This/Survivors song

The /heap contains the snippets.

This is a bad idea.

Part 0

This is the third story.

Notes:

1. Events may repeat themselves, precede their causes, and take different forms in different stories. They are the same events.
2. Coraline is a librarian.
3. Links may cross inter-universal boundaries.
4. Notes may provide context, but not meaning.
5. Coraline Henderson is dead.
6. The soft vibrating that you feel in your bones, it is nothing more than the humming air, handsaws twanging, cats purring too many to hear. Do you have a problem with silence?

Midnight - the end of time

In the end, the universe is destroyed, leaving behind two survivors surrounded by approximately 3.8 billion sphinxes.

The survivors seem rather annoyed, not so much because everything they have ever known is now gone, but because, as a result, they have now found themselves sitting in a small pocket in the middle of what is effectively a giant, moon-sized wad of winged cats. The sphinxes watch them from all sides. They are sitting on sphinxes. Bertram has a sphinx on his lap. Coraline has a sphinx on her head. Occasionally the walls roil as the sphinxes rearrange themselves, but mostly the interior is just a solid expanse of fur and eyes and wings and whiskers and cute little cat noses crinkling softly in their general direction, filled with the overwhelming sound of purring.

"Good job," Bertram says, over the noise.

Coraline glowers at him from under her sphinx hat. It makes her look like Batman.

"Really," Bertram goes on. "I'm impressed. I did not expect that when we destroyed the entire universe, this would happen."

Part 1

The year is 2032 by the Cerrisian calendar. It has been four years since the crown of Soravia fell, sending the kingdom into chaos and turmoil. As the ruling Houses struggle for power and influence, they make alliances and send their armies to march and engage in terrible battles. The devastation only spreads, with no end in sight.

But Soravia is large, and many areas remain almost unaffected.

But Soravia is small, and there is no escape within its shores.

Notes:

1. This was all planned in retrospect.

Molstead Inn - morning

"Most people have dreams that are very simple. Family, home, food, warm water for a bath at the end of the day. Not that difficult."

~ Earthan blogger

Coraline Henderson was perfectly normal. She owned an inn and tended bar in the small town of Molstead, got out of bed in the middle of the afternoon, bought random things at market that sometimes made no sense at all, rescued passing adventurers from giants, occasionally went to temple and argued with the statuary, and was generally thoroughly badass. The only thing particularly abnormal about her was the minor detail that she was actually from another planet, in another universe, called Earth.

This planet was called Cerris.

Here, in Molstead, she tended to go by the name Lyra Zidane. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with her real name, but she was paranoid, and Lyra was a nice name. Not that 'Coraline' was her real name either; for a native Finn, it had far too few vowels to be appropriate. But that didn't matter here. They wouldn't have been able to pronounce it no matter how many vowels it had.

Half the time people didn't even get 'Lyra' right. It would have been laughable, though in all fairness they did tend to be drunk when this happened. One of the perks of bartending.

This morning, Coraline woke up relatively early - after all, it was still morning. There was a cat on her head, which helped. It was also the middle of summer, which was probably the main reason - even downstairs the rooms tended to get quite warm in the daytime.

She pushed the cat off her head and stared at the ceiling for a moment in the stewing heat. The cat slid onto the other pillow and curled up again.

"How can you even move in this?" she asked the cat. "All the fur... so warm..."

The cat said nothing, so Coraline just lay there for a bit in extreme discomfort. Everything was warm. She felt like a puddle. The voices, though contained to a low murmur, felt like dripping, weighing down on her even more than the oppressive heat. Everything was just... heavy.

Eventually, somehow, she got out of bed, found some clothes, downed her morning 'medicine', which just happened to be a cup of brandy, and nearly fell on her face when the mysterious cat ran out after her. Then she was in the kitchen with its horrible lack of any sensible kitchen appliances. These people had magic, for crying out loud! Why hadn't anyone invented a dishwasher? Convection oven? Automatic mixer? Refrigerator?!

All in all, it was terrible. As she threw out some mouldy bread and fried up some eggs and toast, she made a mental note to look into commissioning at least that last one the next time she stopped by Keller's place. He was, after all, a wizard. Even if he was useless, she could probably tell him enough about the basic operating principles to get something... for now, though, she filed the note away with the other perennial note to put in some proper insulation upstairs to stop the entire place from turning into a bloody oven. All it really needed was the walls filled with mud. Shouldn't be so hard. None of this should be so hard.

Grumbling, she walked into the tavern proper, and was immediately surprised to find that it was indeed a tavern and not a library. This happened from time to time, but in a way she supposed it sort of made sense. All her life she'd dreamed of being a librarian. And here one of her greatest dreams of all had come true: she had a job.

She glared at it. The stupid thing was how very similar libraries and taverns really were, in practice. Both were places where ideas converged and were communicated. Both were places where people came to self-diagnose and self-medicate, respective, and where they usually made their lives worse in the process.

She sighed, grumped up to the counter, almost tripped over the cat again, realised she'd forgotten what she came in here for, went over to prop open the door to maybe get some breeze, and then, on the way back to the cat, nearly ran into a guy coming down the stairs.

She glared at him. He was a local, but he'd been too drunk to go home the previous night and had thus just been hauled into a room to sleep it off. Not unusual, but also normally not her job to deal with it.

He gave her a small wave and rubbed his head. Then he tripped over the cat.

Coraline just sort of stared for a moment.

Somehow she got him to the bar, and passed him a coffee. He mumbled what might have been thanks and stared glumly into the mug, disinclined to do anything with it.

"Drink it," she said. "It'll help."

The guy just sat there. The cat jumped up after him and flopped down next to his arm.

Coraline petted it angrily, and then looked back to the guy. "Seriously, drink it," she said.

He picked up the mug and stared at his coffee as though it were some strange and foreign potion. Oddly, it wasn't, though Coraline had no idea why. It was just a thing here, and they got huge shipments periodically. And it was very much coffee.

Suddenly he downed it in three solid gulps, stared at the empty mug, seemed to stop, then startled, twitched, stood up, and fell over again. The cat peered after him with absolute disinterest.

Coraline peered over the counter as well, somewhat more worried than the cat, wondering if she'd finally managed to accidentally kill a patron, but the guy was already getting up. He shrugged himself off, looked at the cat suspiciously, and then asked, quietly, "Er, how much will that be?"

"Uhnn, let's see..." she said, rummaging around for a bit under the bar. Then she found the paper pad covered in doodles, and, occasionally, billing info. "Looks like you got your tab up to five, so let's make it eight silver altogether including room and board. Includes breakfast, if you want it."

"Er," he said, passing her the coins, "What's breakfast?"

"I made toast." She'd actually made more than toast, but the toast was the only thing left that was edible.

"Okay," he said.

She got him a piece of toast, and watched as he wandered out, munching.

Molstead - morning

Later, she picked up the cat and headed out as well into the bright sunny morning. Bob, the guy down the street, was passing by with a barrow full of what were probably not coconuts. One of these days she would find out just what they were, but at the moment she was looking for someone else.

A group of women were by the Harrison place gossiping under a tree. They waved. She waved back.

Some guys were heading up the road with a bunch of saws. A gaggle of kids were playing with a dog.

There was a distinct lack of the one person who was supposed to be there.

"Cat," she said, "Where's Jess?"

The cat said nothing.

"Seriously," she said, "She should be here. She handles mornings."

The cat had nothing useful to say to this either.

"Hmph," she said.

Still carrying the cat, she wandered off to find out just what had happened to her innkeeper. Asking around yielded nothing, though one annoyingly hamstery guy kept asking her what day it was and then followed her all the way to market when she finally decided to ignore him and move on. Another asked what the deal with the cat was. She didn't know quite why she was still carrying it, but she was. She didn't know where it had even come from in the first place. It wasn't her cat.

The market was a fairly standard affair, as far as she could tell. A town this size had a pretty consistent setup, with stalls and tables around the square for when it was nice out, and shops all around that serving as backup. Outside it wasn't necessarily the same folks any given day - a town of a few hundred had a fair bit of overlap, and while the Jameses were the go-to meat sellers where everyone would drop off and/or pick up their meat supplies, they wouldn't necessarily get the same James son or daughter two days in a row.

And then there was Barney, one of the blacksmiths. He kept trying to sell her a sword. Apparently he'd made it just for her, and every time he saw her come by, he'd hurry over and insist that today was the day that she would buy this brilliant piece of moulded metal off of him.

Today was no different. "Lyra!" Barney said, hurrying over to Coraline. "I've got this sword. You know I've got this sword. It's got your name written all over it, and for the absolute steal of a price of five silver it's all yours, all yours!" He held the sword, scabbard and all, up in her face and jiggled it around.

She pushed it aside. "Look, you-" she began, but then the other guy was in her face again, the one who'd followed her all the way here, all hamstery and insistent.

"What day is it?" the guy asked for what might have been the fiftieth time.

The cat hissed at him. "The day you die," it said quietly, and settled around Coraline's shoulders.

Coraline ignored this, and then Barney pulled him aside again in order to reclaim his own rightful place in her face.

The hamstery guy, whatever his name even was, wandered off to bother the Jameses instead.

"Five silver," Barney repeated. "Once in a lifetime deal. Just five, and it's all yours!"

The thing was, five silver was a really good deal for a sword. Barney's steel was good, too, at least for steel - she'd previously bought a pickaxe off him, and it'd held up to all manner of non-warranty-covered abuse before she'd finally bent it out of shape. Not that she'd ever tell him about it. As annoying as the guy was, there was only so much soul-crushing she felt polite to inflict on him. Bending was not supposed to be easy.

A decent sword usually went for more like 50, too, even when it wasn't custom-made. The only problem was that she had absolutely no use whatsoever for a sword. The ornate golden staff she always carried (or slung over her shoulder, as it was now) was not only the only weapon she needed, it was the only one she could even properly use. At range, it shot energy bolts that seemed to vary in intensity according to whatever she felt like, and in a pinch is was also quite heavy and rather sharp, and thus highly effective when used to whack people over the head. So a sword wouldn't have added much.

But five silver was a really good deal. "Five?" she asked.

"All yours," Barney said.

"Oh, very well," Coraline said, fishing out some coins. Not only would it maybe finally get Barney out of her personal space, she'd always sort of wanted a proper sword. Granted she'd been five at the time, and continued to act like she was five, for a good chunk of her life.

The sword was a strange weight on her belt. Then again, the entire belt was a strange weight on top of her light blouse and skirt, but she needed the near bottomless pocket that it held, a magic bag she'd bought the previous year and then refashioned into a purse of sorts. It was important because she especially needed the few small bottles of vodka stashed away in it in case of emergencies. Such emergencies were best avoided.

Barney looked her over and nodded. "Aye, yes, that's the look. Utterly dashing, the lady wizard."

Coraline eyed him suspiciously, then said, "You seen Jess around, by any chance?" She figured she might as well try to get something useful out of him while he was here.

"Not today, I'm afraid."

"Foo," she said. "Thanks for the sword, though. I think. And don't ever do that again." She held up a finger for emphasis.

He grinned at her and backed away with a weird swagger. This was basically his norm, though how he did that she had no idea. In another time and place, she suspected the guy would have been right at home in a used car lot.

Asking around some more (and avoiding the Jameses and their unfortunate inherited questioning baggage) revealed much the same - nobody had seen Jess today, though normally the girl did come through here on her way to mind the inn. This wasn't like her, either. From a fairly well-off family who ran one of the larger farms, Jessica Eslinger was a hard worker, and generally quite reliable. Quite consistent in her routines, too.

Janice, who sold mostly cloth and craft items, suggested she head up and check the family's farm. "Might just have taken sick or something," Janice said.

Coraline nodded. Bit odd for the summer, but it did sometimes happen.

"If not, I'd try the temple," Janice added. "It's near there, and little Jess always did like seeing the statue."

"Little?" Coraline said.

"Well, maybe not so much anymore," Janice said with a smile. "Growing up into a right lovely young lady, that one. Might even take after you some day." She waggled a finger at Coraline.

Coraline smiled and held back some snark at this, instead waving goodbye as she headed out again and Janice wished her a good day.

She had often wondered what all they thought of her, but never quite had the heart to ask. They thought she was a wizard, after all. They thought she was from Ord, too, the strange local mirror-universe where magic was even weirder than here, and indeed probably thought quite a few other odd things on top of that. But that was fine. People could think what they wanted, and for her part she probably thought quite a few things they didn't care to know about either.

Molstead outskirts - morning

Coraline headed up the road to the Eslinger farm, thinking about toasters. Wonderful invention, toasters. Why was she thinking about toasters? Not that she had much insight as to why her brain did much of anything anymore, but toasters sure were random.

She thought about a bunch of other things, too. She thought about normality and how much she liked it, and how annoyingly not normal this day was being. She thought about what a hard time she was having thinking. She saw a stump that looked suspiciously like a guy in rough leathers, and thought about that, and then realised it really was a guy in rough leathers when he moved.

He stepped forward, apparently keen on addressing her, but his attention seemed to be mostly on her staff. "Fuck, that's a giant arse staff. What's the deal with that?" he said, gawping.

Coraline smiled, stopping. "I'm a wizard, mate. Can't you tell?" The staff always sold that one, even though she could hardly do much real magic herself. Big, ornate, and golden, it had a stylised phoenix on the end with wings outstretched, and a bit of an orb that just sort of hovered in place, unattached, where the head should have been. Really magical-looking, that orb. But the whole thing looked too impractical to not be magical.

"Oh. Really?" he said, looking a little worried.

She laughed, and asked, "You passing through around here? I own the Molstead Inn, if you need a room for the night." She gestured back the way she'd come. She didn't recognise him, so that might mean business. While they made most of their money by inebriating the locals, the odd outlander was always a good addition. Especially since they could usually charge them more.

"Great," he said, just sort of standing there awkwardly.

He didn't seem inclined to say anything else, so she just spun about and continued on her way.

According to her mum, Jess had left home at the usual time this morning. When Coraline explained that her daughter had apparently never made it to town, let alone work, Mrs. Eslinger was quite concerned, and probably for good reason.

Coraline was becoming rather concerned herself. People did not normally just vanish, and when they did, it was generally not a good sign at all. She supposed that that had been exactly what had happened to her in her own world, though. But she'd had warning. She had agreed to this. Not that she'd told anyone else about it.

Even so, she assured Mrs. Eslinger that it was probably fine, something must have come up, that's all. She'd find Jess and sort it out.

No use worrying people when they really didn't know yet if anything was amiss.

Molstead temple - noonish

It was a long shot, but per Janice's direction, she checked the temple, too, poking her head inside while the cat on her shoulders licked its paws disinterestedly. The main room was empty, the large statue of Azorres looking down on the space surrounded by much smaller shrines to some of the other gods.

It was cool and quiet inside, and dark, despite all the windows letting down their respective sunbeams, and she let the door shut gently behind her so as to not disturb the tranquillity of the place.

"Hey, statue," she said, finally breaking the silence outright.

The voice that emanated out was long and low, but one she knew well, having spent considerable time arguing with it. "Welcome back, wayfarer," the statue said. "How are you holding up?"

And it was, specifically, the statue speaking. The local gods did at times speak through their icons, especially Azorres, but in their stead many of the larger statues likewise had voices of their own, and, indeed, personalities. Coraline quite liked this one, though she tried not to show it ever.

"Well," she said slowly, "I'm drunk out of my skull, my life's a bloody Monty Python skit, and my innkeeper is missing. And I've got this extra cat for some reason. I have no idea where this cat came from."

"No worse?" the statue said.

"No worse, no better, just voices, voices, voices, booze, and voices." Coraline threw her arms out in emphasis at all the voices, and sighed. "Seriously, though, have you seen Jess? It's just that her folks said she left, but no one's seen her along the way and she never showed up at work. She didn't come by here today, by any chance, did she?"

"She has not been here," the statue said in its calm low voice.

"Well, bugger," Coraline said. The cat on her shoulder stuck a paw on her cheek, and she eyeballed it out of the corner of her eye. She had two cats, Tress and Thimble. Good mousers the both of them, and also very good lap warmers, despite Thimble's perpetually angry expression. And this cat was neither Tress nor Thimble. Everything else aside, it was a lot larger, prettier, and a very fluffy tortoiseshell longhair to boot, whereas the other two were borderline shorthairs, and respectively brown-pointed and grey.

"Oy, cat," she said. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Does it matter?" the cat said.

Coraline gave the cat a confused look, then abruptly turned back to the statue. "Statue, was I just speaking cat, or was the cat just speaking... uh... whatever the hell this is?"

"Just Soravian," the statue said. "But shouldn't you know that, if you speak it?"

"The moment I know anything about anything will be the moment there's been a massive miracle. Like, when I'm dead or something." Coraline shook her head. "Seriously, it doesn't work that way. Somehow I just talk and the language comes out, except there's some things I can't say properly at all. Usually names and perkele."

"Most interesting," the statue mused.

Coraline frowned, a little surprised she'd just come out and admitted that, but before she could ask anything else, the cat said, "You speak cat, I speak Soravian. What does it matter?"

"I could logic you down a hole where ain't nothing matters at all, cat," she said. "If nothing else, though, I need something to call you. That's not 'this cat'. You know?"

The cat purred and curled against Coraline's cheek.

"Also it'd be nice to know where you came from so I can worry less that you might be an alien or something trying to suck out my brain juices," Coraline muttered.

"I'm Agata," the cat conceded. "I'm a witch's cat. I needed a witch, and you seemed witchy."

"What, did something happen to your old witch? Also, I kind of ain't a witch."

Agata eyed her for for a moment, then stretched out a leg and stuck a claw up Coraline's nose.

"Ow?" Coraline said. It didn't actually hurt, but then again she had kind of busted her pain sensitivity by being always drunk, so maybe it should have. She didn't know.

"You'll do," the cat purred.

Coraline frowned at the cat. This was all very unexpected, and not what she had come here for at all. She glanced back at the statue.

The statue said nothing, and was instead, for the moment, simply very statuey.

"Witch died. Had a run-in with a witcher," Agata said under her ear. "Deathdealer, it was."

Coraline pulled the cat off her shoulders and rearranged it as a lump in her arms, which she proceeded to scratch behind the ears. "What, around here?"

"Around," Agata purred, curling into her fingers happily.

The statue's voice echoed through the room once more: "How do you know you are not a witch?"

"Er... I suppose I don't?" Coraline said. "Nevermind witches, though. If I were a 15-year-old girl on my way to work in the morning, what might stop me from getting there?"

"Everything," Agata said. "Young witches get into all the worst trouble."

"Well, this one definitely ain't a witch..." Coraline said.

"Try it the other way around," the statue said. "You are looking for Jess. Where did you lose her?"

Coraline paused and gave it a bit of a think. She wished she could still think the way she used to, carry a thought all the way through, consider every possibility, but it was so hard these days.

"The road?" Coraline asked finally.

"Indeed," the statue said. "If she went missing somewhere along the road into town, look for answers there, that they may bring you to the truth."

"Right," Coraline said, then added, not sarcastically at all, "Thanks, statue. You're a wonderful replacement for a working brain."

Molstead outskirts - noonish

Coraline went back to the road, Agata now following behind her, and stopped by the bend where she'd run into that guy before. There was no sign of him now, only rocks in the unpaved road that looked suspiciously like rocks poking out of the unpaved road, and dappled sunlight bouncing out of the trees, and waves of hot air rising in the distance.

Supposing the guy weren't staying in town, there were some old ruins off the road near here, a favourite locale for bandits and small children alike.

"Let's check this out," Coraline announced, after spending entirely too long just sort of staring off into space. Pulling her staff off over her head and momentarily getting her braid tangled in the strap, she headed into the trees.

Agata trotted ahead, leading her through the underbrush, away from dry patches, around soggy spots, making little noise. A spider fell on Coraline's head and tried to run down her face, but wound up toppling to the ground instead.

She stopped to scratch her nose, and Agata stopped too. Then they heard the voices, rough and raucous, drifting through the trees ahead. Coraline pushed through the twiggage with great ineptitude and peered into the quasi-clearing.

This had been a city once, a home to the ancient Torini elves, but now few buildings remained standing, let alone intact. Mostly the white stone blocks and columns lay scattered throughout the ferns and grass, with only the odd wall or pillar rising against the green, clusters of buildings tumbled down into rubble and isolate walls now almost totally reclaimed by the forest. The only thing that really stood out was the building at the far end - intact, still sealed after all these centuries, and nearly untouched by storm or moss.

The only other thing that stood out was the bandit camp flat smack in the centre of the ruins.

Of the men, Coraline counted up to about ten or so, but kept losing the exact count as she glowered in their general direction. Two of them were standing some sort of guard, though neither appeared to have noticed her despite her complete lack of care; the general attention of the entire group seemed to be on Jess, who was tied to a tentpole, and a particularly dangerous-looking bandit standing over her saying something loud and unintelligible. Jess didn't respond. She appeared to be unconscious, her dress torn conspicuously.

"Voi paska," Coraline said quietly.

"I count thirty-seven," Agata said. "Most in the camp, two more in the trees." The cat motioned with its head the general direction of the more in the trees.

"Um," Coraline said. Apparently she couldn't even count anymore. Great. And there was also this problem of thirty-odd bandits in a camp who had apparently stolen her employee. She kind of needed that employee.

After a few minutes just sort of standing there failing to make any progress at all thinking things through, Coraline realised the voices in her head were getting louder again. She fished a bottle of vodka out of her nearly bottomless bag, downed a couple gulps, nearly fell over when the world gave her a massive spin, and then noticed Agata had fallen asleep on her feet.

How long had she been standing there? The lighting looked different now. But everything also just looked darker. It always did this, though, when she started to sober up. The key was to not ever completely sober up. She didn't know what would happen exactly if she did, but from how bad things had gotten before she'd started self-medicating, she doubted it would go any better now.

And for now she had bandits to worry about. They seemed to be eating lunch. She'd forgotten lunch. Was this why she was so out of it now? Or was that the vodka? Or both?

She supposed she could just shoot the lot of them. Only problem there was she didn't know where the other two were. And they also had a hostage. And her reflexes were kind of not good. And they had a hostage. And there were a lot of them. She had vodka, though. She could throw vodka at them. Flaming vodka. That might distract them. Except no, no, that wouldn't work. Thinking was definitely not her strong suit these days, especially after adding vodka. She wished she had brought the statue.

Something glooped past her foot, bouncing into the shrubbery.

Perhaps she could go for help. Call the council, get the militia involved, come in with a whole lot of crossbows and corner and arrest the whole lot of the bandits. Except these guys were pretty heavily armed, and would likely fight back and then some if anyone tried that, so odds were even if the militia did win, it wouldn't be without cost.

Maybe she could try talking to them. Because that totally wouldn't get her captured and killed as well. Or would it? She was a wizard, after all. Or looked like one, anyway. And she could totally shoot anyone who tried anything. Probably. If she got lucky.

"Right!" Coraline announced quietly, "Let's get killed!"

She stuffed the bottle back in her bag, hefted her staff, and strolled into the ruins with what she hoped was the confident sort of stride that someone with every right to be there would use. Because, like, confidence and stuff. People with confidence could be dangerous. She was dangerous. Yes.

Agata gave her a dubious look but followed closely.

One of the watchers said something as they approached. "That's her," the guy she'd run into before said, standing up.

A few backed away as she walked past, but the dangerous-looking bandit rose to meet her; the others simply sat and stood and watched, leaving the matter to their leader. And he was their leader - this was clear not just from his posture and regard, but also his hat. It was an extraordinarily fluffy hat, faded blue, knitted with considerable care. It had what might have been cat ears poking up on top. It was all in all quite ridiculous. None but the leader could have pulled off such a ridiculous hat.

Coraline stopped a few meters away, and he smiled slowly.

"You in charge?" she demanded flatly.

He regarded her for a moment, then said softly, "Bold move, coming alone." He seemed to disregard the cat. Agata disregarded him right back.

They weren't doing anything about it, however. Just waiting. Seeing what she would do first. She had been counting on this. Or she would have been had she been counting on anything.

"I thought perhaps we could resolve this matter with civility," she said. "Before anyone should..." she took a moment to glance to where one of the bandits was trying to inconspicuously load a crossbow while she tried to come up with and end for the sentence, "...get hurt." She hadn't actually noticed the guy before she'd said that, but then he'd just sort of been there, cranking.

The crossbow guy laughed nervously.

Coraline levelled her gaze on the leader again. Her staff was pointed in his general direction, though not directly, and he cocked his head at it before returning the gaze.

"Well, I reckon we could come to an arrangement," he said. "Such don't come cheaply, though."

Coraline eyeballed him, then abruptly turned and walked over to where Jess was tied. Only the girl's hands were bound, and loosely; it was clear they didn't expect her to be able to do much. And indeed, the girl was rather bruised, with a black eye, and breathing raggedly. "For damaged goods?" Coraline said, glancing back.

The bandit leader faltered a moment. He looked disappointed, like he'd been hoping she wouldn't notice, then a bit worried - perhaps not in the least because Coraline now had her staff pointed directly at Jess's head. "Ransom's five thousand," he said, recovering himself. "And we'll be all out of your hair. Water under the bridge, as it were."

She smiled slightly. "I'll give you five hundred," she said, slipping a coinpurse out of her bag with her free hand. She pulled a few coins out and then tossed the rest of the bag to the bandit leader. Then she pointed at another bandit, this one a lanky bald guy. "You. Bring her for me."

For a moment nothing happened. Agata put her ears back, and indeed the cat was a her, Coraline realised. Calicos usually were, since it took a particularly odd genetic fluke for a male to get calico fur, and this was also a witch's cat. It was only fitting.

She looked back to the bandit with the hat. The leader, on whom everyone here was waiting. It was a tense situation, but her mind didn't seem to care.

Finally he nodded, but motioned for two other bandits to go with as well. The one she'd picked out picked up Jess, and then she was headed back out of the camp, out of the ruins, onto the road, the bandits following behind her with Jess, Agata following them.

Eslinger farm - afternoon

The walk back to the Eslinger farm was over almost immediately, or so it felt to Coraline.

With pursed lips, Mrs. Eslinger quickly ushered Coraline and the lanky bandit inside, directing them toward a room in back with a bed. Then she abruptly turned about and informed the other two in no uncertain terms that they would need to wait outside, daring them to disagree, blocking the entire doorway with her plump frame.

Coraline didn't stick around to see how that turned out, and instead continued in, watching as the lanky bandit set Jess down on the bed with considerable care. He backed out quickly as she took a seat next to Jess.

The girl was in poor shape, and while Coraline wasn't a doctor, Agata's comments about her being a witch hadn't been entirely wrong. Not that she was a witch, of course, but she did have a little magic to her name: the thing with understanding languages, the ability to occasionally set things on fire, the ability to heal with a touch. To do so was draining, of course, and it made the voices worse, so she usually tried to avoid it, but in this case it looked to be necessary.

She finished off the bottle from before in the hopes of staving off the voices ahead of time, then placed her hands on Jess's chest, feeling for damage, and concentrating on fixing it. Ribs, organs, bruises, more organs. Fear. So much fear and confusion. She didn't know how to fix the fear, though, and let it be for now. In the back of Coraline's mind, voices mumbled incoherently, rising to the fore.

The girl's eyes fluttered open, then she saw Coraline. "Lyra?" she said, sitting up. "Where am I?"

With some effort, Coraline pushed the voices back, and glanced momentarily back to the door. Mrs. Eslinger and the bandits were nowhere to be seen. "You're home, dear. You're safe," she heard herself say, and after a moment of hesitation, took Jess's hand, adding, "Can you tell me what happened?"

Jess's grip tightened, but she just looked away.

"It's all right," Coraline said. "None of this is your fault. What they did says nothing about you. It happened, and you're still here, and you're gonna be fine. We just need to go through it so you can begin to heal, and put it behind you."

"I can't," Jess said quietly. "I just see them... and I can't. I can't. I can't."

"It's all right," Coraline repeated. "Tell me what you see."

After much wheedling, Coraline got the story out of Jess in pieces, doing everything she could to put the girl at ease along the way. When it was done, Jess seemed calmer, though she wouldn't quite let go of Coraline's hand just yet; Coraline eventually used this to drag her into the kitchen and 'borrow' a late lunch for the both of them in the form of some fruit, sandwiches, and wine.

While they were eating, Mrs. Eslinger ran in with a large knife and dropped it on the table. She looked exhausted, and she had blood on her clothes. Their eyes met, and the mingled rage and fear were palpable. Suddenly Coraline realised something must have happened, started to run for the door, then stopped and picked up Agata and stuffed the cat into Jess's arms.

"This is Agata," Coraline said. "Hold onto her for a bit. She likes her ears scratched."

Then she ran outside, grabbing her staff on the way.

"Er..." Jess said.

Agata purred.

Eslinger farm environs - afternoon

Coraline spotted the two bandits immediately. They were hard to miss. They were running right at her, with swords. She walked toward them, then skirted aside and gave her staff a mighty swing and drove a bladed wing into the nearer one's side, yanking it out and around as he fell, shooting the other in the face.

The one she'd chopped at tried to get up, but she just shot him too, this time requiring significantly less luck because this time she had time to actually stop and aim.

When she looked up, Mrs. Eslinger was in the doorway, smiling coldly.

It turned out Mrs. Eslinger had stabbed the other bandit to death near the road before running away from the other two with her deceptively long legs. He lay there in a pool of his own blood, several holes in his chest and abdomen.

"They deserved worse," Mrs. Eslinger said.

Coraline just nodded. Considering what the bandits had done, she couldn't really argue.

"When they found out she wasn't likely worth ransom," Coraline explained, "they... well, I've healed her physical wounds, but her mind will take more. You're going need to be there for her. Be supportive."

"I know how to take care of my own daughter," Mrs. Eslinger said darkly.

Coraline nodded again. "Of course. This sort of trauma can be difficult, however, for everyone involved. To come to terms with what has happened, she'll need your help in order to heal and move on. Whatever you do, don't judge her for it, but especially don't let anyone else." She was mostly babbling, but hoped it had maybe hit on the right approach. She wasn't sure.

"You seen a lot of this?" Mrs. Eslinger asked.

"Some." While she hadn't exactly, trying to explain the internet didn't seem like the best idea even in general, nevermind when she was this out of it. She indicated the dead bandit in front of them instead and asked, "What do you want to do about him?"

"Burn it. Burn them all."

Coraline obliged with a quick staff blast to the body, setting it on fire burning it quite thoroughly. Mrs. Eslinger looked pleasantly surprised, and they headed back for the other two.

Jess stood nearby, watching, with Agata still in her arms.

Keller's place - afternoon

Coraline hurried into town again, the afternoon sun pushing down on her neck and shoulders. Her head was pounding, voices rattling around almost as chaotically as her scattered thoughts. She was too drunk, too warm, and as she pulled her white-blonde braid loose for a little more shade, she glanced to the woods again. The trees looked quite odd at this level of inebriation, and it would also only be a matter of time before the bandits caught on and did something about it, especially when the three failed to return.

But she couldn't deal with that just yet. First she needed help. Or something. She was a little fuzzy what the hell was going on at all anymore, quite frankly, and realised vaguely that all the extra vodka and wine must have finally hit her head.

Keller's place was on the outskirts of the town proper. Coraline didn't bother to knock, just pushed inside and slammed the door behind her, then stood there blankly while she tried to figure out what she was even doing there.

Finally she realised she had no idea. And Kit, Keller's apprentice, was staring at her from the table, where he'd apparently been researching some spell or other, books and papers all over. And there was a stuffed moose hanging from the ceiling in the corner. That hadn't been there before.

"Need something?" Kit asked.

"Is that a moose?" Coraline asked.

"I have no idea," Kit said. "Not a sheep, though. Nolan checked."

"Why?" Coraline said.

Kit shrugged. Nolan was the town's resident insane sheep-obsessed kid. Everything was either sheep or irrelevant to him. Nobody knew why, and as a result nobody tended to know why he did much of anything, either.

Keller bustled into the room, and upon seeing Coraline, exclaimed, "Miss Zidane! So good to see you again!" As usual, his fancy wizard robes were flowing hugely around his ageing frame, and she got the impression his bustle was primarily in effect in order to take full advantage of that. "You've finally come to your senses, yes?" he said, continuing to bustle around. "Of course I can only help you so much so far out here, but-"

Coraline interrupted him by putting two fingers over his mouth when he got too close. "I think I need to use your alchemy lab," she said, and then went in without waiting for a response.

"What?" He hurried in after her, but she was already going through the compounds.

She selected a shell for a bomb, lined it with some red stuff, lined that with a tissue, and then mixed in a few more substances intended for the actual reaction. She wasn't sure, but if the things she had mixed turned out to be what she thought they might be, the result was probably going to be incredibly toxic.

"Wait, that's dangerous!" he insisted. "You shouldn't just be mixing things like that!"

She finished closing the thing, then turned and gave him a rather skeptical look. "You don't even know," she said flatly, and then stopped, brightening. "And neither do I!"

He gave her a worried look, but she just dropped some coins in his hand.

"For the supplies," she said. "I... think."

"Look, this isn't that simple, Miss Zidane," Keller said, pushing the money back at her.

She ignored it and brushed past him, and the money just wound up on the floor as a result.

