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The /heap contains the snippets. This is all draft.

Part n+1 - Ending

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?

Notes:

1. Coraline is a librarian.
2. Links may cross inter-universal boundaries.
3. Notes may provide context, but not meaning.
4. The story is always told from perspective. Translations are built in, even gestures.
5. Gestures hold transient meaning.
6. Coraline Henderson is dead.

Midnight - the end of Arling Tor

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, but the effect is dulled by her mask, stange and silvery and eyeless.

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

Part 0 - Prologue

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.
2. Not everything is translated from the original tongues.
3. Notes may provide meaning, but not context.
4. The worlds are circular. You may repeat yourself.

String 2943

"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."

~ Unknown

Dreamscape

The strangest thing about the dream, probably, was the fact that it was not green. The sky was not green, but simply hanging grey and low. The ground was not green, but dull and rocky, not tinted by an otherworldly glow, simply there. The wind - for there was wind here - was furtive and blustery, coming in wet bursts. It was going to rain.

And it wasn't green.

It wasn't noisy.

Really, it wasn't anything...

She startled, slowing, looking around. There was something, a noise, a hint of warmth drifting around her. Trolls? They were in the area, and they were hunting her. They were always hunting her, and she didn't remember any point in which they hadn't been hunting her, and so she simply turned and fled, darting down the corridor of trees, into the dark, under the whistling branches. Dull leaves shifted underfoot, muffling her footfalls. It was getting darker. They were getting closer. The rain was coming.

She tripped. She fell.

She was down. Underground. A passage, a tall shaft above, open to the sky, showing little light from so far. The first raindrops fell wet and heavy, but only from time to time, only on one side, thrown by the wind above.+

Down here, though, the walls were already wet. Trickling moisture hinted at life within the ground, of strangeness, of alien forces silently at work, always changing. She needed a direction. Two options, two ways to run.

So she chose, and she ran, and the walls ran with her. She ran, and the walls changed, widening the corridor, opening out into a grand cavern. Further on, jagged rock gave way to strange formations, pillars and columns, almost too precise, but right here, in front of her, was a car, some ancient Soviet model, poking its hood from the wall. It grinned at her, all bumper and headlights, and said, "Whaddya know about that?"

"I'm sorry," she told the car, "But I can't stop. I need to keep moving. The moment I stop, everything goes horribly wrong and the trolls find me, so I need to keep moving, okay?"

"I won't ask him," the car replied, withdrawing back into the wall.

She frowned, but really that was good enough.

She realised she was stopped.

The dream fell away.

Molstead Inn - morning

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, of course, perfectly normal. 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, simple name. Most of the ones she used were.

This morning, Coraline woke up relatively early. There was a cat on her head, which helped. It was also the middle of summer, which was probably the main reason - it was very, very warm.

She pushed the cat off her head and stared at the ceiling for a moment in the stewing heat.

The cat slid onto another 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 in the back of her mind, though contained to a low murmur, felt like dripping, weighing down on her even more than the oppressive heat. There were no trolls. Everything was just... heavy.

Eventually, somehow, she got out of bed, found some clothes, downed her morning medicine, and nearly tripped over the cat when it ran out after her. Then she was in the kitchen with its horrible lack of any sensible kitchen appliances. These people had magic, and yet nobody had thought to invent a dishwasher. They had no proper ovens, no easy-on stoves, no mixers; even the concept of a refrigerator seemed like a far off dream.

The bread was mouldy.

The eggs seemed to be fine.

There was a pile of vegetables in a barrel. They looked a bit soggy.

Coraline was suddenly very, very glad she was not the cook, did not normally ever have to cook, and in fact did not really know how to cook in the first place, and hastily closed the barrel.

The problem was, there should have been a cook around by now, or more specifically, a geral innkeeper, but Jess was nowhere to be seen. The entire place was depressingly empty, silent, and horribly warm.

She glared at the stove and the coals burst into flame, making it even warmer.

"Fine," Coraline muttered, and put some eggs and bread on to fry.

Grumbling, she then walked into the tavern proper, glared at it, and then gave up and grumped up to the counter when this had no effect, it being an inanimate space devoid of all occupants. Then she 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, which had slightly more of an effect than the previous glare, but only slightly. He was a local, but he'd probably been too drunk to go home the previous night, and the bouncer, Dors, very much enjoyed hauling people up the stairs to sleep it off. Now the guy looked perhaps even more out of sorts than she was. Not unusual, but also normally not her job to deal with it.

