattened on one side. "If you find yourself in danger, break it. It will summon me to your position." The girl has vanished again.

"Okay..." you say.

"It has to be you," he says, backing away, and the girl reappears behind a fountain, peering at him fearfully. "She's given you her token. You've made the connection, gotten through to her, and she may be able to rest, with your help. But if it does turn out to be a trap, if you find anything amiss, use the stone, do you understand?"

"Yes," you say, which is a total lie.

"Keepers guard your path," he says.

=== 8 ===

You follow the girl back down the avenue, and down corridors, and down a set of stairs, and then another, marking on the walls with chalk, numbering in various shapes to indicate direction and relation. Everything is just surreal, now. You're too tired to think straight. You're dreaming.

You've put your pole away, slung across your back, your lightstick tied to it. Your sword is sheathed at your side. All you have in your hands are the doll and chalk.

The girl turns and pauses, waiting for you to catch up when you lag behind, skipping ahead, glancing back at you from time to time, vanishing and reappearing, flickering from point to point.

You stumble from time to time, and trip on the uneven flooring.

She takes your hand, helping you back up, and draws you along happily, like a child would take her mother's hand on a walk.

Wraiths watch as you pass, their shapes appearing in the shadowed maws of doorways.

You proceed onward, downward. The architecture changes, becoming rougher, lower, more cramped. The walls seep, and water trickles. Ice forms in the corners. Frost forms fern shapes on the walls. The chalk quits working.

You hear, faintly, the roar of waterfalls.

You continue downward.

You come to a wide, open doorway, different from the others. It's not ornate, but it stands out: this one has words engraved into its frame over the opening, the first words you've seen in quite awhile. You stop and copy them down while the girl stares up at you impatiently, tugging at your arm.

You finish and let yourself be tugged into a wide, low hall. This time she's the one who stops and tells you something, but of course you cannot hear her. Doorways lead off into gloom, full of harsh shadows off your lightstick. A small stream trickles through the glistening stones, having carved itself a path long ago.

You shake your head vaguely, but peer at the other doorways - these, too, have words over them, but unlike the long lines above the entry, each of these is just a single word.

You copy them down as best you can as she cups her hands over her heart, and gestures around. All around, from each of the doorways, wraiths drift toward you, trailing tatters and shadow. She crosses her arms over her chest, touching her hands to her shoulders, like a mini hug.

The wraiths linger around you. This many, this close, you feel an aura emanating off of them, a sort of vague horror permeating your bones, cold and sickly.

You put your pad away. It's hopeless.

The girl shakes her head, and turns and continues on. The wraiths drift out of her way, and as you proceed once more, follow with you, a drifting, tattered escort.

At the door, two figures pull themselves out of the stone, scrapingly, like stone themselves, almost deafening against the almost silence. They're humanoid, but with vague, smoothed, geometric features. What resemble swords jut from the simulacra of hands.

The girl says something to them. They bow. The door opens.

The darkness beyond is a vast cavern, natural, unfinished, full of the roar of water. The stone is rough and broken, giving way to pitfalls and cliffs and terraces... or something, at least. Your light only illuminates a very small amount of actual ground. You pick your way after the girl as she navigates effortlessly around obstacles, sometimes leading you exactly, sometimes simply appearing around, or on top of various rocks and rubbles. Some of it looks like columns, evenly spaced, but toppled and ruined. There's a significance to that, somewhere, but you can't quite place it. Ordered columns. Doors in the dark. Ordered columns.

There is a hanging smell of grass mould, lingering in the wet and rocks.

Your lightstick goes out. The darkness is sudden, absolute.

You stop. You have no idea where you are, what's around you. The undead are almost completely silent, but you still feel the wraiths nearby. You sense motion, almost. A wind. The roar ahead. It's dizzying.

The girl takes your hand. The strangeness of her touch is a gentle thing, vague and not quite there, but now almost familiar to you, and as she draws you along in silence, you let yourself be led, walking flatly, as if on ice.

You let your mind wander. You dream, flittingly, of brighter places, and think of all the things you need to do. You can't think of anything. For once in your life, there are no looming deadlines... or perhaps you just don't remember what they are.

You stub your foot, almost tripping, but catch yourself. Mist drifts down from the roaring water as you continue to approach, wettening your bare arms.

The girl stops you with a light touch, and then withdraws. For a moment, in the silence, there's nothing there. You're alone, and lost, and trapped, no way out.

Lights begin to rise from the rocky ground, all around, vague glows with no discernible form, casting a soft illumination throughout the cavern. It's a large space, rough, full of cracks and clefts and toppled columns. The waterfall is just ahead, crashing down through an oddly circular shaft, carving a deep basin, and pushing its way through the chasm with unstoppable force. Ghosts, too, fill the cavern, a sea of forms not quite right, discoloured, off-shape, blurred, too much bloom. Closer, other undead gather around - your escort of wraiths, and also a group of well-armoured mummies, guards of some sort, all matching, a set. Zombies and other walkers linger, watching from between the ghosts, and around the guards. The girl, of course, is the center of all of it, the convergence as they all drift closer, eagerly awaiting the fin.

In the corners of your vision, you think you see other shapes, figures watching, floating, glowing, but when you look directly, there's nothing else there.

It occurs to you that you are in way over your head, rather like that time you tried to set up a wikifarm with a tiny team of volunteers and no budget whatsoever,<ref>Or that time, when you did have a budget, you tried to redo the entire interface for Wikipedia and all its sister projects... with no team whatsoever.</ref> except where failure there just meant a bunch of people yelled at you, failure here would mean your death. Or worse. The instructor wouldn't be of any help, either. If it came to it and you even managed to summon him, he'd just die too.

You're not even sure what your goal here is. What would you be failing ''at''?

The girl looks up at you expectantly, her guards flanking her. And they are her guards - whatever they were before is long-forgotten now. Somehow everything down here, all the lost dead, have rearranged themselves around this one little girl.

"What do you want me to do?" you ask. You gesture to yourself, and then her, and shrug enquiringly.

She looks down, and you realise what she's standing on. Bones, old and broken, scattered at her feet. A child's bones.

She says something, then repeats the sleeping gesture, putting her hands together at the side of her head, then leaning into it, then falling, softly, like a feather, to the ground, where she disappears.

You give her bones a confused look, and then glance to the guards, and the wraiths.

One of the wraiths passes you a cloth, dark and silky, almost wispy. Almost whispery.

You take it, but you're not really sure what it expects you to do with it.

Another wraith drifts down to the ground and tries to pick up one of the bones, but its hand passes right through it.

"Oh," you say.

It continues the motion, showing gathering them up, and you understand.

You lay out the cloth and gather up the bones yourself, and fragments of bones, watched by a broad, silent audience. The wraiths lead you to a few you initially missed, and finally nod that it is done. When one of them gestures for you to take the bones with, you roll up the cloth into a tight bundle, the size and shape, almost, of a swaddled infant.

You turn to go, and find the girl smiling up you.

A moment later, she's vanished again.

=== 9 ===

Two wraiths break off from the others to escort you back, appearing and disappearing along the way. Several of the lights also drift along with you, dancingly, in and out of the floor and walls, and doorways. You almost think you hear them warble, but perhaps you only imagine it. But maybe this is what ghostlights look like to the average person. Maybe. Ghostlights warble.

The girl doesn't reappear.

As the passageways become more familiar again, you start to see your markings, leading the way back. It feels like another lifetime ago, almost, when you put them down.

Finally, you come back to the avenue and its empty fountains. The lights drift around you. The wraiths drift in and out of view, not always there, sometimes ahead, sometimes to the side or behind.

The instructor is still there at the foot of the stairs, now with another, both apparently arguing with a different group of students, but they quickly end the argument and come to meet you as you approach. The lights fall away into the floor, no longer needed. The wraiths are gone, too, now.

"You made it," the instructor says. "I was starting to wonder. Any trouble?"

You hand him back the stone and shake your head. "It was very... down," you say.

"Deep, you mean?" the other asks.

You nod.

"So, uh, are you one of the new recruits, or what?" one of the students asks you.

"What," you tell him.

"Which is... what?" he asks, confused.

You don't really pay attention as the other instructor draws them aside. "I have her bones," you tell the first instructor. "The girl. What should I do with them?"

"Here," he says, reaching out to take them.

A wraith appears suddenly, threateningly, beside you. It says something at the instructor, blocking him.

He immediately withdraws. Blood trickles from his ears.

"What the fuck?" one of the students yells.

"Balls!" Another nearly falls to the floor, clutching his head. The instructor with them draws his sword, getting between them and the wraith, motioning for them to stay behind him.

You just sort of stand there, holding the bundle, not really sure what to do.

The wraith proceeds to also stay put, lingering beside you, looking down on the Guardians, daring them to try something.

"What is this?" the first instructor asks you shakily.

"They..." you pause, trying to find the words. Your head hurts too, now. "They're with the girl. Brought me back. Guides."

"They?" he asks.

"That went... there were many dead," you reply. "Two... of these and some lights were my guides back."

"I see," he says. He gives the other instructor a look.

"It looks like it wants her to do it herself," the other says. To you, he adds, "Did they specify where they wanted the girl interred?"

You shake your head. "I can't hear them. It's the same for me." You tap your head for emphasis.

"Then why trust you?" he asks. "Why allow you to walk in their halls unharmed, and even aid you back out?"

"The girl," the first says. "She must have been their center. And since you'd already spoken to the girl, that would have been enough."

"But if she doesn't have the knack..."

"She used sign language. They can still see."

"So how do we handle this?"

You look between them blankly, really not following the conversation as it goes on and apparently bonks into you a few times.

The students are also watching, staring at you and the wraith, looking what you would normally consider a delightful combination of confused and freaked out. Right now, however, it just makes you feel even more tired.

One of the instructors waves at you, and you give him a surprised look. "Huh?" you say. "What?"

"You'll need to take her all the way," he says. "Do you understand?"

You nod. The other instructor is already ushering the students up the stairs ahead.

"A Deathdealer will escort you through the main temple," the instructor tells you. "Come."

=== 10 ===

The Deathdealer turns out to be a fairly ordinary-looking balding man with a beard waiting by the large, barred, bolted, banded door as you emerge, still accompanied by a wraith.

"Seeker," he greets you, and draws his sword just enough to show the emblem, the dark skull and mask of Kyrule, stamped on the blade below the hilt.

"Deathdealer," you reply.

Another wraith drifts out of nothing into the space next to you and peers down at him as well.

He gives them a long look, and then glances back to you.

You shrug.

"I'll go clear a path," the instructor says.

The Deathdealer nods.

You proceed to stand around awkwardly for a bit, allowing him a headstart.

Finally, you point to the wraiths and ask, "These are called what?"

"Wraiths?" the Deathdealer asks.

"Wraiths?" you try to repeat, but it doesn't quite come out right. He corrects you, you 'oh' and try again.

You head out a bit later, the wraiths drifting in and out and ahead of you. It's still early, the sky dark, but there's a buzz all around as the temple awakens. You stick to side corridors and maintenance paths, going around the larger thoroughfares whenever possible.

It isn't always possible. Even when it is, sometimes there's folks around. The Deathdealer warns them off, and seeing the wraiths, they don't argue, hurrying out of the way.

In the thoroughfares, the path is cleared for you, initiates and priests alike crowded into the side halls, chattering. They grow silent as you and the Deathdealer pass, followed by a wraith, and then two. The wraiths stare off into the crowds, out of their shadowed cowls, trailing wisps and tatters silently.

A few priests cast protective spells, or put up wards, forming shields of energy in front of them. People whisper as you pass.

A hand brushes your shoulder from behind, like icy death, and it burns through your flesh, permeating deeply. You recoil, turning back, almost dropping the bundle. The wraiths have stopped, their cowls pointed in unison to a particular doorway. One of them says something you can't quite hear, even as the not quite sound of it worms into your head, and points, shaking its head.

A woman is standing somewhat out from the crowd, a meter or so into the corridor, watching intently. Her grey hair is up in a tight bun. There's something about her that you can't quite place.

"Who is she?" you ask. Your arm isn't really working anymore, you realise. The shoulder aches horribly.

"Samaran Adith," the Deathdealer says. "One of the Keepers of Magic."

"Can you ask her to move back?" you ask, trying to work around your arm not working by grabbing it with your other hand around the bundle. "The wraiths don't like her."

He gives you a long look.

You start to move forward again, just to test it. A wraith reaches out to stop you again. You stop immediately.

The Deathdealer goes to talk to her. She backs off, withdrawing into the side corridor.

The wraiths, satisfied, continue on, and you with them.

You get past the bulk of the people at long last, and the next groups you pass are much smaller. They still stare, though, and whisper, and it occurs to you that they're not just staring at the wraiths, and that you probably look quite awful yourself. You're carrying a strange black bundle, and covered in dirt, still a bit soggy. Your pants and tunic are filthy and torn, even a bit bloody in places. Your arms are smudged and discoloured, your hair a wet mass pulled back on your head. You try to wipe your forehead on your shoulder, just to see if you can. It hurts. It sort of works. It probably makes your face even dirtier.

You get to the catacombs. They're full of bones and tombs and crap. You're not really paying attention. You just follow the Deathdealer and the wraiths until they stop and sort of look at you expectantly. Or in the wraiths' case, vaguely and deadlily.

The walls are full of alcoves and depressions, full of bones and wrapped bodies and probably wrapped bones. There are quite a few urns. It all looks quite old. One of them, though, is empty, so you go over to it, give the wraiths an uncertain look, and place the girl's bundle there. You kneel down and kiss it, and set the doll on top. "Rest now, sweet sister," you whisper. You're not sure why you do this. It just feels right, and you go with it.