He hurried after her. "You should be learning proper magic," he insisted, "not... barging in here and mixing gods know what."

"Yeah, that's my job," Kit pointed out. "Get your own wizard."

"I don't have time for that," she said vaguely, then muttered again, waving her fingers, "Time."

"Well, yes, but..." he sighed. "Well at least take a mask, if you're seriously planning to detonate that thing," he said, throwing a gas mask after her.

Somehow, she actually caught it.

Molstead environs - drunkenly

She headed back up the road, passing some kids along the way. They were chucking pinecones at each other. One of them chucked a cone at Coraline and it bounced off her head. Someone who might have been their mum yelled something unintelligible.

She tossed the bomb into the air as she went. Toss, catch. Toss, catch. One-handed one ball juggling, the simplest form, not even juggling at all. Instant death if she dropped it, probably.

Everything was fuzzy. The previously oppressive heat just felt like butterflies, now.

She ran into two more bandits on the the road. One of them pointed at her and said something. The other drew his sword. Coraline swung her staff around its strap with her free hand and shot him, and the first started to run at her and she shot him too.

She stared at them as they lay on the ground, collapsed, smoking, lifeless. She was too drunk. She had thought she was too drunk before, but now it was really sinking in. She was too drunk now. This was dangerous. She glanced at her hand. She was still holding the bomb, though she couldn't quite feel it anymore. She gave it an experimental squeeze and watched her hand as it squeezed the bomb slightly.

Then she was walking again.

Elven ruins - drunkenly

She pulled on the gas mask as she came out into the ruins. The bandits spotted her quickly. There were a lot of them. Several were pointing crossbows. Others had swords and axes. She was too drunk for crossbows. Swords and axes too, but especially crossbows. She threw the bomb at the lot of them and then dropped behind a section of wall.

Crossbow bolts whizzed overhead and thunked and plinged around her. The bomb exploded on impact with a hissy flpomph.

There was yelling, coughing, footsteps coming toward her. She sat, back to the wall, clutching her head, until the last bandit stopped rolling around behind her.

She poked her head over the wall for a look. None of them were moving, just collapsed bandits all over, with a particularly large swath of them where they'd fallen coming at her.

The bomb radius had been huge, the effects rapid and potent. All because of a little extra magic. The implications would have terrified her, had she been thinking straight. Instead she tried to count the bodies.

She counted... she couldn't count. She got up to one. Then she lost count. Several dead birds were on the ground.

Some part of her brain knew it wasn't necessarily safe to take the mask off, however, as she walked slowly between the bodies, fists raised, deliberately extending a finger for each one she passed. She ended up with all fingers up before even reaching the camp itself, and cursed a bit upon realising she didn't have enough fingers. Then she fished a pen out of her bag and just wrote all the numbers on her arm, going back through from the start, a new number for each one she passed, forgetting whether or not she'd already the fifth one, and then subsequently lost count again.

She tried again, this time shooting each one in the head as she went, small-calibre, adding tick marks next to the first five and then resuming the main count.

She ended up in the ruins on the other side of the camp, her arm covered in numbers. It was a lot of numbers. It was only twenty-nine. That wasn't good.

But there had also been three more that had died at the farm. And the two on the road. She added a few more numbers to her arm. That meant more than one bandit not accounted for. Probably.

She looked around, swinging her head left and right as she tried to focus on the ruins and surrounding trees. Her field of view was... not good. Everything was swimming a bit. She had no idea where they might be. Unless the guy was in a tent. She was standing next to a tent.

She pushed her way inside.

Molstead woods - afternoon

Robert Earnsworth, more commonly known as Huge Bob, was not just a bandit, but a very successful bandit. This, he believed, was because he understood finer points of how the world worked - namely that pretty much every point was based on magnitude. Thus he made a point of being bigger, meaner, and scarier than everyone else. And richer. And fluffier. And warmer. Generally just more of everything.

It was for this that people called him Huge Bob.

Huge Bob was too warm.

He pulled his hat off with a sigh of relief, the sweat rolling down his brow. The woods were otherwise pleasant enough, but this was just uncomfortable.

There was yelling from the direction of the camp, and his hands clenched around the hat. Something was going on back there. His axe was a few paces away, but he couldn't get up just yet.

"Always when I'm taking a shit!" he yelled to no-one in particular. He hoped no-one was around, anyway. His pants were literally down, and he'd gone this far out precisely to avoid having anyone around.

"Fucking shit," he added for emphasis.

The shit took its own time, in absolutely no hurry at all, despite all of Huge Bob's efforts.

Finally he finished up his business, pulled up his pants, grabbed his axe, and hurried back toward the ruins, only hoping his men hadn't screwed things up too much this time.

He got back to find the camp silent, everyone on the ground, no explanation why. Aside from a couple, they all had holes in their head. Some were lying in pools of their own vomit. It looked as though many of them had been hurrying toward something in the direction of the main road, but whatever had taken them out had stopped them in their tracks.

"The fuck...?" he said, looking around, and coughed. In all his years of banditry, he had been up against many things - men, monsters, magic, more monsters - but never had he seen anything quite like this. Poison, maybe? Some sort of disease? But how could it have been so quick?

He backed away, and nearly tripped over a man. This wasn't right. Nothing about this was right.

Elven ruins - drunkenly

The tent proved to be unoccupied, though a lumpy pile of bedding had required closer inspection, which is to say Coraline went and poked it a bunch of times before it finally sunk in that it indeed wasn't a body at all and was instead just a lumpy pile of bedding. That was a bit disappointing.

Finally she pulled the tent flap open, managed to leave slightly more gracefully than she'd entered, and proceeded to attempt to look around. This attempt was almost immediately interrupted by an unusually upright, large, and hatted bandit nearly backing into her.

"Agh!" she yelped, jumping back.

He spun about in surprise, taking his axe with him in what turned into an enormous cleave that she only barely managed to dodge, rolling away, landing on her back. She was definitely too drunk for giant bandits with huge axes and fuzzy hats.

"What the fuck?!" he yelled, advancing on her, though it sounded muffled. He raised the axe for another swing, swinging, bringing it down.

Coraline had no time to get up and run, no space to dodge, only enough to block with the staff at the very last second. The rod bounced against her breast, the force of the blow resonating through the bones of her arms. He pulled his blade down further, trying to slide it to her unprotected stomach, and she pushed it away enough that it sank into the ground by her crotch instead, pinning down her skirt.

She realised he was screaming at her, mostly insults, instructions to die, things he would do to her. It lost coherence as the dregs of her consciousness wondered why the hell she felt so cold.

Then she pulled away, ripping her skirt, kicking the axe back, out of his hands, out of her way. She rose and spun, swinging around the staff like an axe of her own, the sharpened edges of the phoenix' wings singing through the air.

The bandit jumped back, avoiding the swing, but overbalanced in the process, and the second upward swing caught him right in the throat, knocking his head back, knocking him over, knocking Coraline over too in the opposite direction.

Elven ruins - evening

Coraline awoke to crickets. It was evening, that crazy time of day when things had finally cooled down, but the sun was still hovering a couple hours over the edge from nightfall proper.

She was still alive.

Suddenly she sat up, looking around quickly. Had she missed any? But from the look of it everything was just bodies. She pulled off the mask and took in the sweet, cool, strangely foetid air. Her head was clearer now, and as she got up entirely, using the staff as a crutch, she realised she was splattered with dried blood, and almost fell over again. She had to do something about all this. These bodies. So many bodies. Best not to feed the bears, or whatever, and she didn't want to waste anything the bandits might have stocked up, either. Weapons, supplies... she went over each corpse, as well as the tents and containers, gathering up any decent armour and weapons she could find, as well as trinkets, coins, knick-knacks, stuffing them into her magic bag.

She grabbed the bandit leader's hat, too, while she was at it.

Then she burned the bodies, a single staff blast each, the stench of flesh rotting in the summer heat mingling with the stench of burning.

She took a detour to give Mrs. Eslinger the good news, getting rid of the bodies still on the road on the way, before hurrying off to the temple.

Molstead temple - evening

Coraline found Davis, one of the priests, lighting the candles at the various shrines.

He looked up and smiled at her as she entered, then looked a bit confused at her appearance, his nose crinkling, as she made a bee-line for the statue.

"Oy, statue," Coraline said, her hands on her hips. "So I just slaughtered a bunch of bandits. Remind me, why are you helping me, again?"

"What?" Davis said, behind her.

The long, low voice of the statue echoed throughout the chamber. "And what would have happened had you not?"

"I don't know," Coraline said blankly, in what was mostly not a GIR voice, though only mostly.

"It is likely that they would have come after you and Jessica both," the statue said, each word slow and precise, "on the way laying waste to the outer farms, and even perhaps burning down the entire village. Then they would only have continued - on to other towns and other innocent souls. But you stopped them. You did the only thing that was certain, though you cannot know the price."

Coraline glared at the statue, but then Davis put a comforting hand on her shoulder, startling her. In return she glanced back and gave him a freezing eyeful of death.

Davis laughed nervously, backing away.

Then she admitted, "Okay, I guess I mostly just came here because you lot have the only decent baths in town."

"Blood washes off, but the memory of what you have done will not," the statue said, though the voice had changed, taking on a heavier tone. This was the god himself, it seemed. "You carry the Deathgod's coin for a reason. These are the decisions you make; I can only give you the truth you already know."

Coraline smiled humourlessly, and said, "Well, that's what sleep is for." She waggled a finger at her ear. "Brain washes itself out right proper if you just let it."

Molstead - darkening evening

The bath was absolutely wonderful, though it didn't quite get the numbers off her arm, and she also wound up a bit disappointed that she hadn't thought to bring any clean clothes. Or even a spare skirt without massive rips in it.

Ultimately she wound up just washing the clothes too and putting them on wet, enjoying the cool as they dried in the evening breeze.

Kit was outside Keller's place telling some of his friends some plan or other of his. He was always doing that, it seemed, and Jora, of course, as the oldest one there, was skeptical. "I dunno," she was saying. "I don't think it's such a good idea."

"It's a totally good idea!" Kit insisted.

"Will there be sheep?" Nolan asked.

"Yeah, maybe," Kit said, and threw his arms out. "There could be anything!"

"That's the spirit," Coraline said vaguely as she passed, despite having absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

Kit nodded in agreement.

She got a few comments from the townsfolk for her clothes - not just for the ripped skirt, but also the bloodstains - but nothing really came of it.

Molstead Inn - night

Jess was tending bar when Coraline finally got back to the inn, Agata sitting on a shelf behind her. The place was fairly busy, so the girl had her hands full, but she came over as Coraline took a seat on a spare stool.

"You a customer now?" Jess said, smiling.

Coraline put the bandit's hat on the bar in front of her, and Jess picked it up, staring at it.

"Did you..." the girl began, then tried again. "Are they..." She looked at Coraline hopefully.

"Yeah, all dead," Coraline said tiredly. Then she added under her breath, "I think." Not that it would likely matter much - after what had happened, she rather doubted any survivors would try to come back.

Jess just stared at her, lost for words.

Coraline gave her a moment, then just said, "Since you're there, pour me a shalott, will you?" While Jess hurried to fetch up a mug and bottle, she added, "I didn't expect you to come in."

"You know, it's weird, but I just feel safe here," Jess responded, pouring out a very small amount of the bizarre oniony liquor.

"How's that weird? We've got Dors." Dors was the bouncer. He was an orcan, a native of Ord, and quite large, and the one thing he never did was quite fit in. At the moment he was striking poses at one of the patrons.

"Well, there is that," Jess said.

Dors gave them a big smile from across the room.

"Will you be all right handling for the night?" Coraline asked. "I think I... kind of need to pass out now."

Jess picked up the suddenly empty mug and gave it a dubious look, but nodded.

"Great," Coraline said, and wobbled her way into the kitchen, nearly ran over Malla, the cook, and with great care, stumbled out the other side, making her way to her room in what was probably the most roundabout way possible.

Elven ruins - autumn day

"Events do not occur apart and singly. Anything worth the hunting has a cost."

~ Sandman

The bounty hunter stopped amidst the white stone ruins and looked around carefully. People came here often - to camp, to play, to study - and he noted the signs disinterestedly. The norm was not his concern. If everything were normal, he would not have been here.

He nudged the ashes of an old fire and kicked aside some empty bottles, and then he saw the marks. Scorched earth, the scars of intense, localised heat, always so precise, so distinct, the same here as reports had been from Seras and Telegrin, and in Kalona before that. He had not expected this. Not here.

Molstead - late afternoon

It was autumn, so the day was cool, and the night would come soon now. The market bustled as townsfolk prepared for the annual Harvest Festival, but the hunter merely waited in a corner and observed, out of the way.

Laughter and conversation drifted throughout the square. Bright leaves blew past. Brown leaves scurried across the ground.

Passerby greeted the hunter cheerfully. A few asked what brought him to town. A few others avoided him, concerned by his aspect and appearance, moving away in hushed conversation. He paid it all little mind, watching instead for the signs he knew well. A little madness. A little fear. Eyes not quite right.

One man was going from stall to stall, poking his head at the other folks, asking questions. Insistent, pressing, catching the hunter's eye as he did the rounds. Then the man noticed the hunter, too, and hurried over.

"What time is it?" the man asked. He was slightly dirty, and for all the world resembled an emaciated hamster that had suddenly gotten up and decided to be human.

The hunter checked the sky. "Quarter to five, I s'pose?"

"What time is it?" he asked again, more insistently this time, and this time the hunter didn't answer, merely waited.

After about an hour, the man narrowed his eyes, made an angry noise, and headed off to the next person to pester.

Molstead Inn - late afternoon

The Molstead Inn had twelve tables, but one was missing a leg and as a result some drunks had gotten the bright idea to nail it to the ceiling at some point, so in practice the inn really only had eleven usable tables and a hazard sticking out of the ceiling. Coraline wasn't entirely sure, but she suspected that one of the drunks in question might have been her.

Nobody ever mentioned it unless they ran into it.

For now, three of the tables were occupied - two by locals enjoying their evenings with pitchers of ale, and one by three cats sitting on it, with Coraline in one of the chairs. The cats were all staring at Coraline, who was for her part taking a drink every time one of them blinked.

It was a very slow game, and she had been at it for most of the afternoon, though she had originally sat down to draw. Then Tress had sat on her drawing, Thimble had slid off Agata, and the entire plan had been ruined. So instead she simply watched them.

Cal, the new waiter, never commented, instead keeping her properly supplied for the duration and tending to everyone else who came in in the meantime - clearly he was a keeper.

These were the days she lived for, long and lazy, no worries, no concerns.

Later, more townsfolk came in, as well as a few outskirts folks in for the festival, and by the time the evening had settled over the area, the place was full and bustling, leaving many folks standing between the tables, laughing, chattering, no room to sit. It was quite loud. Food and drink were bussed around. Jess was tending bar - the girl had recovered quite well over the past couple months, as it turned out - and Dors was at the door.

Nobody took the other seats at the cats' table.

Thimble blinked.

Coraline took a drink.

Tress yawned.

Someone splashed their drink on Agata and she put an ear back in discontent. Coraline scratched her own ear absent-mindedly.

Tress yawned some more.

Over the noise, someone yelled at Coraline asking what was up with the cats.

She held up a hand signaling for them to wait.

Tress continued to yawn.

Tress finally finished yawning and blinked.

Coraline took a drink, then yelled back, "What?"

"I said what are you doing?" the guy said. He was an out-of-towner, but she didn't recognise him as anyone from even the surrounding townships. His attire marked him as a fighter, of sorts - light armour, well-made - but his swords drew the eye - one steel, one silver. A hunter.

"Drinking," Coraline told him over the roar.

He raised an eyebrow, then asked, "Mind if I sit?" He didn't wait for a response.

Coraline gave him a scathing look, then took another drink when Thimble blinked again. She was finally starting to get a bit drunker; while it was only plum wine, the cats were getting a bit blinky amidst all the ruckus and smoke. Aside from Agata, who had only blinked once since the morning.

"You look like you own the place," the guy said. "Table to yourself, only some cats on it..."

"I do own the place," Coraline said. "Aside from the cats. The cats own me."

"Oh," he said. Then he added, "The name's Dalric. Dalric of Forst. You?"

"Lyra," she said irritably. Even as long as she'd been here she still hadn't gotten used to the friendliness of people. And the need for names everywhere.

A waitress set a pitcher of ale and mug on the table in front of the hunter, carefully avoiding the cats. While the gal was there, he ordered himself some dinner.

"Got any rooms, then?" he asked a bit later.

"Might be one left." she said, watching Agata carefully. The tortoiseshell seemed to be closing her eyes very, very slowly.

Then, against all expectation, Tress blinked. Surprised, Coraline looked back to Agata, but the cat's eyes were normal again. She'd missed the blink, if there had even been one.

Just to be safe, she took two drinks and twitched an eye at Agata.

The guy waited until she seemed to be done, then asked, "Yes?"

Coraline explained that Jess could actually get him set up with a room, and the game continued while he finished his dinner. Tress blinked twice. Thimble just glared with his perpetually angry face. Agata stuck out her tongue and then forgot to pull it the entire way back in.

Finally, the hunter said, "So I see what you're doing. Why are you doing it?"

Coraline glanced up. "Why not?" she said, then took another drink as Thimble closed his eyes and rolled over.

He gave her a skeptical look.

She shrugged, indicating the half-finished sketch of a very angry-looking Thimble-atop-Agata. "I was waiting for a shipment. And they were there." She paused, then added, "Guess it'll be in tomorrow, from the look of it."

He nodded, sort of satisfied, then asked her about the town, how things were, what people tended to do around the place, how the preparations for the festival were going. She told him this and that, things were good though the threat of the war loomed overhead even now, place was largely farmsteads and tradesmen, preparations were going. Lots to do.

In turn, she asked him what brought him here, a professional monster hunter into the peaceful lands away from the fields of ruin.

He asked how she'd known.

"Silver sword," she said. She considered making a joke about similar-looking metals, but couldn't think of anything funny that wasn't a pun on the word 'zinc'. Which probably wouldn't have translated anyway.

He nodded again, and said, "Towns got bounties, too. Oughtn't neglect them when there's lives at stake here same as everywhere else."

"Well, we ain't got any," Coraline said, then took another drink when Thimble slid off the table. Then she realised that that hadn't been a blink at all. She frowned and looked to see where the cat had gone, but he was already lost in a sea of legs.

"None at all?"

"Naw," she said. "We had some lurkers a few weeks back, but the kids took care of those."

"Really. Kids."

She shrugged slightly. "What they lack in organisation they make up for in enthusiasm, excessive research, and hitting things with sharp objects. And occasionally screaming. I hear Erry actually out-wailed a banshee one time."

"Don't their parents mind?" He asked.

She shook her head, but was watching Tress suspiciously. "They're pretty responsible about it. Jora looks after them, and they've also got Nolan," she said. "If there is anything out there that is scarier than Nolan, we have yet to see it."

"Sounds like quite the fellow."

"He's completely obsessed with sheep," Coraline said.

Molstead outskirts - evening

To say that Nolan was obsessed with sheep was an understatement. He was not obsessed with sheep. It went deeper. Sheep were simply everything to him, his entire life, his calling, his purpose. Everything about them made him happy. His parents had no idea what to make of this, of course, but they were not sheep. Nolan understood. Only sheep could understand. Only sheep could provide.

There was a noise below him, and Nolan yawned and looked down at the noise that was not a sheep. It was instead Jora, a girl who probably would have qualified as a friend to someone who entirely comprehended the concept of friends, but that would have been someone else who was not Nolan. To Nolan, Jora was sword-person. The avenger. The guardian. Of not sheep.

"Nolan," Jora was saying, "Please come down. I know you have your reasons for being up there, but your parents are worried about you. Just come down, eat dinner with them, sleep in your bed for a night, and come back in the morning."

Nolan frowned at her. There was a logic to it, he supposed. Bed was warm. He was hungry. He couldn't see much anyway. Tomorrow would be better. "Okay," he said, and dropped out of the tree.

He landed right next to Jora, his nose about two inches away from her elbow. She didn't even flinch.

Jora escorted Nolan back as the stars twinkled overhead, and wondered if this had anything to do with the riddle that Kit had unearthed the other day. It had translated to something about 'the oldest key' for 'checking signs', and Nolan had just yelled "Boom" and run off. And then she'd found him in this tree. And then he'd remained in the tree the entire time since.

Nolan, meanwhile, thought about sheep. And a few other things too, but mostly sheep.

Molstead Inn - night

Dalric stood when the innkeeper did, receiving a suspicious look for his trouble.

"Don't," she said.

It was an odd response, but he just nodded as she left. He wasn't sure what it was she didn't want him to do, of course, but perhaps this was a local thing. For now he didn't worry about it - he was here for a job, a standing bounty that spanned several holds, and it occupied his whole attention.

The Carrier could be anyone.

The place was a bit quieter now, so he asked around, standard questions, getting a feel for the matter. His focus, for now, was on the hamstery guy in the market. The way he had asked the time, persistent and repetitive, was suspicious; they did that sometimes, when they slowly went mad. Became fixated in their terror, and there was always terror as the hunger ate at their souls. First the terror, then the loss, then the devolution into utter mindless thing, devouring and spreading, a plague like none other.

"Oh, Yink?" a bearded guy answered. "Yeah, I know him. Good lad until he went on that logging trip. Just hasn't been the same since."

"He's always asking," another said. "Always asking, never likes the answer."

"Asks a bunch of things, doesn't he? Like he just picks something at random for the day every morning."

"I dunno that he sleeps at all."

"Been going on a few months now."

"Something happened up there, I'm telling you," a curly-haired fellow insisted. "Others didn't even come back at all, and Yink... he just came back trembling, and he wouldn't speak of it. For the longest time he wouldn't even say anything. But this is worse, if anything."

"Oh, leave him alone. He's harmless. Just a nuisance, really," another said.

But Dalric wasn't so sure. He wasn't sure at all, but indeed it looked likely, especially if he really wasn't sleeping. Odd that a Carrier might last so long - usually it was a couple weeks at most - but if the suspicion that had brought him here in the first place were true, it could be possible that one had lasted far longer. Years, even, potentially.

Dalric did not like the implications of that one bit.

Molstead environs - morning

Morning came with a damp chill seeping through the leaves and across the grass. Everything was wet, including Nolan, perched in his tree once more. There, he watched and waited.

Molstead - morning

Dalric was also up, though not up a tree, watching the buildings, noting the paths, looking again for anything odd or hamstery. Only a few folk were out this early, and in the wet and cold, their breath formed mist that lingered in place, leaving strange trails to mark their passing.

He found Yink crouching behind the blacksmithy, muttering to himself.

The hamster man stood suddenly, and looked around, quickly spotting Dalric. "What time is it?" he asked, advancing slowly.

Dalric backed away, hand to his sword, but Yink just bounded forward, right into his face, and very nearly his sword as well, stopping only just before he impaled himself. But that was it, nothing more threatening, just a mild invasion of personal space, and that question, again.

"What time is it?" Yink stared into Dalric's eyes insistently. "What time is it?"

Dalric nudged him away with the tip of his sword, and the madman backed off easily enough, though he went no further. Just stayed as close as he could get, and Dalric noted his eyes looked relatively normal. Dark, perhaps, but that could be natural. Some people here did have dark eyes.

Dalric backed away a bit, but the guy just followed.

He pushed past him and still Yink followed.

"What time is it?" Yink asked.

Molstead Inn - morning

There was a dripping. Coraline awoke slowly, each drip cutting into the dream like a big cutty thing, unexpected, unremembered shortly after, until finally she realised what it was. It was still quite early, at least for her, and it occurred to her that, in the future, she should really stick to harder liquors. Nice safe things like vodka and shalott. And even brandy, for that matter - as bad as it tasted, it was a marked improvement washing the horrible taste out of her mouth. Now if only she could wash away the dripping so easily.

She groaned and went back to sleep.

The dripping continued in the background.

Molstead - noonish

The day pulled itself up by the elbows and, with great effort, turned bright and sunny. Clouds pulled themselves across the bright sky. Townsfolk busied themselves with stuff and things, while the children ran about eating random things, getting in the way, and occasionally helping amidst an air of anticipation. Nolan pulled a twig across the bark of his tree.

Amidst this, Dalric had intended to tail Yink about his normal day, see what he did, what oddities arose, and generally just observe. Given that Yink was still following him around, this was rendered somewhat more difficult, though it did afford a few other opportunities. He could lead the guy various different places, for one. It would potentially make the guy quite easy to isolate, for another, decreasing the risk to the townsfolk.

For now, Yink was suspicious, but not too suspicious. Right now he was chewing on his thumb. He made no indication of hearing voices.

"Oy," Dalric said, beckoning the guy over. "You hungry?"

Yink approached carefully, then asked, much less carefully, "What time is it?"

"You don't give a fuck what bloody time it is," Dalric said. "Just answer the damn question. Are you hungry?"

Yink stared at the hunter for a moment, clearly struggling internally, then asked, "What time is it?"

Dalric glared at him.

Yink stared back, then finally nodded, very, very slowly.

"Great," Dalric said, and stuffed a rather large meat pie into the madman's hands.

Yink clutched it in a hamstery fashion. Then he nibbled it. Then he continued to nibble it. Then he nibbled it some more. All the while he stared at Dalric with buggy eyes, not even blinking.

Dalric had stared down all manner of creatures over the years - monsters of the night, undead, rabid bears, cranky old ladies, even a dragon - but this was just unsettling. Even so, he stared into those buggy eyes and was unsettled. Very unsettled.

Yink nibbled.

Dalric's eye twitched.

Much, much later, the entire pie was finally all nibbled up, Yink was sidling closer and closer, and Dalric was certain of only one thing: he needed a drink.

But first he had to ask: "Do you still feel hungry?"

Yink shrugged, staring up at him, buggy-eyed and hamstery.

"Well?" Dalric insisted.

"What time is it?" Yink said.

Dalric winced, took a deep breath, and then asked instead, "Do you ever hear voices?"

"Yes," Yink said.

"You do?"

"Yes," Yink repeated, and pointed to the hunter. Then he asked again, sticking his face right under Dalric's, "What time is it?"

Dalric took another deep breath, and then slowly, very slowly, backed away and made his way out of the town centre. Yink, of course, followed.

Molstead Inn - noonish

In the dream, the world was a forest of legs: human legs, table legs, elven and orcan legs, ox and dolyak legs. Skirts and leggings rustled in the breeze. Leaves drifted limply about. The sun was high, but the air was cool. The forest was dead, dormant, waiting.

She stalked through the legs, looking for something but not knowing what it was. Then she caught the scent - or perhaps simply a feeling - and broke into a run, bounding on all fours, wind streaming through her luxurious fur. The forest thinned, but the leaves were swirling about and now she was fighting to keep going, fighting to stay on her feet, the leaves pushing and jostling, picking her up off the ground, floating, floating.

It all fell away, but really she was falling, falling through the sky, away from the world, everything fading into blackness.

There was a flash of space, of an alien terrain that had become all too familiar, and then in a sudden rush of voices, Coraline awoke.

She found herself staring up at Malla's worried face. Said face was worryingly close to her own. Said face was saying something. Something worried. Something about something upstairs. Something come look. You said to tell you if we ever saw something odd, and there's something odd in one of the rooms, and I'm afraid, milady. Please, you need to deal with it.

"What?" Coraline said groggily. She still felt a bit like she was falling, though the feeling was fading.

"There's something in one of the rooms, milady Zidane," Malla repeated. "You need to come look, please. I don't know what it is, but there's just something not right about it."

"So what is it?" Coraline asked, pulling herself out of bed and into some actual clothes.

"I..." Malla shook her head. "It's black. Shiny. Feels like the whole world gone wrong."

Coraline frowned, but gestured for the woman to lead on. She grabbed a bottle of whiskey on her way out.

The room in question was the hunter's room. Though Jess had been the one to actually assign the guy, Coraline was still reasonably sure of this because there were leathers all over and the table was covered in weapons, mostly knives. It looked like he hadn't actually slept in the bed, either, but simply on.

Staying as far back from the doorway as she could, Malla pointed to the small-table by the bed. On it was a book, and next to that, three shiny stones, two an off white, one black, the size of golfballs. Coraline had seen similar once before. She remembered the cold feeling as the spell had settled over her, like water dripping down under her skin, and shivered.

Then she pushed it aside and smiled reassuringly back at Malla. "Just stay here," she said, and headed over to the table.

As she got closer, she could feel the voices getting louder in her head, and it seemed almost as though she were pushing against a current, and yet at the same time, she was drawn through it, to the black. That black stone. So familiar. So inviting. Safe. Necessary. Needed. The voices rose to a scream.

Her finger touched the stone and everything fell away. Voices, floor, gravity, all the light and sound in the world.

It all just fell away.

Somehow Coraline managed to avoid falling over herself, and a moment later everything was back to normal - the floor where it should be, gravity doing what it was supposed to, the voices just a murmur in the back of her mind. She was holding the black stone clutched in front of her, its cold surface unrelenting in her grip. She forced her hand to relax a bit and gave it an annoyed look.

"Milady?" Malla said uncertainly from the doorway.

"This is a soul gem," Coraline said, turning, holding up the black stone. "Except this isn't a soul in it. Souls are... well, they're not really anything, normally. Just memories, resonance. They might glow a bit." She wasn't sure how she knew this, unless she was just making it up, but either way it made sense.

Malla nodded, confused.

"I need you to go call on the Mayers. Tell Edine I need the council," Coraline said gravely, forcing herself to put the stone back down on the small-table. She knew what... whatever the hunter's name was... was really hunting.

Her.

And a moment later the realisation hit her.

She had just fallen into his trap.

Coraline glanced back to the doorway, but Malla had already gone.

She proceeded to panic for a bit, realised she was still holding whiskey in her other hand, drank a bunch of whiskey, panicked some more, and then finally calmed down a bit. She needed to think, not... make it even harder to think. Except why would it even matter? Of course she'd be here. Of course they should all be concerned. Duh.

She gave the bottle of whiskey a disappointed look, gave the black soul gem another irritated look so it wouldn't feel left out, and shuffled back downstairs feeling like a bit of an idiot.

Mayer house - afternoon

The Molstead town council was not so much a council, exactly, as it was a tea party that happened occasionally, usually whenever one of the members/members' wives/members' sons/random people staying with a member felt like it. The members of the council either showed up because they had power, or had power because they showed up. Either way, it all worked out, because it was a relatively subtle sort of power - the power that keeps things moving, that resolves disputes, that brings down your scary aunt Edna on you should you step out of line.

Coraline was on the council because as innkeeper, she knew most everyone, and most everyone knew her... and also, of course, because she was a wizard - or possibly a witch - whereas Keller, despite being a wizard as well, wasn't on the council because he never actually showed up. The others were generally representatives of powerful or large families, or elders with a lot of sway, or Nolan's mum, who came mostly just because she needed to be sure Nolan wasn't disturbing anyone too much. Merlijn, the leader of the militia, tended to come as well, for obvious reasons, along with Davis, who purportedly represented the interests of the temple.

Edine Mayer was hosting.

Davis was eating a cake.

Coraline was mixing the Cerrisian equivalent of Irish coffee. Some of the wives didn't appreciate this. Some of them did.

Agata was crouched under the coffee table.

Folks were shuffling around and sitting down.

"What was so important we all needed to come today of all days?" Merlijn asked. He looked decidedly frazzled, though the rest of him not nearly so much as his hair, which was sticking almost straight up.

"A hunter," Coraline said, with as much eloquence as she could through a mouthful of highly alcoholic coffee. "Dalric of Forst." She was momentarily surprised at having remembered his name, but just went with it. Or tried to.

"So?" Edine said. "We've seen him around."

Coraline took a minute to choke on her coffee, then another to stop choking, before following up, "He's hunting the Death of Souls."

There was a stir around the living room, which was saying something because a good chunk of the folks were already still shuffling about for unrelated reasons.

"Are you sure?" This was Naran, one of the elders. He was leaning over his coffee unconcerned, but he generally always seemed unconcerned about generally everything. He was like a Finn in that, and Coraline rather approved.

"Quite," Coraline said. "Malla was cleaning the rooms and found something that put her on edge, poor dear. Turned out to be a black soul gem, just lying out on the end-table with a bunch of empty ones. Hunters use these to prevent the Death from jumping hosts by trapping it instead," she explained, "which is also how you get the black ones."

"But if he just left it there," Moira, another elder, began, "How can you be sure he's hunting now? Doesn't that mean he'd already be done?"

Coraline shook her head. "Carriers are attracted to other Carriers, so it's possible that the gem, too, was intended to draw any out." They seemed to buy this, so she went on: "And why come here, otherwise? We have no bounties. And if he has soul gems, why leave them out? They're expensive, and black ones worth a bounty even beyond that. He's been watching the town, asking around, looking." She looked around at the assorted folks. "It's a challenge. A trap."

The others glanced around too. They all knew what this meant, or at least pretended to in order to not look stupid.

It was Nolan's mum, Gwynne, who finally broke the silence. "We don't have any Carriers," she said. "Do we?"

"Unlikely," Coraline said. "We'd know if there was an outbreak. Generally Carriers only survive a few days at most, so the only way it travels is by folks coming in and passing it on. And even then the voices they'd hear would make them incapable of functioning." Unless, of course, they happened to be alcoholics.