"Morning," he said groggily, rubbing his head. Then he tripped over the cat.

Coraline stared blankly for a moment before it occured to her to actually get him over to the bar and maybe get him some coffee. And herself some coffee. She clearly needed some coffee.

When she plonked some mugs down between them, he mumbled what might have been thanks and stared glumly into his own, disinclined to do anything with it.

"Drink it," she said, "It'll help." She drank some of her own for emphasis. It wasn't very good.

The guy just sat there.

The cat jumped up and flopped down next to his arm. Coraline petted it angrily, and then told the guy, "Seriously, drink it."

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 shipments with all the other things. 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?"

"Eggs on toast," she said

"Okay," he said.

She got him the rest of the eggs and toast, and watched as he wandered out, munching, before picking up the cat and following after herself.

Molstead - morning

It was a bright sunny morning: horrible and warm and bright and full of birds. Loud birds. Also neighbours.

Bob, the guy down the street, was passing by with a barrow full of what were probably not coconuts, though they looked a little bit like them. A group of women were by the Harrison place gossiping under a tree. They waved, and she waved back, because that was apparently what people did around here.

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, though it seemed surprisingly happy considering she was holding it at the moment like a sack of potatoes.

"Seriously," Coraline said, "She should be here."

The cat had nothing useful to say to this either, and just sort of dangled in her arms.

"Hmph," she said.

Still carrying the cat, she wandered off toward the market to try to find out just what had happened to her day gal. Asking around yielded nothing, though one annoyingly hamstery guy kept asking her what day it was and then followed her all the way to the square when she tried to just ignore him. Another asked what the deal with the cat was, but she didn't know quite why she was still carrying it herself. 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, fortunately sheathed, 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 eighty-seventh 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 was pulling the other guy 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 - 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 - and 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 was basically a large, ornate golden gun, fashioned after a phoenix with bladed wings extended. 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. Which she seemed to do a lot for some reason.

But five silver was a really good deal. And 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.

"Five?" she asked.

"All yours," Barney said.

"Oh, very well," Coraline said, fishing out some coins.

The sword was a strange weight on her belt, especially when all she was really wearing under it was a light blouse and skirt.

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

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

"Not today, my lady," he said.

"Blugh," 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. 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.

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 vaguely at this, 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.

Molstead outskirts - morning

Coraline headed up the road to the Eslinger farm thinking about toasters. Wonderful invention, toasters. She thought about other things, too. She thought about normality and how much she liked it, and how annoyingly not normal this day was being. 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, slung over her shoulders. "Fuck, that's a giant arse staff. What's the deal with that?" he said, gawping.

Coraline put on her best worrisome smile, and said, "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. The stylised phoenix on the end had 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 even in general the whole thing looked too impractical to not be magical. The fact that she was still wearing a cat for some reason probably didn't hurt either.

"Oh. Really?" he said, now 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."

"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, with no indication of anything amiss.

It was like she had just vanished, except people did not normally just vanish, and when they did, it was generally not a good sign at all. Coraline 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. Were they looking for her?

Probably not. It'd been almost five years now.

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, god of Light and Life, 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.

"Hey, statue," she said.

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 day gal 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, wobbling the cat, 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 in a raspy voice.

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?" What she didn't ask was if she was just hallucinating again.

"Just Soravian," the statue said. "But should you not 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 then again she'd always been oddly open with what she told this statue simply on account of it being a large inanimate object that didn't seem particularly inclined to try to exact retribution no matter what she told it.

Then the cat said, "You speak cat, I speak Soravian. What does it matter?"

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

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?" Coraline asked, then added, "Also, I'm kind of not 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 maybe it should have. She didn't know.

"You'll do," the cat purred.

Coraline frowned at the cat, and pulled the paw away from her nose. 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's definitely not 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. Was it even the booze anymore, or just the voices coming through distracting her? Except now she was distracting herself thinking about distractions. Not helping.

"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."

String 31373

"Losing your way between dreaming and waking, the bright days you once knew so well fade into nothing but a memory. The colours fade, the edges blur and now you see the world only through the eyes of a sleep-walker - not real enough, and yet too real to understand."

~ Unknown

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.

"So there's some ruins out in the woods," Coraline announced, possibly to Agata, 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 that opened up before them. It 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, trees growing through and over them, 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 rather dirty-looking 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, scents of 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.