As you get up, turning around, the wraiths kneel as well, and then fade away in tatters.

"It's done, then," the Deathdealer says.

You realise the instructors are also there now, behind him.

"Okay," you say. "Good. Finally. I need to go sleep now."<ref>'Curl up in bed with the biggest sandwich I can find' would have been your exact phrasing, had you any idea how to translate it.</ref>

"Wait," the Deathdealer says, and stops you, placing a hand over your heart, sensing. He casts a healing spell, speaking a quick word, shaping it with his fingers, and touching it back to your heart with a soft, white light. All the aches and pains and soreness just fall away in a strange, almost intoxicating, relief.

"Oi," you say. "Thanks."

He nods. "Get some rest."

As you hurry off, a kitten squeak sounds from your scarf.

"Feck!" you moan. You'd forgotten about the creature.

=== 11 ===

You don't go sleep. You don't have time to sleep. You need to fix your... whatever it is. You're not sure what it is. It sounds like a kitten, but it's too small to be a kitten. It shouldn't even be alive. You shouldn't even be alive. You have that in common, you suppose. It matches your hair. Filthy, matted, black. So much in common. You're not really sure. You're not sure where you're going. Where are you going?

You stop. You're holding the creature in your hands, in some random corridor, somewhere in the main temple. The sun is coming up outside - the glow is bouncing down the walls, soft and rosy, oddly warm, but you don't feel warm at all. You should be places. You should... be doing something. Everyone else is doing things, the strange creatures who did sleep, who see things properly, who can likely focus properly, on the shadows, the light. They pass you by, not really paying you much heed beyond the odd look of surprise. It barely registers. You're very used to standing out.

You haven't been so tired in a long, long time. Not since university, since writing strange madnesses, since implementing your own distributed processing setup on the spot out of sheer necessity, to render too many frames all at once, all at the last minute.

You find a bathhouse, and take a bath. You need it. The three-legged matted fur-wad needs it, but then you realise you don't even know which end its head is on, and thus can't risk submerging it. You take it with you anyway, setting it at the side of the pool, picking at its matts haphazardly, trying to find a way in. It squeaks.

You find food, and sit in a corner of the cafeteria, and as you eat, you get out your tiny scissors and get to work. You snip carefully, tinily, excavating slowly, trying to find the other side of the matting, but not go too far. It works, mostly. The creature stays still in your hands, barely moving, as you murmur to it comfortingly, and randomly pick at your meal. At one point you go too far. You nick something. You feel a twinge of pain in your ear. "Sorry, love," you tell it, but it hardly even seems to notice.

One of the legs turns out to be a tail. This leaves you more confused than before. You find a head, a nose, a mouth. You feed it some now very cold meat, and it bites it down blindly. You wish you were more awake and could do a better job finding the eyes.

You leave the hair and gunk in your tray as you leave, lacking any better idea what to do with it. They don't have trash cans. They should have trash cans.

You take another bath, this time giving the creature a bath too, excavating further as you go. The water helps loosen the fur.

You find an empty room, and later another cafeteria, and continue.

Eventually you finish.

You wind up with a cat. It takes you entirely too long to figure out that it is a cat. You're just satisfied that it seems to have a normal amount of limbs after all, and eyes that respond properly, and the head is all there, and that it even seems to eat food.

And then you stare at it. At him. You give him some more bits of meat. He squeaks, happily, and almost even purrs.

"Holy crap you're a cat," you tell him. He's very small, the size of a young kitten, maybe, but with adult proportions, solid black (and for the moment very patchy) fur, and heterochromatic eyes.

He hops onto your scarf and burrows back inside.

You stare blankly off into space for a bit.

"Oh," you say.

You're not really sure what happens next. You wander off. You don't know where you're going, what you're doing. You find yourself somewhere. Someone asks you what you're doing, can they help you. You tell them you don't know, and wander off.

It's afternoon. Or maybe it's noon. You're practically swimming when you walk into Kerka, and he doesn't even recognise you at first, but you don't recognise him, either, until he grabs you and stops you from walking right on past him, saying, "Vardaman?"

You stare at him blankly, and then say, "What?"

"Where've you been?"

"Around," you say.

"Okay."

That sounds like the end of the conversation, so you don't bother to respond. Or should you?

"Sorry we just left you like that," he says.

"Eh," you say.

Juane and Leifos show up.

"Hey, you're alive!" Juane says. He looks tired too, but nowhere near as.

"Dammit, Juane, what are you doing up?" Kerka asks.

"I'm fine," Juane says. "Shut up."

"You guys okay?" you ask them.

"Perfectly," Juane says.

Kerka snorts in disbelief.

"I tried to tell him to stay," Leifos says. "He didn't listen. Obviously."

"He never listens. What'd you expect?" Kerka says.

"I dunno, I don't usually try to get him to do anything," Leifos says. "Or not do anything, which I suppose is your department?"

"Well, yeah, because it never works."

Juane rolls his eyes at you. You just sort of stare at him blankly.

You all head out and find your roofing overseer guy. The daylight is bizarre and strange. The humidity feels like a coffin.

The guy takes one look at you and Juane and says, "No."

"What?" Juane says.

"You're exhausted. I won't be having you two on my roofs," the overseer guy says. "What were you doing?"

"He fell in a hole, and most of the hole landed on top of him," Kerka says, indicating Juane. Juane grins sheepishly.

"And you?" the guy asks you.

"I had to wash my cat," you say.

He gives you a long look, and then just says, "Fine. Don't tell me. Just get some damn rest, and don't ever show up to me so tired again. If you are, don't come. Sleep. Instead."

You and Juane exchange utterly blank looks.

"Honestly as long as two of you show up, that's probably all I need anyway," the guy goes on. "You got that? I only need two of you from here on out. Doesn't matter which two."

"Cool?" Juane says.

"Yeah, we got that," Leifos says, giving Juane a light smack.

"Great," the guy says, and then shoos at you and Juane. "Now you two, go away!"

"Oh," you say. "Right. Sleep. I remember sleep. Maybe I should try that again sometime."

Juane laughs and wraps an arm around your shoulders, nearly falls over on top of you, and you both sort of awkwardly lead each other back inside, and toward the dormitory. Most of the awkwardness is the both of you nearly falling over from time to time. You're not really sure why he's leaning on you. You're not really sure why you're using him as a crutch. Neither of you seem to have enough energy to actually stop.

Juane drops you on your bed. The blackness is like a vast, rising cloud, blooming out around you, as it takes you lovingly down into its depths.

== Part 2: Reduction ==

<div class="cat">
Everything changed. It was so sudden, so unexpected. Someone listened, and heard. And ''found'' you.
</div>

=== 12 ===

<div class="cat">
Your name is... you don't know. You don't remember. Did you ever have a name? You understand the concept of a name, at least, or perhaps... ''she'' does?

She's asleep. You were asleep, you think. You were asleep for a very long time, since before. Before what? Before the darkness? You don't know. The darkness is gone, now. Everywhere around you is light and sound and voices, now. Who is she? Dreamer. Madwoman. Names?

She has so many names. They flit around inside your mind. So many thoughts. So many dreams.

Your rock. Your anchor. Everything is backwards, now.

You put your ears back, and crouch on top of her, just waiting for it to all fall down, for this bright, strange, brilliant new world to suddenly come crashing down on top of you and your anchor. Your ''Names''.

And then it does.
</div>

=== 13 ===

You wake up suddenly. Someone's yelling at you, pulling you out of bed. The tired-looking old man. He was gleeful, once. Now he's practically giddy. You stare at him blankly, and as soon as he lets go, fall over, mostly for effect.

And then you remember your cat, and completely panic. You have a cat. He's yours. You need to find him, protect him, where is he, where... you catch a glimpse...

You're on the ground. You're not sure what's going on. You're breathing again. Your chest hurts, your heart beating all too quickly. You want to flee, need to get out of here, be somewhere else, anywhere else, away, except... except you think you already did? You are somewhere else. Your hands are shaking. Your fingers are tense, your hands like claws, useless. You can't get them to move properly. Adrenaline. It does this. You try to untense. It doesn't work.

Breathe, you tell yourself. Just breathe.

You take stock, stand up, look around. You're in some sort of conference room, you think. Small space, long table, chairs. The cat is a weight in your scarf. It's dark, now, sun's gone down.

It's not dark. The sun's still out. You're dead tired, bone dead, something. It just feels dark. You want to sleep. You can't sleep. You need to breathe, to calm. You remember, vaguely: measured breathing. Measured to what? You make up a measure. You walk along, trying to figure out where you are, to remember what happened.

You pass other people. They probably know more. You don't know what to ask. They pass by.

You wind up in a room. A shrine. The room is the shrine. The shrine is the thing in the room. You don't know. It doesn't matter. You're calmer, now. Now all you have left is exhaustion. You fall to the floor, staring at the shrine. You say something, you think. You wonder what it was.

Kyrule?

=== 14 ===

You wake up slowly, clinging to the dream, and the warmth. You're warm. Comfortable. That can't be right.

You sit up, looking around, and realise someone's put a blanket over you. Your head was in her lap. Motherly. She's an older elven woman, oddly podgy, and yet also quite frail-looking.

"Hello!" she says, smiling at you warmly. "Welcome back."

"I'm sorry," you tell her, scooting away a bit, and then just totally blank. You are not even remotely equipped to handle a social situation such as this.

"I'm a librarian. Idreaya Hilaema Veloris," she says.

"What..." You look around, find your cat. You realise he's probably the lump in your tunic, and awkwardly fish him out of your bra. He peers up at you with his odd eyes, one blue, one purple. It occurs to you that these aren't the correct colours.<ref>Heterochromia normally occurs in ''white'' cats. And the odd eye is normally green, gold, or brown. Normal cat eye colours. Purple is not normal.</ref>

"Just... Idreaya. Sorry." Her eyes are purple, too. Maybe it's not so strange.

"No," you tell her, "I mean... why... what are you doing here? What am I doing here?"

"Well," she begins, "you'd fallen asleep. I found you on the floor, and you were really out of it, so I figured it'd be best if just... if nobody bothered you again, see? And since I'm an elf and I don't need much sleep anyway, I mean, why don't I just let her sleep here. I'll meditate, she'll sleep. Deal with it all in the morning."

"Is it morning?" you ask.

"It is!" she says brightly. "Will you run through the rituals with me?"

"Sure," you say, getting up entirely, relocating the cat to your scarf. The elf reaches out her arms and you pull her up as well.

Normally, the morning rituals are led by a group of priests, with all the initiates basically crowding in and saying the chorus while the priests up front do all the things, but with just the two of you, you wind up with a much more active role. The elf woman lights the candles, and then passes you the light to light the rest as she begins the verse. You trade off sections, speaking the chorus in unison, and you realise you actually understand, now. You understand the words. It's a history of gods, and the nature of the world, and the proper order of things. What you're all doing, essentially, as servants of Kyrule in particular.

"And from the darkness we came," the elf woman is saying.

"And from the light we depart," you reply, reciting as much the shapes of the words as the words themselves.






You finish, blowing out the light, and bow your heads in silence. This is probably supposed to be a time for prayer, you expect, but you just let your mind wander, instead. You are grey, standing guard between the light and the dark. Translate that into english, and it sounds awfully familiar...

After a bit, she turns to you, and says, "Thank you."

"For what?" you ask.

She laughs. "Where are your emblems? Or are you just trying to make a statement?"

"Emblems?" you ask, and then look down and realise your disc is gone. "Oh, I guess I lost it."

"What level?" she asks.

You give her a blank look.

"Are you an initiate?" she asks, sounding a bit surprised, and curious.

"Yeah," you tell her.

"You speak the words very well," she says. "Could have fooled me. Did fool me. Bet you'd fool a lot of others, too, if we play it right. Come on," she goes on, practically pushing you out, "let's get you some new emblems. Some really generic ones."

She leads you off down various corridors, doubling back a bit, clearly trying to remember herself quite where she's going, before finally finding some landmarks. She asks you how your studies are going, and you give her some vague answers. You try to come up with some questions of your own, and she gives you some advice which actually makes a fair amount of sense.

You wind up at a workshop of sorts. The front is all tables and stands, and it's full of discs, of various materials, laid out, in bins, in heaps and piles. They have various designs. They have various emblems, and words. Chains and cords and bits of jewellery are also all around. Behind it all are more tables, desks, chairs, and stands, with materials and many more in various stages of completion, and generally a huge mess all over the place.

In the middle of it all is a woman sitting with her back to the door, and to you. She waves over her shoulder and says, "Find whatever you're after and get out. I can't deal with this right now."

"Really? So we can just grab whatever we feel like, is that it?" your old elf lady asks. "Very cool. I think I'll be a..." She looks to you enquiringly.

"Declare yourself a Keeper... of Might," you suggest. Suddenly you have the nagging feeling she might actually be a Keeper anyway. But that'd be ridiculous. Wouldn't it?

"Hah!" your elf says. "What an excellent idea. Got anything for that?"

The woman gets up exasperatedly, and turns to face you. She's holding a very large dog, and half of her face appears to be melted off. "Fine," she says. "What are you looking for, and by whose authority?"

"Have you considered getting that looked at?" your elf asks.

"What's with the dog?" you ask.

The woman glares at the two of you. "It'll grow back," she says. "It always does."

"The dog?" you ask.

"No, you... what?" she says, looking confused. The dog, on the other hand, just looks really, really happy. Like a really, really happy samoyed. Being really, really happy.

"Nevermind," you say. You pick up a disc out of a nearby pile of black ones. The emblem on these is a rose, and underneath it, a single word: "Servant," you read aloud, sounding out the Daesh. You know the word immediately. In fact you seem to know all the words now.