Gwynne frowned. "Nobody's come in from out excepting this Dalric himself," she said. "And nobody's been hearing voices what hasn't been for years already. It's a dead end."

"It'll be a mess," Merlijn said dejectedly. "He'll go around trying to figure who it is when he doesn't know a thing! And now of all the damn times?" He looked up, mostly at Edine. "Pardon my language."

Edine waved it away, opening her mouth to speak, but Everton James interrupted her.

"He was asking about Yink," Everton said. "Last night in the inn." Coraline glanced over, so he added, "It was after you'd took over the bar for the night."

"Huh," she said, then she remembered. "Yink, that the guy who keeps asking what day it is?"

"That's the one," Everton said.

Gwynne sniffed. "Been like that for years, Yink has."

"Does he know that?" Edine asked. "Does he care?"

"Do we care?" Naran asked.

The others looked at him.

Naran shrugged slightly. "What? Might as well put it out there. The guy's nuts. Useless. Can't even help himself. We don't even know if he'd be happier dead."

"That shouldn't be our decision," Davis said, though his graveness was undermined by his also choosing that moment to try to surreptitiously nab another cake.

"Doesn't matter," Merlijn said. "Yink isn't a Carrier, so this Dalric'll just have to keep looking. The more goes on, the more'll die."

"But what if he is?" Naran asked. "Or what if someone else is, and we just don't know it?"

"We'd be fucked," Merlijn said. He didn't even bother excusing himself this time.

"No, Naran's right," Coraline said. "Why is he here, of all places? And is there anything we can do at this point, or should we just wait and see what happens?"

Davis shook his head warningly. "See what, if people start dying?"

Coraline said, "I don't know."

He sighed and ate his cake unhappily.

Granny Höhrmann, an elder sitting in a rocking chair in the corner with a cup of tea, belched. She rarely said anything, but when she did it was well worth hearing, so this drew most of the eyes in the room.

She continued to say nothing and just sat there rocking, looking at her tea.

The eyes in the room slowly drifted back to Coraline. She grimaced. She had nothing, at least not that she wanted to share.

"Lyra," Moira began, addressing Coraline, "What did you do before you came to Molstead?"

"Not much," she said. Oddly this was the first time anyone in town had directly asked. "I used to travel a lot, and before that I studied at university."

"Azorres said you carry the Deathgod's coin." Davis said. "For what did Kyrule grant his boon?"

"Uh..." she said, suddenly starting to panic. They were all too focussed on her. She needed a way to deflect. They couldn't know what had happened, what she had done, how when she'd taken the coin in that desecrated temple, the voices had begun.

She had tried to use a knife instead of her staff. Like she had thought it'd work better to kill a person hands-on, or something. It hadn't. There'd been blood everywhere, on her hands, her hair, her coat. Black was the best colour, but it dried brown and flaked off for days...

"Lyra?" Davis said, startling her.

She jumped. "I... I don't know," she said finally. "I wish I could say it was relevant, or it was something that could help us here, but I don't even know what happened."

Davis frowned over another cake, considering.

"It's been two years," Gwynne said, looking at Davis. "And she's done nothing but good for the town. Let her alone, she probably came here to get away from all that."

Coraline nodded, staring at her 'coffee'.

"Okay," Moira said. "So what have we got, then?"

"Um, excuse me." Erik, one of Edine's sons, was standing in the doorway. "There's been a murder," he said.

"Yink?" Gwynne asked suspiciously.

"Yeah," Erik said, susprised.

"Well, that was quick," Moira said.

Erik frowned.

"What happened?" Merlijn asked, standing.

Erik shook his head. "Feldman found him in his shed." Feldman's shed was generally empty and unused, probably due to the vaguely cow-shaped hole in the roof that made it slightly less than useful as a storage shed. Even on a day like this, it would have been a good isolated place to take someone out of sight.

"Was Dalric there?" Moira asked. "The hunter?"

Erik shook his head. "No sign of him, though I don't doubt he did it. Yink's throat was slit and this was... there." He held out a soul gem. It was glowing slightly.

"That's not a Carrier," Granny Höhrmann said from her rocker. "The soul gem's white. And your boy wants us to know."

"What, that he messed up?" Everton said.

"That there will be more," Coraline said. "He's gonna find it whether it exists or not."

"Okay!" Merlijn announced, raising his hand. "Who all thinks we have a Carrier here?"

Everyone looked around. Nobody raised their hand.

Merlijn nodded. "Yeah," he said, putting his hand back down. "So. Not knowing the first thing about any of us, who do we expect this guy is gonna go after next?"

"Oh gods," Gwynne said, horrified. "Nolan!"

Davis put down his cake.

Molstead environs - afternoon

Nolan was still in his tree. He had a stick in his hand, a thin branch whittled down to its core, straight and even. After watching the town carefully, he was reasonably sure his hypothesis was correct. This was exactly what Kit needed. A stick.

He poked the stick in the direction of several random passerby. It needed runes. He was no good at runes. Runes weren't sheep.

Nolan slid out of the tree and scampered off.

Mayer house - late afternoon

The council spent the next two hours arguing. First it was about how to protect Nolan, then what to do about the hunter in general, and what even had brought him here in the first place. Then there was the trouble of what to do about Yink, and then Davis found a tooth in one of the cakes, and a fair bit of yelling ensued.

Amidst this, Merlijn gave up and left to go put some kind of protective detail on Nolan, assuming Nolan could even be found. They had, at least, established than Nolan was basically the only other Molsteader not in this room who was all that likely to be mistaken for a Carrier, so there was that.

Gwynne went with him.

At some point Coraline also just gave up and had at the whiskey and proceeded to pay no attention whatsoever.

Granny Höhrmann rocked idly, knitting.

Edine yelled stuff.

Davis yelled stuff.

Naran said something in a completely normal tone of voice which was quickly drowned out by Everton yelling stuff.

Moira looked irked.

Coraline poured her some whiskey.

A bit later, Moira was a bit less irked.

Coraline sat back in a happy drunken buzz and stroked Agata's fur.

Edine yelled some more.

Everton yelled at her.

Davis and Edine yelled right back.

There was more yelling.

Coraline got up, pushing Agata aside onto the seat, set her whiskey on fire, and dropped it on the coffee table.

The yelling stopped.

"Oops," Coraline said.

The coffee table was now on fire too, the flames licking off the surface, spreading with the whiskey.

Everyone just stared for a moment, then Everton grabbed a blanket. Coraline held out a hand and the fire went out almost immediately. She had no idea how she'd done it, but it'd done the trick.

"So Dalric," Coraline said slowly, doing her best to even get the words out in one piece. "Is he under arrest, or are we just gonna ignore this, or what?"

"He murdered someone," Edine said darkly.

"Yink," Naran corrected. "Thought he was a Carrier, got it wrong. That's what happened."

"And it's okay because it's Yink?" Edine asked. "Because nobody'll miss him anyhow?"

"Nobody said that," Evertone said.

"It's sort of true," Naran said placidly.

Clearly they were just about to break out into argument again, so Coraline said, or at least tried to say, "Yeah, I'ma go talk to him. Sort something out." And left.

Molstead - late afternoon

Coraline didn't actually have any plans to track down Dalric. Her main plan, at this moment, was just to get back to the inn and possibly fall over. And find a toilet. She needed a toilet. Toilet, then fall over. Priorities.

Whatever happened, Dalric would probably show up there again sooner or later. He'd left his stuff there, after all. And his trap. And his stuff.

Agata jumped up and climbed onto her shoulders uncertainly. "It's not going to matter tomorrow, you know," the cat said.

"Why, what's so special about tomorrow?" Coraline asked.

"Or the next day," Agata supposed. "But it'll be a mess when it happens."

"Always is," Coraline mumbled.

Molstead Inn - late afternoon

The shipment had come in when she'd been out. The inn's staff and some other folks had already mostly finished stowing it, so she just waved as she headed past, found her bed, fell over into her bed, and then nearly rolled off the other side of her bed.

The general background noise of the inn and town lulled her quickly into sleep.

Mayer house - evening

The remainder of the council had finally agreed on something. The tooth in Davis' cake had probably come from Edine's granddaughter Suzy.

Molstead Inn - night

One of the problems with going to sleep drunk is that the sleep in question tends to not be particularly effective. It is deep and restful right up until the point where it stops being at all deep or restful, at which point the sleeper suddenly wakes up feeling absolutely miserable.

Coraline suddenly woke up feeling absolutely miserable. She was too warm. Her head hurt. Something was dripping upstairs. All in all, it was awful.

She drank a glass of water, almost immediately felt less miserable, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Drip.

Coraline woke up less suddenly this time, and felt less miserable, but the voices were getting a bit louder. She drank some brandy and went back to sleep.

Drip.

She awoke partially, drifting out of a listless dream into a room in darkness. Something warm and catlike was curled up next to her.

Then sleep was reaching up and reclaiming her once more.

Drip.

The warm and catlike thing was Tress.

Drip.

The dripping wasn't stopping.

Coraline rolled over, dislodging a cat. The cat flopped over. Another cat stared her in the face. A third was sprawled next to her.

"Nrrrgh, cats," Coraline mumbled.

"Yes, hello," Agata responded from the other side of Tress. Apparently Thimble had been the one she'd dislodged from on top of her. At least she hoped it was Thimble. She suspected she actually had enough cats at this point.

"What the hell is even up there?" Coraline asked. "Dripping."

Agata rumbled. Tress stuck up a paw. Coraline stared at the ceiling. Bloody ceiling. Why was she even in bed? Oh, whatever.

"You all are useless, you know," she told the cats.

"At least we're not drunk," Agata said.

Coraline went up to investigate, torch and staff weapon in hand. She wasn't expecting anything dangerous, but sometimes they did get bogeythings and other weird crap, especially where it tended to be dark. And indeed, the whole place was dark. They'd closed up without her, which was fine, if a little unusual, but she paid folks fair for what they did, unless it was completely ridiculous and uncalled for, but that particular incident didn't bear mentioning.

Agata followed her as she made her way upstairs.

Drip.

The sound seemed to be coming from one of the guest rooms. It was probably occupied - they all were - but she poked her head in and shone her torch around regardless. Indeed, there was a guy asleep in his bed, and on the floor next to it, a bowl partially filled with water. The ceiling above it was wet, preparing another drip.

Coraline eyeballed it for a moment and then pulled out of the room. Attic it was.

She poked her way into the attic staff-first, holding the torch to its shaft such that she could aim them both about as one.

All in all, the attic seemed to be an attic. Nothing moved besides Agata, who trotted inside and poked about, investigating this and that. Coraline stepped inside and checked the objects in corners, but it all just seemed to be boxes, dust, bits of insulation. Some logs. A random pile of shoes, almost as tall as she was, that made no sense but had come with the place when she'd bought it.

The dripping would have been coming from the far end, so she headed over thataway, advancing slowly, checking behind boxes as she went, listening for anything unusual. A spent mousetrap here. Shadows that jumped away when she pointed at them. Decorations for Wintersday, leering from the wall, sparkly and bright, but coated in dust and gloom. A broken walking chair. A well.

There was some shouting from outside, but in here the voices were muffled and indistinct. She ignored them and checked that last thing again.

It looked like a well, at least. Traditional-style water well, circular, about a meter across, stone walls rising about half a meter up out of the attic floor, a bucket with a whole lot of rope tied to it sitting on the floor nearby in a small puddle. Except this was an attic.

This made no sense whatsoever.

Agata hopped onto the edge and peered inside, and for lack of any better idea, Coraline leaned over and did the same, shining down her torch into its depths.

It was deep. Very deep. Far deeper than the room below it, and yet the room below had shown no indication of having had a well dug through it in the slightest.

They couldn't see the bottom even with the torch.

Coraline and Agata exchanged glances, and even Agata looked confused.

Finally, Coraline said, "It's a well."

Agata sat down and said, "Apparently."

"In the attic," Coraline added.

"Yes," Agata agreed.

"What," Coraline said.

She looked down the well again, but it just looked like a deep well. Deep, round, and fairly tubular.

This called for fire. She looked around, grabbed a random piece of wood, stared at it in general annoyance, stared at it some more, smacked it on the edge of the well a few times and then gave it a grumpy look.

The piece of wood resolutely refrained from bursting into flame.

Coraline continued to look at it grumpily for a bit, then said, "Phbbt."

A merry flame danced out of the wood.

Sometimes Coraline really, really wished she knew how she did this, and this was one of those times.

She gave the wood a moment to get more thoroughly on fire, then leaned over the well again and dropped it in. It fell a few dozen meters, illuminating the walls as it went, then hit water and went out with a dull, echoey splash.

"Huh," Coraline said.

Agata's ears perked up. "Someone's coming," she whispered.

Coraline pointed the torch and staff back toward the doorway. It was Dalric. He had a sword out, but reached up to shade his eyes from the beam with his other hand.

"Lyra?" he called out. "Is that you?"

"Stay put and don't you try anything," Coraline said warningly.

Dalric smiled. "It's just me, relax" he said, putting his sword away. For the moment he stayed put. "Is there something the matter?"

She eyed him suspiciously, then asked Agata, much more quietly, "Did the council ever get anyone else to talk to him?"

"Nope," the cat said. "You volunteered, remember?"

"Buggrit," Coraline muttered. Then she addressed the hunter again: "You have some answering to do, and it may as well be here as anywhere. Why did you come to Molstead?"

"You know why I'm here." His eyes seemed to linger on her staff entirely too long.

"No, I really don't," Coraline said. "You seem to think there is a Carrier here, but why? You've already found Yink wasn't, and the same would go for any of us. We've had no contact at all. So what led you here?"

"There was a foretelling," he said, "that Molstead would be Taken and destroyed. You must know how quickly the Death passes through, how important it is to act."

"Sure," she said. "When you've actually got something to act on."

Dalric nodded. "I know that now. But the worst will come, I assure you, and you will need me here when it does."

Coraline eyed him dubiously, but asked, "How many did you kill?"

"Here?" he asked. "It was only one, and you have my sincere apologies."

She supposed it would have to do, for now. The threat of a real Carrier was very serious, and if he was right, then they would indeed need any help they could get. Still, she didn't like it.

"And what are you doing up here?" she asked.

"Heard a dripping." He said. "That's quite the staff."

Coraline sighed and finally lowered the staff. She could hardly argue about the dripping. "Turns out we've got a well in the attic." She said, shining the torch back at it. Then she eyed the puddle irritably. From the look of it, the well was mostly just sort of there for no apparent reason, and the dripping was just a side effect of the bucket. All she really needed to do to stop it was clean up the puddle. But that didn't make a whole lot of sense either.

Dalric came over and poked the wall of the well experimentally, then looked inside. "How far down does it go?" he asked.

"About 300 feet," Agata said.

Dalric looked at the cat in surprise, then back in the well. "Anything in it?"

"Water," Agata said.

Coraline ignored them and kicked the bucket aside, sticking the head of her staff in the puddle. A moment later, it flash-evaporated into steam.

She gave Dalric a moment to investigate the well as well, just in case he had any ideas. He didn't, so she gestured with her staff and said, "Ah, go on, shoo. Authorised personnel only, and all."

Dalric smirked, then asked, "So we're good?"

"For now," Coraline said. "Your welcome has already worn thin, so if you get the urge to kill anyone else, it'd better not be without a really good reason. Are we clear on this?"

"Of course."

Molstead environs - noonish

"In the eye of the storm, there is no way out, no escape."

~ Andromeda

The important thing about Molstead's Harvest Festival, above all else, was that it made no practical sense. That was the point. They were done with the harvests, winter was coming, and all that was left was to wait it out, so they started the season off with a massive party, building up an enormous bonfire in the middle of town to light the way. And then they kept partying for as long as they could keep the bonfire going.

Eventually the momentum wore off, the fire went out, and things went back to quasi-normal, and the townsfolk tended to spend a few weeks going around repairing everything before the snows arrived.

Then Wintersday happened and the party started up again, this time decorating everything with ridiculous colours and ribbons and bells, and putting up a massive painted sparkly tree in the middle of town.

The Wintersday festivities lasted until the tree fell down under the weight of the snow. In the two winters Coraline had been here, it had lasted thirteen days one year, and an entire two days the second.

After that there were inevitably another few weeks of downtime, punctuated by annoying amounts of snow falling out of the sky.

When the snow melted, it was time for the Festival of Renewal. This, too, was a massive party, and for this they built another bonfire, mostly because they could, and partly because it was usually still quite nippy and this generally kept any new snow out of the square.

Then the party ended and it was planting time.

They had a Summer's Eve festival too.

Basically they just really liked to party, and since they could, they did.

The first day of any festival was always the loudest, and today was no different. The daytime belonged primarily to the children, and to those who acted like children, and they ran around shooting off rockets, doing scavenger hunts, dressing up as monsters, and eating everything in sight.

While this was going on, the town council held a small funeral for Yink, mostly because this resulted in everyone else leaving them alone for the duration, which gave them a chance to talk in momentary peace.

Since they were there, Coraline said some words: "He was really annoying and we never even found out what happened to him. That's kind of sad." She looked around. "What, it is."

"Yes," Edine said.

"What about Dalric?" Everton asked.

Coraline shrugged. "Apparently there was some sort of foretelling that led him here, and he just acted too soon. Meantime he's promised not to kill anyone else, and I'm inclined to buy it for now, though we probably still wanna try to keep eyes on him."

They all supposed that made sense for the time being. While they were at it, they agreed on some other things, too. Best keep the militia alert (or at least not totally drunk, if they were going to be reasonable here). Don't alarm the townsfolk. Don't over-inebriate anyone. Keep the bonfire from getting too big. Avoid flinging cows. Anyone setting off really big fireworks should remain conscious while setting off really big fireworks.

For some reason they all looked pointedly at Coraline for the last few of these.

Woods outside Molstead - afternoon

A bear was eating grass. It was good grass, and these were good woods, and all in all, the bear, assuming it even was a bear, was quite content to keep at it all day.

Cerrisian bears, or at least the Cerrisian equivalent of bears, were large, fat, and antlered, with enormous claws and alarming teeth. Like any bear, they ate passing fauna. Like a moose, they ate various flora. Like a goat, they ate just about anything else, too. They were, all in all, quite dangerous, and they filled the deep, dark woods north of Molstead like the dragons out of a bedtime story.

There was a noise behind it. The bear looked about, peering into the nearby gloom with its beady eyes. One of them suddenly had an arrow in it.

The bear stood there for a bit. Then it fell over. Then it died. Then it got dragged back to camp, skinned, gutted, butchered, and hung.

Soldiers were all about, waiting around, horses set to graze, equipment dropped to the ground. Even so, the camp was very temporary, ready to pick up and move at a moment's notice. The men spoke in hushed voices, gambled, traded stories. No fires were lit. The food was all eaten cold.

The bear meat was simply stowed for later.

Amidst this, two priests were arguing. Doranis was saying, "This is a bad idea. Have I mentioned that?"

His companion, Edric, answered, "Yes. You've mentioned that."

"Well, this is a bad idea," Doranis went on.

"Okay," Edric said tiredly.

"Seriously, this is a bad idea," Doranis insisted.

"Yes," Edric said again. "You've said."

"Well, it is," Doranis said.

Another guy came up behind them, saying brusquely, "Will you shut up?" This was Nurunn, the Deathdealer leading the operation.

"Sure," Doranis said amiably, and, for the time being, shut up.

Nurunn nodded. He was tall and muscular, and an experienced warrior, but he knew well the importance in what they were doing, and like the priests, he too was concerned. One slip could mean disaster, but if they did succeed, it would take them one step closer to finding a way to successfully fight the Death of Souls. And some day even, perhaps, to finding a cure and ending it outright.

There was a horn call.

"We're up," Nurunn told the others. Immediately the soldiers burst into activity, picking everything up, mounting their own horses, and readying to head out. A moment later a scout rode into camp.

The scout pulled up, confirming, "It's a go."

Nurunn and the two priests led the advance. Unlike the majority, they remained on foot.

It was about ten minutes to the site, easy going, little foliage in the way. Several other scouting parties rejoined them as they went.

The ring of soldiers parted to allow Nurunn and the priests in. Everyone else spread out around them. They could allow no chance of escape.

The horses fretted uneasily.

The Carrier was pinned down by several layers of netting, staked to the ground and several trees, with a pair of soldiers sitting on top of it with crossbows to the guy's head. His hands and feet were tied, too, but even so he struggled mightily, twisting against the rope, pulling at the netting, hissing and spitting, far stronger than a normal man. His wild eyes were pure black, and they bulged as he strained against the netting, trying to escape, to feed, but for all his efforts he could achieve nothing. Every soldier here carried a soulstone next to his heart.

"Huh," Edric said.

"Well, he's really far gone," Doranis pointed out, then tapped his own soulstone just to be sure it was still there.

Edric scowled. "Will this even work at this point?" he asked.

"That's what we're here to find out," Nurunn said.

Doranis nodded and cast a soulbinding on the Carrier, his fingers weaving the motions of the spell. It was normally wizard magic, but the gods could grant their priests many things, and when he was done he gestured to Nurunn with a flourish that the guy in the netting was all his.

Nurunn gave him an unamused look, then practically sat on the Carrier in an effort to pin him down the rest of the way. The two soldiers shuffled a bit to help, but didn't get any closer. Nor did they relax their aim.

Nurunn wound up with an arm across the dirty chest, and the maddened face mere inches from his own, only a few layers of coarse rope netting separating them. The man stank. "Edric," he commanded.

The priest passed him a small pendant, and Nurunn pressed its amulet to the Carrier's neck. Immediately the guy stopped struggling, collapsing back to the forest floor, and the Deathdealer took this opportunity to slip the chain through the netting and firmly clasp it around the guy's neck.

For a moment the Carrier simply lay there. Then his eyes began to clear, not entirely, not enough for colour to reappear, but enough that whites were showing, at least, and he stared vaguely upward, not really at Nurunn nor apparently at anything.

"Is it working?" Doranis asked behind him.

Nurunn lightly slapped the Carrier's face. "Hey," he said. "Anyone in there?"

The Carrier startled, then his eyes focussed on Nuruun. "What? Where am I?" he asked.

"You're safe," Nurunn said, relaxing his hold. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Kessel," he said, looking around. "Kessel of Trom." He pressed against the net. "Why am I... I'm so hungry."

Nurunn nodded back to the others. "It's progress," he said, getting up. He gestured Edric forward. "You'll be wanting to record the details-"

Something clinked, and the Deathdealer was interrupted by an explosion of sorts, black and shadowy, full of hunger and voices. It sent him flying, swallowing up several of the nearer soldiers outright, bringing Edric to his knees, clutching his head. Doranis threw up a ward, and though it wavered, it held as the shadow subsided. Many of the surrounding soldiers fell over as well, their soulstones black, every one of them, filled and black, but a few just stood there, staring, their eyes turning colour, their minds filling too with hunger and voices.

Nurunn picked himself up quickly, drawing his sword, but as quickly as it had happened, everything was still. The captured Carrier was gone, exploded through bindings and netting alike. And now the inner-most soldiers were taken as well, those few of whom even remained standing... Nurunn dispatched them quickly, not even bothering to soulbind them, just praying it would be enough.

"You know," Doranis began to noone in particular, looking at his soulstone. It was empty. "I don't think that quite worked." He was wobbling a bit, but he seemed largely unaffected otherwise.

Nurunn checked his own stone, and while it was dark, it only repulsed him. It seemed he was clean as well, protected, for now, by his god-given resistance. He cast it aside.

"Soldiers, reassemble!" Nurunn called out to the ones in the surrounding woods, many of whom had also been knocked over by the blast. They needed to find this Kessel of Trom again, and quickly. But now he wasn't the only one, either. They had too many casualties. Dead, and worse.

Molstead environs - afternoon

The festival was getting weird. This wasn't surprising - it was the middle of the afternoon and anyone with a talent was running around showing off all the random things they could do - but this time, for whatever reason, the bonfire in the middle of the market square had gotten several meters high and turned bright purple, and things were getting even weirder than usual.

Coraline made a point to be somewhere else during the majority of this. She wound up sitting on a fence near one of the outlying farms, with Agata perched on a nearby post.

It was particularly uninteresting out here, and she rather liked it that way.

Elven ruins - afternoon

The kids spilled into the ruins clearing with a surprising explosion of disparate energies, especially considering there were only four of them. Kit was in the lead, with Nolan accompanying, and with them they also had Jora, who tended to act as bodyguard for their little party, and Erry, Kit's annoying little sister who just sort of followed them everywhere in spite of everything they did to try to dissuade her.

Their interest for the day was in the Edifice, the mysterious solitary building still standing, untouched by time and weather, at the far end of the ruins, and so they made their way there through the dry grass and shrubbery. Erry kicked at some stones. Nolan had his stick from the tree, and as they made their way, he examined the white stone blocks of the rest of the ruins to ensure that none of them were really sheep.

"It's the centerfold," Kit announced as they went. "The last mystery. And this time it will be mine."

"Wallets," Erry agreed.

Jora said, idly, "They say ain't nobody's been able to open the Edifice since the Exodus." Not that she would ever admit it, but she was curious to see if Kit would go into a full-on ramble, and sometimes baited him solely for that reason.

"We'll be the first," Kit said. "And we have it. A mystery to unlock the mystery within."

"We have a stick," Nolan said. He held up the stick for emphasis. "It needs runes."

"It's a mysterious stick," Kit said. "A symbol of something old. Older than anything. The Torini were architects, mathematicians. They valued symbols over form, so we enter with a symbol."

"Runes," Nolan repeated.

Erry looked at the stick carefully, and said, "It doesn't look old."

"It's not," Nolan said.

And then they were there. The Edifice, big as life, tall and white and gleaming, carved and adorned with flowing motifs, though the basic architecture was remarkably simple. Even the door was impressive. It seemed to sparkle in the shadows.

They stopped, looked at it, looked some more, looked around, looked at it some more, and then looked at each other.

"Well?" Jora said finally.

"What is it? What is it?" Erry insisted, bouncing around the front of the building.

"It's a stick," Nolan said, and poked the door with his stick.

Nothing happened.

"Here," Kit said, motioning for Nolan to hand over the stick. He did.

The wizardling held it aloft like a wand and pointed it about in various arcane-looking motions, generally directed at the door.

Nothing continued to happen.

He then poked the door with the stick as well, to similarly little effect.

The others just sort of went along with this, watching the door with interest, aside from Erry. Erry made a face and started picking her nose.

Nolan said, "I told you, you need runes."

"On the stick?" Kit said skeptically.

"Yes?" Nolan said.

"What did it say in the book?" Jora asked.

Kit shook his head. "Didn't. It's secrets. Things in books aren't secrets, or they wouldn't be secrets anymore."

"Runes," Nolan repeated.

"All right, which ones?" Kit asked, giving up.

Nolan counted off on his fingers, remembering. "Fish. Tree. Hunger. Chaos. Hazard."

"Seriously?" Kit said. That combination actually made sense. But how had Nolan figured that out? That kid didn't know the first thing about magic - everything about sheep, and nothing about magic.

Nolan just stared at him intently, and so instead of actually asking, Kit quickly looked away and hastily scribbled the runes down the length of the stick.

"Poke it," Nolan commanded when the wizardling was done. "Poke the mysterious mystery with the stick."

Kit gave him a sarcastic look, but complied, and this time the magic sealing the entryway burst into brilliant sparkles before fading away once more. With a click, the door unlatched and opened slightly.

"Woah," he said.

"Boom," Nolan said.

Then Erry ran up and pushed the door open a little more. This revealed an extensive mass of darkness, and she very nearly dove in before Jora grabbed her by the hood of her jacket.

"Hold up," Jora said. "Let your brother put a light on you first."

Erry pouted and held up, mostly because Jora still had a very solid grip on her jacket and it was about all she could do, while Kit cast some magelights on everyone. Then Jora let go, Erry ran inside for real this time, Kit gave Jora a surprised look, and Jora simply drew her sword and marched in after.

The two boys exchanged looks and headed in as well.

The entryway was grand but simple, with a high ceiling and staircases going up and down, a pile of bones against one wall, and dust everywhere, fine, deep, and drifting. Erry was already gone, and Jora was standing at the landing of the stairs up, but she glanced back when they entered, unconcerned, only snapping to alertness when the door thudded shut behind them with a dull boom, resealing itself and sparking vaguely once more. The only light now came from the orbs over their heads, filling the space with their odd glow, casting fuzzy shadows in the dust.

Aside from the bones, there were no signs of life, or even any light sources; where there should have been windows there was only stone, and where a lamp should have hung, only a chain dangled down, lonely and useless.

"Erry?" Kit called.

With a squeal, Erry slid down the banister and landed in a heap in from of him.

"Oh," Kit said disappointedly.

"Keep an eye on her," Jora told him. "Everyone should stay together. We don't know what we'll find, or if the place might try to fall down on us now that we're inside."

"What'd you let her run in for?" Kit asked.

"Where are the sheep?" Nolan asked.

Jora looked at him oddly, and said, "Why would there be sheep?"

"Kit said there might be sheep," Nolan replied.

"There might have been a lot of things," Kit said, looking about. "That was sort of the point."

Nolan frowned, looking about as well, and then fixated on the pile of bones. "Maybe," he said slowly, "there are sheep in there."

Woods outside Molstead - darkness

Darkness. Everything was darkness. Shapes looming, careening, drifting in and about, but still, only darkness. He didn't know what they were. He didn't know where he was going. It didn't matter. It was only darkness, only everything, black and close, enveloping, consuming.

Sometimes there would be lights, and he would go to them and put them out, inviting them into the darkness, bringing them home.

Sometimes the shapes would fade away. Movement would stop, and he would be alone, entirely alone in the quiet, the black, the whispers tickling the edges of the void. Then the shapes would be back, and the lights would beckon, beckon, begging him onward.

Shapes.

Darkness.

Hunger.

Everything was hunger. The darkness was hunger, empty, necessary, comforting.

Sometimes the darkness was full of lights. Usually it was only black. Black against the dark. Dark against the black. Another black.

He felt it, calling to him with its silent delirious voice, so cold, so empty, so sweet and comforting, so hungry. It was so dark, so far, but so close, and his hunger paled in comparison. His darkness was so bright. He had to make it, had to get there, to join with it, before the darkness went entirely...

White.

In his single-minded purpose, the Carrier ran onward through the woods, hungering, unseeing.

Molstead environs - evening

Coraline was now sitting on a stump. She was happily drunk, and as the evening was settling in, the real party would soon be beginning. The day belonged to the children, but that was mostly just an attempt to tire them out for when everyone else got properly going come nightfall.

She pulled herself up, nearly fell over, and was very surprised to see Agata then fall over entirely.

"Agata?" Coraline said.

Agata picked herself up very carefully before glancing over with a look of utter disbelief. "How," the cat asked, "do you even function being this drunk? How are you alive?"

"Uh..." Coraline said. "Something something tolerance build-up due to long-term abuse?"

Agata put her ears back, and said, "That's terrible."

"Yeah?" Coraline said. "Sorry. Why's it affecting you?"

Instead of answering, Agata grumbled and headed off, weaving along the way, nearly falling over on several more occasions, and Coraline followed.

They wound up back in town, amidst the festivities.

It was utterly town-like, and Coraline quickly caught up with everyone else, taking over the inn's obligatory point of primary dispersement, and of course dipping into it copiously herself. She needed to refrain from getting too drunk, of course, but merely really drunk wasn't too drunk, so that was fine.

The night wore on, and madness ensued. This time, however, no cows were flung. The notion never even came up. The festivities faded to a happy blur, the market square and surrounding streets filled with music and dancing.

Time was lost, forgotten. Perception drifted in and out of focus.

Coraline stood back and remembered, vaguely, what it was to live. Everyone was so happy, and she supposed she was too, but even so, it wasn't the same.

Things happened. None of them were cows. One of them was a chicken, which walked through at one point. People placed bets. Some folks won. Others lost.

Coraline said, "There is no chicken."

Someone else said, "It's over there. We need to eat the rest of it."

Something caught fire, but it was intentional, so that was fine.

People ran about. Some of them were alarmingly short.

There were many snacks and fireworks, and only one mixup so far.

Agata sat in a corner in the hopes of sleeping the entire night off, but wound up covered in slugs instead.

Edifice - night

By the time Nolan had finished sorting through every single bone in the pile, the others had long since given up and gone exploring without him.

He turned the one sheep bone he had encountered over in his hands. It was a rib, and it had been the only sheep bone in the entire pile. This was rather strange, and he wondered what it meant. It was a conundrum that only sparked questions without answers, however, so he merely took it with him as he wandered vaguely down the stairs to find the others.

On the lower level, they had found an obelisk, about the height of a man, with a hole through the top third of the shaft. It was like the one they had in town (and generally ignored), except this one had a small orb, floating unsuspended, within the hole.

Nolan walked in on the others, still holding the sheep rib, with, as it turned out, almost as much of an idea as any of them, aside from Kit. Kit was just staring.

Finally, Kit asked, "Is it real?"

"What is it?" Jora asked.

Erry ran up to it and poked the orb.