The voices in her head were getting louder again, so the 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.

The bandits seemed to be eating lunch. This wasn't good. She supposed she could just shoot the lot of them, but with so many it didn't seem doable. And 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. With a sword. That might distract them. Except no, no, that wouldn't work. She wished she had brought the statue.

Agata hissed, and something glooped past her foot, bouncing into the shrubbery.

She couldn't go for help, either. She knew the council, and she knew just how ineffective the militia could be in a real situation. Even with crossbows their discipline was terrible, so even if they got the camp surrounded, the moment the bandits fought back it would fall to pieces.

But maybe she could just try talking to them. She was supposed to be a wizard, after all. People listened to wizards.

"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. Another said something else, standing up and pointing.

Coraline gave him a vague look and then walked right past.

A few backed away, 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 metres away, and he smiled loudly in invitation.

"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, and 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. Probably.

"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, looking a bit confused. 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. The tenseness was almost tangible, but Coraline's mind kept thinking about daffodils.

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 surprising 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 any more than she was a real wizard, 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. The healing in particular was draining and usually 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, smoothing over the rest. 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, bloody knife and dropped it on the table.

Jess and Coraline stared at it.

Finally, Coraline just said, "What."

Mrs. Eslinger gave her a very pointed look.

"Oh," Coraline said, though she still didn't really understand, and scooted out toward the door, grabbing her staff.

Jess, meanwhile, picked up the knife curiously, at which point her mother hastily snatched it back.

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 suddenly realised this was probably a bad thing and skirted aside at the last moment, giving her staff a mighty swing as she went. Fortunately she was proficient in waving around heavy objects willy-nilly, and managed to drive a bladed wing into the nearer bandit'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 then 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, coming up behind her. Coraline almost jumped when this registered almost a minute later, but then didn't, and just turned slightly instead.

"What they did to her..." the woman began, then focused her very piercing gaze on Coraline. "What did they do?"

Coraline shook her head. It was a lot to describe, and she didn't even know how.

"What did they do?" Mrs. Eslinger repeated.

"Broken bones, ruptured organs, internal bleeding, sexual trauma, a ripped tendon," Coraline listed blankly. "That's all fixed. I dunno what they might have done to her mind, how well she'll recover, you'll need to..."

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

"Good," Coraline whispered. "She'll need you. Gods, will she need you."

Mrs. Eslinger nodded, looking resolute. "They say you're a wizard. Can you take care of these?" She indicated the bodies, and when Coraline stared at them blankly, went on, "Burn them. Burn them all to dust."

"I can do that," Coraline said. There were only... a lot of them, and this had been the plan, right? Had there been a plan? Where was that cat?

For now, she just brought the staff about and blasted the body before them with enough heat to leave only a small, smoking crater behind.

When she went back to take care of the other two, Jess was standing nearby, watching, Agata held closely in her arms.

Keller's place - afternoon

Coraline hurried into town with the afternoon sun pushing down on her neck and shoulders with surprising force. 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 else, 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 managed, 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!" Keller was saying. "You shouldn't just be mixing those 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 pushed 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 when the former started to run at her, 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, and apparently shooting them too. 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 somewhere behind her 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.

After a bit it finally occurred to her to poke 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. Dead horses made dusty mounds.

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 alreadied 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 two more not accounted for.

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, wondering just what the fuck had happened 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 heads. 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.

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 had to go and poke 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.

Coraline yelped and jumped back as 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. The trees were spinning around her. The ruins were weaving about like fish.

He screamed, charging at her, though whatever he'd said was completely muffled for some reason. He raised the axe, 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 still 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.

The rest of her pulled away, ripping her skirt, and she kicked 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 in misery, a racket of crickets drilling into her skull. It was evening, that crazy time of day when things were finally cooling down, but the sun was still hovering a couple hours over the brink from nightfall proper.

She was still alive.

Suddenly she sat up, looking around quickly. She needed the other twp. She'd missed two, hadn't she? But from the look of it, everything was just bodies now.

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. 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...

It took the better part of an hour to go through it all. She burned the bodies, a single staff blast each, the stench of flesh rotting in the summer heat mingling with the stench of burning.

Molstead temple - evening

Davis, one of the priests, was lighting the candles at the various shrines. He looked up and smiled at Coraline as she entered, then noticed her appearance, and then her smell, a moment after.