"Ooo, that's a good one. Properly generic," your elf says, leaning over. "You should use that."

"Sure," you say. To the woman with the face and the dog, you ask, "So can I just take this, then?"

"You'll probably need a chain," she says irritably.

You get a chain, too, and a little clippy thing to apparently put the emblem on properly. All in all, it's way nicer than your previous setup had been, and probably a lot less likely to randomly fall off.

}}
}}

== Notes ==

<references />

{{hidden|

{{ administrative |

"You can't name anyone?"

"Jim," you say finally.

Jim walks in, with Kerka.

"I found us a witness," Kerka says. "Should help clear things up."

"And what is this?" the administrator asks.

"Oh, I'm with them," Kerka says. "I don't know why I didn't get the invite." He sidles up next you you, looking weirdly innocent.

"So, clarify anything here if I'm wrong," Jim says, "but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it. You've been getting some complaints about this group. Probably from Harrik? Maybe even exclusively from Harrik?"

"Your feud with Harrik is well known, Jim," the administrator says.

"Oh, humour me," Jim says. "Because I know these four. They're hard workers. They're always on time, even when they shouldn't be. When they shouldn't have shown up at all." He gives you and Juane a somewhat pointed look, before turning back to the administrator. "Now are you going to tell me that after sending me what he probably thought were incompetents, after a long line of sending me incompetents, several of whom have been killed falling off the roofs, that after these lot turned out not to be, Harrik is trying to have them expelled?"

"Now, really, that's going it a bit far, isn't it?" she begins.

"Is it? Tell me, what are the complaints?"

"The latest?" she says. "They were taking a nap when they should have been working. Add to that," She points at you. "She was missing most of yesterday, assaulted Harrik, and has not shown up to any of her duties."

"And yet she's here, isn't she?" Jim says. "How'd you manage that if you couldn't find her for anything else?"

"Now I really don't think that's..." she begins, dismissively, but Jim cuts her off.

"The reason they were taking a nap," he says, "was because I told them to. Am I no longer responsible to manage my own workers?"

"If that's true, then why did they not simply say so?" she asks.

"Probably because Harrik wouldn't let them," Jim says flatly. The administrator starts to protest, but Jim just goes on, "Why don't we ask them? Maybe let them say so?"

"Very well," she says tiredly. "What is your version?"

"Basically?" Juane says, "we were asleep. And then suddenly someone's throwing us on the floor yelling at us. That about sum it up?"

"I... yeah," you say. "I couldn't even understand what he was saying. I think he was picking me up off the floor, or something. I don't really remember..."

"Yeah, you kind of freaked out, there," Juane says. To the administrator, he goes on, "I'm gonna guess the 'assault' was her trying to get him to let go of her, because he wouldn't until she kicked him a few times. It was... kind of impressive."

You give him a confused look.

"Anyway," Juane continues, "She finally got away and fled, so Harrik turned on me and started lecturing... or threatening or however you want to spin it. Saying things like 'your days are numbered, you'll be out of here for this, who do you think you are'. He was a funny shade of purple at this point. Can't be healthy. And finally he ran out of things to say and left and I could get back to my nap."

The administrator gapes at him.

"Was it a nice nap?" Leifos asks.

"Oh, I feel much better, now," Juane says.

"You look it," Jim says. "Vardaman not so much. Another cat?"

"No, I..." You shake you head. "Apparently I passed out on the floor somewhere."

Jim gives you a flat look, and then says to the administrator, "Can we get them moved to another dormitory?"

"The others are full," she says.

"Their own quarters, then," Jim says.

"For initiates this new?"

"Yes?"

While they argue it out, you flop up your sleeves and look at your arms. There's considerable bruising, especially on your left wrist. "Oh," you say.

"Yeah, I wasn't making that up," Juane says.

}}

{{ room |

Jim leads you all to your new quarters, with everything all now apparently settled, checking the numbers against the note until you get to apparently the right door. He unlocks it, peers inside, and shrugs, handing Kerka the key. "All yours," he says.

He stops you as the others go in to check it out. "What happened?" he asks quietly. "Did you at least find somewhere safe?"

"Yeah," you say.

"If Harrik," Jim says, "If ''anyone'' ever hurts you again, I will give them Hells."

You smile disarmingly. You're really not sure what to say to this.

"You need more sleep," Jim says.

"Always do," you tell him. "That's my curse."

He gives you a slight chuckle at that, and goes.

You head in and check out the room yourself.

"Oh hey we do all fit!" Kerka says loudly.

"Well maybe if you weren't so fat there'd be some space left over," Leifos says.

"I am not fat, I am merely..." Kerka starts, and then stops. "Okay, maybe I am a bit fat. What's your point?"

"That was my point," Leifos says.

"Huh?" Kerka says.

"It's kind of small," Juane tells you. And he's not wrong:

}}

{{ stories |

You flip through and find the relevant section, and then stop and actually read it. It's basically what you expected: Shalias zu Harenai, Keeper of Magic, caught the Death of Souls doing research on it in the first place (that bit you hadn't known, exactly, but it makes sense). Didn't immediately tell anyone, just kept right on studying it, taking detailed notes, testing various possible treatments on herself. Finally told some other folks after she didn't die after some two weeks, because that was odd. More studying. Was definitely deteriorating, but unusually slowly - normally the total course of the disease would be a week, tops. Finally just left. Insisted she needed to study it properly, her own way. Folks with her tried to stop her, including two Deathdealers, one of whom she killed. Not really known what she did after that (necromancy, mostly, you think, since you know she was one, and otherwise why bother leaving), but then she showed up in the City of Death, the planar realm of Kyrule himself, several weeks later. There, Kyrule gave her the means to cure it, asking only for her own sacrifice, but she was already under the control of the Death of Souls and instead used this means to only remove it from herself. Then, not wanting to own up to the betrayal it made her commit, she fled.

It all fits how you know the story until the end.

"So according to this, Shalias zu Harenai was made by the Death of Souls to betray Kyrule," you say. "Never mind that that doesn't even make sense, it's just wrong. Which is... sort of what we were arguing about."

"Why do you say it's wrong?" Idreaya asks.

"The instructor said that this is the story according to the Keepers, but the Keeper version doesn't have anything about what actually caused it, just that she had the means to end it all, and didn't, saving only herself. That's what made it a betrayal, that she chose to do this, of her own will. Whereas if she was being controlled by the Death of Souls, then her actions wouldn't even have been her own, and thus it wouldn't have been a betrayal at that point anyway. Just... sad. And confusing."

"And you don't believe him because it doesn't make sense?"

"No, because it's wrong," you say.<ref>Someone is wrong on the internet! In fact someone is wrong full stop; who even cares if it's the internet?!</ref>

"How would you know that?" Idreaya asks. "You're not a Keeper, are you?"

"Er, no," you reply.

"So how do you know?"

You try to come up with an answer. In character, you have nothing: only the Keepers would know precisely what's right or wrong, and you're obviously not. Unless a Keeper had told you, which hadn't happened. It wouldn't concretely be in any book aside from one that you're not even remotely supposed to know about, which pertains to a very particular Keeper that even the ''other Keepers'' don't know about. And out of character, you're really not prepared to just come out and say 'Yo I'm actually from another universe and I used to write about this stuff for fun and profit and that's why I know all these terribly secret things about your cult.' Or anything else even remotely true, for that matter.

"I... I'm not really prepared to answer that question," you say.

"Why not?" she asks.

"Because it's a giant can of worms," you tell her. "And you open a can of worms and worms come out and they wiggle their way everywhere, and before you know it the whole room is just covered in worms. And then you step on them because they're all over the floor, too, and they go splat and there's just no cleaning that up. At least not anytime soon..."

Idreaya is eyeing you curiously. "But there is an answer in that can," she says finally. "And I don't think you've done anything particularly awful to get it there."

"Look, I'm sorry. I don't know who I can trust," you tell her. "Or if I should trust anyone, or if I should even be here... or if I'm even really here at all."

"You need to trust someone," she says. "You need to talk to someone. If you're not sure about this... how are you supposed to handle any of it alone?"

"I've just kind of been ignoring that minor point," you tell her.

She narrows her eyes. "Sit down. Help me sort these books, and we'll talk about it."

"But..." you start.

"Sit," she says forcefully, indicating a nearby chair on its side by the wall.

You get the chair and sit. She runs you through the system - it's not exactly Dewey, but it seems to work, and mostly you're just matching the cards up to the returned books at this point anyway - and then you get to work in silence. You don't know what to say. You don't know where to start.

"Are you doing all right?" Idreaya asks.

"I don't even know," you tell her.

"I like to think this is real," she says.

You nod and shove a stack of books onto a cart, and get another pile.

"But I mean," Idreaya goes on, "I'm not sure anyone knows for sure that any of this is real. Does it really change anything? All you can do is work with whatever's in front of you, real or not."

"I suppose," you say. That is basically what you've been doing thus far.

}}

{{ research |

...

You also sketch out all the various monsters you'd run into.

"We need to get all of these identified," Kerka says, gathering them up. "And we should see about some translations for the text we found, and reference materials we can continue to use in general. And we'll probably want to find some floor plans and cross-reference where we were with that."

"Have fun with that," Juane says.

"Er..." Leifos adds.

"Sounds like high time we hit the libraries," you say.

"That's what I'm thinking," Kerka says.

}}

{{ invitation |


He sees you and stops, letting the procession go on past him, and then, with a look you know entirely to well, starts heading right for you.

Not even thinking, you flee. You know that look. It's the look of someone who wants you to do something for them. Usually something utterly disgusting and horrible involving ancient versions of MediaWiki. For free.

This does not work at all. He grabs you almost immediately, spinning you around.

"Oh, hello," you say, not even missing a beat. "I didn't see you there!"

"What?" he says, looking almost confused.

"Uh..." you say. Usually this totally confuses them. But usually 'they' are Perennial, a user with a tendency to forward tasks to many, many people, and who has many project ideas, and with whom, at all costs, it is key to avoid becoming trapped in a conversation. This guy is clearly much more on top of things than Perennial.

"Okay, look," you say, trying to shrug out of his grip. It doesn't work. "Whatever it is you want, I don't work for free, my rates are on my site, and I have a strict no pre-ContentFramework policy. Tell me you're on at least 1.32."

"What in the world are you talking about?" he says, now sounding utterly lost.

You try to keep a straight face. Obviously this isn't MediaWiki-related, but you had to say it anyway. "Sorry. What was it, then?"

"What's your name?" he asks.

"Vardaman," you tell him.

He lets go, finally. "You're a hard woman to find, Vardaman."

"Yeah, well, if people can't find me, I don't have to run away from them."

"Morgahn told me what you did in the Warrens," he says. "That was a brave thing, walking in there alone."

"It was stupid." Almost as stupid as the whole ContentFramework thing. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Just break absolutely everything once, so we never have to again! Brilliant!

"Yes," he says. "Very."

You try to come up with a polite response to that, before finally just giving up entirely. "I'm sorry," you tell him, "what exactly was it you wanted from me?"

"To the point, then," he says. "Would you be willing to join the Guardians of the Passing to do more stupid things?"

For a moment, you can't think of any response to this, polite or otherwise. Your mind just blanks. "Er..." you say. "Could we maybe have this conversation sometime when I'm actually awake?"

"And when would that be?" he asks.

"Sorry," you say. "I mean, yeah. Of course. Would my... party be invited too?"


}}

{{ witch |



}}

{{ ordination |

"Hmm," Annabelle says. "Some sort of ritual, I'm sure. Oaths and some sort of material component, and getting you on the ground, probably. They like doing that. Go find out."

"Er, how?"

"Ask around. Practice your innocuous prying. These are important skills, you know, information gathering, not letting anyone on about what you're really after."

"And what is it, exactly, that I'm really after?" you ask.

"Power," Annabelle says. "Right now, you don't have any, and it's eating away at the both of you. Powerless cat who hardly remembers how to cat, powerless witch who just... isn't, really. But the priests? They get access to the god's own power, and we will steep you in it, and once you're acclimated to the very nature of magic, that's when you'll open up your soul and let it flow free."

You stare at her blankly. She eyes you expectantly.

You stare at her some more.

Finally, you say, "What."

"It's safe," she tells you reassuringly. "Probably. We'll know more once you're able to channel. See how well you do with any magic at all."

This, of course, isn't reassuring at all, and you continue to just sort of stare at her.

"Oh, go on," she says, waving you out. "Just go! Find out. Nab some books if you have to."





You wind up in the library. You're not really sure about the books. You ask Idreaya.

Specifically, you ask her, "How do you make priests around here?"

"How do you mean?"

"There's different levels of priests, right? How does that work? How do they... become whatever they are?" you ask. "Does someone just point at them and say, 'yo, you're a priest now', or are there fancy rituals and such? Is there magic involved? Does it vary by region? Has it changed much over time?"

"That's more than one question, you know," Idreaya says, putting aside her book.

"I've got... more," you point out.

"Oh?"

"Do they bless dorm rooms and heavy artillery?"

She gives you a curious look. "You know," she says finally, "some of this, at least, should be covered in your classes."

"Sure," you say. "We've discussed the mysteries, and the different meanings to each level, but how does it work in practice? What does it look like? Where can I read up ''in detail''?"

Idreaya stands up, rising gracefully out of her chair, even as the chair falls over backwards behind her. "Why don't I just show you?" she says.

"Er, what?" you say.

Idreaya gives her chair a slight wave as she comes around the desk, and it rights itself behind her. "Come on."

You follow her out, confused.

You follow her down some corridors.

You follow her as she peers into some rooms, tutting.

You follow her to the point where you become convinced she's quite lost, and then you follow her into a small shrine.

"This'll do," she says.

"What?" you ask.