"Erry!" Kit yelled, and the orb pulsed slightly, an odd flare of light in this peculiar gloom, but nothing else really happened.

She gave it a pouty look in disappointment. "Aww, I wanted it to go shiny," she said.

Jora steered her away from the thing, leaving Kit and Nolan on the centre stage.

Kit rubbed his brow, then told Nolan, "I think it's one of the real ones. Active, even."

Nolan gave him a blank look, so Kit explained, "They were objects of power, beacons to magic users. The Torini could use them for all sorts of things, like travel to away places, because they put them up everywhere. I suppose a lot of the major cults kept up the tradition, though what we've got now are just a pale imitation."

"So could we use this?" Jora asked. "To travel?"

"To sheep?" Nolan said finally, holding up the rib.

Kit nodded. "Aye, I think so? I'd want master Keller to look at it, of course."

"Something to come back to, then," Jora said. "It's late. We should get back before the party runs out."

"Fooood!" Erry shrieked.

Molstead - night

At some point everything had gone horribly wrong.

They hadn't even realised it at first, as the yells turned to screams, but then time went on, and the flow of the party ran sour, and things wore off.

And now it was later.

Coraline hadn't been that drunk, had she? There were folks on the ground, lying, not moving. The bonfire was low. Several buildings were burning, much higher than the bonfire. Coraline picked herself up slowly, swaying. The world was spinning. Agata walked over and leaned against her legs.

She breathed carefully, in and out, in and out. She was still pretty drunk, so whatever had happened, it couldn't have been all that long ago. And now the screams. The voices. They sounded almost the same, distant, unimportant, all consuming. She didn't know where they were coming from, just there. Somewhere.

This was wrong. So wrong... so many voices...

...rising around her.

She was on the ground again, rocks digging into her exposed face and arms. What was she even wearing? Her dress drifted around her so lightly as she picked herself up, all hands and knees. This time her legs were unsteady, but differently, and they held as she finally dared to look up, wiping off a few loose bits of dirt.

This place, it wasn't Molstead. It wasn't even Cerris, but some other world, all rock and stone and dust. The landscape faded into the distance, jagged and harsh, mountainous, full of cliffs and clefts and ravines, barren. There was no sun, no moons, no stars, but only a strange glowing sky that washed everything in green, hanging entirely too close. Lightning flashed with no thunder. The voices were all around, invisible, drifting in and out of focus.

"Not this again," Coraline mumbled. She wasn't even sure what this was, but it all seemed so familiar.

The dog ran past at the edge of her vision, and she swung about, nearly falling, trying to catch another glimpse, but all there was was rock, and more rock.

If only there were life amidst the rock, but it was only rock and more rock, and no life at all. Only loneliness and rock, and the whisper of the voices, the glow of the dying sky, the broken sky, the broken world.

If only there were something, but here she was alone.

Completely alone.

Edifice - night

Kit readied the stick again for the passage out, but the door gave them no resistance from the inside, simply opening at a touch.

"Huh," Kit said.

"For emergencies," Nolan explained. As far as the others were concerned, this didn't explain anything.

"Look," Jora said, pointing. The fire was tall, and they could see its glare easily over the trees. But it wasn't right, she realised. It was too big, from here. Too wide. Too much of a glow, like the glow of her own village had been, so long ago, and she put a restraining hand on Nolan, mostly because he'd wound up right in front of her; in reality he was the least likely of any of them to do anything stupid.

He looked back, confused, and then, seeing her expression, poked Kit.

Kit poked him back.

"It's too much fire," Jora said vacantly. "Too much."

"Obelisk," Nolan said.

"Erry," Kit said, pulling her back, "Let's play a game. Let's go poke the shiny." He glanced back to Jora, but she was just staring.

Erry, on the other hand, grinned like a maniac and made no attempts at all to resist as Kit attempted and completely failed to guide her back into the the ancient elven building. Instead she ran up and jumped around the door until he reopened it, and immediately charged back inside when he did.

Kit, suddenly realising what a terrible idea this was, yelled, "Erry, wait!" and ran in after her.

Nolan, meanwhile, ambled nonchalantly back toward town, toward that horrible glow, and Jora followed, the dread filling her like terrible fish, swimming upward and upward, drowning her, almost, in its foreboding.

Molstead outskirts - night

Everything was so quiet, with only the odd scream curdling the muggy air. Nolan walked past the first few buildings looking around at the damage. There was stuff all over. A few people were running about, avoiding each other and ducking into buildings. Some were simply standing in place, not doing a thing. He pushed one of these over and frowned.

The man curled up on the ground, legs to his chest.

"Nolan?" Jora asked, skirting about the guy on the ground.

"We could flee," Nolan said. "Be safer. Easier. But that wouldn't help the story."

"What story?" Jora said.

"This one," Nolan said, gesturing into town. He started walking again, toward the centre of town. Toward the silence, the fire, the worst of it; whatever the folks had fled, it had been from that direction.

"What?" Jora asked again, following.

"It wouldn't work, not knowing what we've fled," he said. "So we need to know. Then we can flee."

Molstead - night

"Raw, well-ordered, ruthless, careening off the jagged edge of reality."

~ Red Queen

Coraline woke up just in time to see something run past, and immediately scrambled up and ran after it. It turned out to be the chicken that had run through before, now running in the other direction.

"Chicken!" she yelled, grabbing after it. Then Agata launched onto the bird, bringing it down and slowing it considerably, giving Coraline a chance to finally scoop it up.

The chicken flapped about in her hands and tried to peck at her, and she wrapped it up in the bottom of her coat.

"Seriously?" Agata said.

"Um," Coraline said, and finally looked around, still holding the chicken. The bonfire was low. Broken things were everywhere. She could still hear some screams, but nothing all that nearby.

A door slammed behind her. People hiding in the buildings, then? The square was deserted, aside from those on the ground. So many of them. She recognised most, checking a couple of the nearer ones, and they seemed to have been trampled for the most part, some shot and stabbed, but with a few it wasn't clear what had killed them at all.

"No, no," she sighed. It wasn't just that folks were dead - she'd seen plenty of that since coming to Cerris - but these... they had been her friends, her neighbours. She'd bought furs off Carcarot several times. Jerome had been the one guy in town who actually liked shalott. Edine had served them cakes just the day before, and now she was dead. They were all dead.

And Jess, lying by the barrels, tables overturned. Jess, who had been almost like a little sister, especially after the bandits, who looking up to Coraline, hanging around, always trying to impress her. And of course she had been impressed; in the months since, the girl had recovered beautifully, only for this to happen.

She'd thought she was free here, safe. That it was over, but it was never over, and it was maddening. Her anger, like everything else, was dulled by the alcohol.

"Argh!" Coraline snarled, forcing herself to look away. She found Agata back by the fire, watching her with eyes reflecting the dancing flames.

A moment later, Agata gave what might have been the feline equivalent of a shrug, then indicated toward one of the alleys. "Look. People."

"Are we sure about that?" Coraline asked. There were three of them, but they didn't look like anyone she recognised, and more than that, they also weren't moving in what was generally regarded as a normal fashion even for the overly drunk. It was a sort of vague shuffle, moving toward them in such a way that the legs seemed almost secondary, as if something were pulling them from further up, using invisible strings wound through their chests.

Coraline moved a bit to the side, testing, and they readjusted their routes accordingly, still coming right toward her. Then she scooted over to put the remainder of the bonfire between her and them. It was much smaller now, but the thing had been huge, and the embers and low flames were still quite hot.

The three shufflers readjusted their routes again, not even bothering to go around the fire, merely shuffling right up to it, climbing into it, roasting rather well, and kind of falling over after a bit. One actually made it out the other side, but then he, too, fell on his face a couple of meters away, flaming weakly.

"Okay..." she said slowly, and went and nudged him over with her foot. He was wearing plate armour, and was amazingly, as it turned out, somehow not dead. He turned his seared head toward her and seemed to be trying to say something, but no real words came out. Frankly she didn't care, and just drew her knife, since her staff was still stowed away in her bag, and kicked aside the chestplate. Then she knelt down and stabbed the blade into the guy's heart, holding the chicken to his face to keep him down.

The chicken made some indignant chicken noises.

Only then did she remember she was still holding it at all, and gave it an annoyed look as she got back up.

The chicken made a further chicken noise and flapped a bit.

"Carriers aren't so bright," Agata said. "Now are you?"

"Oh, shut up," Coraline said, tossing aside the chicken. It ran away, flapping.

She gave the now very dead guy on the ground another look, and wondered again what the hell had happened. What had these been doing here, of all places? That had been soldiers' armour, and possibly uniforms under it, though considering she'd managed to pull them through a fire it was a bit hard to tell for sure at this point. And how had so many been taken by the Death of Souls? Three Carriers? Together? That was almost unheard of, unless perhaps a much more powerful one had gotten into a densely populated camp and... she didn't know, exploded or something?

Coraline really, really hoped it didn't work that way, and fished out her staff.

The two kids got to the square fairly quickly, at which point Nolan unceremoniously shoved Jora behind a bush, and then Jora unceremoniously pulled him behind it as well.

It wasn't that there seemed to be particularly much to be afraid of at this point. Indeed, the place seemed rather dead - literally. Of the dozens on the ground, not a one was moving, and no lights were coming from the standing buildings. Only two were outright on fire despite clearly nobody having done a thing about it, but the night was wet and cold, and it hadn't spread.

There was just no sign of what had actually happened, either.

"See anything?" Jora whispered.

"Just wait," Nolan replied quietly.

They waited. It was solid advice, really. Sooner or later something would have to happen, and better to be relatively hidden than out in the middle of it. Still, Jora didn't like it. Really, really didn't like it. In fact she was terrified. She hated it, but this was just bringing back too many horrible memories, and that they didn't even have a clue as to what it had even been this time around...

She muttered under her breath and kicked a stone, venting a small amount of her frustration, but only a small amount.

Nolan didn't move.

A moment later, they saw Lyra, the innkeeper, come around the fire. She was holding her wizard staff, looking around, one of her cats trotting beside her. Then she just stopped and started arguing with her cat.

Nolan and Jora exchanged glances, or would have if Nolan had looked back when Jora looked at him. Instead he stared resolutely forward, mouthing words in time to the argument.

"What are they saying?" Jora whispered at him.

"I don't know," Nolan said.

"You don't know?" Jora repeated.

"It's not Soravian," Nolan said. "Doesn't matter."

Jora exhaled sharply, trying to reign in her irritation, and went back to watching the argument. Whatever it was, it looked a bit futile on either side - like the cat didn't even care, and the innkeeper didn't even know.

They stopped arguing. Lyra pointed her staff at something, and it turned out to be a newcomer, a ragged man shuffling, almost lurching, slowly toward her.

"Sixteen paces," Nolan said under his breath.

Jora didn't even try to ask.

He approached her like a bum after money, the sort unsure whether to ask nicely or just outright mug. He was filthy, covered in dirt and other things that weren't dirt at all, his clothes torn and ragged. His hair was a solid mat.

Unlike the others, which had been more ambiguous, Coraline knew this man for exactly for what he was - a Carrier, so far gone that there was nothing left, only the pure depravity itself on legs, and all he could do to silence the voices, to fill the horrible void, was to take what wasn't his. A soul. A mind. A life. And more. Dozens already. Hundreds, perhaps?

Coraline tried to back away from the smell alone, a horrible odour reminiscent of rotting chocolate, but as horrible as it was and as much as she knew she needed to avoid such a confrontation, to get away, to be anywhere else than here, it was all she could do to even continue to hold her staff on him. Indeed, she found herself actually wanting him to come, wanting him, to join him, to take him, to devour.

He fell to his knees before her, looking up, eyes as inky as the night, and held up his arms as if in prayer, pleading. Pleading for her. Begging. Welcoming.

She returned the gesture, holding her own hands out, placing them on the sides of his head, gently, caressing. It was okay now. He was home. There would be no more pain, for either of them.

Her staff tumbled to the the ground, forgotten.

Agata watched carefully, ready to bound away at the slightest indication of anything amiss. Well, anything more amiss. This was pretty damn amiss already, and yet also horribly witchy.

Agata growled, mostly at the other Carrier.

Coraline caught a whiff of this train of thought and almost laughed, and then suddenly noticed what she was doing. What was she doing? This man before her, her hands on his head, mirrored, each of them a mirror of the other. She could feel his pain, too, his loss, his fear, and hunger. So much hunger. She tried to push it away, to soothe the pain, to fix him, because she could, she could fix him, she knew she could fix him, but as she tried the voices in her head only rose to a roar and then a scream and she nearly lost all sense of anything, only voices and pain and hunger, only darkness, the darkness behind the green, the souls rising all around.

It fell away as quickly as it'd risen. She couldn't fix him. She wasn't strong enough, and he was pressing on her, his hands on her head, pulling her down, clenching together.

So she tried the opposite. If she could heal with a touch, could she also harm? Could she kill?

It was a single powerful thought. A sense of nothingness, of timelessness. A ceasing of being, not mending, but simply ending.

He collapsed immediately, falling back and splaying in the mud, more dirt for his collection.

Coraline stared at her hands, suddenly empty, alone. The voices had faded into the background, out of sight and almost out of sound. Almost.

She felt almost whole.

"Okay that was fun let's go," Agata said pauselessly behind her, and turned around and left.

"Right," Coraline said, and headed after. She needed no convincing. She needed to get out of here, and quickly.

Nolan continued to watch the empty square for some time.

At some point Jora asked, "Are we done now?"

Nolan said nothing, and simply watched and waited. Considering that trying to move Nolan against his will was about as easy as moving a sack of elbows, Jora sighed and went back to watching everything that wasn't the square in case someone or something spotted them.

Molstead Inn - night

Someone had barricaded the front door to the inn, so Coraline went in through one of the back windows, berating herself about the entire situation. She had been so wrong about everything. She'd thought Molstead was safe, a place where she could settle down and be free of the demons pursuing her, but it hadn't been, simply because she had been here. She'd done this.

She'd had the audacity to think it possible to make a life for herself.

The laughter startled her, like something out of a horror flick, and then she realised it was her own. So she forced a couple more laughs just to be sure it hadn't been a coincidence, and then stopped. This wasn't helping.

She needed supplies.

Bob was hiding in the store room. Coraline said "Hi" and stuffed a decent stock of bottles and other non-perishables into her magic bag. Then she looked about and also added a couple of kegs for good measure, and, since they were there, a few bottles of her home-brew potion attempts.

She didn't even bother packing up her clothes and day-to-day items, just lumped everything up into a wad and stuffed it in. Then she stuffed in couple more things she'd missed with the initial wad. She could sort everything out later. Magic could be pretty awesome like that.

In the attic, she grabbed a few travelling items, noticed that the well was apparently still there, gave it a weird look, and headed back down, doing her best to avoid the small crowd of townsfolk hiding in the common room.

A few saw her anyway so she just gave them a small wave and ran.

In the back of the inn, she kept a small room dedicated to pretty things. Keepsakes, memories, reminders of home, reminders of who she was and how she had gotten here. An ornate filigree mask wired to a pair of sunglasses. A book of art from a videogame. A set of makeup. A flower shaped from dried, woven grass. A bright cuddly sea-anemone. A wooden statuette of Ganesh, and with it a smaller one of a wombat in a vest. The sword Barney had sold her a few months back.

She grabbed the lot of it, and put the mask up on her head by the sunglasses, safely away from anything that might crush it, and then grabbed the two cats sitting nearby, too, though these simply wound up one in each arm.

Thimble murred in surprise. Tress purred.

Agata jumped onto her head, sprawling over the mask and crushing it anyway, as Coraline climbed back out the window.

Molstead - night

Nurunn turned the dead Carrier over and retrieved the amulet, examining it carefully. It seemed the charm had shattered, the black relic destroyed in the reaction. But it had worked until then.

He handed it to Doranis and turned to the small group of soldiers they'd brought with them into the town square. Nurunn directed them out into the woods and down the roads, joining the other search parties for any remaining carriers set off by the initial blast.

They couldn't get them all, but they could lessen the damage.

In the meantime, Doranis began a ritual prayer for the general region. Things about peace and solace and finality, rest for the weary, hope and home. A few of the soldiers bowed their heads as they left.

The ritual went on, and Nurunn listened sadly, letting go even if only a little bit, remembering things long lost. Peace was what they were trying to protect, and if not peace, then the hope of peace. The dream of peace. The rest that he could never have, and indeed, it seemed the worlds never would.

Jora and Nolan listened as well, and Jora's irritation slowly faded. It was just words, but they were powerful words, and she'd always liked hearing them in her own village, where their priests had likewise been more ritual-oriented. Not at all like Molstead, where the only priest to regularly come into town at all had been Davis, and he'd only really come for the cakes.

She wondered if he was even still alive.

Then another shuffler was shuffling into the square. Jora groaned. She was getting a bit tired of this.

Nolan, on the other hand, ran out toward it.

She immediately stood and started after him. "Nolan!" she yelled.

He stopped in front of the shuffler and did a little dance.

The shuffler stopped and stared at him in vacant confusion.

Nolan did another little dance, this time centred on the other foot.

Nurunn threw a sword through the shuffler's face.

Nolan immediately stopped, turned around, said, "Okay, we're done now," and started walking back the way they'd come.

Jora just gawped at him as he passed, and then continued to gawp about a bit after.

Nurunn frowned. "Is that normal?" he asked Jora.

Jora threw her free hand into the air, yelled, "I don't even know!" and turned and ran after Nolan.

Elven ruins - night

Nolan and Jora got back to the Edifice to find it sealed, with Kit and Erry nowhere to be seen. Jora went to give the immediate area a lookabout, taking care not to make too much noise in the dark. Nolan grabbed another, much less appropriate, stick off the ground and unhappily scraped the same shapes as Kit had done earlier into it with a knife.

He poked the door, got no effect, frowned at the stick, bugged his eyes out at the runes, and then adjusted one slightly. Then he poked the door again, and this time it opened.

"Jora," He said quietly, but it was enough for her to hear.

They hurried back inside, downstairs, and into the room with the obelisk. Still no Kit or Erry. All empty. They stared at the obelisk for a bit.

"They could be anywhere," Jora said.

"Good," Nolan said, and poked the not even remotely shiny orb in the obelisk's heart.

There was a flash of light.

Blocky structure - underground

There was considerable relief as Jora and Nolan suddenly caught up with the others in the strange new place to which, as it turned out, they had all been transported.

Which is to say Kit and Jora were relieved, Erry had said "Hi," and Nolan had asked where dinner was.

"Oh, that's what we forgot," Kit said. "So silly of us, after having packed everything else for this little venture."

"Really?" Nolan said.

Kit gave him an annoyed look, which slid right off like ducks.

"Anyone know where we are?" Jora said, getting to a slightly more practical subject.

The others shrugged, dissented, and, in Nolan's case, stared vaguely at a wall. They were in a room of sorts, large, square, dark, and with no discernible doors, windows, or even light fixtures. The only light came from Kit's magelights, including one he had affixed to the ceiling. A trickle of water down one of the walls indicated they might be underground, but beyond that, gave no real clues.

The only notable things in the entire space seemed to be another obelisk - a mirror to the one they'd taken to get here - and a strange circle of runes on the floor.

Nolan poked the wall with the water.

Kit examined the runes.

Erry decided she was also hungry, and then asked if their parents were still alive.

Everyone else just stopped.

"No," Nolan said, still facing the wall.

Erry stared at him, so he turned around slightly and explained: "The Quints were killed on the spot. Mrs. Enori was turned and taken." The Quints were Kit and Erry's parents, and Mrs. Enori was Gwynne, Nolan's mother, but he always referred to them like this.

Jora said, "I'm so sorry," directing it mostly at Kit and Erry. Nolan didn't seem to feel things the way normal people did.

"How can you possibly know that?" Kit incredulously asked Nolan.

"Probability, previous trajectories, and sheep," Nolan said flatly. "Mr. Enori only survived because he would have wound up in the inn, escorting some of the small people."

"Small people?" Jora repeated incredulously.

"The less erratic ones," Nolan said, looking at Erry.

Erry continued to stare, then Jora hugged her and she burst into tears.

Kit shook his head, frowning, but the problem was, against all common sense, Nolan tended to be right about these things. It didn't help, though. Right now, it didn't change a thing.

"We need to find a way out of here," he said tiredly.

Nolan nodded, looking as chipper as ever.

"Couldn't we just go back?" Jora asked.

"I wouldn't," Nolan said.

"What would happen if we did?" she asked.

"Nothing at all," Nolan said.

For whatever reason, that prospect came across as even scarier than the unknown before them.

Woods outside Molstead - early morning

Coraline nearly ran into one of the soldiers in the woods, in large part due to how much she was carrying. She hadn't meant to be carrying so much, but three cats, as it turned out, were indeed 'much'. And they were heavy. And fluffy. And floppy. And they made it a bit hard to see when one of them kept sagging over her forehead, digging in the sunglasses and really messing up her hair in the process, and when she couldn't even do anything about it because the other two had both hands entirely occupied.

"Watch it," the guy said, then actually looked at her, a look of disbelief spreading across his face like a slow-motion mushroom cloud.

Coraline watched it with fascination, but was interrupted by his companion, who asked, "You got all your cats, or are you gonna need to go back for another load?"

They were dressed like the three she'd drawn into the fire earlier, but now she noticed an oddly familiar insignia on their armour - a sort of balance scales - though she didn't know what it meant. Neither seemed particularly alarmed at her arrival, however, so it seemed it was not her they had been after. At least not as far as they knew. She intended to keep it that way.

"Yes," she said, tilting her head for maximum cat-hat ridiculousness.

The second one laughed, the other gave her a dubious look, and she just grinned and started on around them.

"Wait," the second said, gabbing her arm and spinning her back around, causing her to drop Thimble. She tried to pull away, but he was much stronger than she was, and before she could really do anything at all he'd drawn her up to his chest, getting himself a face full of Agata in the process and nearly squashing Tress between them.

Agata hissed.

"Let go of me!" Coraline yelled, trying to push him away, but also trying even more so to not squeeze Tress. She could feel the cat's claws digging into her arm.

Then she felt it. The voices rising. The strange dark pull of the Death of Souls, that horrible feeling that had suddenly become so normal in the past few days, haunting her, refusing to leave her alone, calling for her to surrender, to give in and come.

She rejected it, trying to pull away, pushing as hard as she could as Tress began to let out a low yowl, and the soldier abruptly let her go.

She jumped away.

"Sorry, miss," he said. "Had to be sure."

"Sure of what?" Coraline demanded angrily, picking up Thimble and backing away even further.

The two soldiers exchanged glances, and then the one said, "There's Carriers in the area. Had to be sure you weren't one of them."

Coraline stared at them, confused, and then turned and ran, past the brook lake with the frogs' singing, down the road, to the next town over and onto the river.

Blocky structure - underground

"If you don't start out too big for your britches, how are you gonna fill 'em when you grow up?"

~ Stephen King

After what might have been anything from a few minutes to a couple of hours, they finally figured out that the entire far wall was a door and that, for whatever reason, the circle of runes was the doorknob. By standing in the circle and thinking that the door should open, the door opened.

"Is this Torini?" Jora asked as Kit stepped out of the circle.

Kit shook his head. The Edifice they'd come through had been a Torini building, but the architecture here was completely different, solid, dark and blocky. "Perhaps one of the other elven civilisations?" he suggested, but for once he was about as clueless as the others. Aside from Nolan. None of them had any idea how clueless Nolan might have been.

Nolan headed out immediately, walking quickly into the newly discovered corridor and looking about the gloom for anything interesting.

"I wish he wouldn't do that," Jora said to no-one in particular.

Kit hurried after and reapplied lights to everyone's heads, and then Erry ran out and clung to Nolan.

Like the room they'd come in, the corridor itself was long and blocky, extending into darkness, with more circles of runes next to more expanses of wall as it passed into its horrible, pressing silence. Down its entire length, there was no sign of any light beyond their own.

"It's like it's dead," Jora whispered, following behind. She had her sword at the ready, though there was no sign of anything at all.

Nolan stopped and opened a wall at random, standing in the circle with Erry at his side as the huge stone block swung open. Then he poked his head inside. Then he picked up Erry and stepped a bit to the side, and a moment after, a strange construct of swirling shards of stone flew out through the space where they'd been, turned about, and then started toward Jora instead.

Erry shrieked horrifyingly.

Kit threw a fireball at it.

Jora hit it with her sword.

The construct fell to its component pieces, which clattered across the ground.

Nolan kicked one of the pieces and nodded.

"What was that?" Kit yelled, finally running up.

"Hostile," Nolan said.

"You think?" Kit retorted.

Jora shook her head at them, and instead of answering, went into the room proper to check it out, but it gave no clues, just plain dark stone, blocky construction, an empty space, and a low square pedestal in the centre.

"We don't even know if it was supposed to be here," she said. "But if it was, it would have been here." She nudged the pedestal.

Kit shrugged from the doorway.

Nolan opened a few more chambers despite all protests from the others, discovering more empty rooms and one full of featureless cubes, and eventually gave up, passing the remaining side doors by, and heading on down the corridor, the others following closely.

"How far does this go?" Erry asked tiredly at one point.

Nobody knew.

Finally they came to a corner.

"Lo, and behold, there was a... corner!" Kit proclaimed.

"The air is stale," Nolan said.

Kit looked at him and then sent a flying magelight down the corridor to see where it'd wind up. They all watched solemnly as it sailed off into the distance and then stuck to the far wall.

"You don't suppose there is a way out," he said slowly. "What if this is all just a giant dead end?"

"What would be the point of having a giant dead end?" Jora asked him.

Kit shrugged.

"Ask Vitoi," Nolan said, starting down the corridor once more.

The others didn't ask, and merely hurried to catch up.

They continued on in silence.

Then the silence was broken by Erry asking why they didn't have magic ponies. Why weren't magic ponies a thing? "I wanna ride a magic pony," she went on. "It could be shaped like a giant sofa and gallop by flying around."

"That's just stupid," Kit said.

"No you're stupid," Erry retorted.

"I don't think it's stupid," Jora said. "Riding a flying sofa would be a lovely way to get around, especially in summertime. Comfy pillows, wind in your hair..."

Kit harrumphed.

"This place is entirely devoid of sheep," Nolan said.

The new corridor finally led them to a set of blocky stairs, turning back in the direction they'd come, but down. At their base was another one of the door-walls.

Kit glanced at the others.

"Sure?" Jora said.

"I don't think it will crush us, but we'll need to come up slowly," Nolan said. He recieved a couple of confused looks for this, but didn't bother to elaborate.

Kit went down to the circle, the others following him a few feet behind. Jora started to draw her sword, but Nolan stopped her and motioned for her fasten the strap to hold it in instead.

Even more confused, she did.

When Kit stepped into the circle of runes, nothing happened.

Nothing continued to happen.

Nothing continued to continue to happen.

"I guess it's-" Kit began, but was interrupted when the door exploded, spurting water everywhere around the edges and then cracking down the middle, too, allowing through another torrent. He threw up a shield, deflecting most of the blocks when entire thing finally shattered completely and threw bits of door at them, but it only countered some of the force of the water behind it. The surge of water knocked the breath out of him as it carried him off his feet, and almost immediately the entire corridor had flooded.

It was utter chaos. Currents of water still pouring in, stairs and walls tumbling past, bubbles of stale air obscuring any hope of a view. He tried to swim, to pull himself through it, but it didn't work, just banged him up more as the whole world swirled around.

He couldn't breathe. His lungs hurt, burning, needing air that wasn't there, and he thrashed in a panic, trying to get out.

A hand on his arm stopped him, strong, wiry, holding him in place, and Kit realised it was Nolan, perfectly calm, even as the waters darkened around them, gesturing for him to do something, to make something. Magic. Gestures of breathing, to the water around, and suddenly he understood, quickly casting a waterbreathing charm before he passed out entirely.

The effect was immediate as he took deep, needful breaths of the suddenly life-giving water. The pain in his lungs was gone, his muscles were likewise no longer screaming at him for uncertain reasons, and he could see again, clearly see. Nolan was nodding at him.

Kit nodded back, and grinned.

Nolan pointed to himself.

"Oh, right," Kit tried to say, but it came out as a weird moan instead of the words themselves. Regardless, he cast the charm on Nolan, as well, who then immediately swam off up the stairs, moving through the water with an oddly snake-like motion.

This came as a bit of a surprise, until Kit suddenly remembered the other two, too. He tried to yell, let out another strange moan as a result, and swam as quickly as he could after Nolan.

As it turned out, this was not very quickly at all.

Nolan met him halfway, pulling Jora, who was holding Erry with all her remaining strength, behind him. Erry had, apparently, already passed out.

Kit did his best to hurry over, finally managed to position himself in such a way that Nolan could get Erry in front of him, and then cast the charm on both her and Jora.

Erry didn't wake up, but Jora took in several grateful breaths before smacking the other girl a few times, humming something very alien-sounding, but also oddly comforting.

A moment later, Erry was breathing again and making strange noises. Upon realising how strange the noises were, she then started making even stranger noises, looking quite pleased.

Kit rolled his eyes.

Flooded chamber - underground

For lack of any better ideas - or, for that matter, any way to communicate any better ideas - they headed out into the newly-opened chamber. Nolan took the lead, as the fastest swimmer in practice. Erry might have exceeded him in theory, but it was hard to say because she kept swimming in circles around the other two, blurbling and singing.

The chamber was vast and flooded. Their lights only illuminated a short distance into the water, highlighting each other, the nearest wall and floor, and nothing else against the utter black of the space.

They went in a short ways, lost sight of even the near wall, and stopped, crowding around each other in concern.

Erry stopped singing.

Jora made some noises and gestured a bit, trying to communicate her bad feeling about all this.

Kit made some really weird bubbles with his hands and frowned.

Nolan shrugged and started swimming out again, toward what was probably the centre of the chamber, and was, rather quickly after, greeted by an enormous eye looming out of the black. The eye was attached to an even more enormous trunk, as well as, apparently, a set of really massive tentacles further off to the side.

The entire thing was, for the mostly part, just sort of sitting there.

The eye seemed rather surprised to see him, and the creature immediately pushed itself upwards, such that several tentacles were now facing the party. They seemed to be lined with hundreds of sharp teeth, and some other things that were even more disturbing than teeth. Hooked and multi-pointed things.

Nolan seemed completely unsurprised to see it, and simply swum up to get back to eye level again. He gestured toward himself, then to it, then around, then made a motion that seemed to mean 'out'.

Then he nodded, gestured toward the others to come along, and swam around and past the massive squid.

They followed cautiously, but it made no motion to stop them, and soon they were utterly alone in the black water once again, swimming through what for all purposes felt almost like nothing at all.

Nolan periodically stopped and waited for the others to catch up.

Finally, after a few minutes of horrible noisy silence, they reached the far wall. It, or least the small patch that their magelights illuminated, was completely nondescript.

They regarded it for a moment. A mass of tentacles and other squid parts they didn't recognise caught up with them and also regarded it for a moment.

They regarded the mass of tentacles and other squid parts for a bit.

Nolan swam off in another direction, following the wall, and, not wanting to continue a stare-off with a massive squid, the other three once again followed him.

Then Nolan stopped and bonked on the wall. It was no longer smooth here, and instead looked crumpled, filled with cracks and holes. Above, the entire ceiling had slanted down peculiarly. The water here was colder, and felt heavier somehow.

He gave it a pushing motion and gestured for Kit to come over, and repeated the pushing motion.

Kit gave him a confused look, and then suddenly understood and grinned. This he could do. As Nolan and Jora pulled Erry away, back toward the massive squid, Kit gave the wall a simple magical push, building it up slowly through the surrounding water, and exploding through the wall. It groaned and shifted, then exploded outward in slow motion as rocks and huge boulders alike drifted out and down.

Almost immediately the squid started advancing toward the hole, but as Kit glanced back, he realised the opening wasn't nearly big enough for the thing to get through safely, so before it rammed into him he hurriedly gave the edge of the wall another magical shove, widening the hole considerably.

Then the squid rammed into him anyway, wrapping a tentacle around him and yanking him along with surprising gentleness before pushing him aside a moment later.

The others caught up and gathered around him as the creature disappeared into the gloom, though now the water wasn't entire black, just mostly. There was also a mostly, but not entirely, indiscernable glow in the direction that seemed to be up. It was a little hard to tell what was what.

Behind them the side of a rough mountain loomed out of the deep, crossed by the other side of what was, next to the mountain, a disturbingly smooth expanse of wall. Aside from the hole Kit had punched through it. That wasn't very smooth at all.

Erry blurbled tiredly and tugged at Jora's sleeve. Jora drew her into a hug, and the girl fell asleep almost immediately.

Jora gave Kit a bemused look. A very, very strange-looking fish swam past them.

Nolan pointed upward and glanced at the other two enquiringly. They nodded, and the lot of them started upwards, Nolan helping Jora to drag Erry's sleeping deadweight up with them.

Initially they followed the mountain, but then the mountain ended, still well beneath the surface, and then they ascended alone, slowing periodically to catch some rest. It didn't actually seem to help, but Nolan insisted.

Part 2

There are many worlds, and many planes, but time, too, is not always what it seems.

Cerris is both and all three.