Coraline ignored him and made a bee-line for the statue. "Oy, statue," she said, rounding on the thing, 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, and 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," the girl 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.

Molstead Inn - night

Jess was at the bar when Coraline finally got back to the inn, a large tankard of ale and Agata sitting on the bar before her, so Coraline came over and said, "Yo."

Jess just slid off the chair and hugged her tightly. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Agata was peering at them dubiously.

"Um," Coraline said when Jess finally let go, and then held out the bandit's hat, slightly bloodied.

Jess froze, staring at it.

"Just an object," Coraline said, and set it down on the counter. "They can't hurt you."

Jess was still just staring at the hat, so Coraline turned the girl's head back toward her own with a finger. "Hey," she said. "You're safe now, okay?"

Jess nodded slowly.

"Say it," Coraline said.

"I'm safe," Jess whispered.

Coraline bonked the hat with a fist. "This is just an object. Stay the night, okay?" she said. "Dors will be here to guard the place."

At the moment Dors was striking dramatic poses at one of the patrons. The bouncer was an orcan, a native of Ord, and quite large, with black and white skin patterns, and the one thing he never did was quite fit in. Usually he made a scene instead.

Dors gave them a big smile from across the room, with multiple rows of teeth, before raising a hand and flexing each finger individually. This was accompanied by no small amount of unrelated sound effects.

Jess nodded again.

"Great," Coraline said. "I think I... kind of need to pass out now." She slid away 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.

Her bed felt like a great, fluffy cloud.

Part 1 - Intermission

Everybody is running from something. They may not know it, and they may not fear it, but still they run. Some even run from running itself.

And yet the bullet you're running from is almost never the one that hits you.

Notes:

1. To say 'kauhistuksen kanahäkki' may apply.
2. Events may repeat themselves, precede their causes, and take different forms in different stories. They are the same events.
3. Please keep reading.
4. Every word was chosen.
5. This is not a kids movie.

String 781

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

~ Sandman

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, or prepared for preparing for it, or at least discussed preparing for it.

The bounty hunter merely waited in a corner and observed, out of the way, but not at all out of sight or mind. Some passerby discussed him, too.

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

A few folks greeted the hunter cheerfully, 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 that was almost, but not entirely, unlike something that would come out of a hamster, and sidled off to pester a random passerby.

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.

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.

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 and even spilling out outside, 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 finger, signalling 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 loudly, leaning in. He was an out-of-towner, but she didn't recognise him as anyone from even the surrounding townships. His leathers marked him as a fighter of sorts, but it was his swords that drew the eye - one steel, one silver. A hunter. Of monsters.

"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 noticeably 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." Coraline 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. "They were there."

He nodded, 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, why are you bothering me.

Then she quickly asked him what had brought him here, a professional monster hunter into the peaceful lands away from the fields of ruin, this is totally a conversation.

He blinked.

Agata blinked.

Coraline nearly slid out her chair in surprise.

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

"Well, we don't have any," Coraline said, pulling herself back into her seat. Then she took another drink when Thimble slid off the table. Then she realised that that hadn't been a blink at all and leaned over to see where the cat had gone, but he was already lost in a sea of legs.

"None at all?" Dalric asked.

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

"Really. Kids." He sounded skeptical.

Coraline shrugged slightly.

"Don't their parents mind?" Dalric 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 said.

"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 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 from 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 perhaps the guy was exactly what he sought, 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 rumours 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 over his shoulder.

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 miscellany, getting in the way, and occasionally helping amidst a general air of anticipation. Nolan pulled a twig across the bark of his tree.

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 the hungering, or 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 demons - but this was just unsettling. Even so, he stared into those buggy eyes, refusing to back down. He was just unsettled in the doing. 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 at Dalric. Then he asked again, sticking his face right under the hunter'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.

Dreamscape

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 the feeling - and broke into a run, exhilaration in the hunt, 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 green, of a rocky alien terrain that had become all too familiar, and then in a sudden rush of voices, the dream, too, fell away.

Molstead Inn - noonish

Coraline 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 unhelpfully, 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 attempted to smile 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, finding it. She was the innkeeper. And 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 folks, and as a wizard she knew things, and as an outsider with some seriously dark secrets, she was also just just bloody paranoid and made a point to show up whether they wanted her to or not. Which they seemed to, what with her being a wizard at all, especially since Keller never did.

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 head 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, or considering 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 quite 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. 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. Carriers don't exactly survive long, so the only way I see it travelling 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."