Idreaya putters about the backside of the shrine, muttering, and then pulls out a wine bottle. "Okay," she says, turning back to you. "Basically the way this works is we normally have three priests conducting the ceremony. Start with a prayer, the applicant kneels before them..." She looks at you expectantly. "Kneel, will you?"

"Are you three priests?" you ask, but get down on your knees regardless.

"Yes," she says. "By the Keepers, we name before the Eternal our Voices, and the Seekers who shall aid us. Something something I don't actually know how the prayer goes, but you get the idea."

"Um..." you say. You are starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable with this.

"The specifics don't really matter," Idreaya tells you, popping open the bottle. "Which is great, because I don't know them." She pours some wine into the palm of her hand. It's almost black, and as it trickles between her fingers, it looks just like blood.

"As wine, the blood flows," she intones, "As blood, the waters flow behind all worlds." She reaches out and draws on your face with some of the wine. "I mark you, Seeker, before Kyrule. From blood to ash, you are witnessed."

Idreaya watches you for a moment, and then shrugs slightly. "That's the first one. Now the second, that's where it gets properly interesting. We can basically just keep going from there." She pours some more wine on her hand, and then smears it down her face before taking a swig of it. "Kyrule! Keeper! Guardian! Seeker! We wash our souls in the blood of the living, as you wash them in the waters of Death!" She then dumps some on your head as well, and its coldness trickles down your hair and face.

Some of it gets in your eyes and you try to blink it out. It strikes you that Idreaya doesn't look entirely serious. In fact it almost looks like she's doing her best to keep a straight face, and is barely even succeeding. You're just completely lost at this point, but you wouldn't even know where to begin to argue.

"Repeat after me," Idreaya tells you. "'As a Seeker, I take on the burden of the Emissary.'"

You give up. "As a Seeker, I take on the burden of the Emissary."

"'As the Emissary, I give up my mortal soul, that I might speak for and be as the god Kyrule himself.'"

"As the Emissary, I give up my... soul, that I might speak for and be as the god Kyrule himself."

"'I begin anew. I am reborn remade.'"

"I begin anew. I am reborn remade."

"You are witnessed, Vardaman," Idreaya says, passing you the bottle. "Now drink."

"I am witnessed," you whisper, and take a swig of the dark, sweet, bitter wine.

"Finish it," Idreaya says.

"Is that really necessary?" you ask her.

"Yes," she says. "I mean, normally it'd be split up between several ascendants, but... yes. It's important." She nods for emphasis.

You give her a dubious look, but oblige and start chugging. It's only about half full at this point, at least, so there's that. And chugging. Half full was still pretty full. Chugging.

You finally finish it, rather out of breath, and already a bit woozy.

Idreaya takes back the empty bottle.

"Now what?" you ask.

"Wait for it," she says.

"What?"

"Just wait."

You wait.

It hits you like a brick to the brain, the solid heavy sweetness of the thick, blood-like wine, and also something far, far stranger, hidden behind it all, not quite there, just out of reach. The room careens around you, and suddenly you're on the floor, but even that won't stay put, so you give up, quit moving entirely, but everything is moving around you, reeling, drifting, spinning. You can't bring your eyes together. The images won't come together. Your limbs are like lead, rooted to the floor, heavy and unyielding, but you ignore it and try to move yourself anyway, pretending everything is fine, normal. You're drunk. You're very, very drunk, but you've had considerable practice being drunk, and know exactly how to handle it, despite this probably being more drunk than you've ever been before.<ref>The most drunk you'd ever been previously was that time you went bar hopping one year on Halloween. You were Death, and over the course of a few hours went through at least four glasses of whiskey, a glass of absinth, two highly-alcoholic blue drinks (possibly three), some cocktail with nutmeg in, and a glass of Guinness. You suspect that had you not gone home and passed out when you had, the real Death might have had to show up and collect you.</ref>

You pull yourself upright, sitting. You don't even try to focus your eyes, or focus on any particular point. Somewhere in your brain, you still know the layout of the room, and that's good enough. The big mass of complexity, that's the shrine. Idreaya is the elf shape bursting out laughing.

"Is it so funny?" you ask. Your brain can't even keep up with the words, but you just keep going, not waiting to see if they're right.

"Yes!" she laughs. "The look on your face! Priceless."

"Idreaya," you say. "This..." It's getting progressively harder to speak. You can hardly see at all anymore.

"Give it a moment," she tells you.

The room reels around you.

You're lying on the floor again, too heavy to move. Idreaya is waggling her hands at the shrine, and then she pokes it, frowning. You're more aware again now. A bit.

A bit is not very much.

"Idreaya," you say again, "why did you do that?"

"Because," she says.

You wait for her to continue for entirely too long before you realise she isn't going to.

"Because why?" you ask.

"Because you were going to anyway," she says, peering down at you. "Might as well do it proper, hmm?"

"Oh," you say. You're still lying on the floor, heavy, unsure. That wasn't the answer you wanted to hear.

Someone else says something, and Idreaya just says brightly, "Hello!"

"Yeah, er, what are you doing?" he asks, possibly again.

You pry yourself up and peer at him blurrily. You still can't really get your eyes to focus. Hou don't even bother. "Hi," you tell him.

He gives you an uncertain look.

"I swear to drunk I am not the gods," you tell him.

"What..." he says again.

"Ask the Keeper," you mutter, gesturing toward Idreaya, and fall back to the floor.

He goes. You're not really sure what happens. Idreaya helps you up, shaking her head. "How do you know?" she asks.

"Bees," you tell her.



}}

{{ practice |

You go through the exercises, your partner explaining some of them as you go. He smiles shyly at you, uncertainly, and you try to put him at ease by being a good student, attentive and on track. Maybe it works. It's definitely exercise. It reminds you of dance, when you'd been visiting a friend a few years back and joined her in her dance practice.

One of the instructors is watching you, and you do your best to ignore him, focussing instead on the moves, feeling the vague shimmer of power as you maintain your channel.

"Stop," the instructor commands. He gestures your partner aside, and the guy bows and backs away as the instructor goes on to address you specifically. "You're channelling."

"Er... what?" you say. You almost stop right there, but then figure you might as well wait to see if he actually objects or not before you go one way or the other with it.

"Low power," he says. "You're not doing anything with it, simply maintaining the connection. Why?"

"Practice," you tell him.

He nods, slowly, and then suddenly his sword is out, drawn impossibly fast. He rushes you, stabbing you through the chest, one swift, deep thrust, through bone and muscle alike, and at first it doesn't even hurt. It just feels wrong, very wrong, as the breath is knocked out of you, as the world darkens and grows vague around you.

"Keep your connection up," he tells you. "It will sustain you, keep you alive so long as you continue to channel. Consider this... practice... as well. We will see how long your concentration holds."

You do, barely, clinging to the channel as a lifeline as he lets go, and then the pain hits you, the deep reverberating horror of broken bones, as well as a sharp fire in your arms and shoulders and back, all around, like cramps. You fall heavily to your knees, catching yourself with your hands, remaining only barely upright as the room, everything, swirls around you.

It doesn't matter anymore. None of it matters. Your whole existence has become a strange amalgamation of pain and colour blurred around you like vertigo. You channel, you have to channel, pulling power like the starving gobble food, but trying to moderate the flow, not pull too much, not go too far. You can't let go, but you can't... even now a part of you still knows...

The others are still training, going through the exercises, moving around you, giving you berth. You're glad, sort of. You wouldn't want to be a spectacle...

You aren't breathing. Your heart... the sword is in the way... it cannot pump. You have no heart left. You're dead. You fumble at the blade with your hand and it cuts it, and even as the skin breaks neatly and the hot slash of pain tells you this is real, this is your hand, connected to your own little world of agony, it hardly bleeds, only the slightest glimmer...

You focus on the channel, the channel, the flow of magic, the power coming into you, sustaining you, keeping you alive. You feel it replacing your functions, you feel it becoming, you feel... you keep it going. You keep channelling. It's getting harder, as your focus flickers. It flickers more.

You put your focus to words, aligning the patterns to the words, the words to the pattern, the pattern of keeping the channel going. You don't even know the words, or where they're from. It doesn't matter. You speak them, in your mind. You become them, as they become you.

It doesn't become more bearable. There is no transition in which the pain becomes normalised and fades away, no respite, no sweet release. The pain just gets worse. You're making it worse, the more you hold on, the longer you continue channelling, forcing your body to live, even as it shouldn't. Death would be the only release, and that isn't an option, so you keep going, keep drawing more and more and more power, even as it eats away at you, even as the pain mounts...

But the words. You speak the words, and keep going. They sustain you, as much as the magic itself. The words, too, are power, and you're starting to understand...

Around you, shapes and colours, motion... there is a world out there, beyond your agony. You used to...

Your focus flickers. The words are becoming huge, larger than life, nothing at all.

Somewhere, you think you hear yourself screaming.

It doesn't help.

There's a force, a pressure. Your shoulder. You gasp as you feel the blade ''move'' inside of you, a wrongness sliding and pulling, even as the pain explodes anew, everywhere, filling everything, fresh and...

Your focus shatters. You lose your connection. Blackness. Blackness, warm and welcoming, blooms around you like a great flower, enveloping you in its soft embrace.

And then the blackness falls away, and suddenly the world is back, full of light and sound and colour, and feelings, feelings that aren't pain, but similar, stranger. The texture of the floor beneath you. Your pants pressing into your legs. The air cutting into your dry throat. The hand on your shoulder, holding you up. Hunger in the pit of your stomach, a strange warmth in your chest...

You're breathing.

It's the first instructor, the one you talked to when you came in, whose name you've already forgotten, or were, perhaps, never really paying attention to in the first place. He's knelt in front of you, holding you up, a hand on your shoulder, another on your chest. The warmth fades as he withdraws his fingers, now also covered in blood. Your blood.

Your tunic is covered in blood, drying, sticky. The sword is covered in blood, lying on the floor behind him, discarded.

He's surprised. Shocked. He doesn't even bother to hide it, but you're not really sure what to do with this information, either. In fact you're not really sure what's going on at all.

Someone says something behind him, and he glances back, but then gives you an uncertain look, hesitant to get up, to leave you? You give him your best reassuring smile. It's basically your only smile that isn't a manic grin. It seems to satisfy him, and he gets up, and they talk.

No. They yell.

You sit there, trying to work out what happened. Your hand is healed now, too. You were channelling. You were... dead. Practice. Combat training. How did you wind up... you all had managed to talk your way into some real training, and you were going to learn to fight, not... this?

You hear snippets, vaguely.

"We're not here to be gentle, Kamar. We're here to make Deathdealers."

"And you really think traumatising our newest recruits is going to help with that?"

"They'll all be traumatised by the time they're done."

The others. Your sword guys. You look around, trying to find them. The room is almost empty, now. A few stragglers gathering their things and heading out. Juane, nearby, eyeing you worriedly, insistently, but blocked by the other two instructors, arguing, with Leifos behind him. Kerka walking over nonchalantly, totally unnoticed.

"Oi," Kerka says.

"Hey," you reply. Your voice is barely a whisper.

"Are you okay?"

He's giving you a rather dubious look, like he doesn't even believe the question, let alone anything you might say to it, and you just stare up at him for a moment, trying to come up with an answer, trying to figure out what 'okay' even is.

You consider channelling again. Maybe it would help. It wouldn't help, and besides, Annabelle had said it was just as important to be able to stop, to not channel, as to do it at all.

Finally you just shake your head.

"Okay," he says. "I am going to get you onto your feet, and then we're going to run for it. How's that sound?"

You almost laugh, but it comes out as a croak, instead, broken and horrible.

One of the instructors stops Kerka. The first one, Kamar? "I'm sorry," he says.

The other one crouches down in front of you, expressionless, in his eyes a horrible dead calm. His initial attack had come out of nowhere, out of that same dead calm, and now as he gazes into your eyes, you stare back, transfixed. He reaches out and touches his index and middle finger to your temple.

You're channelling. You don't know why. You just are.

Fear rises inside of you, cold, tight. It's not you channelling. You have no control, no focus. The power is simply flowing through you, unabated, as those cold eyes bore into you. It burns at your mind, tingling, shimmering, that feeling of magic itself, but rising, as more and more and more is pulled through you.

"No," you beg. "Please, no..."

But it doesn't stop. He doesn't stop.

You recognise this. You try to remember what it's called, what to do, but you cannot think, cannot focus on anything, only the current pushing through you, torrential, even as it pushes your very mind aside, as it slimes through everything you are. Mind... your mind is stretching, fighting back. It wasn't meant to stretch at all. Soul siphon. You remember now. Don't fight it, makes it worse. But it burns, and shimmers, and cuts, and you want to fight it, you have to, everything left of you insists. So you fight that instead, fighting not to fight, because it won't help, it can't help.

There is no fighting this, not directly. Only way to fight it is to do it right back. You wouldn't know where to start.

So you try to just let it happen, instead, fighting only yourself. You plead with him, begging, screaming, even you retreat into yourself, even as the power increases, molten and immense, burning you away in its whiteness.

It stops, suddenly, cut off. The hole it leaves behind is blinding, gaping, unclean. An empty wound, too big for your mind, and you can't touch it, can't think about it, mustn't, or it'll just hurt even more. It does hurt, doesn't it? You're too afraid to check.

The man crouched in front of you is still watching you, staring intently. He's a Deathdealer. For any of Kyrule's faithful to dare do such of thing, it would have to be a Deathdealer.

"You're different," he says. "One of the chosen?"

"Please," you whisper, "don't..."

"I won't do that again," he tells you. "And we'll teach you how to fight it. The time will come when you will stand against everything, and nothing will defeat you."

"No..." you whisper, uncomprehendingly. You have nothing left, no energy, no interest. You're broken, and that's all you are.