Notes:

1. The Dark Sister is neither living nor dead.
2. The story is always told from perspective. Other languages are only used if the perspective does not know them.
3. Placeholder content may be chosen/generated by automated processes.
4. Mind the year.

Crypt of the Ar Avas - darkness

"People dream. Worlds dream. Some dreams I give, and some dreams I take, but in dreams I am always there, with you at every pass, every twist, every terror. And prayer? Prayer is implicit. There is no need for prayer when you are with me every time you close your eyes, every time you let your mind wander. I am beyond prayer. I am Dream."

~ Eapherod

The Dream awoke in darkness. For a moment it existed, uncertain, but then it decided: it would be an elf. It would have these things and wear these clothes and here it... no, she, would wait. Simple.

She nodded to herself as she sat down vaguely on what may or may not have been a ceiling, rearranging the tails of her vest around her. This would work.

As she rested amidst the slow trickle of dust, the newly-minted elf didn't bother to look around, instead slowly becoming aware of her surroundings, illuminated by the odd light from her quiver, almost by osmosis. Stone caskets there. Shelves with old bones. A skeleton, upside-down on the floor, or perhaps right-side-up on the ceiling.

It didn't matter. She was only here to wait, with one purpose, one command, set as a constant in the essence of her being:

Save the mystery, solve the princess.

The rest would follow.

In the meantime, she began to knit.

Plains of Deluun - winter, four years past

When Coraline had first come through to Cerris, her hair had been different. Darker, rougher. She didn't know when it had changed, only that when she finally got a bath and looked in a mirror months later, it had turned almost white, bleached, perhaps, by the sun.

She had come out in wilderness, utterly alone, by a small creek with leafless trees lining the banks, and a light frost glittering on the edges of everything around, even her coat. Her bag had fallen nearby, and her staff, too, was gleaming in the dry brown grass. There were no signs of civilisation in any direction, only grassland beyond the creek itself, hills and grass and the bones of trees, and some low mountains in the far distance.

So she simply started walking, deciding that downstream was as good a place to go as any, with no idea where she was going, how she would survive, or what she would do for food.

Night fell all too quickly, and she camped with fire and little else. The remains of some crackers. Some creek water she'd melted and tried to boil in her water bottle. A nagging pit of hunger that would not be sated.

Sparks rose and joined the stars when they came out, but she recognised none, so she gave the constellations names of her own, The Blob, Mr. Scruffy, Thing That Looks Almost Like The Pleiades But Isn't. But they were all wrong.

The fire hissed and cackled, whispering in the back of her mind.

And that was when the terror set in.

Open ocean - night

Erry awoke almost immediately when the four of them finally broke the surface, and prompty pulled her way free and sank. The other three tread water and spat out their odd lungfuls of water and started to breathe air again as Erry bobbed up again, flapped about, and then sank again.

Jora stared at where the other girl had been for a moment, then said, exasperatedly, "What was that? All of that? What?"

"Not expected," Nolan said flatly.

"No?!" Jora said.

"Okay, that's it. If we ever make it to shore, I'm getting a wand, or some kind of proper focus," Kit grumbled.

"Why didn't you have one before, then?" Jora asked, calming down a bit.

"Keller didn't approve," he responded. "Said a good wizard doesn't need that stuff. Need, my arse! Has he ever even had to deal with these sorts of things?"

Behind him, Erry sputtered to the surface again, and, again, almost immediately sank, so Jora finally went to go try to maybe teach her how to swim on top of the water as opposed to just through. The girl wouldn't actually drown with the water-breathing charm in place, of course, but this wasn't helping anything either.

"Even if you are a good wizard," Jora pointed out, "that doesn't mean you shouldn't use the things that can make you better."

"Exactly!" Kit yelled, entirely too loudly.

"There's no shore here," Nolan then pointed out.

"Yeah?" Kit said.

"We need a boat," Nolan said.

"Yeah," Kit said. "Except I can't summon one. I suck at summoning. Even little things. Like I tried summoning a spoon. Wound up with a broken nail."

"Yes," Nolan said.

Kit frowned at him.

Meanwhile Jora's attempts to teach Erry to swim were having no effect whatsoever, so she finally just gave up and pulled the girl over to the others and shoved her at Kit. He grabbed her before she sank again.

"Your sister is hopeless," Jora said.

Erry grinned.

Kit stared into his little sister's face grumpily, then suddenly exclaimed, "Oh!" He passed her off to Nolan and added, "Ice!"

"Wouldn't that be a bit cold?" Jora said.

"Well, normal ice, sure," Kit said, shaping out another spell. "But this is magic ice. Lasts longer, doesn't lose its cold, all that." He finished a couple more forms and groaned, then muttered a few words to tie it all together, casting it off to the side and then nearly sinking himself as a result of the motions.

Erry giggled.

The water where he had pointed began to draw upwards, solidifying into a fairly large block of ice, half-submerged, and flat above the surface with a slight wall around the edges, easily big enough for the lot of them.

Nolan threw Erry onto it and climbed on after.

"Nice," Jora said, and tried to pull herself up as well, but the thing had no good hand- or foot-holds, so Nolan had to help her to get on all the way.

Then Nolan and Jora had to drag Kit out of the water together, receiving no help whatsoever from the exhausted wizardling.

He collapsed on top of them.

They all just lay there for a bit, staring up at the stars and lightening sky.

Kit raised a limp arm and cast a really lethargic cleaning spell into the air over everyone. They could almost hear the spell clunk as it flopped back down and dried everyone off.

They did hear the arm as it clunked down on the oddly-tepid ice.

"Hungry," Erry said, sitting up suddenly.

"I suppose conjuring up some food is out?" Jora asked, not even moving.

Kit moaned helplessly.

Nolan pulled himself out from under Kit and stared off over the waves.

"Need a sofa," Erry said.

Then a rather large fish, several feet long, flew out of the water and onto their raft with a wet plop, almost as though someone in the water had heard them and chucked it out.

"That's not a sofa," Erry said.

Kit quickly scrambled up to see what had happened, though aside from the fish there wasn't much to see.

They all stared at it. Then they stared at the water. Then a tentacle reached out of the water and gave them a little wave before disappearing back under the other waves.

"Our giant cephalopod companion gives us thanks," Nolan said.

"How is that even...?" Kit started to ask, but then he just gave up, flopping back on the ice. "That... no."

"Yes," Erry said.

"This day couldn't possibly get any weirder," Kit mumbled.

"The stars are wrong," Nolan said, more to himself than anything else.

Inn at Somn's Post - noonish

"There is a major issue here about forgetting. The whole of the law is to keep your story straight - you must remember this. The wandering mind ends up who knows where it ends. In ruins, probably. That's usually a safe answer, or convenient, anyway."

~ Reagan Library

Coraline got into the inn in the crossing town of Somns's Post around noon, subsequent to a nice long horrible ride down the river in a somewhat stolen boat.

She collapsed into a stool next to a guy who looked surprisingly similar to how she felt, and sprawled her arms across the bar, tumbling two cats out onto it. A third rolled off her head a moment later, and the mask clattered down with it.

"Um," the innkeeper said upon coming into the main room and seeing this.

"Hi," Coraline said, raising her head ever so slightly. "You got any rum?"

"No," he said.

"Grog?" Coraline asked.

"No," the innkeeper said.

"Bourbon?"

"No."

"Bluuugh," Coraline said, and gave up, collapsing back onto the bar with a clunk. Thimble started licking her hair.

"Barkeep, a shalott for the lady," the guy next to her said.

The innkeeper frowned, started to say something, then simply thought better of it and obliged, plopping a suspiciously stinky mug down in front of her before scooting back into the other room.

Tress got up and craned over to sniff at the mug and started retching as a result.

Coraline confiscated and downed it, decidedly not sniffing it first.

"Ghuck," she said after.

After a bit, she finally straightened up into a more or less sitting position. The shalott helped, dulling both aches and voices, making her feel, if not entirely alive, at least slightly less dead.

"So you're still alive," the guy next to her said, and she finally gave him a proper look. Tired face, long silvery hair tied back at the nape of his neck, longcoat and worn leathers, and swords rather like the hunter's, but much finer. He had an amulet that marked him as a Deathdealer, she realised, but more than that, she'd met him before. It had been an evening in an inn not unlike this one, almost three years past. They'd almost had a conversation. It had almost been a real human connection.

Then the entire night had devolved into a session of the both of them doing little beyond drinking and repeatedly yelling the words 'drink', 'fuck', and 'perkele' with various inflections.

"Hi," she finally managed, giving him a small wave.

"Hi," he said, a bit taken aback. "What's with the cats?"

"It was him," Agata said, gesturing toward the guy with a paw, which she then proceeded to lick. "He did it."

"Eh?" Coraline said.

"He killed my previous witch," the cat said.

"Oh," Coraline said. "Why?"

The Deathdealer raised his brow.

"She was boiling children for her soup," Agata said. "I'd told her it wouldn't work. She didn't listen."

"Work for what?" Coraline asked.

"Why are you talking to your cat?" the Deathdealer asked suspiciously.

"Wait," Coraline said, confused. "You mean you can't hear her? But everyone could hear her, I mean at least the statue seemed to be able to..." she trailed off. Hadn't they heard her? Except nobody had ever actually responded, had they? And she'd always sort of suspected she might be losing it. To an extent she had already very definitely lost at least some of it.

"A statue?" he said dubiously.

"Well..." she began, then stopped. She knew the statues, at least, were very definitely a thing here. She hadn't been entirely sure about the first one, out in the wilderness near where she'd first arrived on this planet, but one in the Molstead temple had definitely talked to others.

"Oh, you're messing with me!" she said.

He broke into a smile and quickly hid it behind a drink of his whatever it was.

"Good one," Agata said.

Coraline scoffed.

Thimble licked her hand, but was rudely interrupted by Tress flopping over on top of it.

They all sat in silence for a bit. The innkeeper got her another shalott before scooting back into the other room again. Coraline almost yelled 'Drink!' but decided against it, instead just staring at her drink wondering what the hell she was even doing here. And where the hell she was going.

"You're hurting," the Deathdealer said finally.

"I'm fine," she replied.

He sat back for a moment, and then slid an unusual golden coin toward her, and she picked it up curiously, turning it over in her hand. Like his amulet, it was intricately detailed on one side with a skull and mask - the very same mask as she had wired to her sunglasses - and on the other with a set of scales, and she remembered why the insignia the soldiers had worn had looked so familiar.

"Do you know what that means?" he asked.

Instead of answering, she asked, "Do all Deathdealers carry these?"

"Aye," he said. "The name's Vardaman. You're Amadi, right?"

Amadi? Was she? Not that it mattered. "What does it mean?" she asked instead, still looking at the coin.

"Trust me," he said quietly.

"I can't," Coraline whispered. She couldn't even bring herself to look up.

"I give you my word as Deathdealer that I will not harm you or betray your secrets, no matter the cost," Vardaman said. "As you hold my coin, know it is so."

"No matter the cost?" Agata said. "That's a bit hefty, don't you think?"

"So it is," he said.

Coraline didn't respond, instead fishing out her own coin, an exact match for Vardaman's, and she stared at them in her hands. People called these the Deathgod's coins, supposedly granted as physical manifestations of Kyrule's favour, though why, she didn't know. All she knew was her own had brought her only misery, and for whatever favour or boon there was, she certainly didn't feel favoured by anyone.

She just felt alone. Completely and utterly alone.

A moment later she was sobbing into Tress's pointed fur, leaving both coins abandoned on the bar in front of her. Tress kept trying to lick her, but it didn't help.

Vardaman sighed and poured himself another drink.

Hadrin - winter, four years past

After two months walking through the various wilderness, 'alone' was something Coraline had gotten quite used to. She'd figured out the staff, discovered it was a weapon, and this had kept her alive. She'd developed rituals for her days, practicing her aim, shouting into the wind, stopping to draw, to write, to read, and this had kept her sane. But still she was alone. She had no purpose, no direction, nothing, just a vague promise to live, and a vague hope that out there, somewhere, would be something. Anything.

And then something had shown up in the form of a small shrine poking out of the forest growth, so old and decrepit it had looked like nothing more than a piece of cliff, blocks of stone tumbled down from high above. But then she'd seen the order behind it. The care with which the stones had been cut and placed. The opening that could be nothing else but a doorway.

The voice emanating out of it.

"Come closer," it said. "Come inside." The tones were rough, uneven, and there was something utterly unnatural about the voice, like from a poorly calibrated speaker system.

"Why should I?" she asked it uncertainly. "What... you should show yourself, first. Come out."

"I can't come out," the voice said. "I have been trapped here for what feels like an eternity, and there has been no one, nothing, to sate my boredom. But you, now you're here. I can offer you so much, for so little."

"Well, what are you, then?" Coraline asked.

It laughed, strange and rolling, but the joy and the mirth behind it seemed oddly sincere. "I am a god, little wanderer, trapped in place and time. Alone."

"In a... little building?" she asked, trying to peer inside without actually getting too close. It just looked dark, though, and smelled of forest.

"Left alone and forgotten when the old ones left the world," it said. "Just a voice in the wind, with none to hear. But you can take me. You can return me to the world, return me to those who could hear me, see me, know me. I will go unheard no longer, for together we will be more powerful than anything!"

"Really?" Coraline asked. "And why would I want that?"

"Just imagine the power, all yours," it said. "Just come inside."

Coraline sat down on the ground in front of the entrance instead, pulling off her backpack. "You seem to be oddly obsessed with power," she said. "Why is that?"

"All desire power," it said. "And I have it! I just cannot use it."

Coraline finally found her torch and shone it inside, illuminating the far walls, dirty ground, bits of rock and dirt, a pile of leaves. Some animal bones. Some sort of worn down statue. "Is that you?" she asked, shining the beam on the statue.

"Yeees," the voice breathed. "I am Maracor, Spirit of Decay."

Coraline raised an eyebrow at the state of the shrine. "Appropriate," she said.

"Take my statue, and I will be with you always, my power yours," Maracor said. The dried leaves inside swirled about, drifting out of the shrine across the forest floor.

Coraline plucked one out of the air as it drifted past, and spun it about in her fingers, and said, "And what if I don't want your power, Maracor, Spirit of Decay?"

"ARGH!" Maracor screamed, and a large gust blew out with it, full of rotting stink and leaves and flies, reaching for Coraline, full of rage and fear and a horrible feeling of death.

She jumped away, scurrying back into the woods away from the shrine, but the wind dissipated almost immediately, the feeling of death fading with it.

"Hah!" she yelled triumphantly back at it. "You don't have any power! You can just stay there!"

It screamed after her again as she resumed her path, and then she was alone once more.

Alone with the whispers in the leaves, the voices in the wind's singing, the murmurings in the river's flow.

Alone with the screams piercing the night as the flames of her campfire cackled and spit.

Alone with the shapes flickering and dancing in the shadows of the day.

Inn at Somn's Post - afternoon

Once Coraline had managed to calm down a bit, Vardaman relocated them to a table in a private room with a few bottles, lunch, and, as it turned out when they jumped up on the table as well, three cats between them.

Tress immediately rolled over and got to grooming her rumpled and wetted fur.

"Sorry," Coraline said, wiping the cat hair out of her eyes. "I'm fine, I mean, that wasn't..." she didn't even know.

"Eh," Vardaman said, turning the wired mask-sunglasses combination over in his hands. He slid her back her coin, and added, "You can't always carry your burdens alone."

Coraline glanced at Agata. The tortoiseshell had her tongue hanging partially out of her mouth for no apparent reason.

"The last time I told someone, he ran after me with a sword demanding that I die," Coraline said, looking away. "He was one of your priests."

She had managed to easily outrun the priest in question, but he'd been a bit portly to begin with. This man, on the other hand, was a Deathdealer, and the Deathdealers of Kyrule were first and foremost hunters and warriors, dedicated to the service of their god.

Vardaman raised his brow.

The thing was, however, she was here. And this would be such a simple solution to so many problems.

"We both know full well what these coins mean," she said, still not looking up. "If it came to it, you would break your promise, because everything is costs, and some costs are too high, no matter what we might promise."

He smiled slightly, humourlessly. "So it is."

Coraline had made a promise herself, a few years back. A big one, so big it was why she was here on this world at all. She had promised to live. Such a simple promise, and yet it was a promise that kept becoming harder and harder to keep, the cost more and more deadly for everyone around her. Perhaps it would be worth it to break it now. It would certainly be easier.

"Okay," she said, sitting back. She could just say it.

She proceeded to not say it.

"Hmm?" Vardaman asked.

"Er," Coraline said, and then tried again, "That is... I'm a Carrier of the Death of Souls."

This was the first time she'd ever come out and said it herself, and in a way it made her feel almost liberated, but in another it simply solidified it, made it real. She was exactly that, and there was no escaping it. It would eat her same as any other, even if it was taking considerably longer than average.

Vardaman didn't respond, simply observing her for a time. Coraline watched him tensely. Thimble purred, looking angry. Tress rolled over and started licking her other side.

Finally he asked, "How long has it been?"

"Almost four years," she said.

He frowned, and asked, "You're sure it's the Death of Souls?"

"What, and that I'm not just crazy?" she said. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Other Carriers are drawn to me, and I to them. Get out a black soul gem and if I'm not paying attention I'll just stick to it like a squirrel to a shiny. And the voices... the voices just keep getting worse."

"But you're fighting it," he noted.

"I'm so tired," Coraline said.

Agata was staring at her, somehow managing to look deadly serious even despite the tongue half hanging out of her mouth.

"I'm not going to kill you," Vardaman said, setting down the mask. "And that priest was wrong to try."

Coraline looked at him in surprise. In a way, she was almost disappointed. The prospect of not having to run anymore, of just being done, had been so inviting.

"Why?" she asked, not even thinking.

"Someone doesn't want to kill you, and you ask 'why'?" Agata muttered, finally pulling in her tongue. "Really?"

Vardaman smiled. "Because you could end it," he told her. "If all this is true, you could end the Death of Souls. You're not just a Carrier, but a survivor, and for as long as you fight it, you will hold the means to turn the curse on its head."

"Eh?" Coraline said, relaxing in spite of herself. She'd long since given up on the idea that there might be a solution. She'd just been running. Why had nobody told her this? Why had everyone attacked her? Rude.

"It's not certain," he went on. "There's no prophecies, no great destiny or fate of the world shit, no chosen path nonsense. Only a little hope. A fighting chance if you should choose to take it."

She stared at him. Between them, on the table, Agata purred, a loud rumble that filled the enormous silence. A chance was worlds.

"You interested?" he asked.

The day's emotional roller coaster finally levelled off after lunch had been properly had, with only a pile of overlarge cookies remaining.

Of course Coraline was interested. Even if it was just a chance, it was a way forward, something to actually do, a means to stop running and start actually fighting.

She asked why Vardaman was helping her, and he explained how important the matter was to his faith, what an affront the Death of Souls truly was to the balance of death which they held so sacred. It wasn't even a curse so much as a mindless disease, taking any and all with whom it came into contact, and in so doing, depriving them of not just their souls, but also final judgement and rest.

She asked why he'd wanted to help her before he knew what the matter had even been, and he said simply, "Well, you seemed nice."

She asked what the chance actually was, and just what it was that she needed to do, how it was she could possibly fight this in practice.

"Let's go back to the beginning," Vardaman said instead. "How did it start for you? What happened four years ago?"

"Er," Coraline said, not really sure where to begin.

Four years ago, a 2.1m tall purple elf had shown up at Coraline's door and asked her if she wanted to go somewhere and have coffee. Given that this had been in the middle of Turku, in the south of Finland, on the remarkably elf-free planet of Earth, this had immediately come across as incredibly strange, and thus immediately caught her interest.

And thus, wondering just where 'somewhere' even meant when it was a 2.1m tall purple elf saying it, she had said yes.

'Somewhere' had turned out to be another planet.

The 2.1m tall purple elf had turned out to be the god of death. His name was Sherandris, and he liked snacks, weird poetry, and hanging around his main temple impersonating one of his own priests and throwing slabs of meat at those who gravely offended him. He was one of the most powerful beings in the universe.

This, however, had been back in her own universe, which was something Coraline didn't exactly want to bring up.

"I suppose the way it happened," Coraline explained after giving it all a good long think, "was that one moment I'd been walking home from the library, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up face-down in the dirt in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter on a planet that, as it turned out, wasn't quite the right one."

"Or 'verse, as it were," Agata said lazily. Coraline gave the cat an annoyed look.

"And the Death of Souls?" Vardaman asked.

"That's when I caught it, as far as I can figure," Coraline said. "I dunno how. I was there, and then I was here, and everything started changing. It was utter wilderness, but I kept hearing voices in the wind, in the babble of the creek, the cackle of the flames. Seeing shadows that weren't there. The weirdest feelings."

"Magic's different here," Vardaman pointed out. "If you'd come through from Ord, it was probably that."

"No," Coraline said. "I ran into a Carrier, and something worse, too, a few months later, and it all just solidified. Same voices. Same shadows."

"What happened?" Vardaman asked.

Coraline shrugged. "I finally got to a civilisation of sorts after a few months, only to find it all wrecked," she said, picking at a cookie. "It was a small town. Kalona, in Hadrin?" Vardaman nodded, so she went on, "Everyone was dead, but there was this Carrier wandering the streets. He tried to feed on me, so I shot him."

"That should have been the start right there," Vardaman told her.

She shook her head. "Maybe, but that wasn't it. It happened, but it didn't change anything. He was just... there. And then there was the thing in the temple... I'd gone inside trying to be ready for anything. I don't think I was."

Vardaman snorted.

"It all felt like a dream," Coraline said. "I went in, nothing moved... there was this woman, and I killed her, and I don't know what happened. But there was something..." she trailed off. For some reason her head hurt, like she was straining to think. But that didn't make sense.

"What?" Vardaman asked.

Coraline shook her head, confused. "Whatever it was, that was when I realised I was hearing voices at all. They had been so subtle before, and were still so subtle otherwise, that it just seemed like background noise. But when I... it made them louder for a bit, and I realised what they were," she explained. "Except that wasn't how it happened," she said.

What she was remembering, it had all been a dream?

Kalona temple - winter, four years past

Coraline entered the temple slowly, shining her torch and staff ahead of her and peering inside before entering entirely.

Nothing moved. The space was still, all still, a shine of dust illuminated by colourful windows and torchlight alike. In it were shapes, forms not quite right. Shapes she couldn't see, of pews, lined up and proper. Shape of an altar up front. Shape of a statue behind it, bathed in light, drawing the eye away from the death. A female figure, solitary, one arm forward and one arm back, a look of joy on her face. She didn't fit.

Coraline walked slowly down the aisle, shining her torch into the gloom, but passing the faces by. The statue was the important thing.

Again, movement drew Coraline's eye. A woman by the altar, stepping out of the shadows curiously, confused. The woman's clothes were dirty and torn, but from her attire, she seemed to be some sort of priestess. She didn't fit.

The woman said, "You... you're alive. What are you doing here?"

Coraline hesitated, and stopped in the aisle, still a couple of metres away. "I... I don't know. What happened here? Is everyone...?" She trailed off. The words felt odd, as though they were the wrong ones, as lost as she was. As lost as this whole place was. And there were so many questions, and yet she didn't even know enough to ask.

"Dead?" The priestess finished, grinning. A moment later the grin was gone.

"What?" Coraline said.

The priestess gestured for Coraline to come closer. "Come," she sighed weakly. "It's too late. Where do you come from, the outliers?"

Coraline shook her head. "Further off. Everything's just smoke, ashes, there..."

"So it is. The lands have fallen," the priestess said. "It's the world's end, and nobody will remember. Just the end."

"What happened?" Coraline asked again.

The priestess ignored her and looked away into the gloom. Coraline watched her carefully. The place was warm and dark and there was something wrong, horribly wrong, but she couldn't quite place it.

A moment later, Coraline was standing over the priestess' body, panting for breath, knife in hand. There was blood everywhere. So much blood.

And then the voices were there, really there, loud enough to hear, rising around her, whispering, taunting, cajoling, screaming in her mind, a roar of echoes rising into a cacophony. Her skull felt as though it might explode, and amidst the solid roar she was losing herself, everything she was and had, before blackness finally pulled her into its welcome embrace, not even waking.

Inn at Somn's Post - afternoon

"Let's try something," Vardaman said, raising a hand.

Coraline gave him a confused look, but didn't try to stop him as he sketched out a spell over the cats, directing it onto her. It settled a bit like bees, but she didn't feel any different after.

"Hmm?" she said.

"Don't worry about what happened," Vardaman told her, "just remember what it felt like. What was the place? Remember it. See it. You're there now."

"Okay..." Coraline said skeptically, but obliged in the imagining.

"Tell me what you see."

"I'm in the temple." She hesitated, exploring the space, looking around the memory. "It's dark. There's pews, and... and the windows are broken. There's glass all over the floor, all over... there's no light. Why is there no light?" Suddenly she was shivering, and she didn't know why.

A rough tongue dragging on her hand startled her back to the present, and then Tress went back to licking herself.

"It's all right," Vardaman said. "It can't hurt you. Play it out, like a dream."

She nodded. A dream. Dreams she could do.

"You entered the temple. What do you see?"

She took a deep breath, and nearly gagged. "It wasn't... what I see. It's what I smell. One summer a badger crawled under the house and died. It's like that, except where the badger was a gradual tired thing, this is... this is solid."

"Where is it coming from?" Vardaman asked.

"There's people. The place is full of people, all dead, like they came here to escape. And then they died where they sat."

Coraline looked around. The place was dark, despite the windows, and as she shone her torch about the gloom, dark shadows jumped and jittered in its wake. Aside from the, the rest was still.

In the dream, Vardaman was there beside her, walking her through it, holding her steady. She could see him as he lingered on certain descriptions, staring at the windows, examining the bodies, following her down.

"I go down the aisle and I'm not even looking at them," she said, "because they're not dancing. The woman at the altar, the priestess, she's dancing." She paused. "No, she's just standing there. The statue is... doing something, though. Shifting. I don't really know how..." she trailed off.

The interior of the temple was much warmer than the outside, and her heavy coat was getting decidedly uncomfortable, but she couldn't bring herself to stop and take it off. It was as though a force was pulling her forward, toward the altar, toward the woman standing still as stone, toward the statue that kept shifting about in impossible, jerking, blurring motions, now one way, now another, mesmerising.

"What?" Vardaman's voice said, somewhere distant, startling her out of her trance.

"I can't look at it. It's not right. But I can't look away, either. I can't do anything." Her coat was pressing on her back and arms, unbearable in its heat.

She realised she had stopped in front of the woman. Something in her head was screaming. It sounded like the voices, felt like them, the same sort of urgency, the same sort of pain, but this was before the voices had even started proper, and this one was different besides, one voice, one mind, alone, somewhere else, trying to get her attention.

She tried to focus on it. "I've stopped. There's a voice," she said. "I hear it in my head, but I can't make it out. But I can move again. I have control, like sludge. I need to kill her. I need..."

The scene was fading, getting away from her all over again. Something was making her forget. Something had made her before. Only this time she wasn't alone, and...

Vardaman shook her awake.

"What..." Coraline said. Her arm was covered in Thimble.

"You passed out." He poured her a shalott. "Have a drink."

She did, slowly, trembling. She had forgotten something. Her head felt empty.

"You were in the temple," Vardaman said, sitting back. "What were you doing? What had the priestess been doing?"

Coraline thought for a moment, remembering, rehashing the scene. There had been something else, yes. It had been so determined to keep this from her, to make her forget the entire thing, but now, precisely because of its attempts, she knew it was there. Likewise, she saw the priestess as she had been, eyes completely back, contorting and shifting through the space, almost writhing, vibrating, and the statue behind it vibrating and shaking behind her, almost as though fighting her...

"She was gone," Coraline said. "Something was controlling her, and then it was controlling me too, and then... then I don't know. I heard something."

"You do know," Vardaman said. He refilled her mug. "Drink."

"Aside from the alcohol, you're a terrible date, you know," Coraline remarked, drinking. "But you're so good with the alcohol I don't even care."

"What was it?" Vardaman asked. "Was it her voice you heard, or the voice behind her?"

Coraline shook her head, and drifted back slowly. "Neither," she said. She didn't even notice the smell anymore, or the lighting, just the glow of the woman and the dancing. The woman was standing so perfectly still, but dancing.

Coraline felt herself drawn forward, slowly, surely, her own legs making the necessary movements, shuffling their way forward, leaving no control of her own. And beneath it, buried under everything else, was a voice, yes, but she couldn't quite make it out. As the memory dream slowed to a standstill, she went over it again and again...

"Nelanor. Nelanor."

"It's my name," she said, surprised. "She's saying my name."

"Who is?" Vardaman asked.

"Alyre. Her name is Alyre. I know this because..." She paused, then went on, smiling, "Because I can see it." She wasn't even sure how. It was just... there. The same way she knew Nelanor was her. It just was.

"The temple would have been dedicated to her," Vardaman said. "Along with Azorres, she is particularly venerated in Hadrin. Or was. Back when they had people."

Coraline nodded.

"Life and love," Agata muttered. "How appropriate."

"What happened next?" Vardaman asked.

Even if it hadn't been entirely consciously, on some level, she'd heard the voice, and she'd understood what it meant. "I understood," she said. "I started to fight, not by struggling against it, but by giving in, letting it control me." She was flowing with the sludge and slipping out her knife when it wasn't looking, and continuing along.

"And then I'm right in front of her, and I have my knife..." Coraline said.

The woman was vibrating, blurring, flickering in and out of place. Behind her, the statue of Alyre was doing the same, but backwards.

Coraline felt numb. She could see it. It was there. It was happening. She couldn't feel anything.

The woman turned and faced the statue, dancing stronger, faster, and Coraline felt the sludge feeling pulling on her, urging her to do the same, to join in and break Alyre. Break her. Break her and take her.

She didn't join in, instead reaching for the priestess, slowly, deliberately, wondering vaguely what she was even doing, and grabbed the priestess' head from behind.

"It wants me to do something, to... give it my power and break Alyre, but I don't want to, I don't have to do what it says. So instead I just grab the woman and try to slit her throat," Coraline explained, shaking her head. "Except she struggles first, and I miss... have to do it again, but that doesn't really work either, and she's screaming at me to let her go, what..."

"What are you doing?!" the priestess yelled, and finally pulled away. She was clutching her neck, blood spurting and dripping, staring at Coraline in horror, looking normal for the first time since Coraline had seen her.

It almost all fell apart right then. Doubt, disbelief, it didn't fit. The woman, the statue. Why would she have done this? There was nothing here, they'd just talked, talked, discussed the town.

The statue shifted, another weird vibrating twisting its form. That hadn't happened. She had to end this.

"I had to, I have to," Coraline insisted, not knowing if it was true at all.

The priestess shook her head, and held up a hand defensively. "No..."

But Coraline interrupted her by slashing at the protective hands, and face, and throat, again and again.

"Amadi?" Vardaman asked.

Coraline almost jumped, and said, "I screwed it up. Can't stop. Have to finish it. Finish her, so she'll be quiet, so she'll stop trying to scream, the horrible screams, gurgling, broken...

"But they aren't her screams. They don't stop," Coraline saide.

In the memory, Coraline fell to her knees, in the blood, in the noise. There was blood everywhere, on the floor, on the altar, the broken statue. All over her hands and clothes, all over the priestess before her, who was finally, mercifully, dead, and yet still the screams would not stop.

"Why won't you stop?" she whispered, staring at the body. The woman had fallen facing away, but still, she seemed...

The screams gave way, and it was then that she heard the voices for the first time, really heard them, rising around her, whispering, taunting, cajoling, screaming in her mind, a roar of echoes rising into a cacophony. Her skull felt as though it might explode, and amidst the solid roar she was losing herself, everything she was and had, before blackness finally pulled her into its welcome embrace.

Vardaman frowned, clearly thinkng of something, but Coraline just scratched Thimble's ear absentmindedly, staring off into space.

Agata yawned, emitting a horrible smell of fish. Tress leaned over to smell it up close.

"What happened next?" Vardaman asked finally.

"I wake up and I'm covered in blood," Coraline said, closing her eyes. "It's everywhere. And I feel so weird." It was a bit like her mind had been taken out and rolled up in cotton. Muffled. Quiet. Fuzzy. "Not all there..."

Coraline crawled over and rolled over the woman. She was clearly dead, but even now her expression was one of torn and vacant horror, hazel eyes unfocussed and lost, blood tainting the colours and adding strange patterns across her oddly dirty face.

Then the remembered - the realisation, and the recognition. The voices. The voices were there, too. Concretely. The voices that had always been there, with her, ushering her along her way, but now more than just whispers. No longer out of sound, out of mind, but simply there. Always there.

"I need to get out of here, I need to get away, I need to...!" Coraline wailed, panicking, practically scrambling out of her chair at the same time. Tress jumped away in surprise.

Then Vardaman was next to her, and he grabbed her by the arm. "Hey, hey," he said. "It's fine. You're safe now."

Coraline blinked at him in confusion, but calmed down all the same.

"It's the spell," Vardaman said. "Along with true sight, it makes the memories themselves more real. Sometimes that's not a good thing."

"Blugh," Coraline said as the Deathdealer helped her back into her seat, Tress watching suspiciously from another table.