"We can put the militia on alert," Merlijn said. "But until he actually does something, what can we really do, arrest him? 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 Naran interrupted her. "Why not?" he said.

"He was asking about Yink," Everton James noted. "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 Dalric kills him, then what?"

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

"Well 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."

Davis 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 focused on her. They couldn't know, they couldn't, not what had happened, what she had done, how she'd taken the coin in that desecrated temple. How 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, not looking at anyone. "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.

"Yeah," Erik said, surprised.

"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, and vaguely cow-sized hole in the wall, that made it slightly less than useful as a storage shed. Usually Feldman was chasing badgers and young couples out of it.

"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, and ran out of the room.

"Nolan," Coraline said.

Davis put down his cake.

Molstead environs - afternoon

Nolan was still in his tree. He had a stick, a thin branch whittled down to its core, straight and even. After watching the flock carefully, using its patterns as seeds, 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 half hour 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.

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

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.

Granny Höhrmann rocked idly, knitting, before suddenly setting down her knitting and saying quietly, "Idiots, all of you."

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.

Granny Höhrmann stood and walked over to the flaming table, then held a hand out over it. The flames went out almost immediately.

"There has been a murder," Granny Höhrmann said, glaring at the room in its sudden ghastly silence. "Doesn't matter who it was, doesn't matter now why. We assign a judiciary and we handle it."

Everyone just sort of stared at her. For some reason, despite this being exactly what their town charter said they did, this had not occurred to anyone to actually do.

"Lyra," Granny Höhrmann went on, turning to Coraline, "Will you be our judiciary?"

Coraline stared at the elder witch blankly. "Whuh?" she managed finally.

"Get to the bottom of this," Granny Höhrmann said. "You know more about these matters than anyone here, so make your assessment and decide for us all." She glanced around the room, but nobody dared disagree.

"Um," Coraline said. "Sure?"

"Then it's decided," Granny Höhrmann said.

Coraline glanced around uncertainly, then said, or at least tried to say, "Then I guess I'ma go talk to him." And left.

Molstead - late afternoon

Coraline didn't actually have any plans to track down Dalric. Her main plan at the moment, in fact, 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, wobbling. Or maybe Coraline was wobbling.

"Yeah?" Coraline asked.

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

"Always is," Coraline mumbled.

Woods outside Molstead - late afternoon

The prevailing colour was brown, with hints of fire. Long shadows danced through falling leaves. Bare twiggage poked up and crowned the sky. Browning grass rustled in the breeze.

To the bear, it was all the same. It nibbled on some twigs, ate some grass, and ambled lazily along, not really after anything in particular, but possibly a bit of everything.

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 and dumped unceremoniously in a heap.

Soldiers were all about, waiting around, horses set to graze, equipment dropped to the ground. 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.

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. This wasn't exactly unusual behaviour from Doranis, but the priest was one of the best casters they had, and for this, should anything go wrong, they would need the best.

There was a horn call.

"We're up," Nurunn announced. 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 with the scout. Unlike the majority, they remained on foot.

It was about ten minutes to the site, easy going, little foliage in the way. A few other scouting other 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 two layers of netting, staked to the ground and several trees, with a pair of Guardians sitting on top of it to hold him down. 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 helpfully pointed out.

"Hopefully not too far," 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 order to keep the guy put. He wound up with an arm across the dirty chest, and the maddened face mere inches from his own. The man stank.

"Edric," Nurunn commanded.

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

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.

"That feels like something," Doranis asked behind him. "Is it working?"

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

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

"You're safe," Nurunn said, relaxing his hold slightly, but only slightly. "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, and nodded to Edric.

The priest hurried forward, getting out his notebook.

Something clinked, and they were interrupted by an explosion of sorts, black and shadowy, full of hunger and voices. It sent the Deathdealer 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.

"Guardians, 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.

Mayer house - evening

The evening settled in suddenly, seepingly, and full of grandkids running around. Suzy, Edine's granddaughter, beamed at the remainder of the council happily as they exhaustedly moved to adjourn.

But that was fine. They had finally agreed on something.

The tooth in Davis' cake had probably come from Suzy.

Dreamscape

It was cold, nippy, even. They weren't anywhere in particular, just snowy fields, rural, vague. The snow was trampled, frosted. Agata was seated by her boots. Good boots. Old boots. They hadn't fallen apart yet. Good.