He gets up, and you sink to the floor. It greets you like an old friend, hard and unyielding, digging into all of your corners, sticky, pushing into you even as you push into it, but a friend nonetheless. It's there. It's solid. It isn't going anywhere, doing anything, changing. For the moment, that is enough.

Your sword guys are standing over you. Receiving instructions. What to do with you. They don't like it. They argue. They're angry. They want an explanation, but they don't get any. You almost have one, as you lie on the floor, feeling its cool. Almost.

They pick you up, carry you out, Juane holding you as gently as he can, and you tell him, "Annabelle. Annabelle."

They understand.
}}

{{ oracle |

You weren't chosen. You chose yourself. And yet the darkness this path will lead you down, you know where it ends.

I know where it middles.

I see you. You walk into it willingly, alone. But not. There is another, a light to guide you. Ariel. Ariel. She doesn't come out. You don't come out... you.
And you know. You could avoid all this so easily. Walk away at any point. Turn your back. Why don't you?

I can't.

No, not anymore. Bound in words, and blood. But even that you chose to do. You were afraid, weren't you? You were afraid you wouldn't see it through, and that's why you wrote it so you had to, because unlike so many others, you know yourself. You know how easy it has become for you... to let go.
So you made it so you could let go. That your path was set. And when you come out the other side, shrouded in black, corrupt, lost to us all, what then? What will you do when your very bonds are broken by aeons on the other side?
Our rules don't apply there. We can't protect you.

I'll break.

Yes.

I'll trust... her.

}}

{{ translation |

"...Maintenance closet," Kerka says. "It says 'maintenance closet'?"

"Apparently," you reply. "I mean..." You look over Pellier's notes again. "Yeah, that's the only thing that makes sense."

"Wasn't this the line we found over that definitely not a closet?" Kerka asks.

"Yup," you say.

"Okay. Next?"

}}

{{ put down to a page |

It occurs to you that you're doing this wrong. You're losing track of yourself, and also of who you're supposed to be. You've made promises you don't know how to keep, for the sake of beliefs you don't hold. And your own? What are your own?

You need a record. Something to come back to. Something to remind yourself.

Who are you?

You get a fresh sheet of paper. You bind it with a kiss. You write it down in english. You start with your name.

----

My name is Jennifer Mar. I'm a writer - of stories, of software, and of everything in between. I paint worlds and products depicting all of what I believe without ever really saying it, and thus far, this has been enough - as I have encountered more, I have only grown as my perspectives changed to incorporate this new knowledge.

Now, however, I am faced with a challenge. To not be Jennifer Mar. To not be me. To not serve the knowledge and understanding that has driven me thus far. Ense Vardaman is someone else. What he believes and serves is something else. It is contrary to me, and what Kyrule would ask is also contrary.

I believe in freedom and knowledge. I believe in the challenge, in the fight. I believe in pain and in facing what we fear - that we are all alone, that the world is cruel, that we are faulty, that existence is vast and uncaring, and that even amidst what little we perceive, we will be gone in the merest instant, and that nothing lasts forever. But I believe in kindness, too. I believe monuments can be big or small, that the simplest gestures can change the world - and I believe the world is worth changing. I believe people are worth saving, even in our merest instants of survival, and that this life is what we make it, even as it's all we have. We all serve something bigger - ideas, possibility, our future, a grasp of the divine, our dearest families - and this is what makes us strong.

Understanding comes from challenge, and even the most self-evident concepts must always be challenged - either that they might prove to be wrong, or so that we might understand why it is they're right.

And we must understand. It is not for nothing. Everything is for nothing. There is duality to every notion, perspectives that are true even as they contradict each other utterly. The truth may be a tautology. It may not exist. Understanding is multifaceted. We will never understand.

We understand more than we realise.

To understand, seek out perspective. The most true things, the most divine, are amalgamations of perspective, and yet even they might be wrong. Perspective shows the faults. It allows the challenge.

Words are meaning. We use them to understand, to communicate understanding, to learn.

* Words are not understanding.
* Words are not meaning, but they shape meaning.
* Words can lie.
* Words can be wrong.
* Words change. Consider origin and common usage.
* Lies might paint the truth in more brilliant colour than the correct words ever could.
* The truth must always be free.

Kyrule is wrong, as are all who would hide the truth, and hide from it.

There is no truth too dangerous to reveal, only those who lack the understanding to handle it. And they will never learn if not for experience.

Vardaman learned this too, at some point.

}}

{{ statue of azorres | (this didn't happen)

You hang back, and then slip away from the rest of the group when noone is looking. Noone is really paying attention in general. Noone really notices.

You approach the statue uncertainly, not really sure what to expect. You'd totally forgotten about this, about Azorres and the statues, how very at-odds they had been with the Deathdealers, how very helpful they had been when your other character had needed help.

"Statue?" you say quietly.

"Hello again, dear dreamer." The voice echoing out around you, huge and deep and unreal. "I feel we have spoken before."

You look up at it uncertainly. This... was not what you were expecting.

"What is it?" it asks.

That's the problem. You don't actually know. You don't know what to say. You don't know what to ask. You don't know if you can trust it, or Azorres, or anything. You don't know a damn thing, and it's eating at you, and there has to be something, something...

"Help me," you say quietly. "Tell me this is real, or... something..."

"And what if I can't?" The statue's voice is alien and old, a tremor of stone and steel, unmoved by time. "We do not know if any of this is real, not truly," it says. "We only tell each other we are real to affirm what we already fear to be the case, but it does not change the facts, only our perception of the facts."

"So what, just pretend I'm real and hope it's true?" you say.

"That is all anyone can do," the statue says.

"But I'm not," you say.

"You are standing there," the statue replies. "Is that not real to you? You are speaking; are the words not real?"

"I'm not who say I am," you say. "I'm not who they think I am. I'm not any of this, and I don't know what to do..."

"Who are you?" the statue asks.

"I don't know!" you plead. "I don't, I really don't."

"You know who you are trying to be. What is at odds with this?"

"I... I'm not him. I'm not Vardaman. He's..." You drop to your knees. You're not really sure what you can say, or what's true. "...strong."

"You are here, dear dreamer, asking for help," the statue murmurs. "Is that not strength? To go where you know you must? To try, even when you are afraid?"

"I... don't know..."

"Who are you, to you?"

There's a long silence. You try to think, come up with something, except the problem is, you're not even sure yourself, anymore. "I'm a writer," you say. "My name is Jennifer Mar. I found a book at a thrift store, and when I read it, it sent me here. To the world I was writing."

"A writer," the statue says. The words are huge, unbelievable.

"That's not really true, either," you say quietly. "I mean, I write software. This is just... a dream on the side."

}}

{{ bar | (this didn't happen)

"Huaaaaaah!" excited happy noises

"Er... what?"

"Sorry... it's really good."

"Hah, glad you like it. Usually it's a bit of an acquired taste. Too sweet for most people."

"Too sweet?!"

He shrugs.

"It's not even that sweet.
"Then again, one of my favourite drinks is sweet tea... and this stuff is really sweet. There was this drinks place I went to when I was younger, a lot of people criticised them for making their drinks too sweet? Usually they'd put six things of sweet in a drink. I had them make me a sweet tea once. Started out with six, but it wasn't sweet enough. Doubled it, wasn't enough.
"It took twenty pumps of sweetener to make it properly sweet. That was like half the drink at that point."

"Sounds... sweet."

"Hells yeah. Get me another, will you?"

"You know this stuff has alcohol in it, right?" He pours you a refill.

"Yeah, so?"

He rolls his eyes.

"So," another guy says, sitting down next to you. "I bet you got stories." He's a young fellow, lanky, not all grown in.

"Sure," you say. "Some of them might even be interesting, but I can probably ruin those, too."

"Oh yeah? Try me," he says.

"What, tell you a story?"

"Yeah. One of your reeeeally boring ones." He scrunches up his face to indicate how really concentrating on you he is.

"Oh, come on," you say, rolling your eyes.

"Fine," he says. "How about a bottle of vodka?" He reaches across the bar and grabs some shot glasses. "Make this into a contest - the more we drink, the more interesting I bet your boring story gets."

"Well that's hardly fair," you say.

"Gone through too many of those, have you?" he asks. "Fine." He pours himself a shot and moves to drink it, but you stop him.

"I mean it's not really fair to you," you say.

"Oh, now that's just a challenge I can't back down from!" he says, and pours you a shot as well. "Come on, then. Give me your best worst story."

You wind up telling a story about a pine tree and how it took this guy's soul and he had to track it down and tackle it in order to get his soul back, but it kept running away. Somehow you turn a bash.org one-liner<ref>"Some pine tree had my soul one night when I was drunk. So I chopped it down and dragged it through a field for two hours and got my soul back."</ref> into a rather lengthy - and pointless - tale punctuated by entirely too many shots of vodka, and before you know it, you actually seem to be drunk. Actually unambiguously drunk.

The young fellow is nodding. You nod too, for emphasis.









You wake up on a bed feeling like... everything... awful. It's just bad. You don't want to move. You don't want to think. You don't want to be alive. You're not... even entirely sure you're alive at all.

You sit up, regretting everything. Your head lurches out your stomach. All your muscles feel like buzzing. The large guy is sprawled next to you.

You prod him. "Oi," you say. Your voice comes out raspy.

He doesn't respond.

You decide to just ignore him and get up and try to find the rest of your clothes. You're still mostly dressed, but a boot is lying on the floor, and most of your leathers are... under the guy.

"The fuck," you mutter, and try tugging at them. This achieves nothing. You try pushing at him, but while you think you probably would be able to roll him over if you actually tried, you don't particularly want to. He's... sweaty. And smelly. And you don't really want to touch him, let alone wrap your arms around his girth to get a proper grip...

So you just give up. You grab your swords off the ground and trudge out into the main room of the inn. The door and windows are open to the morning air, but it still smells like beer and piss - an improvement over the room, or possibly just the guy - but not by much. You find a table that's easily to collapse onto<ref>The first one you get to at all.</ref> and collapse into a chair at it, sprawling out your arms, clonking the swords, belt and all, onto the table with a clonk.

Some other folks are around, having breakfast. They don't even try to greet you.

Tetelien hops onto the table and cocks his head. "Have fun?" he asks.

You groan by way of answer.

"I don't think I've ever seen someone drink so much and live," he says. "But then, you're not really human anymore, are you?"

"How much..." you sort of ask.

"You started with six cups of cider," the cat says. "Moved onto... what was it, many shots of vodka? Would have been more, but then the guy showed up. That whiskey was full when you started, and when you moved onto the shallot..."

"So just like florida," you mumble. "But in reverse. I mean, there we started with the whiskey. Moved onto absinthe. The blue drinks after. Might have been some shots when Gaurav wasn't looking. And somehow it all ended with... beer. I tried to tip them. At the dive bar. I tried to tip the lady."

Tetelien just watches you vaguely.

"Deathdealers can't get sick, right?" you ask.

Tetelien shrugs.

"Because that was my main incentive to not drink before. I'd not get hangovers so much as just lose my entire damn immune system."

"And how is the hangover, hmm?" Tetelien asks.

"I'm a fucking puddle with too many bones in."

"The usual, then," Tetelien says.

"Nnng?"

A guy who you think might have been the owner of the inn shows up with some food and several cups of... things. "Good morning!" he says and starts depositing things in front of you.

You stare at him blankly.

"You've got coffee, juice, water, and my old gran's remedy," he says, laying out the cups. The food is a plate of... well, food. Sausages and porridge and some vegetable things you don't recognise at all. "Should clear you right up, after the night you had."

"Was there a pineapple?" you ask him.

"A what, now?"

"Peas? Unicorn? Maybe a necromancer involved somehow?"

"No..." he says uncertainly.

"Did my clothes stay on?" you ask.

Tetelien bursts out laughing, a deeply unsettling thing for a cat to do.

"Did you wake up in a room with a fishbowl full of peas?" Tetelien asks once he's managed to stop. "Was the unicorn ''there'' with abs painted on? Was the orc covered in clovers, or does that come later?"

"Er, no," you say. "Later, I think."

"I think you're fine." He turns away dismissively and starts licking himself.

The innkeeper gives you and the cat a confused look.

"It's a... story," you explain. "That I'm trying not to repeat."

"I... see," he says, and backs away.

Later, you go to pay the innkeeper, feeling, if not exactly better, at least more alive.

"You're a priest?" he asks.

"What?" you say, and then glance down. Your emblems are hanging half out of your shirt, and you stuff them back in. "No," you say, utterly unconvincingly.

He gives you a dubious look.

"Look, what do I owe you?" you ask. "And... by any chance... could you maybe collect the rest of my clothes and stuff for me once the large guy... leaves?"

"Um... sure?" he says. He comes up with some numbers, and you don't even bother to make sense of them. You're just finishing paying him off when a pair of newcomers come over. One of them is also a priest of Kyrule, the other apparently something else.

The innkeeper turns to them brightly. "What can I do for you this fine morning?" he says.

"We're looking for a Deathdealer," the priest replies. "Has anyone of the sort been through?"

"No, can't say anyone has," the innkeeper says. "Is it urgent? Something we should be worried about?

"Hi," you say, giving them a slight wave.

"Yes, yes, hello," the priest says, not really paying any attention to you. "Nothing to worry about, just business," he adds to the innkeeper.

"Cameron Versuth?" you ask.

The priest finally turns to regard you properly, looking a bit surprised.

"I'm the Deathdealer," you say.

"Funny," he says.

"The fact that I am half dressed, clearly hungover, and have a cat on my head does not mean I am not totally normal and competent," you say flatly.

"What about the fact that you're not?" Tetelien says.