"So I'm going to guess you just fucking left at that point?" Vardaman suggested after retaking his own seat.

Coraline nodded. "Except that was also when I got that coin, you know?" she said. "The mask... and the balance. But seeing that mask here... I never expected that."

"Surely you have similar symbols in Ord," Vardaman said. "We do have most of the same gods."

Coraline shrugged.

"Where did you get your mask, then?" Vardaman asked, indicating the mask-sunglasses still on the table, but now covered in half a Thimble. It was the same design. The exact same design.

"That's... complicated," Coraline began, trying to think of what she even could reasonably say.

Then Agata took the opportunity to hack up a hairball on Vardaman's plate, and he jumped out of his seat again in mild disgust.

"Er," Coraline said, hardly even moving. "Ew?"

Vardaman stared at her. Then he stared at the hairball. Then he stared back at Coraline, and finally at Agata.

"Fucking hells, cat," Vardaman said finally.

Thank you, Coraline thought vaguely in Agata's generally direction.

Agata purred and rolled over, turning into an enormous mass of fluff with legs sticking out, and then the thought returned, You're welcome.

Coraline barely managed to avoid jumping out of her chair again as well, but only barely.

"So to clarify," Vardaman said, "when exactly did the voices start?"

"They got noticeable," Coraline corrected. "I don't even entirely know when they started, really. Just after I got here..."

"How did you? Come to Cerris, I mean." Vardaman asked. "Was it from Ord?"

She nodded. "I guess... you might say I fell through a hole. I mean, I think that's what happened," she finished quickly. She knew full well that that was exactly what had happened, but trying to explain how she knew would have been a bit of a stretch, especially since she hadn't actually come from Ord.

"A hole," he muttered.

"Rabbit hole?" Coraline suggested, and absentmindedly lifted a Thimble paw off her cookie.

"Strange," Vardaman said. "Your Lesk is impeccable."

"My what?" Coraline asked, utterly at a loss.

"It's a language," Agata explained. "You're speaking it now." Then she added, for Vardaman's sake, "She can speak everything. Why, just the other day we were speaking Abyssal like it was the most ordinary thing in the world."

Coraline grumbled something incoherently. The problem was, she didn't even notice half the time when she was speaking something else. Soravian she'd gotten down, mostly due to practice, and she could certainly switch with ease to any of the several languages she'd previously known before this had all started, but the new ones always managed to sneak up on her.

"That's an... odd skill," Vardaman said, but then asked the cat, "Why would you know Abyssal, then?"

"Mostly because she does," Agata said. "A cat and her witch, we're bound together."

"Mostly?" Vardaman said, raising his brow enquiringly.

"How did that even happen? I mean, what actually makes you my cat?" Coraline asked. "It's like you just showed up one day and suddenly, pow, cat and witch?"

"More elaborate rituals are usually employed, but frankly just falling asleep on a witch's face will do it," Agata told her.

"How convenient," Coraline muttered. It wasn't exactly an unusual cat thing to do in general.

Agata purred.

Coraline ate her cookie. It was starting to get a bit noisier in the main inn as the evening settled around.

"And after Kalona, the voices just got worse over time?" Vardaman asked.

"Not exactly," Coraline said. "I think... I made them worse. Otherwise, it had been so gradual..." She trailed off. Would they even have affected her otherwise?

"What do you mean?" he said.

"She did magic," Agata said from the table. "Went and threw everything off."

Coraline nodded. "Yeah."

"But normally magic has been the only means of fighting the Death of Souls, buying perhaps a little more time," Vardaman said. "You're saying that for you, it made it worse?"

She shrugged. "All I know is what happened."

Not long after Coraline had gotten out of the mountains north of Kalona, into what had turned out to be lands populated with real, living people for a change, she'd joined up with two guys travelling west. It had happened very, very suddenly. They'd met in a bar, pissed off the locals, and then fled, stealing some horses in the process.

Her new companions turned out to be a wild-haired guy named Darren Costa and a rather peculiar fellow named Merrs, whom Costa was trying to escort to somewhere terribly vague. She didn't really ask; Despite Costa's religiosity and Merrs' suicidal tendencies, they'd seemed gallant enough, and it wasn't exactly proper to pry.

Aside from the anvils falling out of the sky and the fact that Merrs' horse kept muttering to itself, the trip had been nice and uninteresting right up until they hit some bandits.

"Basically we got attacked by bandits at one point and Merrs got himself stabbed in the process, and somehow I healed him," Coraline said. "And that's when everything really started going downhill."

"You used a healing spell?" Vardaman asked.

"Er, no," Coraline said. She didn't think it was a spell, anyway. Nothing she did seemed to be very spell-like. "I don't... think so, anyway..."

"Not spells, but inate sorcery," Agata said. "A witch has certain knacks, you know. Hers seem to revolve around the balance of life and death."

"It turns out I'm secretly Poison Ivy," Coraline said. "From Batman."

Vardaman gave her an appropriately blank look.

Coraline sighed. Of course he wouldn't get that. Not that it had even entirely made sense in the first place, but still.

There was a knock at the door, and some serving girls brought in dinner and a few replacement bottles of shalott. They got to eating, with the cats partially relocated to the other end of the table for their own dinners, and the story unfolded.

Verash - spring, three years past

After the constant mugginess of the rest of their trip, it had been an unusually nice day.

Merrs was riding ahead while Coraline and Costa followed behind and generally utterly failed to make conversation, though a few snippets did occur. At one point she asked exactly what Merrs' deal was.

"What exactly is Merrs' deal?" were her precise words.

There was a pause while he considered the question. Then, instead of answering directly, Costa responded, "It has been my life's work to seek out and, if possible, bring forth the Light of Azorres. A chosen one who would lead the faithful, acting as a guiding star in the world of the living, out of their suffering."

They rode in silence for a moment, then it hit her like a brick through mud, which is to say very, very slowly. "Merrs?" Coraline asked. Then she added, "So he's a very holy man."

"Yes," Costa said.

"I hope he doesn't want to be a waiter," she said.

Costa gave her a look of utter confusion. She laughed happily.

"Nevermind," she said.

They'd lost sight of Merrs over a small hill, but caught sight again as they topped the rise. Now he was joined by a small group of what appeared to be bandits of some sort.

There were four of them. They seemed to be telling Merrs to get off his horse, or something along those lines. Whatever it was, he wasn't doing it, instead just sitting there, apathetically ignoring them as they shoved swords at him and yelled crudely.

"Agh!" Costa yelled, and drove his horse toward them, yelling at the top of his lungs, trying to get their attention. It only took a moment and they turned toward him instead.

"Oh, look what we have here, lads!" one of them said, probably the leader. The bandit swaggered forward as Merrs slid sideways off his horse behind him. "Reinforcements!"

"You rat bastards!" Costa screamed. Suddenly the sky was full of lightning, cracking and thundering even without clouds. Then it struck, shaking the very ground and obliterating three of the four bandits in an instant.

At the same time, the horses bolted, leaving Costa clinging for dear life in an attempt to get his back under control, and Coraline on the ground not far away where hers had thrown her.

Aside from Merrs'. For some reason Merrs' horse was still just standing there.

The last bandit, who had somehow escaped the lightning, fled.

Coraline got up quickly, grabbing her staff. She seemed to be fine, but Merrs, on the other hand, wasn't moving. As she walked toward him, she raised the staff and fired, hitting the fleeing bandit in the back. She watched the man fall without even caring, and only as she dropped to her knees beside him did a look of concern cross her face.

"Merrs?" she said, rolling him over.

He groaned. There was blood on his jacket. It seemed one of the bandits had thought it funny to poke him when he didn't cooperate.

"You idiot," she said, pushing aside a few layers of shirts and jackets to find the wound in his abdomen, still bleeding. It looked deep, but she didn't know how deep, especially with all the blood. Whatever the case, she also had absolutely no idea what to do about it - even if she could stop the bleeding, there were probably some important organs in there, and such.

So she put her hand on it, instead, because that totally made sense, feeling the blood and the heat and the sense of pain and hurt, and then there were voices rising all around her, a strange sensation of drowning in nothing, and after the screaming, only blackness.

When she awoke, the voices were still louder than they had been, more present, more constant. The crackling flames before her hissed and spit and babbled, their voices right at home amidst the rest, and she watched them dance, not really thinking, not really listening.

She realised Merrs was nearby, weaving flowers out of grass. "Costa's still trying to find your horse," he said, not looking up.

Twilight glowed off the broken clouds, mirroring the colours of the flames across the landscape.

"What..." she began, then stopped. "Oh. Are you okay?"

"No worse for wear," he said, closing his eyes. The voices drifted in and about the spoken words like fishes.

In the end, Costa never did find the horse.

Inn at Somn's Post - evening

"That wasn't your first time doing magic, was it?" Vardaman asked. "I mean, I'm going to guess it didn't end there," he added, "but fuck..."

"Yeah," Coraline said. "It was."

He looked surprised. "But you're... what, in your thirties? Usually sorcery comes on in your teens at the latest."

"Er," Coraline said. She was actually only in her twenties, but that didn't really negate the point. "Well, it might be," she said. "That is, everything just sort of changed after I got here, you know?"

"Perhaps different worlds, different magics," he mused.

"I don't know?" she said blankly.

"Hmm," he said. "What else was there, then?"

"Not just magic," she said, "but uncertainty, too. I'd left camp to go get more firewood or some such, and at some point I got thinking and began to doubt that any of this was real, thinking maybe this was all just some dream, some break from reality, and that I'd wake up back home only to find none of it had even happened. I think..." she paused, taking a deep breath. "I think I nearly lost myself right then."

That, too, had started with magic.

Verash - spring, three years past

Coraline had always wanted magic. Through her entire life, it had been a bit of a dream, a longing, a need for something more beyond the bland, bland world to which she belonged. Eventually she'd grown up a bit and her focus had shifted to words, which were their own sort of magic - the only magic her world had - and to dreams, where it didn't matter what was real and what wasn't. But dreams ended. Worlds faded as she always awoke, and after that there were only words. Sweet, sweet, tantalising words that still left her wanting at the end, because they, too, were never enough.

So she had pushed it away, that want, that need, and she had dreamed amongst her hoarded words.

But now she was here. And here there was magic. And it was real.

She wanted to be excited. She was excited. She wanted to sing and dance and shout into the wind, but the wind was elsewhere, taking the evening off. Something about it felt off.

And that's where the uncertainty crept in. Something wasn't right, because it couldn't be.

It couldn't be real. There was no way it could be real. It hadn't happened. None of it had happened. It was just a dream. A new reality, a new world with simple answers and big dreams and strange magics... and escape.

A way out.

She was a coward. After everything, she had proven a coward. All the dreams of being strong. All the daydreams and the nightmares and the playing with swords, after the chainmail shirts and the trebuchets and the illusions of power. Even when her parents had told her, no, no, little girls are not Roman soldiers, little girls are not alien commanders, they're... well, things that exist, princesses or something, she had still wanted to fight, to take on the world, to be that elf on the elephant, leading the army into the light. And a princess too, of course, but not just any princess. But then the brick of real life had hit her, and after everything she wasn't a princess at all. Not any princess. And she couldn't handle it.

And now here she was. Playing the hero, the strong, the gal who had everything in order save for a place to belong, because in this place that she had escaped to, she could never belong. There was no way. No way at all.

It wasn't real.

Some day she would awaken only to suffer for this silly dream, as she had suffered for all the others. As everyone had always said she would, from all of those that had come before. There would be no option to simply 'show them', for there was never anything to show.

The realisation hit her like real life all over again. That horrible search for a job. That wave of despair, those months teetering on the edge, those stories and dreams and words that had kept her afloat through it all, but only barely. That final surrender before it all ended. Here she was, wherever she was, alone. Hopeless. No future at all, just useless and dreaming. Hiding behind her dreaming, but the dreaming was shallow and it could not protect her. Nothing could protect her.

She heard them now, through the silky darkness of the night, the voices of her past and present. Calling out to her. Laughing. Mocking. Wondering. They didn't even care, for she was already lost, but sometimes they wondered. Whatever had happened to Coraline? Whatever had happened to that gal down the block, that girl in Databases who had always dressed up, that barrista with the funny hair? Oh, but she had failed, disappeared, fallen off the radar, never made it anywhere, not even out her own front door. They mocked and they chattered and they questioned. Who are you, little dreamer? Who do you think you are? Did you really believe it could be true? Are you this silly, this hopeless, this ridiculous? Oh, you pathetic little girl, you, who could not even handle real life!

Voices that rose around her, shrouding like a second night, voices that called to her fears and failings, voices that reminded her of who she had been and what she had lost, voices that left no room for escape, not now, not this time. And other voices too. Others which were not her own, others which were older, stranger, but just as bereft of hope as she was.

As the blackness pulled her under, there was not even silence in its shadows.

"It was the same as when I'd healed Merrs, but different," she Coralin told Vardaman. "Everything from my entire life was telling me this wasn't real, that I just needed to give in. I couldn't do anything. Just sort of blacked out, except the voices, they didn't even stop, just got worse and worse and worse, until there was nothing at all, just..."

"Just what?" Vardaman asked.

Agata was staring at her.

Coraline shook her head.

It didn't even stop when she awoke.

Coraline woke screaming. She couldn't help it, couldn't stop. Then the others were holding her down, holding her back, gagging her, silencing here, but even still she tried to scream, scream through the cacophony, scream for silence and respite, for an end, for an escape.

And then she realised it was gone. It was over, whatever it was, replaced instead with something else, something far more real, and she finally stopped. She was alive, and free, and here, and here she wasn't alone, here there were no voices, just the wind's singing, just Costa holding her down and Merrs telling her it's okay, she's home, he won't let her go. Just her overwhelming exhaustion, just a bird calling out to the day.

She nearly choked on something in her mouth.

"Gloria?" Costa said. That was her name, as far as they knew.

She nodded slightly.

"If I take this out, you're not going to start up again, are you?"

She shook her head, and he ungagged her. She tried to sit up and had some trouble at first, but then managed it. She was so tired. She couldn't recall ever being so tired.

"The hell?" she said weakly.

"I could ask you that," Costa said. "What happened? Do you know?"

She shook her head. "How... I feel awful." Merrs sat down beside her. It was midday and the sun was gleaming with the brilliant force of spring, but though the day itself was warm, she felt cold, even wrapped in her coat.

"You've been out an entire day," Costa said, giving her some dried yam. "We found you by the trees, but when I tried to heal you it was as though nothing was wrong. Nothing physically, at least."

"Oh," Coraline said. She realised she could still hear the whispering, even now, but the specificity was gone, replaced with only the usual vague voices.

She didn't know what to say. Was this... she didn't even want to think it. So instead she chewed on the yam and stared at the ground. Nice, solid ground. Lots of dirt and rocks and little half-dead plants and bits of twiggy things.

"You almost left. Has that happened before?" Merrs asked.

She shook her head. Not like this, at least. There had been voices, of course, but the last time they had stopped when she had blacked out, not like this. This had been so much worse. And this time there had been a feeling that had come with them. A sense of space, of vastness.

"When I healed you," she said. "It was kind of like that, only not really."

"And you feel better now?" he asked.

"Better," she said. "I feel like I got eaten by a cat with a gizzard full of toasters."

"But it already happened, and now it's over." Merrs said. "Now you feel better."

"That's..." It was a reasonable way to look at things, she supposed. "Sure."

Merrs stood and helped her up as well. "Come," he said, taking her arm. "Let's walk."

It was difficult at first, as she was quite stiff and quite sore, but as they got moving she began to really feel better. The stiffness and the pain subsided. She realised she was shivering, and drew her coat tighter. But she was all right.

Costa caught up a little later with the horses and everything packed up.

It was strange going, however. The world felt wrong. Not real. Not like a hallucination, necessarily, but like how it had felt going outside after spending 40-odd hours straight in a basement staring at four computer screens working on her animation final project, getting the last bits of details in the objects, setting up the lights and camera paths, and rendering, rendering, tweaking, and rendering.

Then she'd stepped outside with it all on a CD and the real world had just looked wrong. The leaves on the trees both too clear and not clear enough, the sunlight and the shadows too bright and too dark.

This felt like that.

"Perkele," she said to herself.

Inn at Somn's post - night

"I think Merrs brought me back," Coraline explained. "I don't even know what he did, but he just seemed so real, so certain. And when he was there, it was always a little better after that."

"I don't know if you've been extremely lucky, or monumentally unlucky," Vardaman said, propping his chin up with his elbows on the table. "The odds of travelling with someone like Merrs, the Light of Azorres, but on the other hand, the odds of winding up with such a curse at all in the first place..."

"I'd go with 'yes'," Agata said.

"Egh," Coraline agreed.

After a bit, she said, "It mostly stayed manageable after that, at least until we got to Telegrin and split up. And then I sort of completely lost my mind."

"Uh-huh," Vardaman said.

"And then I started drinking," Coraline said.

Vardaman looked at her blankly.

"Actually it wasn't long after that that I met you," she added, and sighed, remembering.

Telegrin - spring, three years past

Only then had she truly understood what was lost upon losing one's mind.

It had come on so innocuously in the days after Merrs and Costa had taken the ship south, leaving Coraline back to her own devices.

At first she was fine. The odd whispering, a few murmurs here and there, but still generally out of sight, out of sound, and out of mind.

Then something changed. They came as an onslaught, voices pouring in, beckoning, begging, screaming, asking, crying, shouting, an endless roar of a whisper, the torrent of a thousand waves all crashing at once. And she heard them all so clearly, so plainly, so many, with no black to shelter her, no void to welcome her. There was no escape, no solace from the torment, simply more, and more, and more.

She lost herself in it, lost track of her surroundings, her intent, and everything she was and wanted. There was only room for voices, voices, voices. Speaking out of the shadows, out of loss.

She stumbled and continued, lost in the depths of her mind, reeling in the voices never-ending.

If only there were silence amidst the madness. But there was none; there was only madness and more madness, voices, and no silence.

If there were sound and also silence, a respite, a sanctuary against the sound.

If there were the silence only distance, alone, without the sound, the sound of the voices, thousands, tens of thousands, never stopping, never ending...

But there was no silence.

Coraline wandered on, lost amidst the madness of the roar within her mind.

A shadow stopped her, adding voices to the voices, louder and louder. She needed to move, to flee, to escape the silence. She needed silence amidst the voices, stillness amidst the rock, but there was none, no silence, no stillness, and still, the shadow would not move.

"This is a mugging," the shadow said, a voice with words lost amidst the words, so many words, so many fragments, all pieces, bits and empty pieces. She didn't understand. She tried to tell them she didn't understand, that she couldn't, that this wasn't, but she didn't know. All there were were voices, and no knowing, only voices and more voices.

And a shadow.

The shadow was so silent, it needed more, it needed the voices, it needed to be welcomed into the dark, the real dark, the rock, the

The voices told her.

So she ate it, and then there was no more shadow, no more bright, no more silence.

She knew nothing. She was no-one. The wind. A whisper and a shadow.

The world was not real.

Others passed her by, but they paid no heed. They were not real, and nor was she. Only the voices stood out, in their shout and their roar and their reverberation against the shadowy, flimsy backdrop of the world she saw with eyes. It was nothing.

Only the rock and the shadow, the sky washed by the whirl of voices, so many souls that passed through, so many voices, shouting, shouting, always shouting and never heard. They were meaningless, and still they shouted, because they did not know, they could never know, but they were only the cicada, they were only the whisper, and yet they whispered on.

Whisper and whisper, shout and shout, question and question. The cacophony was never-ending, and yet all were lost within. No single soul stood out, no single voice was heard, only the masses, the unending masses, coming and coming. It was all. It was everything. Voices.

Only voices. No end to the voices, just voices shouting, voices pleading, voices lost without even hope to carry them on, but still echoing even now, for there was no hope here, only nothing, only echoes, always echoes. This was the place of echoes, where echoes were only all. Only echoes. Nelanor. Echoes.

They pleaded, the echoes. They called. They whispered secrets and shouted legends, for it was all they knew, and amongst the echoes there was nothing, only nothing. If only there were something amidst the nothing, no abyss, no great shadow, no deep darkness that loiters below, only something, a shadow of the world, but something, then. Something to support the voices, the echoes, the shadows.

But there was only nothing.

She was in a place. She didn't know how she had gotten there, or what she was doing there, or even, for that matter, much of anything at all, but this was a place. Some of the whispers had mentioned places, but as they whispered on, the places faded.

Everything faded. Everything was lost in the whispers, in the shouting, in the din.

There was a cup in front of her. A singular voice, quieter and yet somehow louder than all of the others, said, "You look like you could use some shalott."

She looked at it. Rock, part of her thought, staring at it, and then, before she knew what she was doing, that part of her drank it. Amidst the voices she didn't really notice. There was nothing to notice.

It was later. It was clearly later.

And there was only silence.

She was Nelanor. Nelanor looked up. "It is what the thunder said," she said.

"Sorry?" the barkeep asked.

She was in a bar. It was clearly a bar, though like none she had ever seen before. There were no taps and no vast assortment of myriad bottles such as marked the bars she knew, but there was the bar itself. It was very clearly a bar, long and wooden and polished, and the barman behind with apron and bottles and barrels, ready to pour whatever, so long as he had it, to whoever, so long as they could pay for it.

There was also no lighting in the rest of the room, as far as she could tell, The patrons drank in smoke and gloom, coming forth, perhaps, only as often as they had to. And here, at the bar, there were only the three lanterns. Kerosene, if she had to guess, and no apparatus for anything better. This was all they had. They made do, though. People did, when it was as far as they had come, and indeed they were proud of it. They had come this far, after all. They had achieved real lanterns, right?

Or something along those lines. She wasn't sure what was going on, or how she had gotten here. There was, however, another mug in front of her. Had she already had one? It was hard to say.

So she drank that too.

And soon she found that so long as she drank, she retained herself.

Inn at Somn's Post - night

Coraline told Vardaman the happenings in chunks and gists, not really understanding it entirely herself. It felt like a dream, half-remembered and utterly unreal. Only the low murmur of the voices now reminded her that it had been very real indeed, and that it wasn't just a memory, but still a lingering threat.

Vardaman interjected a few times for clarification, but for the most part he simply stared at her with varying levels of concern and growing alertness as she told the story. When she finished, he continued to stare.

Finally he said, "And then after that..." he trailed off, then tried again. "You're actually telling the truth. You're a fucking Carrier."

Coraline gaped at him.

Agata rumbled.

"Yes?" Coraline said incredulously.

"Fucking hells," he said. "I'm sorry. I didn't believe you, not entirely, I couldn't wrap my head around it, the possibility that... I mean, I had to be sure, because if it was true... and it is true. Fuck. How?"

"What?" Coraline asked.

"How have you lasted so long?" Vardaman demanded. "This is it, exactly it, but... not, so fucking how? How have you maintained your sense of self, even with the shalott? That shouldn't be possible. And the magic, it's just backwards. I don't understand."

"You think I know?!" she said.

"No, I understand, obviously," he insisted, "But you have to realise this is completely unprecedented. Even Shalias only lasted two months!"

"Oh, do I?" Coraline snarled. "When nobody would even tell me the first thing about the Death of Souls? When they wouldn't believe I could possibly be a hunter, and then I had to pretend I was a messenger of Kyrule just to get access to some damn books?"

"That's what the mask was for?" Vardaman said incredulously.

"Well I had it," Coraline said, "And you know, if you wear the right mask, sometimes people think you're something you might not entirely be."

"You can't fucking do that!" Vardaman yelled.

"Well, I did!" Coraline yelled right back.

"Ladies, please," Agata said between them, "I know the term for a collective of witches is an argument, but you two don't need to be such a cliché."

The two humans just stopped and stared at the cat.

Agata stuck out a leg and started licking it nonchalantly.

It was getting quite late. Coraline had stuck a magelight to the ceiling earlier, but now... that had been, what, a few hours past? "I'm sorry," she said tiredly, and got up. "You wanna maybe come back to this tomorrow?"

Vardaman nodded.

"Right," she said, picked up Thimble, and left, not even bothering with the other two cats. The tom murred in surprise.

Coraline went to the innkeeper to book a room for the night, only to find Vardaman had apparently already done so.

"Your friend already booked you both for the honeymoon suite," the innkeeper told her.

"Really," Coraline said flatly, then turned around and marched right back the way she'd come.

Vardaman was just leaving the other room when Coraline came back and pushed him right back inside.

"What?" he said, surprised.

Coraline pointed Thimble's angry face at the Deathdealer, then did her best to mimic the expression herself.

"Oh," Vardaman said, then smiled slowly. "Not amused, I take it?"

"Honeymoon, really?" Coraline said.

"A simple joke," he said, moving to head back out into the main inn. "I'll get that changed."

"Ehhh," Coraline said, giving up. "You know what, if it has a bed, I don't think I even care."

Inn at Somn's Post - morning

"You get to know your useful tools, then you look around, and there are some handy new tools nearby, and those tools show you the bottomless horror that was always right next to your bed."

~ Peter Welch, Programming Sucks

The morning came suddenly, and covered in cats.

The bed itself was probably big enough for a family of four, but this would have been four humans, not three cats and a human who slept like a cat, and another human who was actually a lot bigger just sort of randomly added to the mix.

Vardaman had a cat on his chest, with a paw on his mouth.

Coraline was using another cat as a pillow.

The third cat was somehow stretched diagonally in a massive sprawl taking up a good third of the bed.

The suddenness was Coraline sliding off the side of the bed, pulling down two cats and a good chunk of bedding with her in the process.

Vardaman jumped up, grabbing his sword, dislodging the cat on top of him. Then said cat dug in with claws and teeth, clinging to his face, and he let out a surprised yell of pain. He flailed a bit, realised it was just a cat, and dropped his sword with a clatter and grabbed the cat instead. This just made it worse.

"Lift him up so he's not hanging," Coraline said, rising from behind the other side of the bed, covered in blankets, like some sort of swamp thing.

"Gragh?" Vardaman yelled. Thimble, still hanging, hissed and tried to pull himself up himself, clawing at Vardaman's head even more.

Coraline tried to disentangle herself from the bedding, failed miserably, and then just hurried over to help directly, trailing sheets behind her. She grabbed Thimble's butt and pushed him up and after a moment, he let go, flipping over in her hands.

"Hey, there, it's all right," she murmured, curling him up in her arms.

The cat didn't seem to agree and climbed up over her shoulder to jump onto the bed.

"I'ma guess you've never had cats," Coraline said to Vardaman. He was bleeding from several scratches, as well as a tear at his lip.

"I am a Deathdealer, not a... whatever the fuck you are," Vardaman told her, wiping off some of the blood with a cloth.

"Librarian," Coraline said, confiscating the cloth and frowning over the damage.

"What, here?" Vardaman said.

"No, on the moon," Coraline said, and poked his face. "I can fix this if you'd like."

"You were saying magic makes it worse," Vardaman said, pushing her hand aside.

"Well, sure," she said, "but this is little enough it won't matter much."

"I can handle it," he told her, then put his own hand over the damage. There was a faint glow behind the fingers, and when he removed it, it was all healed.

"Oh," Coraline said, taking a step back and nearly tripping over a blanket.

"Deathdealers have magic too," Vardaman said. "Different source, mind you. Perhaps that's the problem with yours - it really is your own?"

"Nurg?" Coraline said.

"If you're drawing from your own power, that might explain why it hurts you," he explained. "Usually spellcasters are pulling the magical energies from elsewhere, such as a deity or other power, or perhaps an object or something in the environment. Which then might be bolstering them against the Death of Souls, in those cases."

"Oh. So where do witches usually get their powers?" she asked, getting out a bottle of whiskey.

He shrugged, pulling on his armour. "Their familiars, maybe, or the people around them. Not that witches tend to like being studied much."

"Potions and stuff, too," Agata said from somewhere on the floor. "Soulstones sometimes. And darker sorts'll use other magical races to take their power directly."

"What your last one was trying to do with... soup?" Coraline asked.

"Trying, not succeeding," the cat said.

They wound up back in the private dining room downstairs, cats and all, with breakfast, booze, and apparently a hangover in Vardaman's case, though he didn't seem inclined to admit it.

The Deathdealer yawned massively and dug into a bottle of shalott.

"Isn't it a bit early for that?" Coraline asked. Her mask was back on her head, looking conspicuously ornate.

"You're hardly one to talk," he said.

"I have a condition," she said, sipping her whiskey.

"No shit," he said, then asked, "How does that work? Alcohol as a treatment for the Death of Souls?"

She shrugged. "Quiets the voices, lets me function like I'm a girl. I hate it because I know it'll go away. The sun goes dark and chaos comes again, unless I just keep drinking. None of it is real."

"And magic?" Vardaman prompted.

"Right," she said. "I suppose... usually it's fine, makes the voices worse for a bit, but that's about it. But sometimes it isn't. I do something large and I feel like I might lose myself all over again, and this time there won't be anyone to save me."

"So that's normal?"

"Really only happened one other time," she said, then ammended, "When there wasn't another carrier involved, anyhow."

"Carriers interacting sure does liven things up," Agata said.

"It was a group of adventurers," Coraline explained. "This was after I'd settled down again, trying to make a life for myself. I was an innkeeper and they'd come through and gone off after a bounty on a giant terrorising one of the nearby towns, all bright and boasting and annoying, but I kind of doubted they'd actually be able to pull it off, so I went after them."

Woods outside of Molstead - summer, two years past

The giant was hard to miss. It wasn't just the fact that it towered over the countryside, easily a few dozen meters tall. It wasn't the sheer overwhelming loudness of the bloodcurdling yells or the very ground itself shaking as it stomped about. It wasn't even the terrified farmers fleeing in every direction at its passage.

The particularly hard thing to miss about it was the smell. It was a putrid, sickening smell that rolled off in waves like horrible giant babies, and continued to roll at distance, over the rolling hills, past the various trees, even across the late spring breeze.

Coraline hadn't exactly been hurrying up to this point, but now she almost stopped, covering her nose and staring, trying not to breathe. She was reasonably sure giants, even the ones with the worst hygiene ever, were not supposed to smell this bad. "The hell?" she said to herself, watching it in the distance. Was it sick with something?

There still wasn't any sign of the adventurers, meaning unless they'd gotten lost along the way - something she wasn't about to discount as a possibility at this stage - they were probably about at the giant by now.

Staff in hand, she broke into a bit of a jog.

The adventurers were at the giant. More specifically, the giant was at a silo, poking it repeatedly with a giant stick that looked suspiciously like the better half of an uprooted tree, and the adventurers were nearby, trying and failing to get its attention.

There were four of them, altogether. One was throwing fireballs, to little effect. Two had bows out and were sticking the thing with arrows, to similarly little effect. The fourth was hanging a little bit back, starting to look a bit worried.

Two of them seemed to be yelling. "Oy, pea-brain!" one said.

"Over here, fuckface," another yelled.

Coraline, still a good ways away, stopped to watch in the shadow of a line of trees at the edge of a field of some sort of grain crop.

The ineffective yelling and projectiles went on for a bit. The giant was looking a bit singed and prickly on a side.

It continued to poke the silo.

Coraline aimed her staff at the giant, looking down its length, wondering if it would even shoot that far, and if it could, how the distance or breeze or whatever might affect its trajectory. She also wondered what it was the staff was even shooting - potential energy? Blasts of plasma? Pure magic? Something even weirder? Even now all she really knew was that it, well, shot. Variably.

A bit later, the mage with the fireballs had managed to set the giant's head and shoulders on fire, and it was getting particularly frantic in its pokings.

Then the silo fell over.

One of the adventurers put his bow away and ran at the giant with his sword drawn, his head angling further upwards the closer he got. Then, a few meters away, when he was looking almost straight up, he suddenly thought better of it and turned around and ran away instead.

Coraline snorted with amusement.

The other three adventurers were starting to back away as well.

The giant finally looked down, noticed the lot of them, and stomped on the nearest one. Another fled, and it started after that one, while the other two started casting.

Realising the group really didn't seem to have anything on the giant and was apparently all about to be smashed by really stinky feet, Coraline started running toward them, firing the staff when she had line of sight. Mostly she missed. A few blasts hit, but didn't seem to phase the thing any more than the fireballs had.

Lightning struck the giant just as it crashed past the casters, sending one flying with a swipe from its tree-stick.

Still running, Coraline upped the force of the staff, and the next blast that hit the giant punched a large hole through its torso. Several others sailed vaguely into the clouds, and she was a bit glad the giant was so tall and thus the blasts were all going up.

The giant, even despite the hole, kept going a few more thundering strides in the direction of the still fleeing other one.

Coraline was reasonably close now. Realising the giant was about to fall right on top of the guy, she yelled, gesturing wildly, "Left! Left! Go left!"

For some reason the guy turned right, instead, but this did the trick regardless and he managed to narrowly avoid the giant as it thudded to the ground behind him. He didn't avoid the resulting shockwave, but though it knocked him over almost immediately, he was already getting up, turning around to stare at the huge mound of putrid flesh, as Coraline came to a panting halt behind him.

For a moment she just stood there, trying to catch her breath.

The guy didn't even seem to notice her. "Did we... is it... dead?" he asked.