They needed to be somewhere, she needed to run, but the train wasn't coming, and the wind was bitter, and it was dark already. They needed to be out of here. The trolls were coming.

Coraline spun around, but there was nothing there, only the wind, the voices, whispering , drifting on the surface of the snow. It was so cold, bitterly so, even trying to get in through her hat, and she wrapped her hood tighter around it.

"Is this Finland?" Agata asked.

"Huh?" Coraline said.

"Seems cold," the cat noted. "And dark."

"I don't recall Captain Obvious being here," Coraline said, peering around. What was she even doing here? The station was run-down, abandoned, the tracks covered in snow.

"Troll," Agata said.

It fell on Coraline like a pile of bricks.

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, and fell out of bed.

"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, it seemed. Just how late was it?

Agata followed, all paws.

Drip.

The sound seemed to be coming from one of the guest rooms, and she poked her head in and shone her torch about, illuminating 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, heading back to the stairs and continuing upward.

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 ahead 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 metre across, stone walls rising about half a metre 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. It was perfectly ordinary. 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 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.

Surprised, 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 metres, 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. A moment later, the door swung open, and Dalric entered, sword-first. He reached up to shade his eyes from the beam when Coraline pointed it right at his face.

"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, and said, "You have some answering to do, and it may as well be here as anywhere. Why did you come to Molstead? Why did you murder Yink von Jummerlund?" That wasn't Yink's name. She had no idea what Yink's name was.

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

"No, I really don't," Coraline told him. "You seem to think there is a Carrier, but so far all you've done is endanger everyone here. What gives you the right to blindly kill, without consequence?"

"Consequence," he said, "is exactly it. There was a foretelling 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. "But the worst will come, I assure you, and you will need me here when it does."

"Full of yourself, aren't you?" Agata muttered.

"You've already found Yink wasn't a Carrier. Do not act again without coming to the militia first. Am I understood?" Coraline said.

Dalric watched her for a long moment, saying nothing, so Coraline just continued to helpfully shine the torch's beam in his eyes.

"Yes," Dalric said simply.

"Great," Coraline said. "You will be watched. Now go on, shoo," she added, gesturing with her light for him to get the hell back out of her attic.

"What about the dripping?" he asked.

"I'm dealing with it," she said irritably, not moving.

There was another long, possibly tense moment before he gave her a curt nod and backed back out of the attic.

Coraline gave it another moment just to be sure he wouldn't change his mind and come back up before turning back to the well and glaring at it.

"A well in the attic," she muttered. "What the buckets?"

The well didn't answer, and instead just sort of sat there. Being a well. Not doing a whole lot.

She picked up the bucket and eyed the puddle. 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.

Regardless, she had a go at sticking the head of her staff in the puddle, and a moment later, the puddle was gone, flash-evaporated into steam.

Part 2 - Disruption

You want the answer? You want the end? There is no answer; there is no end. There is only now. In every instance, now, now, now, ever-changing now. Nothing else matters. There is nothing else.

Enjoy your purgatory of the now.

Notes:

1. We are telling the story now.
2. Small events gain traction. In time, they may demolish nations. Catch them as they start, and you may miss the true design.
3. Contradictions belie meaning.
4. Things will become clearer as you go.
5. This was not part of the story.

String 1265

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

~ Andromeda

Molstead environs - noonish

The days leading up to the festival proper were remarkably uneventful. Business was usual. Dalric minded his own. Everyone set up to celebrate and just be done with getting everything in from the fields.

Even the council matters were largely resolved, though they agreed on some other things, too. Best keep the militia alert. 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. Keep an eye out.

Keep an eye out.

And today was the day. Now it began. The first day of any festival was always the loudest, and this one 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.

Coraline made a point to be somewhere else during the majority of this. She wound up sitting on a fence, sketching, 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 four 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 both nanny and 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, baiting, "They say ain't nobody's been able to open the Edifice since the Exodus."

"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.

Erry gave Kit a a pointed look. Her brother totally failed to notice it.

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.

"Can you open it?" Erry asked.

Nolan 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 with his fingers, staring off into space, "Fish. Tree. Hunger. Chaos. Hazard."

"Seriously?" Kit said. That combination actually made sense.

Nolan just turned slightly to stare at him intently, and so, instead of arguing, 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 rather meaningless 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. As technically a member of the militia 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, she wished she could feel it. She wished, vaguely, that she could feel anything.