"Tetelien!" you hiss exasperatedly, and draw your sword just enough to show the sigil. "See? I've got a sword and everything."

"What, really?" the innkeeper says. "Why didn't you say so?!"

"I... didn't want to give a bad impression," you say.

"Oh, lady, after last night, I think half the town's in love with you," the innkeeper says.

"Wait, what?" you say.

"You don't remember what happened?" he asks.

"I... remember drinking," you say. "A lot. And there was this guy. And then drinking with the guy. And at some point it occurred to me that if I seriously kept going I would literally die, except I don't know if I was even entirely conscious at that point. Did I... carry him? ...Cheering?"

"Oh, it was some impressive witchcraft," the innkeeper says. "You just picked him up like he was nothing. Everyone was cheering you on to try it, and when you pulled it off..."

"Did I?" you say.

"Guy barged in shouting about how he was going to burn the place down, take our dear Meria as his trophy, and you go up and wrestle him demanding if he can even take you as a trophy," the innkeeper says. "Now that was a sight. Now after a bit you grabbed a bottle of whiskey and started drinking it straight, and then before we all know it, he's drinking it too, and you spend the next few hours going through all of my very worst shalott together, yelling and trading stories like you're the best of friends, and in all of this you convince him to drop his entire feud and apologise to us."

"I do, do I?" you say.

"It was something else," the innkeeper says.

"So you didn't actually charge me that much..." you say.

"It'd have been on the house, but that much we can't really recuperate so easily. Also you broke two tables."

"Sorry."

On your head, Tetelien is laughing again.

}}

{{ keeper |

The voice cuts into your mind like a scalpel, exquisite and unexpected, but exactingly precise. ''Keeper,'' he says. ''You are summoned to the Grey Lobby.'' You've heard these words before, in a manner, and, transfixed in your growing horror, you recite them along in your mind, expecting them to continue on as written in the scene.

They don't. Instead, there is a horrible lurch as your mind is yanked away from the world, and you find yourself in what is very definitely the Grey Lobby. The wide space around, the even light with no apparent actual light sources, the scattered furniture and ornately drab decor, all of which done out in an interminable grey... the cowled figure right in front of you, scrutinising you with piercing eyes, his fist balled in front of your chest, holding you in place, uncomfortably close, by strings you cannot see.

You can't really move, so you just stare back instead, and do your very utmost not to completely panic.

"Welcome," the figure says. His voice is deep and whispery, here, shrouded in layers, and decidedly unwelcoming. "I am the Voice of the Eternal."

You panic. You stare at him. You stare at everything but him. You just sort of stop thinking, except you haven't really stopped, because now you're thinking that you've stopped thinking and you can't even think of anything else because you can't think, it's too late, it's all over, oh, look, a

"Ense Vardaman," the Voice continues, slicing through your panic. The name is you, you've made it you, except suddenly you don't want it to be. You want to be absolutely anyone else in all the worlds. Who isn't Vardaman. Who isn't here. "You have made a pact to serve us," he goes on.

"Y-yes?" you say uncertainly.

"Then serve us you shall," he says, letting you go. Suddenly you have control over your muscles again, or at least these muscles. Because you're not really here, now are you? Like the mind voice, the Grey Lobby is all in your head.

You take a step back, even as he turns a bit away himself.

"You will be one of our Keepers," the Voice says, no longer even looking at you. "Normally this would be a great honour," he goes on, "but for you, the purpose is deeper."

You don't respond. You don't like where this is headed, but you also don't want to risk making it worse.

"You have surprised the Eternal," the Voice says. "Your knowledge and conviction. The very nature of your path. It will be worth keeping a very close eye on you." He emphasises the last few words, turning to regard you directly once more.

"Oh," you say faintly.

"The Wild Card," he says. "Keeper of Stories, part of no lineage. Trained by the Archivist, and yet privy, too, to stories of the Apostate." He holds up a paper. "Tell me. What did you hope to achieve with this?"

You stare at it uncomprehendingly, and then you realise: it's your manuscript.

"It's just a story," you tell him, but the fear lacing your words is all too real. "A piece of art."

"It's the truth," he says.

"The truth is heartbreaking," you reply. "And so what if it is true? Nobody's going to know the difference. It's just a piece of ancient conjecture, trading theories and contradictory stories, unless there really is more to it, but there's no proof one way or the other. But then they actually date it and find out it's not ancient at all, it's just some random forgery, of course it's not true! It's just something some... student, probably, made up in their spare time."

"And so this is intended to cover up the truth?"

"No, no" you say. "It's just a prank - it doesn't mean anything one way or the other. For all anyone knows, it is true! Coincidences happen, right?"

"A prank," the Voice says.

"Yes," you say.

"That's what this is to you."

You keep quiet for a moment, and stop and think. That's not what you meant at all. The entire reason you put it down on paper was precisely because it was so important - you didn't want to lose it. You just needed to frame it in a way that people wouldn't necessarily see the importance...

He doesn't approve, this much is clear, but you're not sure that matters - you don't need his approval, only his acceptance. You take the manuscript, and read it over, three short pages of illuminated text, buying time, but also understanding.

"What is it, exactly, you object to?" you ask. "That I'd use this for a prank? That I'd put so much into the presentation for so little purpose? Or is it that I wrote it down at all?"

"All of those," he says. "This story is not meant for the worlds. It is not meant to be told. You will refrain from repeating such acts, and you will obey."

You give him a desperate look. You don't like being told what to do, certainly not so overtly. It was just never your thing. A game tells you to stay on the path, you run off into the bushes. A manager tells you to stop putting grumpy faces on your timesheets, you move on to dead birds.<ref>Grumpy-looking ones.</ref> But this is different. As much as the very command makes you want not to, you have to obey. You're bound to.

Somehow, this scares you more than anything yet.

He takes back the manuscript. "We will keep this, safeguarded in the Library. Go, now. Return to your life, and act as a Keeper for the Eternal, not a prankster."

And suddenly you're back, standing in a corner of the archives, surrounded by the stacks, shelves of papers and books and scrolls. Nothing's changed. Everything has changed. Your manuscript is gone.

Tetelien stirs in your sash, sticking out a paw, and then slides his head out as well. You scratch him behind the ears absentmindedly, and he purrs, saying nothing.

A woman comes around the stacks behind you. One of the librarians. "Oh!" she says, surprised. "Didn't expect anyone to be back here."

You nod at her, not really paying attention. You just feel numb. Everything is fuzzy, vague, not quite real.

"Are you all right?" she asks, coming over.

"Yeah," you say. "Sorry, forgot why I came back here."

"Oh, yeah," she agrees. "Hate it when that happens. It'll come to you."

"Yeah, I suppose," you reply.

}}

{{ coraline | (not entirely accurate)

You didn't recognise her the first time, at least not right away. She looked like any random woman, dressed in the local fashion, already somewhat drunk. She waved you over with a bottle of shallot, saying, "Hey, you, you've got swords. I like your swords. Drink with me?" In impeccably slurred daesh.

You'd been a bit amused by her forwardness, and intrigued by her language, and taken a seat as she grabbed a discarded mug and poured you what would probably have been a lethal dose of shallot for a normal person.

"Rare to see another daeshlander out here," you told her, taking the drink. "What's your occasion?"

"Drink!" she said.

"Always," you agreed, and downed your mug.

You talked for awhile, not really about anything in particular, coming back around the same few topics several times over and generally going nowhere with them, or in the case of the topic of 'we're out of drink', to the bar, to get more drink. She did ask some questions about zombies. You did have to explain to her what Deathdealers were, before she gave you a suitably blank look and said, "Er, right, I knew that," and nearly fell out of her chair.

And then it clicked. You remembered. You were in Telegrin. Specifically, you were in Telegrin hunting a Carrier of the Death of Souls. And because you had at least vaguely recalled the nature of the original story, you'd been doing a crap-arse job of it the entire time. Because you already knew who it was. It was her.

You hadn't expected to actually run into her, in a pub, exactly as the story had been written. You hadn't expected the same conversations to happen. The only thing missing was the Father Ted reference. You could probably start shouting 'Girls!', but would that be too obvious?

Too obviously what?

"And that's the bloody trouble with geese, isn't it?" she was saying. "You just get swarms of them and they poop everywhere, and they're just so loud. Aren't they?" You weren't really sure where geese came into it, but you agreed anyway. And apparently neither was she: "Wait, what were we talking about?"

"Geese, apparently," you told her, pouring more shallot, now actually a bit curious yourself if one of you was going to wind up dead of alcohol poisoning if you kept this up.

And the conversations went on. You never did yell 'Drink!', 'Girls!', and 'Feck!', but other than that, she was unmistakable. She gave her name as Amadi. You knew her as Coraline. Neither were actually her name.

The morning came, and you woke up first, on a bed. She was there, too, arm hanging off the other side, leg draped across your stomach, drooling into her pillow, and you reached over, placed a hand over her heart, and felt her life, so strong and warm. The even breaths, the steady heartbeat. The vague hum of power, and beneath it all, the darkness, so much fainter than you'd expected, even as you knew it was there, lingering. Darkness, yes, but tinged with green. The voices were like a dream, and yet you could almost feel them rising as you intruded, reacting to your probe. No wonder she had lasted so long. No wonder she didn't even realise what she was. She was so strong, and for now, the Death of Souls within her was such a tiny seed.

She opened her eyes and smiled at you. "Hey," she said.

"Hey," you whispered, withdrawing your hand, and then removing her leg from your stomach. She slept like a cat. Fitting.

You wondered, vaguely, how differently things would go if you just told her, here and now, what the situation was. How much better it could be if you went off, together, to go address it head-on, with all the time left from the start. But if you did... she'd never get her cat. She'd never become a Keeper of Stories, or a Deathdealer, or learn the necromantic arts that would be key to finally removing the Death of Souls from the world for good. Kyrule would have no reason to trust her, let alone distrust her. He certainly wouldn't learn anything. Could you teach him, instead? Jump off that bridge yourself?

No. Stick to the script. You were already off-script.

She yawned, stretched, as you got up and found your belts and swords and guns and put them all back on. You put your hood on last, peering back at her, still sprawled on the bed, half-undressed, the rest of her clothes on the floor.

"What, you're just going?" she asked, finally sitting up.

"I need to get back out there," you told her. "There's a Carrier in town."

"Buh?" she said. She wouldn't have known what a Carrier even was, at this point, but you wouldn't have known that if you hadn't known exactly who she was, either.

"Keep safe," you told her, and left.

You'd paid the tab for both of you, and returned to your crap-arse job of searching, following the sort of trails.

And she'd presumably gone on to Soravia.

Of course she had. She's here now. You're here now. She didn't even notice you when she came in, and you hadn't noticed her until you glanced over down the bar, and there she was, covered in cats. Her hair is different now, long and almost white, tied back in a sloppy braid, and her figure fuller. Frankly you never would have recognised her were it not for the cats, but the cats are distinctive, and this, again, is how the story went.

Before you can even react, your own cat hops out of your coat and sniffs at the large, long-haired tortoiseshell. The tortoiseshell sniffs back. Expressions are exchanged, and some body language. They purr. Tetelien flops over on Agata, and Agata starts licking him.

"You know he's not really a kitten, right?" you ask Agata. "Just small."

"Yes," she replies, between licks.

"Good," you tell her, and then tell Tetelien, "''You'' know you're not a kitten, right?"

Tetelien just purrs.

Coraline bursts out laughing. "Cats, right?" she says.

"Bonkers creatures," you tell her.

"I dunno, I think they've got things rather right," she says. "Know when to stop, know how to relax, not get worked up over things. Just hunt and sleep and hunt and claw everything to shreds."

"Does yours do any of that?" you ask, indicating Agata. You already know the others on the bar are normal cats, so it doesn't even bear asking, but witch's cats are always a bit odd, and now you sort of wonder how hers compares to your own.

Agata stops and just stares at you. Tetelien murrs and starts hacking up a hairball.

"Sure," Coraline says. "Yours?"

"He's completely useless and basically just likes being carried around everywhere, at all times," you say. "You'd have met him last time, but I don't think he left my bra the entire time we were talking."

"Wait, what?" she asks, laughing. "You had a cat in your bra?"

"He likes it there," you reply irately. "Also you didn't have any cats with you to draw him out at the time. What's with all the cats now?"

"What does it look like?" Agata says. "She's broken out in chronic cats."

"Are you chronic?" you ask the cat.

"No, acute," Agata replies.

"Oh, you are very cute," you tell the cat, and receive an angry glare from another cat entirely. Or possibly just a look. That one's Thimble, and he always looks angry.

"Okay, sword lady," Coraline says. "Remind me what your name is."

"Sword Lady, apparently," you tell her. She snorts into her shallot. But she knows your name. You know she knows, because she's a Keeper. You can sense it about her, a common... connection, as it were. How would the real Vardaman not have noticed this? It's so obvious to you, even as it's not all... there, either...

On the other hand, while the real Vardaman had also been a Keeper of Might, that was it. And his grasp of magic was probably a tad shoddy as well. It was never his focus. It was never ''supposed'' to be yours, either, but you'd just been a little too interested, and also found a cat. That ''had'' complicated things a bit.

"Strange name," Coraline says.

"I've got stranger," you tell her. "Why, one time, I was dubbed 'Devourer of Worlds', accused of eating someone's car, and then it was declared that I was actually a 200-foot-tall pigeon."

"Really."

"Another time a guy named a tomato after me," you go on. "Might have been the same guy, actually. Said it was as penance."

"And what'd he name it?" she asks.

"You know, he never actually mentioned that bit. Just said, 'You're terrible, and I'm naming a tomato after you as penance.'"

She gives you an amused, irritated look, and finally you cave.