"Is this what you people do?" Coraline said incredulously, though the effect was slightly ruined by her stopping for breath three times in the middle of the sentence. "Run into things with no actual plan and get yourselves killed?" Again, she stopped for breath several times in the middle of the sentence.

"Er," the guy said, turning around. "What?"

"You..." Coraline began, then just held up a finger for him to wait while she resumed trying catch her breath. Then she gave up and just lay down on the ground, instead, really wishing she'd bothered, at any point in her entire life, to actually get into a shape that was not 'lump'. Or not 'dancing lump', for that matter - as much as she'd loved to dance, it had never really done that much for her stamina. Or figure.

"Wait, aren't you... weren't you the innkeeper?" the guy said.

From the ground, Coraline flashed him a weak thumbs up. "Captain Obvious, is it?" she said.

"Um... what, how..." he began, then asked, "How did it... you didn't... did you?"

"Oh, you were captain of the speech team, too," she said sarcastically. "Great."

The guy just stood there, confused.

"Dude, check your friends," Coraline said, and then continued to lie there, before muttering to herself, "Hyvinvointini on vaakalaudalla."

She finally pulled herself off the ground again when the screams started, for once not voices in her head, but real, audible voices, bouncing off the objects of the world and echoing back even more horribly than they went out. She grabbed her staff on the way up, using it for the final push, and almost didn't even succeed. She felt like a pile of limp noodles, she was so utterly exhausted. How was she so exhausted? She hadn't even gone that far.

She looked back at where she'd come from and realised it actually had been pretty far - perhaps a couple of kilometers, and up and down at least a hill or two. At a dead run the entire way.

Then she looked at the giant and realised just how very big it was in person and took an involuntary step backwards, almost falling over again.

"Paska," she said, and wobbled in the direction of another scream - very coincidentally the same direction as the casters and the guy who'd been running away.

The screaming one was bleeding from several bones not being entirely on the right side of his skin, and overall a lot of his body just didn't seem to be quite the right shape. Running guy was squatting over him, waving his hands ineffectively and apologising, clearly with no idea what to actually do.

Coraline went to the other one, who appeared to be unconscious, first, largely because, due to being unconscious, this one was being a lot less annoying. Putting a hand on his forehead, unconscious guy seemed to be mostly fine, just something a bit out of balance with his head. Logic side of her brain said this was probably a concussion, but she had a quick go at smoothing it back into balance with her magic feels before getting up and trudging even further away from screaming guy, toward the other one, the one who had been stomped on. Even though stomped guy had been wearing rather heavy plate armour, she rather expected him to just be dead, but dead was easier to deal with than screaming.

As it turned out, stomped guy wasn't dead at all. Instead he was half-buried in the ground with a huge dent in his breastplate where it had practically folded in half.

"Hey," he gasped at her as she approached. "A little help?"

"Well, huh," Coraline said, plopping down next to him. "So armour works."

"Yeah," he said, still sounding quite shallow. He seemed to be having trouble breathing.

Coraline frowned and had a got at figuring out how to get he breastplate off properly, then just gave up and sawed through the leather straps with her knife instead. As soon as it came off, stomped guy started gasping for deep breaths of air, but then he winced and started wheezing instead, blood oozing out of a large gash under where the dent had been.

"Er," Coraline said, and quickly healed the gash, and, as it turned out, a perforated lung underneath.

Immediately stomped guy started breathing normally.

"You're going to have to dig yourself out," Coraline told him as she pulled herself up again. The voices were getting a little louder again, but they still had nothing on her physical exhaustion.

"I can do that," stomped guy said. "Thank you."

Finally she dragged herself back toward screaming guy.

Screaming guy was still screaming, still horribly broken up, and looking rather smashed. It seemed to mostly just be an arm, some of his torso, and his legs, which explained sort of why he wasn't dead, but given that his spine also seemed to be broken, it only sort of explained it.

Running guy looked up at her pleadingly.

Coraline sighed heavily and collapsed back to the ground next to them, put a hand on screaming guy's chest, felt the horrible brokenness inside him, every single piece of it, every bone, tissue, tendon, the nerves severed and twisted, and through it all, so much pain. Behind it all were the voices, strange and distant and alien, but another, too, closer, lost, confused, pleading for escape, for an end, something, anything.

"Oh, shut up," she said.

Somehow both voice and screaming did, almost as one.

"You," she added, addressing running guy, "put his bones back so they're in the right shapes." Technically she didn't think that was actually needed, but it seemed like it might help. Or, if nothing else, it might finally knock screaming guy out completely due to overwhelming pain. Or something.

Running guy did his best, straightening arm and legs, nudging screaming guy's limbs, and then knocking the spine even more out of whack.

Screaming guy started screaming again.

Coraline sighed again and then just had a go at throwing everything all in and fixing the guy outright.

The voices exploded around her in a horrible pandemonium, surrounding her, pulling her away from the world. For a moment, she wasn't really anywhere, simply overwhelmed in voices, screaming and cajoling and whispering madness and horror, and she felt almost as if she were floating even as the barriers of her mind and self dissolved away before the onslaught.

And then suddenly she was somewhere else, standing on that rocky, shadowy plain, under that green, glowing sky that was never quite the same, not quite seeing, not knowing anything at all. This was her, but it wasn't. She didn't know.

The thunder shimmered through the space, and pebbles jangled. There was no silence here, only voices, voices, voices, but here they were so solid and so real that they didn't even matter, and she simply put them aside, focussing instead on the oddly familiar figure before her. A man, small, lost, and slightly transparent.

"I'm sorry," he was saying. "I think I'm lost. Do you know where we are?"

"You're dead," she told him. Her voice was strange, stronger than she was used to, older, stranger, and she didn't quite recognise herself saying it. "This is the realm between worlds, between dreaming and waking. But you have a choice. You may go back, right now, or you may continue on."

"I don't know," he said fearfully. "What do I do?"

"Go back, then," she told him. "Have yourself another try."

He frowned, confusion spreading across his insubstantial face, and then suddenly he was gone.

Coraline smiled to herself, except she wasn't Coraline at all, and she watched as the other souls rose around her, passing, always passing, as they had for an eternity, and would continue on for as long as it took...

The strange, strange feeling that had accompanied all of this faded to a half-forgotten memory as she woke up, and then she couldn't place it at all. Her exhaustion was flooding back, the overwhelming power of the voices filling her consciousness, the sun beating down on her skin with surprising, even excessive, warmth.

"Hey, hey," someone was saying, "Are you all right? What happened?"

"Booze," Coraline said weakly.

"Er, what?" the guy said. This was running guy.

"Give me booze," Coraline said.

There seemed to be some confusion at this, and then someone, apparently unconscious guy, handed her a small flask. She popped the top and took a few swigs of what turned out to be surprisingly good whiskey, and lay back in the fuzzy warmth as the voices faded into the periphery.

Inn at Somn's Post - morning

Vardaman was looking at her oddly, so Coraline stopped the retelling there. "What?" she said instead.

"That... place," he said. "Has that happened at any other point?"

Coraline nodded, shook her head, and then just looked confused. "You mean," she began, and then just stopped. Place. Green. Rock. Souls. She kept coming back to that, and at the same time she kept forgetting it, only recalling things in order sometimes, not at all at others... hadn't she?

"It's a dream," Agata said. "You can only remember it if you come at it sideways."

Sideways, Coraline thought about giant vicious bunnies, not really knowing why, only to have her mind wander back and recall the Carrier that had wreaked so much havok on Molstead. When she had found herself in that same familiar space, somehow, amidst the chaos.

"Oh," she said, and gave Vardaman the gist of what had happened with all of that and shrugged.

"Huh," he said.

"There's been other times too," she said. "Just... glimmers, usually. Sometimes I'm me, sometimes... I'm not."

"Try being me sometime," Agata said. "Might do you good."

Coraline stroked Agata vaguely, but she was looking at Thimble. "You know what the worst thing about all this is?" she asked.

Neither Vardaman nor Agata had anything to gander, so Coraline said, "It's the fact that I've got a cat even better than Grumpy Cat, but I'm stuck on a world too primitive for memes."

Vardaman choked on his shalott.

Coraline sighed heavily.

"You're dying," Vardaman said, "and yet the thing you care about is cats?"

"Memes," Coraline corrected, though she had no idea if the word was even translating to anything meaningful. "Besides," she added, "Everyone's always dying, all the time, regardless."

"Well, that's cheery," Vardaman said, then asked, "Here's a question. Have you tried just not doing magic at all?"

Coraline laughed sadly. "And what, then? Let everything be?" she said. "I mean, yeah, at times. But you people don't exactly have good paramedics, and these are things that should be easily treatable, but they up and kill people because ain't nobody knows what to actually do about them. And I don't have the tools to do it proper either, so I guess magic's the next best thing."

"Getting crushed is easily treatable?" Vardaman said.

"Sure, just get in there with scissors and glue and fix all the broken bits," Coraline said. "Depending on what all is broken, give 'em some antibiotics, stitch 'em up, make them stay put and maybe not eat anything complicated for a couple of days so they don't pull anything open again while it all heals up, they'll be fine."

"Have you... done this?" he asked.

"Er, once," she said. "On a goat."

He looked at her dubiously.

"And the goat was fine, incidentally," she added.

"Okay," Vardaman said.

"Normally we have professionals for that, of course," Coraline went on, "but my uncle Frank didn't necessarily trust other people, so he tried to make sure I learned all the things. Then there was that incident with the wheat thresher, and he decided maybe I shouldn't be learning all the things after all. Er," she trailed off.

Vardaman stared at her.

"I had an interesting childhood," Coraline said.

"Right," Vardaman said.

There was a long pause full of purring.

"What?" Coraline asked finally.

Vardaman shook his head.

"That was just healing, you know," Agata said lazily. "And yet you start fires all the time. I'm sure you're probably killing yourself in the process. Quite dead already."

"Well, no," Coraline said, looking a bit surprised. "The fires don't really seem to do anything."

"Interesting, isn't it?" the cat said.

"You're saying only certain kinds of magic make it worse?" the Deathdealer suggested.

"Maybe. Or it could be magnitudes," Coraline said. "With fire all you really need is a start, because fire grows on its own. Even benzene. Such fire. Very hot."

"And if the healing is particularly complicated, it would fit," he said.

Inn at Somn's Post - noonish

Later, after two of the cats had jumped off the table after a bug, Vardaman asked, "Has there been been anything else weird that has happened?"

"Lots of things," Coraline said. "Some particularly annoying, too, like that time an angel showed up."

"Why?" Vardaman asked.

Amraeve - spring, two years past

The in and out had been surprisingly effective, especially considering Coraline's plan had basically boiled down to 'wing it'. She hadn't really known what she was after, she hadn't had any concrete reason why they should give it to her, and she certainly hadn't actually expected the mask to work, but here she was, leaving the library, wearing a pair of sunglasses with an overly ornate aluminium mask wired to them, holding a book that might even help.

The problem was, now there seemed to be a bit of an angry mob outside.

Coraline glared at the mob. They filled the street, carrying torches and swords and crossbows, and, as far as she could tell, no pitchforks, but frankly wearing the mask on her sunglasses the way she was she couldn't actually tell that far. The thing worked so much better with hairpins, but not having any with her she'd had to improvise.

There was a guy riling them up just in front of her, taking advantage of the height added by the stairs up to the library doors, but his back was turned and he apparently hadn't heard her come out.

"And the dogs think to take our lands?!" he was yelling. "Coming and going with their secretive ways and their dark texts! We must put fire to their darkness..."

As the crowd yelled enthusiastically, something clicked in Coraline's head.

Fire.

This was a library.

Immediately she stomped up, and, with all her strength, clobbered the guy over the head with the book. It was a heavy tome, bound in what seemed to be wood, and it made a very satisfying CLUD on impact.

"Hmph," she said as he crumpled before her.

The crowd, a few hundred strong, a random mix of peasants, soldiers, and guards, went eerily silent.

"I dunno who the hells you lot think you are," Coraline yelled at them, "but you are not touching this library."

There was some laughter from the crowd, then someone said, "You gonna stop us, little lady?" A few cries of "Yeah!" and "How you gonna do that?" echoed after.

Someone threw a bottle, and a few others threw rocks. Two guys started advancing with weapons, though they did so slowly, threateningly, as though trying to simply drive her away/inside than anything else at this point.

Coraline just yelled, "Watch me!" and pulled her staff over her head with her spare hand, nearly knocking off her sunglasses in the process. Then, similarly threateningly, she thudded the bottom of the staff against the ground and fired a single large burst into the sky, which unfolded into the shape of a giant, brilliant phoenix hanging overhead, throwing golden light down on everything in sight, casting dark shadows on everything else.

In light of this, the crowd, appropriately awed, stopped being so threatening. A lot of the folks even backed up a bit in fear.

After a long moment, it faded away, leaving only a few trickles of smoke and a strange blue afterimage in its place.

"Now you listen here," Coraline yelled at them. "This is a library, not some dark place of evil. Libraries are the most important thing a society can build, because libraries are how you remember what has already been done, and how you learn from it and do better in the future. It's how you pass on what you know to your children, and your children's children, and if you destroy a library, you might as well be cutting out your own tongues! It's not dark evil you'd be burning, but your own history, your own voices!"

The crowd mumbled apologetically.

Someone threw a bottle at her.

Coraline growled, and then, pointing her staff in the direction the bottle had come from, started screaming in Cthulhu tongue.

At this point most of the crowd fled in terror, not even waiting to see the results.

She trailed off, looking at the remaining folks irritably. They seemed mostly to be a single cluster of a few dozen soldiers, with a few other random stragglers scattered around the street. Lacking any goats, or even goat skulls, she was basically out of the normal things to do to head them off.

Then something large, white, and feathery fluttered down next to her, almost, but not entirely, unlike a giant cowled bird, orcan-sized, with massive wings outstretched. Coraline felt the breeze as one of the wings positioned itself behind her.

"You have heard the messenger," the thing intoned in a voice like singing winter. "Go, and bring no harm to this place."

Coraline, meanwhile, tried to look like this was all perfectly normal and that she had totally planned this and everything. Obviously.

The random stragglers needed no more convincing, but the group of soldiers hesitated uncertainly. A couple seemed to be arguing with each other.

"Leave," the thing said again, but this time the command was full of power, compelling them to do so, giving no room for dissent.

When the last was out of sight, Coraline turned on the bird thing and demanded, "The crap are you supposed to be?"

It folded its wings and turned, ever so slightly, to regard her from under its hood. "I am an angel, in the service of Kyrule."

"Oh," Coraline said. Er.

"You have done well, messenger," the angel said. "You could have allowed events to unfold, however here we stand."

"I am a librarian!" she yelled indignantly. "I will not stand idly by when any collection is threatened, not when I have the power to do something about it!"

"And you need not stand alone."

"Oh, really?" Coraline responded, starting to get a bit genuinely angry, getting right in the angel's face, or as near as she could when the thing was almost a metre taller than her. "I've stood alone with everything else so far. When the voices came, I was alone, when the darkness came, I was alone, when I lost even myself, still, I was alone. Hunters and priests have tried to kill me, and the only friends, the only help I've ever gotten, came from madmen and bartenders, but they never had any answers, either, just... nothing!"

The angel stared down at her with what seemed to be entirely too many eyes, but Coraline was just getting started.

"I've been running for almost two years," she went on, "resorting to nothing more than vodka and chance and half-baked plans to achieve anything, and while it may have worked so far, it won't keep working. If I don't get somewhere, this will all catch up and you will have yourselves another outbreak, and there will be no coming back from this, no isolate towns, no remote villages, but major urban centres, trade routes, and before you know it, a whole world up in smoke!

"That's what I've got hanging on my shoulders, all of that, and yet only now you come, when I'm impersonating a damn messenger? Fuck you," she said, pulling off the mask. "Fuck you with a cactus."

And then she just turned and left.

Inn at Somn's Post - afternoon

Vardaman rubbed his brow.

"That's our witch," Agata said proudly, jumping back onto the table.

"Heh," Coraline said. She certainly hadn't been amused at the time, but it seemed a lot funnier in retrospect.

"You do realise," Vardaman said, "that right up until that point, it is likely that for all intents and purposes, you were a real messenger, and had indeed been doing the will of Kyrule? The angel would have only shown up for that specifically, and not even known about the... path you had taken to get there."

"I don't need some angel's help librarianing," Coraline said. "If there's one thing in all the worlds I can actually do myself, it's that, even if I don't have a possessed goat skull on me."

"Why would... no, nevermind," Vardaman said, thinking better of the question.

"It's traditional," Coraline said, answering it anyway.

The Deathdealer sighed. "Alright, look," he said, "I get that you've had a difficult journey, and you certainly have reason to be bitter, but you cannot hold this against Kyrule."

"I can't?" Coraline asked. "Why not? Last I checked I could blame anyone or anything I wanted," she went on. "Why, I once blamed an entire week on a tomato."

He gave her a tired look. "I am serious," Vardaman said. "It is in his temple that you will find what you need."

"Like Shalias?" Coraline said.

"Yes," Vardaman said slowly. "How do you know that name?"

"That's what the book I stole was about. 'The Heresy of the Betrayer'."

"That's a dangerous book," he said, but he was smiling slightly. "I don't know that you would be following her path," he said, "but there are resources you could use, information that may lead you to something concrete. A colleague of mine was even testing a lead into the nature of the Death of Souls, so that may also be something to follow up on."

"Yeah? How exactly am I supposed to do that?"

"Go to the Great Temple at Abearanoth," Vardaman told her. "Show them your coin and speak only to the high priest. Tell him Kyrule sent you; he should be expecting you and know what to do."

"And if he doesn't?" Coraline asked.

"Kyrule will see that he does, and that he knows your story and situation."

"So I'm just supposed to expect a god's intervention here?" she asked dubiously.

"For this, you will have it," Vardaman said.

"Er," Coraline said. She scratched Thimble under the chin. There was something here, a niggling question she needed to ask, but she didn't quite know how to phrase it.

Vardaman was watching her, waiting.

Coraline fiddled with Thimble's fur. She supposed it was a matter of trust, sort of. That wasn't quite the right word, though. Reliability? Competence?

Tress hopped up and shoved her head into Coraline's hands, demanding scratchies as well.

She could trust the cats to be cats. It was a bit like that, but bigger. Big like...

Temple at Nriya - four years past

"Come on," Sherandris said, leading Coraline up the last few flights of stairs toward the temple proper. "There's someone I want you to meet."

"What's with all these stairs?" she asked. They were already most of the way up the mountain, and the view from here was nothing short of impressive, but it all seemed a bit... excessive. And clichéd.

"Tourists," Sherandris said. "They love this stuff. But there's teleporters too for the lazy ones, of course."

"I'm lazy," Coraline pointed out.

"Ah, but you'd miss all of this," he said, gesturing out at the view.

The planet they had come to, it had turned out, was called Nryia. It was the ancient home of the gods of Death, and had been, traditionally, quite dead as well. Sherandris, however, was not traditional, didn't like traditional, and generally turned traditional on its head and proceeded to hurl slabs of meat at it. So he'd spruced the place up. Literally, from the looks of it. There were spruces everywhere.

Now, Nryia was beautiful.

It wasn't just the atmosphere, which was pretty great, or the trees and flowers, which were also pretty great, or the architecture, which was pretty great too, or the people, who, indeed, seemed to be pretty great. It wasn't just the general scenery, either, even though that was pretty great too. It was everything.

Coraline grunted.

Sherandris gave her something of a disappointed look. "I could teleport you from here, if you're really like," he said.

"No, that's all right," she said, and got back to climbing.

"Aiight," Sherandris said, and started humming.

There were some tourists milling around the wide space before the great doors to the temple itself, and Coraline glared at them. Even aliens made obvious tourists, with the contraptions snapping photos and the clashing clothing styles and the grinning. She hated the grinning most of all, because in her experience it usually preceded them trying to talk to her.

At least none of them were trying to talk to her here.

Sherandris apparently made a much better-looking target, probably due to the fact that, a, he wasn't glaring at them with all the viciousness of a very angry small dog, and b, his priest's robes marked him as someone who should probably know a thing or two about the place in the first place. Several folks started crowding around him with questions as Coraline skirted away toward the overlook.

There was a good breeze, and she leaned over the balcony, taking it all in, not really thinking, just enjoying the place. She supposed it was a good place, all things considered. Even if Sherandris had effectively tricked her into coming here.

"Excuse me," someone said behind her.

She turned, finding a tourist holding out a small rectangle at her.

"Would you be willing to take our picture for us?" the tourist asked.

"Oh, sure," Coraline said, taking the device. "How do you use it?" she asked, though she hadn't even really looked at it yet. This was just her default response when anyone handed her a camera, phone, or, more recently, tablet, because every bloody one was always completely different and she never remembered how to use any of them.

"Just make sure we're all in frame and hit the dot," the tourist said, and pointed to a rather conspicuous button on the side.

"Oh," Coraline said. That was pretty obvious.

She did so, and was just giving the thing back when Sherandris came over, smiling amiably.

"There's two frat guys back there who wanna rig a giant game of beer pong in the temple," he said, gesturing back.

"Yeah?" Coraline said.

"Apparently they may need my help with the balls," he added. "But they can do the beer part themselves."

"How so?" she asked.

"They plan to convert all the water in the fountains and such to Sparky Light," he said, then added, "Beer."

"If they can do that, why do they need your help?" she asked.

"Because they forgot to actually bring the ping pong balls," Sherandris said. "Something about being slightly drunk when they left, and now, being incredibly drunk, they don't really want to try to go back and get them."

"Oh," Coraline said. "I suppose that makes sense."

"Yes," Sherandris said. He started heading back in the direction of the two guys in question. "Let's see what happens."

Coraline didn't bother to ask why. She just led the three guys inside, held the door open when one of them walked into it instead of using it correctly, and then forcibly steered him inside while holding it open when he walked into it again even though this time it was still entirely open.

"So the activation for all of this is going to be the words 'beer pong'," Sherandris was saying. He indicated Coraline, and added, "We'll probably want you to actually say it, since my priests are less likely to attack you."

"Er, wouldn't they not attack you, too?" she asked.

"Well, yes, but Alice might," he said.

"Wait, what?" One of the guys asked.

The other just laughed.

"Don't worry," Sherandris told them. "This'll be great. You ready?"

Coraline gave him a dubious look.

The frat guys got to assembling their contraption. This involved a lot of trying to get the entire two pieces out of their boxes and having considerable trouble in the doing so, despite the boxes, in fact, being quite simple.

Finally, using a large crowbar and some scissors, they managed it, though one of the boxes was pretty shredded at the end of it. Then they shoved the two pieces together.

"Bwahah," one of them said.

"Our crowning moment," the other slurred.

Sherandris nodded, then strolled forward into the temple, addressing everyone present in a loud voice: "People of the worlds, may I present to you..."

Then he gestured for Coraline to come finish.

She scuttled up to him, looked at all the random people uncertainly, realised they were all staring at her, looked at Sherandris uncertainly, and then looked even more uncertain. "Er," she said.

Everyone proceeded to continue to stare at her.

Finally, she said, quietly, "Beer pong?"

"Louder," Sherandris prompted.

"Beer pong!" Coraline yelled, and it echoed throughout the great hall, bouncing off the pillars, mingling with the beams of light, and suddenly there were ping pong balls bouncing everywhere, and the stench of cheap beer, and, behind them, laughter.

Then Sherandris was laughing too, throwing his head back with the sheer mad joy of it all.

As everything devolved into utter chaos, Coraline suddenly found herself frozen, unable to move, or think, or speak. There was only a vast coldness, an emptiness, a darkness spreading through her mind, and in it... it was maddening, and huge, and meaningless all at once. Something. She saw it and felt it and heard it, but she couldn't understand, couldn't make out any of the parts, for it wasn't anything at all, just this vast dark shape, speaking words too big, too huge, too many to understand, all lost in a torrent of inaccessible meaning.

And then suddenly it was gone, and she was nothing, nothing at all, just lost and empty and alone in the darkness, with only the final string echoing in the void.

You will be my last. You will be the best.

Arms. Strong arms wrapping around her, holding her up, holding her against the void. A voice, low and familiar, drawing her back, home, back into herself. There was comfort. There was sense. There was safety here.

It was later. Everything had settled down, ping pong balls were all over the floor, no longer bouncing about like mad, and the chaos was replaced with just quiet, and simple chatter.

"It's all right, you're safe," Sherandris was saying. He was holding her close, whispering in her ear, and she felt herself coming back together, calming, reasoning. It was true. She was safe. She was shaking, and she couldn't stop clinging to his robes, but it was getting better.

"You're all right," he said.

Coraline closed her eyes and let herself go, slipping into the warm, sweet, comforting void, free from the darkness and the horror that had threatened to consume her just a few moments before, free from the pain and the fear.

Free.

Midnight - the Room

Coraline is in a room, sitting on a sofa, sipping a coffee. Everything is black, but not. Sherandris is sitting across from her, looking surprisingly ordinary.

"This wasn't exactly what I meant when I invited you out for coffee, you know," he says.

"Er, what happened?" Coraline asks. It's good coffee, but everything just feels a bit off. The place. The time. The utter lack of light.

"You're dead," Sherandris says.

"Oh," Coraline says. Well, then.

"A surprisingy normal reaction when the Dark Sister is involved," he says. "Though I suppose the truly surprising part is that in your case there was still a soul left to catch. Even for sorenai you have remarkable strength, and yet you are not even awakened."

Coraline watches him blankly. She has no idea what he's talking about, but it doesn't even matter. Nothing seems to matter. Here, there is just coffee and him and time, all the time in the worlds.

"Why coffee?" she asks.

"I call this the Room," he says, indicating the space. "Everything in it is based on you, so it's always a different room for each person. I guess you like coffee."

"Dark Sister," she whispers. The voice is still there, lingering in her mind, dark, terrible, full of things she cannot comprehend.

"Yes," Sherandris says. "That's what we call her. To others, she is the spirit of the universe, the avatar of the void, the purity of nothing, but to the gods of death, she is our sister. She created us, and in so doing she made us hers." He smiles humourlessly.

"She doesn't speak to other gods," he goes on. "They couldn't take it, and she wouldn't have anything to say to them anyway. But you... not a god at all, and yet she spoke to you." He's watching her intently, his chin in his hands. "What did she say?"

"You can't see it?" Coraline asks. "But I'm dead."

He nods slowly, not really confirming or denying.

She still feels the voice, but here, in the dead calm, the whelming unimportance of the Room, the strangeness and complexity of the voice feels even more alien, and at the same time, the voice feels almost at home. She still cannot understand, but it doesn't matter, it just is. A hugeness, almost, but not quite kept at bay. Meaning that she cannot see. Words that she cannot follow.

"She said I would be her last," Coraline says finally. "Her best."

Sherandris closes his eyes, bowing his head in sorrow. "I am so sorry," he says.

Coraline watches him vacantly, not understanding this any more than she had the voice itself.

"Let's wake you up," he says later.

Temple at Nriya - four years past

Coraline found herself back in the deathgod's physical embrace, back in the world, suddenly very much alive again, with all the cares and confusion and noise of everything all flooding back. It was slightly overwhelming, and she tried to burrow into his chest away from it.

"Hey," Sherandris said. "You all right?"

"Yeah, sorry," she said, and hastily disentangled herself from his robes, turning away in embarassment. She still felt something heavy, looming in the back of her mind, and shook her head trying to clear it.

Sherandris watched her carefully for a moment, then abruptly turned to find a short portly elven woman staring up at him in such a way as she actually appeared to be staring down at him.

"Ah, Alice," he said. "I did not do this."

"Really," she said in a tone that clearly indicated that she did not believe him.

"Really," he said. "Contrarywise, it was her." He gestured toward Coraline. "This is Coraline. Coraline, Alice."

"Hi," Coraline said.

"Hmph," Alice said.

"I feel like I'm seriously missing something here," Coraline said.

Alice gave her a suspicious look, then said in a suddenly much more amiable tone, "We all are, love. We all are. Let's get you some tea."

As Alice led her back toward the temple's sanctum, Coraline still felt the voice, lingering, in the back of her mind.

Inn at Somn's Post - afternoon

Coraline shivered. What she was feeling now, it was big like the voice of the Dark Sister. The room seemed to reel, and the other voices, too, were everywhere, loud, but oddly defined, and that strange, strange feeling of half-remembered dreams was bubbling upward. She almost toppled out of her seat.

"Hey," Vardaman said, reaching out to steady her, but she was already recovered, just sitting, staring straight at him.

"Vardaman," Coraline said slowly, "besides Kyrule, are there other gods of death, of endings, finality?"

Vardaman snorted. "There's a god of dead ends," he said.

Coraline startled, and asked, rather worriedly, "Hazz'ridan?"

"Vitoi," he said, frowning. "I don't think you want to deal with him."

"Ah." Not a name she knew, at least, which was probably a good sign. And all she needed was a one. "Can Kyrule be trusted?" she then asked.

"Of course," he replied, but now he seemed a bit confused. "What are you asking?"

"I don't mean just with this," she said, gesturing vaguely, "but for anything. Everything. If we gave him the keys to the sandcastle, what would he do with them? If he had all the worlds, to do with whatever he pleased, no other gods or obstacles in his way, what would he do?"

"Guard them," Vardaman said.

Coraline smiled. That was exactly the right answer, and more than that, it was true. She could sense it, somehow. She could see it, the possibilities, the directions he would choose, how they would all fit, no deviations, no missteps, no going rogue. A librarian who would guard the collection, a King who would guard the sandcastle.

"Good," she said softly.

"What?" Vardaman said.

"We need a King," Coraline told him dreamily. "We need the names. The paperwork itself is largely automatic, but I still need to do that one little part, feed the card into the machine." She didn't feel all there anymore, because now she was also somewhere else, but this was new. This place, this was just... between. A space between worlds. A blackness without time. The network, open before her, full of names, two for each, and she could see them, she could see them all. A place and a person. A castle and a king. Black sand everywhere. So much sand.

She blinked, but in the world, there was only the same room as they'd been in all day. Vardaman before her, the cats, the table and walls. No sand. It was all just a metaphor, like the castle itself.

"Here reigns King of the Sandcastle, Kyrule of Arling Tor," she whispered.

And then it was done. Suddenly she was back, solid, no more network, no more sand, no more vastness all laid out before her.

"What?" Vardaman said again.

Coraline laughed, confused. "I don't know," she said. "I have no idea what's going on. I mean, I named a name, and now the name is real. Now we exist."

"Pretty sure we existed before," he said.

"Right," she agreed, "but we weren't on the map. Now we are." A map of universes. And she'd just known it was there? What was she doing? How was she doing it? She still needed to verify it.

Coraline said, "Tell me, Deathdealer. Who reigns King of the Sandcastle?

"It is Kyrule of Arling Tor who reigns King," he said, almost as though reciting it out of some book, and gave her a bemused look.

She nodded. This was good. He could have just been repeating what she'd said a moment before, of course, but it was still good. So she then asked, "Who will reign King after Kyrule of Arling Tor?" No way he could know the answer to that one on his own. It hadn't even happened yet. Not from this perspective.

"It will be Nelanor of Kenning Vos who reigns King of Arling Tor," he said.

Coraline sputtered. That was her. It was also correct. She didn't want that to be correct. But it was, just as certain as what the Dark Sister had said, all true, unavoidable. She knew it, she felt it.

"Gluh?" she managed.

"What?" Vardaman said.

"No, that's good," Coraline said. "Sorry. Just... ask me who I would say reigns, will you?"

"Why?" he said.

"Just... to test this." He should have asked it automatically. She wasn't sure why he hadn't.

Vardaman gave her a long look. Finally, he said, "All right, who would you say reigns? King of the Sandcastle and all that?"

She felt it filling her, the compulsion to reply, and the knowing, the precise knowing of the answer. She was supposed to say it. She could choose not to, to ignore the compulsion, but she was supposed to say it.

"In my world, it is Sherandris of Kenning Vos who reigns King of the Sandcastle," Coraline said. Maybe she should have ignored it. She was only really putting the pieces together herself at this point.

"And what does that mean?" Vardaman asked.

"I think they're universes," Coraline replied, and started grinning in spite of herself. "This is Arling Tor. I'm from Kenning Vos. I just named a universe. And entire universe. How does that even work?"

Vardaman just stared at her. Then he just said, "Uh-huh."

"Aye," Coraline said. "It doesn't matter now. I think it might matter later, so I had to get it done, but that's not really what we're here for."

"No, you're just here for the impossible," Agata said.

"And the drink," Vardaman said.

"Drink," Coraline agreed.

Inn at Somn's Post - night

Much of the rest of the day expired as they got back to the main topic and discussed logistics. By the end, Coraline was feeling oddly hopeful, if a little unnerved. Suddenly she was going somewhere, doing something. She had a goal, a real one. Even if at this point it was an incredibly vague one, it was something, and that was the most wonderful feeling she had felt in a very long time. It felt like having a future, full of daydreams and nightmares.

Then Vardaman said, "You'll probably want to do something with all those cats."

Coraline eyed him suspiciously.

"You say that like you're serious," Agata said. "Like you expect her to be sensible, and to change, and to not drag all her random accoutrements halfway around the world. Really, do you know nothing about witches?"

Thinking of the witches of Lancre, Coraline grinned slowly. "And there will be jangling of panties and everything," she said sinisterly.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Vardaman said, utterly disinterestedly.