"Vardaman," you tell her with a laugh. "That's my name. You said you were Amadi, right?"

"Right," she says. "The Deathdealer Vardaman, who broke my heart and left without a word after our one-night stand..."

"Oh, aren't you dramatic," you say.

"Yes," she says.

"We could do another one," you tell her. "And do it right this time."

"Right?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

"And covered in cats," you tell her. "Why, I can just picture it. A honeymoon suite, sexy, sexy times, and cats everywhere, perched on all protuberances, watching every move. And judging. Judging everything." You gesture extravagantly, for emphasis.

She bursts out laughing and nearly buries her face in her very angry-looking cat. A nearby longhair, smaller than Agata, scoots back and gives her a suspicious look.

"You know you want to," you tell her.

"Well, you really are a sweet talker, aren't you?" Agata asks. "Trying to seduce my witch. Really, the nerve you have."

"Tell me, then," you ask the cat, "what must I do to earn your blessing?"

Agata stares at you.

You stare back.

"You're a Deathdealer and also a witch," Agata asks. "Why?"

"Because I felt like it," you tell her.

"Really?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Interesting," the cat says. "Usually witches are so keen on their independence. Like cats. You're not independent. You're a dog, at the beck and call of your god."

''Rude,'' Tetelien purrs in your mind.

You're not really sure how to respond to this, though you kind of agree with your cat.

"Tell me it isn't so," the other cat says.

"It is," you reply.

Agata gives you a long look, and the sticks a leg up in the air and starts licking her butt.

''She doesn't trust you,'' Tetelien whispers. ''Knows you're hiding something, but no idea what.''

''No shit,'' you reply. ''And the fact that I know what she's hiding just makes it that much more awkward.''

Tetelien coughs.

"Okaaaay," Coraline says, after a slightly too long pause as well, probably also talking to her own cat. "That didn't get weird at all."

"Oh, I could show you weird," you tell her. "You want to see some properly weird?"

"If I say 'yes', will it end with both of us naked in the woods with no idea how we got there?" Coraline asks.

"Now I really want to say 'yes' to that, because that would be hilarious, but no," you say.

"Well that's disappointing," she says.

"Well, I mean, I might be able to arrange something..." you suggest.

"Something with a unicorn and a fishbowl full of peas?" she asks.

"And abs painted on the unicorn's neck," you say.

"In purple paint," she says.

"We'd both be covered in purple paint," you add.

"Well, of course. We like purple," she says.

"Yes," you agree.

"Yes."

"Yes."

The bartender is standing nearby, staring at the two of you like you've gone completely insane. Unless he speaks daesh, though, you doubt he knows what you were actually saying, so it was probably just the tone and gestures and... slightly mad looks.

"Got any purple paint?" you ask him in Soravian.

"What," he says, "the fuck?"

Okay, maybe he does know daesh.

"Or more shallot?" Coraline asks.

"We like shallot," you add.

"Yes," Coraline says.

The bartender finally manages to recover some of his composure, and gets another bottle. "So you're... witches?" he asks, pouring.

"Yeah," Coraline says.

"And it's true what they say about witches and naked rituals?" he asks.

"Who says that?" you ask.

"''They'' do, apparently," Agata says.

"Uh," he says awkwardly. "So... no?"

"It really depends on the witch, I think," you tell him. "We're just casters with cats. What actually makes a witch is our composure, and how we treat our communities... and of course the witch's fare." You glance over at Coraline in case she has something to add.

"Don't look at me," Coraline says. "I ran an inn. And then a cat showed up. You sound like you actually know what you're doing."

"I dunno, your cat seems pretty on top of things," you say.

"That's just because she likes being literally on top of things," Coraline responds. "Usually my head."

The bartender retreats, disappointed. The evening goes on. The conversation wanders off into the bushes, out of the bushes, around the bushes, and in and out of some of the signs on the wall. There are quite a few signs on the wall, but most of them are unfortunately in languages you can't actually read. You have a remarkably easy time talking to each other, with much in common, similar interests, and all manner of crazy stories to share on both sides. Too easy, in fact. You hardly even notice as the barfight breaks out behind you, merely scooting out of the way as the spare cats all disappear into Coraline's bag, Agata wraps herself around her neck, and Tetelien crawls back into your clothes.

You're now yelling over the background noise. You've gone through enough strange booze and weird-looking bottles to probably poison a small army. But you're still not really paying it heed.

Coraline's complaining about various drunks, and the different ways her clients have reacted in her own inn, and some of the ridiculous stories there. She tells the story about the gogs, in particular, and you reminisce - that was the beginning of the book, after all - and smile as you urge her along.

Later, you ask her, "You ever tried getting your cat drunk?"

"Er... no?" Coraline says over the noise.

"Well, don't," you tell her loudly. "Bad idea. It'll make you drunk, and if you're already drunk, that just gets ''really'' fun."

"I assume we won't particularly care to hear why you might have tried this," Agata says, leaning over.

"Oh, I just wasn't paying attention, and Tetelien started drinking my shallot," you say.

"Why?" Agata asks.

"Consider that I was already very drunk, and thus neither of us were being particularly sensible at the time," you yell. "It... kind of went downhill from there."

"Yeah, kind of like this party," Coraline yells back, turning back to the rest of the common area of the inn, and you turn to look as well. It's utter chaos, and the noise has reached an all-time high. People are shouting, punching each other, swinging chairs, and the bartender is screaming at them, holding a shovel, to no effect whatsoever.

Coraline slips off her stool, and you reach out to pull her back.

The bartender runs into the fray with his shovel and swings it around, trying to break people apart with it. He hits some furniture, as well as a few of the folks themselves. It sort of helps, but the fight mostly just breaks up around him and then resumes as soon as he's past.

"Fuck," you say, and get up as well, and start casting, a quick spell to basically just calm everyone the hell down, but then you hold it for a moment, giving it time. Like a cutscene in a particularly fragile videogame, you wait to intervene until all the scripts have a chance to run...

The bartender runs past again and clonks Coraline in the head, and you finish casting, dropping the spell in a wave throughout the inn. Everyone just stops, and in the sudden silence, they look around in confusion.

You reach out to grab Coraline, make sure she's not actually dead or anything. She starts to crumple, but then stops, catching herself part-way down, turning to face you as you pull her back. She's like an iceberg, blood trickling down the side of her face. Her eyes have gone completely black.

"Oh," you say.

''Oh?'' Tetelien asks vaguely.

''Oh look she's gone full Carrier whatever will I ever do now?''

''I dunno, what?'' he replies.

''Well, I don't know?'' you say. ''I mean, realistically, do a soulbinding and kill her and just hope that contains it... I mean, I don't know why it wouldn't.''

''Don't you want her alive?'' he asks.

''Well, yeah, there's also that!'' you tell him. ''How long can I feign surprise when I'm not surprised at all?! I'm supposed to be killing her right now. That's what Deathdealers do.''

''Ense Vardaman,'' another voice cuts in. Bertram. ''Consider it an order from the Eternal that you are not to kill this Carrier, who is a Keeper herself.''

''Yeah, I know,'' you tell him.

''Well, that is a reason not to kill her,'' Tetelien points out.

''I already had a perfectly good reason!'' you yell. ''That's not the problem!''

Coraline hisses and reaches for your head with a hand with fingers like claws. You feel a strange pull, twisting at the edges of your mind, as she tries to devour your soul. You shove her to the ground, momentarily interrupting it.

Tetelien pokes out of your top and peers down at her as she starts to get up again.

''Come on, Agata, do your thing,'' you think to Tetelien. You can't just keep doing nothing like this. You're not this slow.

''Make like you are going to kill her, anyway? She was supposed to intervene, wasn't she?'' Tetelien suggests.

''Right.''

You cast a quick soulbinding on Coraline, drawing your sword at the same time, and move to make the finishing blow, knocking and pinning her back to the ground with your knee as you bring your sword down.

Agata is nowhere to be found.

''Um, there's no cat in the way,'' you point out, slowing.

''I think you're going to have to improvise,'' Tetelien replies.

''Fuck!'' You turn the impaling strike aside at the last moment, putting the point of the sword into the floor next to her shoulder, instead, the blade to her neck, even as she resumes trying to eat your soul. The feeling of ''pulling'' is incredibly unnerving. ''Seriously, how sure are we I'm immune to this thing?'' you ask.

You cast a sleep spell, but it just slides into the void of the Death of Souls instead of stopping it, and then a magic binding, and a hold spell, to similar effects.

You try casting a paralyse spell on her, but it doesn't really do anything either.

''Seriously,'' you say.

''It's only been a couple seconds,'' Tetelien notes.

''Just how fucking slow was the real Vardaman?!'' you yell in your mind.

''Did you ever consider that maybe you just didn't write it very well?'' Tetelien asks.

'' 'Very well'? This is a travesty.''

"Holy fuck, you're a Deathdealer?!" the bartender yells, his words attenuated.

You glance back. Everything might as well be going in slow motion around you. The bartender is still holding his shovel like an idiot, and the rest of the inn is sort of sidling out in groups and clumps, trying to avoid responsibility, but several nearer folks turn to stare in surprise as well. Turn, slowly.

''It's your knack,'' Tetelien says. ''Even Deathdealers can't slow time. But you mean to move faster, and so you move faster. Just as you mean to not fall, and you fly. Or not to be noticed, and you pass unnoticed.''

''And we're only noticing this now?''

''You've noticed. And then promptly forgotten. Quite a few times.''

''Shit.'' That is entirely typical.

Agata, finally, jumps onto Coraline's head in front of you, hissing.

The pull stops. You withdraw, a bit, eyeing the other cat suspiciously.

Coraline groans, reaching up to touch her head. "Agata?" she croaks. "What...?" She whimpers and goes limp, unconscious.

Agata perches atop Coraline, moving onto her chest, and stares up at you defiantly as you get up slowly, your sword pointed again at the both of them.

"Do not kill her!" Agata rasps, her ears back. "Help us, and I'll explain."

"Explain what?" you ask. "She's a Carrier of the Death of Souls. That is clear as night." People whisper, an unnerved ripple going around the room. The stragglers are all watching now, in almost silence, the intrigue of the Deathdealer and her quarry.

"Yes," Agata says. "But she is not your enemy!"

"An enemy, no," you reply. "Just another victim turned, who will turn countless others if she isn't stopped. For good."

"She's different," Agata says, stepping back. "Check her eyes. Tell me this is normal."

You kneel over Coraline and oblige, pulling back one of her eyelids, revealing an eye that is indeed clear, the iris a deep dark brown.

"Okay," you tell Agata. "Explain."

"She's not a normal Carrier," the cat says. "She's fighting this, and she is almost winning."

"Winning?" you ask dubiously.

"She got hit in the head with a shovel!" Agata hisses. "What do you fucking expect? Just get her out of here!"

"Fine," you say, and drop a heal on Coraline, thoroughly eliminating her concussion as well as a few other random things, as you pick her up under an arm in almost the same motion.

''I just fucked that up,'' you say in your mind. ''Um. Whatever. Let's go. Where are you?''

''Boobs,'' Tetelien says. He pokes his head out of Coraline's shirt.



You get to the stables and have just set Coraline down on the floor, dropping a sleep spell on her, and are heading to get your horses ready to move out when a half-dressed stable guy shows up and asks blearily if he can help you.

You give him some coin and direct him to get your horses ready to go, hour notwithstanding. He eyes you dubiously, and the still unconscious Coraline even more so.

"Is she...?"

"She'll live," you tell him. "For now." You realise you're not making this any less awkward, but you're really not sure it should be less awkward, either. In fact you really have no idea what you're doing at all, despite all your years of experience.

He gives your swords and armour a worried look, decides not to question this after all, and hastily goes to the horses.

You return to Coraline and place a hand over her heart, sensing. It's much worse this time - you can feel the Death of Souls in her like an encompassing cloud, nearly covering the essence of her soul - it's huge. But she doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger, either.

Now what? Where are you going with this?

You remember the cat, Agata, and glance back. She meets your gaze disinterestedly, almost, and yet her posture tells another story. She's afraid.

"Tell me why I'm doing this," you say.

"Because she's resistant," Agata says. "She's like Shalias, and yet where Shalias lasted mere months, Amadi has survived for years since contracting the affliction. If there is anything your order can use to stop it, to end the Death of Souls once and for all, the answer lies with her."

"And I'm just supposed to believe that?" you ask.

"Yes," Tetelien says, poking his head out of Coraline's shirt again. "What?"

"What?" you say.

"Why are you in my witch's shirt?" Agata asks, ears suddenly back, the threat clear in her voice.

Tetelien stares at Agata, ears forward. Agata stares right back. The stable guy is standing over you with the horses ready to go, staring blankly.

"Fucking cats," you mutter.

The cats both turn to stare at you.

"Fine," you say. You pick Coraline up again, take the horses' leads, and head out into the night.



Once you're properly on your way, mounted, Coraline held up in front of you, you slip into the Grey Lobby, and find Bertram waiting.

"Vardaman," he says.

"Hi," you say.

"What part, exactly," he asks, "did you misunderstand about her being a Keeper too?"

"None whatsoever," you tell him. "I have no intention of killing her, nor of standing in her way at all, long-term. Contrariwise, I really only intend to make her angry."

"To what end?" he asks.

"To save her life." He gives you a curious look, so you go on, "She's grown complacent, and let herself stagnate. Her time is running out, and without motivation, she'll simply let it."

There's a long pause, and then Bertram simply nods. "So I don't need to tell you how far to push her. What limits will motivate her, and how she will need to be able, ultimately, to overcome them."

Now you're surprised, too. You hadn't considered this. "You were in on it all along. It was Kyrule's idea...?"

He nods again, smiling.

"Fuck, that makes so much more sense," you say. All this time you'd thought it'd just been chance: the Deathdealer takes her prisoner due to an accidental encounter, the situation mounts, and Coraline eventually escapes, now motivated to learn to properly fight. If it had been planned, though, it made so much more sense. "Okay. What do I need to know from your end?"

"Just the following. Make her feel trapped, doomed. Show her no trust, but give her openings. Let her test your boundaries, and only after react."

"Bind her hands at first, let her sleep. And when she cuts her bindings with a found rock, step it up?" You suppose. Did that actually happen? You don't remember.

"Exactly. Do not let her become complacent with you. Take her tools away, each by each."

"Force her to do the seemingly impossible. What about the killings in Abearanoth?" you ask. "Has that been happening? If the Keepers are in danger..."

"I will call a convocation. Soon. It would be best if she didn't see you here."

"Should I just not show up, or what?" you ask.

He shakes his head. "She won't recognise you in passing, and others may notice your absence. But don't linger. Ensure she doesn't approach you."

"Sure. She'll need to be taught magic. The boy in green... Raguram..."

"It will happen."

"And I needn't tell you to tell her to totally just kill me."

"You needn't."

"What if she actually manages it?"

"Then we will welcome you home with open arms," Bertram says.

You chuckle a bit at that, though Tetelien growls from your shoulder. "Okay," you say. "I feel like we're missing something here, but I have no idea what."

"Do you have the fragment?" Bertram asks.

"...oh," you say.

"What?"

"About that," you begin, while Tetelien perks up a bit and just stares at Bertram confrontationally. "It's kind of a really stupid story."

"Yes?"

"My cat ate it," you finish lamely.

Bertram just stares at you.

"I thought he'd poop it out at some point, but he... hasn't," you say. "It's a little... er... I think it dissolved."

"Really," Bertram says.

"Meow," Tetelien says.

"You do know what that was, yes?" Bertram asks.

"Yeah," you say. "A fragment of a dead god. Although if you've seen some of the things my cat's eaten, it fits."

"Meow," Tetelien says again, utterly unconvincingly.

"Would it have helped in this case?" Bertram asks.

"Yes," you say. "Quite a bit, in fact. What Coraline is, she has a connection to the... to Eapherod that would make it very effective indeed."

Wordlessly Bertram takes your hand and places something in it - another small, gleaming, perfectly dark stone, shattered from a larger whole. "Do not let your cat eat this one too," he says.

"I don't know how much say I'll have in the matter," you mutter, but give Tetelien a sidelong look.

In the world of the living, you open your hand, and the same stone is there, shifted between planes as easily as dreaming. Tetelien pokes his head out of Coraline's boobs and peers at it curiously.

"Seriously," you tell him quietly, next to Coraline's ear. "Don't fucking eat this."

He gives you an innocent look.

In the Grey Lobby, Bertram stares at Tetelien flatly. The cat sidles around your shoulders, so you pick him up and hold him up in front of you so that he gets the brunt of the stare head-on.

Tetelien stares right back.

This goes on for a bit.

Bertram continues to stare down your cat. You continue to hold up your cat. Your cat continues to stare right back.

And continues.

And continues.

You sigh heavily.

"Fine," the cat says. "You're all terrible."

"Okay, now I'm impressed," you tell Bertram.





}}

{{ OH LOOK PLOT |

"Is your ladies' room still doing that thing?" you ask the bartender.

"Oh, yeah," he says. "Been in and out all week, but I think if you pry at it a bit, you'll get it to work." He frowns, probably at your ridiculous getup, and glances at the Deathdealers uncertainly.

"Right," you say, and ask them, "Think you can amuse yourselves in the meantime?"

There's a momentary confusion, but you note that you're just using the bathroom and they begrudgingly oblige. You're not just using the bathroom. You've been looking for this pub on and off ever since you got back, and started to think. Where did Vardaman ultimately wind up? What was he after? Where did the plot actually go?

And the thing is, ''you don't know''. You know he and Ariel wound up in the hells. You know they were after... something. A soul. Maybe several souls. You know they found it. Them. Something. And that's... basically it.

And you also know there's a portal to the hells right here in this pub in the ladies' restroom. Mostly folks ignore it. Sometimes they use it. Handy tool to make a hasty escape from an unwanted suitor, clingy boyfriend, horrible husband. Also useful for the odd witch or warlock. Or something along those lines. You go in expecting some indication, but for all appearances, the restroom is just an ordinary restroom - sinks, toilets, disposals. An emergency shower in the corner. Odd for a pub, but...

Then you see it. The strange shimmer on the far wall. The shifting. The not-quite-there-ness, the sense of something also there. You wash your hands, just because you can, and go over toward it.

It unfolds completely, and suddenly there's no wall at all, just an opening to another room, not at all like this one. There, the walls are crusted and black. The furniture is all broken. The door is a cavernous maw, full of darkness, framed in teeth. There's a woman in it, too, or at least someone woman-like. A demon, red-skinned, horned, and shrouded in strangeness. She looks a bit surprised to see you at first, but you just get out of the way and gesture for her to pass, and she does, selecting a stall and plonking down.

You, meanwhile, step through the opening, the portal, as well, into the room beyond. The air hits you first, hot and dry and full of smell, a strange bristling wail lingering in the backdrop that puts your hairs on end. The room itself appears to have been half a bathroom as well - the only problem is that it's only half, and 'half' is a concept that has been taken entirely too far throughout everything - each fixture is only half there. Half a sink, half a toilet, half a tub, half a urinal, half a baby's changing table. The only functional-looking thing is the hole in the floor, and that's just a hole. It's hard to have half a hole.

You head to the maw, hesitate momentarily, and then step into the darkness. It turns out to be nothing more than a strange sort of door - blocking light and sound, but allowing passage without issue - and you come out into, it turns out, another pub very much like the one you just left. There's tables, chairs, stools, some customers,<ref>Including a guy who seems to be waiting for someone.</ref> a bar, even a bartender arguing with some guards. It seems to be a conversation about permits. You very pointedly do not go interrupt this, and head instead for the exit, slipping out into the black squalor of some hell you absolutely do not recognise in the slightest.

You don't even bother looking around. You just pick a direction and start walking. The demons and souls around you pay you little heed, going about their own business, and while you don't expect they'd mess much with you, you don't much care to test it. The buildings around you are a strange clash of intricate styles and... organs? casting grimy, glistening silhouettes against a roiling dark sky. It's not clouds that are roiling. You're not entirely sure what it is, and you're not keen to stare. All you know at the moment is that it's roiling, upended somehow.

The street takes you to another street. You head up the other street. There's a hilliness to it all, so you head up the hills. You have no idea where you're going. You're not keeping track. You wouldn't be able to find your way back, and somehow, sort of, that's the point.

You're here to move ''forward''. Everything had stopped when they... it... successfully took out Hanron, and you'd had to make good on your promise to step in, but now... you need to keep going. Your faith in men and gods only goes so far, but right now, you put faith in the story above all else. You need to find out what it really was, and to do that, you need to move. You need to think.

The city becomes grimier, more broken down. It's not even a parallel of Abearanoth, or anything you've seen, just a mess of buildings shoved into a non-euclidean landscape, forming a mind-wrenching mess that clearly makes no more sense to the inhabitants than to you. They just ignore it. You ignore it. You walk on. You walk around. You walk up, and down, and sideways. Sometimes you float.

The city isn't doing it for you. You suppose you should leave.

You continue on, walking in directions. You walk out.

You find yourself in a joke of a countryside. Mostly it's full of tentacles, snaking out of the ground and wriggling. In the distance - now there is a distance to actually be properly seen - are organs. Colons and spleens and livers and things you don't recognise at all, but all with the sort of membrane that isn't quite skin that sits on the outside of everything, separating it from everything else in the body. There's a road through the middle of it. The road twists and inverts on itself. You pause, giving it a disappointed look, and a tentacle snakes out toward you. A passing man-thing gives you a look and shakes his head disapprovingly.

You smack at the tentacle, and it makes a horrible wet splat in your hand, burning your skin, but retracts.

You heal your hand and continue on.

The landscape shifts. Trees form. They look like trees. They're recognisable, normal, growing up in trunks, branching out branches, leafing out leaves. Some of them have bromeliads hanging off them. Some are covered in vines. Some have roots exposed, snaking across the trail. You recognise them as oaks, catsas, mimos, and those weird italian things with the strange bark. They look completely normal, and that, in and of itself, makes them come across as utterly freaky.

At some point it occurs to you that you're walking through a giant intestine. Lined with trees. This is somewhat less freaky.

You come to a village. Villagers are doing villager things. This, too, is oddly normal, though the fact that the entire village appears to be cut in half makes it somewhat less odd. All the buildings are bisected. All the people are sliced in two, but with each half still going around together. There's just a slight delay between the right half and the left.

The guy who greets you sounds normal enough. "Welcome to Lisp!" he says.

"Hi," you say. "Have you seen my hat?"

"No," he says.

"Oh," you say. "Thanks anyway."

Just for the sake of it, you ask some others there the same question. None of them have seen a hat. You figure it's as good a cover as any, though. Something to aim at. Something to present.

You continue on out the other side.

You run into other people, pass through other places, but ask much the same question. You're not looking for a hat. You don't know what you're looking for. But as long as you keep asking in that deadpan voice, it doesn't matter. You're doing something.

You come to a plain, and you break from the road, peering down into the dismal valleys and shrouded hills. They're full of grass, but the grass is hard spirals, more like Abaddon's hair than anything else, twisty and dark, unyielding as you try to pass through it. It breaks off when you kick it. It tears your robes when you try to push through it. You wind up levitating yourself, hovering slightly over the points, as you waft down into the depths, through layers of mist, and strange sounds. Souls, lost and alone, peer at you from empty eyes, not understanding, as you pass. You suppose you understand - you don't actually understand, yourself.

And then you see it. A gateway, sort of. A portal. Sort of. A patch of black, vertical, rising out of the ground, wisping at the edges, vaguely circular. Several meters tall. Big enough to sail a small ship through, if you happened to have a small flying ship. You don't.

Neither, apparently, does the elf standing in front of it, her back to you, as if waiting.

You go up to her, stand next to her. Stare at the black as well. Yes. This is the plot.

"Hello, Ariel," you say.

"Hello," she chimes. "Do you know what this is?"

"No," you say.

"Oh," she says disappointedly.

"Some sort of gateway," you go on. "A passage to another side. It's important, like a back door to an unwieldy application. It might even be our only way in, really."

"What application?" she asks.

You give it a long look. "I think..." you begin, and then stop. You're not sure what you think. You're making it up as you go. "It's the same one as the house in Abearanoth. Coraline and Nell go in, take out the baddies, come out. Threat eliminated, no more dead Keepers."

"Cool," Ariel says.

"Except that doesn't actually solve the problem," you go on. "That's where we come in. Find the back door. Go inside. Get the goods, come out."

"What are the goods?" she asks.

"Not just the one soul," you say. "It was probably all of them."

"All of what?"

"The souls."

She peers at you curiously.

"So," she says, "are we going in?"

You stare at it. You contemplate. You consider. You decide. "No," you say. "Not today."

"Why not?" she asks.

You shake your head. You don't know. It just seems wrong. Too risky. Too unknown.

"What, then?" she asks.

"This isn't necessarily my story anymore," you tell her. "I'm not sure I'm the right one to go."

"But it was?"

"I don't know."

You leave her, after a bit. You wander... out. Out of the plain, the fields, the valleys and hills. Out of the wilderness of organs and upended skies. You're starting to recognise them, almost. They're familiar. You know what they are.

You wander toward the center. You wander to the edge. You find a lift, and a portal. It hoists. Hoists. Hoists.

The gateway opens, and you pass through and the grey city that meets your gaze is all too familiar. The patchwork of tables and vendors and stands is a yowling fest of hawkings and barters. The black sky above is a void. The buildings are dusty austerity. The tower in the distance towers.

You trudge past the stalls, looking for one in particular. A sausage vendor, possibly next to a hairdresser. Maybe it isn't there yet. Maybe it is.

The sausage vendor is. You wind up at her cart, peering down at her curiously, and she says, "Sausage?"

You ask, "What currencies do you take?"

She asks, "What currencies do you have?"

"Ordian credit?" you ask.

"Sure," she says. "How much you want? 3 a piece."

"Two," you tell her.

She pulls a tablet out from a drawer or something, and bonks at it for a moment before spinning it around at you. It has a sum, and a place to tap your card. You tap your card, and then tap the verification.

"Thanks," she says, spinning it back. She passes you a pair of sausages in a sort of plasticky towel.


}}

{{ I have a problem | (not content)

Mmm, torture porn.

}}

{{ return scry |

KEEPER
Did you find what you were looking for?

VARDAMAN
Ugh. It's like staring into the abyss, while the abyss stares back, and I'm just calling out to it, 'Here abyssy abyssy abyssy! Here abyssy!'

JUANE
Er, what?

VARDAMAN
I dunno. I'm getting closer, at least. This is at least the general neighbourhood. In the sense of a local galactic cluster being a neighbourhood of damn galaxies.
Which is actually not terrible, compared to the sheer amount of space there is. Total. Um.
Sorry, we'll get out of your way.

}}

{{ temple of Lara |

ANNABELLE
This is the temple of Lara, the goddess of...

VARDAMAN
It's a cat cafe!

NOMI
Welcome to the cat cafe!

VARDAMAN
See? Cat cafe.

ANNABELLE
Why do I keep expecting you to care about gods?

VARDAMAN
Hey, I adore gods. I just adore cats more. Because they're actually adorable. When was the last time you saw an adorable god?

}}

I am the black and the white.

We stand between the darkness and the light.

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