"Cats," Coraline said. "I'm taking them with me."

The cats purred, aside from Agata. Agata hummed.

That which is dead

"One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?"

~ Pozzo

Vardaman and Coraline parted ways the next morning, Coraline continuing on down the river now on a proper ferry, and Vardaman heading back inland for the reason he'd been in the area in the first place. The war itself didn't really concern him, but the aftermath was a right bloody mess, and someone had to deal with it.

In the wake of the battles, the dead were left to rot, no longer belonging to opposing sides but merely esisting as 'remains', finally brought together where treaty and diplomacy had failed. For most, it was a tale of horror and loss, but for others less savoury, it was a feast, an unending buffet of parts from which to gorge themselves. These others were what concerned Vardaman - creatures of the night, undead, unnatural, and, when he was through with them, unmoving.

The Deathdealer got to the first battlefield in midmorning. It was already a few days old, and it reeked, but even now the odd moan rose from the bodies as he stalked between them. There was little he could do, however, but put them out of their misery. He dispatched a few bloated feeders as well as he went, so engorged they remained mobile in the daylight.

He found more or less the centre of the battlefield by sense more than anything else. With this much death, he could feel it, same as the creatures that were drawn here, and here he thrust his sword into the ground, falling to his knees along with it, beginning the ritual, full of old words and older magic, speaking softly but quickly.

Already, around him, there was stirring. Bodies rising off the ground, creatures waking up, even despite the light, roused by need, the will to survive, to stop him.

He continued, the words of protecting and binding rising with them. Sanctity for the land. Peace and tranquillity. Nature that would reclaim its balance and take care of the rest.

The walkers were pushing toward him, even despite the power of the ritual, and he spoke the last few words quickly and withdrew his sword in a brilliant flash of light, jumping back to make sure nothing had survived the burst.

Nothing had, aside from the massive abomination of jumbled corpse parts that took that exact moment to attempt to fall on him from behind.

"Agh, what?" he yelled, rolling away a moment before it did.

As Vardaman go back to his feet, backing away, he threw a fireball right in its several faces, multiple butts, and a whole lot of legs, setting it on fire. This succeeded in making the smell even worse.

"Eww," he added, dancing away as it lunged after him once more and lost a unmatched pair of undead arms in the process. The thing was at least twice as tall as he was and just as wide, on fire, and apparently trying to crush him, but perhaps the most alarming thing about it was that he didn't even know what it was. In all his years as a Deathdealer and general monster hunter, one of these was a first for him.

Bodies didn't normally do this. They might get up and walk around for various reasons, or turn into various other things, but wad together into a massive lump? Not so much. And it had been powerful enough to survive the ritual, too. Nothing undead should have been able to walk here now; that was the whole point.

It lunged again and he sliced off a few limbs, though this only made a dent.

"You're not supposed to be doing this, you know," he told it.

It replied with anothing lunge and a head rolling away.

"Lose your head much?" he added, dancing back.

It lost a few more heads for emphasis, and then he finally just said, "Fuck it," and spent the next hour hacking the thing to bits, leaving behind a trail of parts amidst the existing carnage, until at long last there was just one small dancing head-leg combination remaining.

Vardaman punted it at a tree and that, too, fell apart.

Grumbling, he wiped off his sword and headed off in the direction of whatever was next, following the trail left by the living in the wake of the battle.

Vardaman came to the camp a few hours later, bustling and busy. As rag-tag and disorganised as they looked, the soldiers were in good spirits; clearly these had been the victors, and it seemed now they were taking some time to celebrate.

He walked in one side without anyone really taking notice, encountered a guy in particularly nice armour whom he cussed out a bit just for the hell of it, and then nearly walked out the other side before they all tried to arrest him.

It was a surprisingly good go - there were three different swords right at his throat, at least five more at his back, and also several crossbows pointed at him from between the sword-holders, but all only on one side.

"Hello," Vardaman said amiably.

The men around him shifted slightly, but didn't return the greeting.

"Just who in the hells do you think you are?" someone else demanded as the men parted to let him through. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to be the guy in the fancy armour. He was a youngish bloke with bright eyes and oddly smooth skin, though Vardaman wondered if this was due more to his age or simple coddling. That it had taken this long for the guy to even respond and have him arrested did say a thing or two, however.

"Yes, hello, I'm Vardaman," Vardaman said. "Who are you?"

The guy actually looked even more offended at this. "I should have you executed!" he yelled.

"Really?" Vardaman said.

"You impudent-" the guy began, but then another voice rang out over him, this one much more familiar, interrupting.

"Lord Vaeron, my apologies," Nurunn said, pushing his way forward. "This man is a colleague of mine, and I would not have you disrespect him."

"He disrespected me!" Vaeron said angrily, turning on the newcomer.

"I don't doubt that," Nurunn muttered, before adressing the men, "Stand down. He is a Deathdealer, and you do not want to try him."

The men lowered their weapons almost immediately, backing away, trying not to get Vaeron's attention in the process.

Vaeron just looked shocked.

"Hello to you too," Vardaman said as Nurunn pulled him away, toward the edge of the camp.

"Must you antagonise them?" Nurunn hissed as they went. "Rabble though they may be, we still have to deal with them."

"Yes," Vardaman said.

"And what, might I ask, would you have done had I not shown up?" Nurunn asked.

Vardaman smiled. "Oh, you know," he said. "Beat the shit out of them. And left."

Nurunn rolled his eyes. "They had you outnumbered ten to one, with swords at your throat," he pointed out.

"What's your point?" Vardaman said.

They got to the adjacent, and much smaller, more orderly encampment of what turned out to be their own soldiers a few minutes later.

"Huh," Vardaman said. "Now this you don't see every day."

"Not this side of the Dalarains, certainly," Nurunn said. "We were trying to test a potential counter against the Death of Souls, and the best lead was north of here. We found the Carrier, but it did not end well."

"What happened?" Vardaman asked.

"It exploded," Doranis said, getting up nearby. He smiled at Vardaman and added, "You could only be the infamous Vardaman."

"What if I am?" Vardaman said, looking him over. Unlike Vardaman, Nurunn and Doranis were both wearing priest's robes, though without the added armour on top, Doranis particularly stood out.

"You could at least stop being difficult amongst your own order," Nurunn said.

"Oh, I could, could I?" Vardaman said.

Doranis snorted with laughter at this, and then Vardaman broke into a smile as well.

"So before we get into the wonderful joys of the Death of Souls, I should perhaps mention how I ran into a giant zombie corpse pile lumbering abomnination thing a field back," Vardaman said, gesturing back over his shoulder. "It was as though a pile of corpses had all just stuck together and then got up and tried to smash me."

"Ew," Doranis said.

"That's what I said," Vardaman told him.

"That's... unusual," Nurunn mused. "I've heard of such abominations, but always built, created by a cognizant hand."

"Hey, it's possible some budding young necromancer happened across the battlefield and tried to make a thing," Vardaman said. "Maybe got smashed itself as a result. Especially since the fucking thing was fire-resistant and shit."

"And sun?" Nurunn asked.

"Yup," Vardaman replied. "Guess it doesn't really matter. What's all this about an exploding Carrier? You needed a whole company for that?"

"Perhaps we should have had less," Nurunn said, and explained what had happened. The fragments of the Black that had been found, that nobody quite knew what they were, but that seemed to be connected to the Death of Souls. The foretelling that had brought them all out here, because as far out and as politically unstable as Soravia was, here at least they knew they would find a Carrier. The initial results on contact between Carrier and Black, and then the explosion when the testing backfired. The chaos and the cleanup and the local devestation.

"Interesting," Vardaman said, "Perhaps there is an end in sight for all of this."

"Perhaps," Nurunn agreed. "Though we'll need more than an unstable pendant for that."

"We might just get it," Vardaman mused.

Nurunn nodded.

Later, Vardaman and Nurunn broke from the camp once more to discuss other things. They wound up on a ridge overlooking the other camp just in time to see it under attack, and to surprise some archers in the process.

Said archers turned around to attack the two Deathdealers instead and quickly became ex-archers.

"Well, that was quick," Vardaman said, stepping over one of said ex-archers.

"What, these guys?" Nurunn asked. "We sort of took them by surprise."

"I meant that." Vardaman gestured down at the camp.

Nurunn shrugged. "Another day, another battle," he said, then asked, "When does it end?"

"When the last House falls, and all who would claim ascension lie dead. When mortals forget their ambition, and find peace with the worlds as is," Vardaman said grumpily, then shrugged. "Fuck if I know."

They watched the fighting morosely for a time, not really getting to any particular point, dodging the occasional crossbow bolt that came their way.

A man came out of the trees behind them, and Nurunn pointed a sword at him without even turning. Vardaman glanced back and gave the guy an annoyed look. It seemed to be someone from the camp below.

"Um, hi, excuse me," they guy said nervously, eyeing Nurunn's sword. "I was wondering, maybe, if since we've been following the same paths, and in the light of the gods, you might give us their blessing?"

"All come before the God of Death with or without your help," Nurunn said, still not turning.

Vardaman grabbed an arrow out of the air and eyed it indignantly.

"Ah, well, the blessing of the God of Death would be welcome indeed, that our people might stand victorious at the end of the day," the guy said.

"Oh, fuck off," Vardaman muttered, tossing aside the arrow.

"Okay," Nurunn said.

"The House of Merrilenn thanks you," the guy said hastily, and then backed away even more hastily.

Vardaman gave Nurunn a confused look.

Nurunn shook his head incredulously. "Every side is convinced that the gods are with them, and that with that, victory is assured."

"Meanwhile we're standing here looking like a pair of vultures," Vardaman said, and did his best vulture impression, craning his neck and tucking his arms back into his cloak like folded wings.

Nurunn poked at him with his sword and Vardaman hopped away, somehow looking even more vultury in the process, eyeing the other Deathdealer suspiciously.

"What I was meaning to tell you," Nurunn began, "was that Gedrel had a message."

"Yeah? How is the old bastard?" Vardaman asked, losing the vulturiness and perking up a bit.

"Dead," Nurunn said.

"Oh," Vardaman said, perking back down. "When was that?"

"A few months back," Nurunn said, and went on, "He said 'it's time'. Do you know what that means?"

"Well, fuck. Yes," Vardaman said. "And I was having such a good time here. Dealing with this stupid war. Being alive. Wooing all the ladies."

Nurunn raised an eyebrow, but merely noted, "We have spare horses."

"I won't say no to that," Vardaman said.

The horse got Vardaman south toward the coast over the course of several days at a nice lazy amble, partly because the horse was a rather laid-back sort itself, and partly because Vardaman was in no hurry either, perfectly content to take the scenic route and stop every ten minutes while the horse sampled the dying greenery.

Somewhere along the way, in fact, he decided he quite liked this horse. This was exactly the way to go through life. Not rushing anywhere. Stopping to take in the full view. Relaxing and just generally taking it easy.

Naturally this was exactly the moment a dragon decided to swoop down and try to forcibly remove him from said horse. He turned just in time to punch the dragon in the face, at least, preventing it from grabbing him as it pulled up, but was still sent flying out of the saddle by the attempt, the horse also knocked over in the process.

"Oy! You come back here and face me, you shit arse!" he yelled after the dragon, scrambling up, but it had apparently already lost interest, winging off into the distance.

When he got back to his horse, he found it dead, neck torn near in half by a powerful talon.

He stared at it.

He stared at the sky, darkening with the promise of rain.

He stared back at the horse.

"What the fuck," he said finally.

It started raining a few minutes later, and Vardaman made the rest of his way to the port at Merrilenn Shade on foot, cold, wet, and alone.

Things basically went downhill from there. There were no ships sailing for Kartheldrin. In fact there were no ships sailing out at all. When Vardaman asked what the fucking holdup was, the harbourmaster said, "They're all sunk in the harbour is what the fucking holdup is."

"And why the fuck is that?" Vardaman demanded.

"The fuck should I know?" the harbourmaster said blankly.

"Well what the fuck happened?" Vardaman asked.

"They all sank is what happened," the harbourmaster said.

Vardaman glared at him, but really the guy just looked broken. Well-dressed, papers all about, clearly previously in the middle of various somethings, but now just... broken. Human. Oldish. Frazzled hair, and even more frazzled beard. Tired eyes. Shirt on inside-out.

Vardaman made himself calm down a bit and then asked, in a less confrontational tone, "When? How?"

The harbourmaster looked up for the first time since Vardaman had stomped into his office. "Yesterday," he said hopelessly. "After the Cloud Solas and the Heart of Dreams set out, the sea just opened and swallowed the lot of them. It's the wrath of Kikein.

"Whatever they did," the harbourmaster went on, "they brought the wrath of Kikein up on us all, ancestors preserve us."

"Okay," Vardaman said. "I'm going to come back tomorrow, and if this is still all messed up then, I'll see if there's anything I can do to help with that, okay?"

"You can't help," the harbourmaster said.

"Okay," Vardaman repeated, and left.

It was the middle of the night and the inns were all packed, but the prevailing mood was not a happy one. Depressed men, worried women, and a whole lot of drink combined to result in really depressed everyone, random fights breaking out everywhere, and a whole lot of stink.

Vardaman made a beeline to join in and drown the bulk of his day in the same medicine, though it was for entirely unrelated reasons that it had been just as bad as everyone else's here.

"It's all hopeless," a guy told him at the bar, working on what was clearly his severalth ale.

"Fucking awful," Vardaman agreed, downing his shalott.

"I'll never find work now," the guy lamented.

"I really liked that fucking horse," Vardaman said, slapping down his empty mug.

"Just some stupid trinket anyhow," the guy went on. "Why'd they have to go and take it?"

"You punch a dragon in the face and suddenly your whole day is ruined. Where's the sense in that?" Vardaman said tiredly, and downed another shalott for emphasis. "It's like the gods fucking hate me."

"What?" the guy said blearily.

"Huh?" Vardaman said.

"Where'd a dragon come into it?" the guy asked.

"Fuck if I know," Vardaman said. "One minute I was sitting there on my horse, and this was a really great horse, you know, minding my own business watching the sunset and all that, and the next thing I know there's this fucking dragon swooping down and the only thing I've got time to do is punch it in the nose and that doesn't even stop it from shredding my horse. My really great horse. That I really quite liked."

"Oh," the guy said, and started working on another ale.

"Fucking dragons," Vardaman said, downing another shalott.

"Fucking gods," the guy slurred.

"Fucking assholes," Vardaman agreed.

The next morning, Vardaman had a horrible hangover, the ships were still all sunk, and basically nothing had improved. The sun was glaring down with horrible intensity. His head ached. His back hurt. Cold winds were blowing down the streets, past the buildings, off the empty water.

He stared out over the delta glumly, the morning sun glinting back at him off the waves, twin crescent moons hanging uselessly further on. Even the smallest boats were in. It was just empty, only a few folks even looking on.

"I'm not dealing with this," he told no-one in particular.

He turned to leave and very nearly ran into a woman coming up behind him.

"Deathdealer," the woman said, "I would speak with you."

"Do I know you?" he asked, squinting. The sun was right behind her, which wasn't helping his headache at all, but she looked sort of familiar, nearing middle age, wearing the common clothes of the city, and in decent quality. Perhaps it was just a coincidence - there were always so many people, and some always looked a bit like others - but it could also have been an old girlfriend, and those never ended well when he forgot. Which he almost always did.

"If you seek to appease the Goddess," the woman told him, "there will need to be a trial."

"Uh-huh," he said, having absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

She eyed him consideringly.

He rubbed his head and wished she would stop moving hers.

"I am Vorei, priestess of Kikein," she said. "The Goddess has seen you, and would allow you to prove yourself on behalf of those accursed."

"How nice," Vardaman said.

"You cannot stay here," she said. "All who wish to leave Soravia must cross the tumulent waters."

"Or I could just go around. Soras has a Gateway."

"And what of your mission?" the priestess said. "The journey would take weeks."

"It's been months already," he muttered. "How much worse could it get?"

Vorei frowned at him disapprovingly.

Vardaman wished the sun would stop shining so horribly behind her.

"Fine," she said, and strolled off.

Vardaman wound up back at another pub, treating his hangover with more hangover. This didn't resolve the hangover. It did make him quit caring.

The folks around were still chatting about the events of the previous day.

"She's pissed, the way I hear it," the bartender was saying, leaning forward in a way that might have been dramatically. "Said they stole something from her, some trinket or whatever, and apparently she couldn't be having with that." He shook his head. "Why two weathered sea captain would ever do something like that, piss off their guardian Lady, I don't know."

"Wasn't a trinket," a guy next to Vardaman said. "I heard it was the bones of some ancestor."

"Wasn't bones. It was this rock," another guy said from the other side of Vardaman, scooting over. "I heard it was a big rock, is all."

"Naw," the bartender said. "It was little, whatever it was. They wouldn't show it to anyone, which is why there's so much disagreement now. They had it in a box..."

"Yeah, exactly," the other guy said. "A rock in a baby coffin."

"What? Who'd you hear that off of?" the guy asked him.

"Old Footsy Namar," the other guy said.

"Hmmm," the guy said angrily.

The other guy shied away from this and pointed. "He's over there in the corner, if you want. Looking all haunted."

"Excuse me," Vardaman said, grabbed a bottle of shalott, and pushed his way out from under the pile of gossipers.

For lack of a better idea, he wound up at the indicated corner, across the table from a guy in very large boots.

Both men proceeded to ignore each other entirely for the better part of an hour, Vardaman nursing his shalott in relative peace, and Namar drinking his ale and braiding some beads together.

When Vardaman ran out of shalott, he finally said, "Yo."

The other guy ignored him.

"Footsy Namar?" Vardaman said.

"It's Bootsy," Namar said.

"Bootsy Namar?" Vardaman said.

"What?" Namar said tonelessly.

Adrift

"Fear drives the universe. You will find dread among the galaxies. You will find horror in the heart of a star. You will find your fate in a heap of dust."

~ The Diktat of Septa Parisis

Adrift on the ocean currents, waiting under the merciless sun, the days passed slowly, and with much complaining.

Of all the problems they faced, it was probably Nolan's uncertainty that scared them the most. He needed more data, he said. They didn't know anything, and might as well just wait, he said. He'd figure this out, he said. So the days passed, and the others waited listlessly, kept alive by bad hacks and magical workarounds.

The first day was long and full of sun. Kit put up an awning to keep off the sun and desalinated some seawater, storing it in barrels at Jora's direction. Jora and Erry made them some beds. Nolan stared at the wind, and said unsettling things.

The second day was almost exactly the same as the first, but with more irritability and some experimental fishing poles.

The third day saw a full-on fish fight in which Erry, Kit, and Jora were all slapping each other with tuna, while Nolan wordlessly handed each of them new ones whenever they dropped their fish.

The fourth day got oddly cloudy, and Nolan remarked upon the lack of birds. He seemed to be counting something.

Nothing really came of it, and the melancholy of the utterly lost slowly took its hold.

On the fifth day, Erry said, "It's so sunny. Why is it so sunny?"

"Because it's summer," Nolan told her.

"It's not," Erry said.

"It is, though," Jora said. "The days are longer than the nights. That only happens in summer."

"It was summer," Erry said. "It's not gonna be summer again."

"Different summer," Nolan said. "We're on the other side now."

On the seventh day, Jora decided they should reconsider everything they had with them and had everyone turn out their pockets so she could tally up every item. Then she handed the resulting list to Nolan.

Nolan handed the list to Kit.

Kit looked it over and then said, "Eh?"

Jora handed him the flaky brown lump that had been the contents of Erry's pockets.

Kit took it gingerly and looked it over. Then he glanced at Erry. "Do I even wanna know?" he said.

"Do you ever?" Erry asked.

"What is it?" Jora asked. "Dirt?"

Kit stared at it blankly.

Then Nolan reached over, took the lump, and bashed it against the floor of the raft, breaking it up into smaller clods of what very much seemed to be dirt. Embedded within it were some twigs, a key, two spoons, a few clips, a die, and several peach pits.

"Boom," Nolan said, holding up one of the pits.

On the eighth day, there was a large tree lying across the raft, branches sticking out in every direction, leaves and roots alike trailing over the sides into the water. Overall the trunk had managed to angle upwards off the other side, but most of the falling peaches landed in the water.

This was the second tree Kit had magically grown from the contents of Erry's pockets. The first had fallen out of the raft and floated away.

"Wow," Erry said, staring up at it.

They'd been up most of the night wrangling the tree while it grew, mostly so it didn't grow entirely out of the raft like the first one had. It seemed to be mostly done now, only producing peaches at a slightly alarming rate, blooming like anything all the while. Only now that the early dawn's rays were finally illuminating it did they all realise just how big it had gotten.

Aside from Kit.

Kit was in a coma. This was discovered by Nolan announcing a moment later, "Kit is in a coma," and then promptly lying down next to him and falling asleep.

Jora and Erry exchanged glances, and then Jora just sighed.

"What does that mean?" Erry asked. She scooted over to poke Kit a few times, to no effect.

"I don't even know," Jora said, lying back against the tree.

"Is he dying?" Erry asked.

"I don't know," Jora repeated.

"Will he wake up?" Erry asked.

"Probably," Jora mumbled.

"Oh," Erry said.

Kit woke up again on the tenth day, and the others didn't die peach poisoning as a result.

The tree was still growing strong, dropping peaches, clinging to the sides of the raft, sinking needless roots under the water's surface. The near-horizontal bottom part of the trunk made a decent bench. The leaves made a questionable sail. Petals drifted lazily around them.

"Magic," Kit whispered in awe as Jora helped him up.

"You did that," Jora said. "Pretty impressive, huh?"

Kit nodded, and opened his mouth to respond in full, but then Erry shoved a peach in it.

"Mmph," he said instead, and then found his hands full as well when Nolan shoved a large fish into them.

"Nrrnk," Kit added.

Later, after he'd lethargically cooked up a proper meal for everyone, Kit asked, "What are we doing?"

They were lost at sea on a raft with nothing, and yet half of the raft was covered in tree and various supplies they'd accumulated - barrels of water, dried fish, magically crafted tools and weapons, a pile of tentacles from a small squid that had gotten too close, a hunk of whale blubber that the massive squid had given them, for even now it seemed to be checking in from time to time to see if they were doing all right. And there was also a science project of sorts with a pile of peaches that Nolan had started at some point - possibly making wine, definitely smelling very strongly.

"Floating," Nolan said.

"Waiting, I suppose," Jora said.

"For what?" Kit asked.

"The next part of the story," Erry said, pulling a bucket out of the water. "Then we can go home, right?"

"No," Nolan said.

"What, then?" Jora asked. "Where are we going?"

"Forward," Nolan said.

"To what?" Jora pressed. As much as Nolan seemed to sort of know what he was doing, she just couldn't see any possible purpose to being out here. They had gone so far, and were now so lost, for what seemed to amount to nothing.

"We just left," Kit said. "And now we're here and I... what?"

"Like the passage of sheep throughout the day, the events leading up to this were not coincidences," Nolan explained. "If we keep going, the natural laws of probability should rearrange themselves around our passage, and we will be able to say that it must clearly have been our purpose all along."

"What," Kit repeated.

"Then we keep going?" Jora asked. "What about Molstead? It's your home, your families..." Then Erry handed her a bucket full of shrimp, and Jora eyed the younger girl inquisitively.

Erry said, "We should eat whatever these things are."

"Maybe he's right," Kit said, taking the bucket instead. "I dunno what we're doing here, but we wouldn't be doing much there, either. Out here all we have is possibility. Anything could happen. Maybe some of it's important."

"We're in a raft," Jora told him. "How important could it be?"

Kit shrugged and boiled the shrimp.

By the nineteenth day, Erry had taken to hanging half-out of the raft drooling with an arm trailing through the water. Sometimes a peach or fish would get too close her her hand and she'd grab it and toss it into the raft, but mostly she just hung.

Though Jora currently had Kit employed making some more weapons out of the same magic ice as they'd used for everything else, Kit and Nolan were also playing word games. The latest game was exceptionally simple: one would say a word, and then the other would say a word that was supposedly related. Erry would also sometimes shout a word from her drangling point, but hers were more sporadic.

They were currently on a particularly long word for 'insipid'.

"Shimmering!" Erry yelled, lolling her head back almost like an owl.

"Glacier," Kit said.

"Sheering," Nolan said.

"Apocalypse," Kit said.

"Dust," Nolan said.

"Can you make this bendier?" Jora asked, handing Kit back an attempt at a longbow. "It needs a balance between springiness and not breaking, but it also needs to be distributed more... taperingly down the ends. If that makes any sense."

"No, no, I see what you mean," Kit murmured, and rearranged its bits a bit. "Better? Also sphinx."

"Aquamarine," Nolan said.

Jora had a go at bending it again and nodded, and they kludged up some arrows before coming back to fine-tune the bow itself.

"Crevice," Erry said.

On the twenty-second day, Erry, again hanging over the side of the raft, suddenly started screaming and recoiled back toward the centre, clutching her arm.

The others, generally lounging about doing other things, scrambled up almost immediately. Nolan got out of the way, leaning back against the tree's trunk. Jora jumped forward to try to hold Erry still, if nothing else, and asking what was wrong. Kit hit Erry square in the face with a stunning spell, knocking her out completely.

In the sudden silence, Nolan said, "Check her arm."

Jora did, laying the younger down on the floor, finding the affected arm, the one that had been drangling. On it was a lurid red rash, swollen and speckled around an area of oddly white skin on the wrist.

"What is that?" Kit asked.

"Don't touch it," Nolan said. "There might be more." Then he grabbed a knife and scraped off Erry's wrist with it before dunking her entire arm in a bucket of peach mixture with Jora's help.

"What do I do?" Kit asked, hanging behind them uncertainly. "What do I do?"

"An antidote spell," Nolan said.

"I don't know what it is," Kit said, shaking his head. "Without some of the poison-"

Nolan cut Kit off by shoving the knife into his hands.

"Oh," Kit said. "You think there's some on here?"

Nolan thumbed toward Erry's wrist, still in the bucket of precarious peach experiment. Erry had gone a disturbing shade of white, looking almost blue in places.

"Er," Kit said. "That... yes." He sketched out the spell quickly, using the goo on the knife as material, and jabbed it at his sister in a panic.

Nothing really happened. Erry just sort of lay there, head on Jora's lap, arm in a bucket of not quite unlike peach, not even hardly breathing.

"Did that work? What now?" Jora asked.

Nolan stuck his face in Erry's.

Kit stared tensely.

"She's not even breathing," Jora whispered.

"BLOOG!" Nolan yelled, very, very loudly, and very, very suddenly.

And then Erry woke up and flipped out and nearly scrambled entirely out of the raft, knocking Nolan back into the tree in the process, before Jora grabbed her and held her down once again.

A whole lot of confusion and struggling later, Nolan was blinking at unusually regular intervals, Erry was absentmindedly scratching at her wrist, and Kit was staring off into space hyperventilating. Jora put a bucket over the wizardling's head. This didn't help.

Jora sighed and then said, "Would anyone like to explain to me what just happened?"

Nobody replied to this, so she went on, "Here we are, out in the middle of the unknown, winging things with utter abandon, and then one of us nearly died. So can anyone, anyone at all, tell me what just happened?"

"Anaphylaxis," Nolan said.

"Well?" Jora said, ignoring him.

"Some sort of poison in the water?" Kit hazarded from under the bucket.

"Sting?" Erry asked, shivering. "Felt like a sting. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

"Mean what?" Jora asked.

"What I... yes," Erry said, hastily grabbing a peach.

Jora sighed again and then pulled the bucket off Kit's head. "If it was something in the water, then what? What can we do?" she asked.

"Calculate," Nolan said. "Unlikely events sometimes occur."

"What?" Jora asked.

"It won't happen again," Nolan said.

No further explanation could be extracted.

On the twenty-fourth day, they saw a ship.

Nolan saw it first, in the early morning. Jora and Erry were sleeping, with the latter using the former as a pillow. Kit was in some sort of trance. Nolan was keeping watch, in the sense that he happened to be awake and he happened to be watching.

Then he put his finger in Kit's ear and said, "There's something out there."

Kit came out of it grumbling, and Nolan repeated, "There's something out there."

There wasn't much to see, not even any birds. Just glowing skies, glittering waves, and rolling water. The sometimes clouds that would wisp overhead, painted now with hints of gold.

"I don't see anything," Kit said grumpily.

Nolan just stared off at the horizon.

Kit socked him and went back to his zonked-out trance.

Later on in the day, with everyone slightly more awake, the others saw it too.

"Oh," Kit said. "It's a dot."

"Ship," Erry corrected.

"I don't recognise it," Nolan said.

"Why would you?" Kit asked. "Have you ever even seen a ship?"

"Boat," Erry corrected.

"Shut up," Kit said.

"Vessel," Jora said.

"Yacht," Nolan said.

"Float," Erry said.

"Craft," Jora said.

Kit stared at the others glumly.

The others stared back with varying expressions of curiosity, apathy, and excitement.

"You wanna go check it out or not?" Kit asked finally.

"Turnips," Erry said.

"Sure," Jora said.

"Armed," Nolan said.

"Great, that's one vote 'yes' and two votes nonsense," Kit said, rolling his eyes. "As always, the nonsense has it, so it's a good thing that wasn't actually a vote." He tied up some wind and directed them dot-ward, using the tree as a sail, making a point to keep it from capsizing them.

Nolan put weapons in everyone's hands. Erry wound up with a pair of daggers, which she proceeded to scrape together, making a horrible buzzing sound. Jora took a bow to complement the sword she already always wore. Kit gave Nolan a really, really irritated look before finally just accepting the longsword that was only as light as it was due to being effectively made out of magic.

"You know I can't use this, right?" Kit said.

"I don't know that," Nolan told him.

"Well, I can't," Kit replied.

"You can't use a focus?" Nolan asked.

"This is a sword," Kit said.

"Only if you use it as a sword," Nolan said.

Kit blinked and looked over the sword again in surprise before finally mouthing, "Oh."

For his own part, Nolan covered himself in weapons, strapping knives everywhere, putting a pair of swords on his back, a quiver at his belt, an axe on his leg, grabbing a bow for good measure, and then plonking himself down on the tree like some sort of barbarian king.

"Well, this'll be interesting," Jora said.

"Sheep," Nolan said.

It wasn't long before they caught up with the ship, exchanged yells with the crew, and discovered something of a language barrier between them all.

The ship itself was large, wooden, and full of sails, and of a general style of craftsmanship that came across as decidedly foreign. The crew were mostly human, muscular and dark, wearing light, loose clothing of similarly foreign style, and also, in many cases, clearly armed.

One of them yelled something mockingly, pointing at the tree.

Another asked something else.

A third got in an unintelligible argument with a fourth.

Erry yelled some random things at them back, but fortunately for everyone involved, none of that got through either.

Kit glanced at Nolan, but Nolan was just sitting on the tree, staring intently at the ship, so he guided the raft up against the side of the ship. Two sailors jumped down almost immediately, bringing ropes, securing the two vessels together. One of them said some things to Erry. Erry said some other things back.

Nolan grabbed a rope and scrambled up onto the ship and started making hand gestures at the crew. Surprisingly, one of the crewmen started making gestures back.

They were really getting going as the other three came aboard, the sailor also talking to his fellows as he went.

"Well?" Kit said, scooting up to them.

"Pirates," Nolan said.

"Really," Jora said, eyeing the ship's crew. They were relatively dirty, unlike the kids, though they probably didn't have a bored wizard on board who could simply clean them all with a cantrip, either.

"Any treasure?" Erry asked.

"Are they friendly?" Kit asked.

"Yes," Nolan said. "We're all illegal, so we're friends."

"We're... illegal?" Jora asked blankly.

"Magic is," Nolan said, gesturing something else at the same time. "They say they can take us with them if we stop being obvious."

"Er," Kit said.

"Lose the tree," Nolan said.

"Aww," Kit said.

"We can do that," Jora said. "What should we pay for passage?"

Nolan gestured a bit, got a response, and said, "Peaches."

"They can have all they want," Kit said.

"Yes," Nolan said, and then strolled off and started climbing up a mast.

The others exchanged glances. The pirates laughed and said something that might have been 'welcome'.

"Maybe I can magic some sort of translation," Kit said.

"Don't be obvious," Jora told him. "But yes. We need to know what they're saying."

"What's he doing?" Erry asked, looking up at Nolan. The boy was currently perched atop a sail, peering off into the distance.

"Looking for sheep, probably," Kit said, and then two of the pirates were steering the three of them away, below deck, and into a small room with four hammocks and a bunch of drawers. Apparently this was theirs.

"Thanks," Jora told them.

The pirates pointed out a bunch of things, said other things that completely failed to communicate anything meaningful, hung up the lantern, and then left them alone.

Jora shut the door and turned to the others. Then she noticed the lantern - oil, with a little wick and flame and a covering that was probably glass - and completely forgot what she was going to say. Instead, she said, "Seriously? This thing is wood, and they use flame for light?"

"No magic, remember?" Kit said, putting up a magelight regardless. This filled the room much more effectively, banishing the shadows, lighting everything up so they could see with detail. The detail turned out to be mostly dirt and stains and general grubbiness.