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 the crevice of a rooftop 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 his companions.

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, about as much of an idea as any of them, aside from Kit. Kit was just staring.

Finally, Kit said, "Yes."

"What is it?" Jora repeated.

Erry poked the orb a few times.

"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 and ran up the stairs.

Kit punched after her lightly, and Nolan produced an entire roasted turkey leg out of his bag.

Erry was waiting by the door when the others go there, and so Kit readied the stick again for the passage out, but the door gave them no resistance from the inside, simply opening at a touch.

Erry gave it an angry look and sidled out around it.

Kit said, "Huh."

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

Jora turned back in the direction of the town as they spilled out, and pointed toward the glare of the fire looming over the trees. "Look," she said.

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, handing Erry the turkey leg.

"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, gnawing furiously.

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 - night

Something had happened. This wasn't right.

Coraline was on the ground, with others, too, around her, not moving. The bonfire was low. Several buildings were burning. Coraline picked herself up slowly, swaying. The world was spinning. Agata walked over and leaned against her legs.

At some point everything had gone horribly wrong. They hadn't even realised it at first, as the yells turned to screams, at some point something had shifted. Something had happened.

And now it was later.

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, green, green, green. 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 there was only nothing. Here she was alone.

Completely alone.

Molstead outskirts - night

Everything was so quiet, with only the odd scream curdling the muggy air. Nolan walked past the first few buildings surveying the damage, almost disinterestedly. 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

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 said. She'd stopped, and now this. She knew these people. Edine. Jess. Others. So many others. The one guy in town who actually liked shalott. The resident junk parts salesman. The log lady. Several militia members she'd even trained herself.

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."

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.

"Are we sure about that?" she asked, and 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 metres away, flaming weakly.

"Okay..." she said slowly, and went and nudged him over with her foot. He was wearing plate armour, and amazingly, as it turned out, was somehow still not dead. He turned his seared head toward her and seemed to be trying to say something, but no real words came out. She 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 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, but he was too burnt to tell her anything. Who were these people? What the hell had happened? What had they been doing here, of all places? That had been soldiers' armour, and possibly uniforms under it. 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.

Tthe 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, but even so, 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 filthy, 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 immediately 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. Hunger for hunger.

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. Or anything more amiss. This was pretty damn amiss already, and yet also horribly witchy.

Agata growled, mostly at the other Carrier. Mostly.

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, pulling at her mind, tugging at her very being.

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 grabbed her staff 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, just 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, the trolls, 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. There was space.

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 turned and ran.

In the back of the inn, she kept a small room dedicated to pretty things. Keepsakes, memories, books, 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 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 amulet had shattered, the black relic destroyed in the reaction. But it had worked until then. Almost.

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.

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.

Nolan ran out toward it.

Jora jumped up as well. "Nolan!" she yelled, running after him.

Doranis continued his chant, but moved a bit away.

Nolan 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, "We're done now," at noone in particular, and started nonchalantly walking back the way they'd come.

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

Nurunn frowned, coming up behind her. "Is that normal?" he asked Jora.

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

Elven ruins - night

They 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 very 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 uncertainly.

"They could be anywhere," Jora said.

"Good," Nolan said, and poked the orb in the obelisk's heart with the stick.

There was a flash of light.

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 could see the insignia on their armour. These were Guardians of the Passing - warriors in the service of the god of death. They didn't seem 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 cats' claws digging into her arm and neck.

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, turning her world on its head and 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 numbly, 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 just turned and ran, past the brook lake with the frogs' singing, down the road, and onward.

Part 3 - Wayside

In practice, there is only so far you can go, so much you can do, so much you can say.

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

Notes:

1. A 'universe' is an artificial construct.
2. Some languages transcend meaning. They cannot be translated, for they simply are. These are the languages of gods, and of darker things.
3. Everything is translated.
4. There is no escape from what you know.
5. Gods lie.

String 2438

"Sometimes, if you pay real close attention to the pebbles, you find out about the ocean."

~ Terry Pratchett

Notes in the Book

It didn't just begin. None of it just began. The things that happened, the things with meaning, they grew slowly, subtly, out of nothing. A few phrases tossed around online. A few words offered in a coffeeshop. A few whispers heard, burbling upward, in the back of her mind.

When Coraline had first encountered Rahah, it had been largely at random. Two girls, growing up on the internet, an ocean between them, encountered at random. They commented on each others' art, but they did that for a lot of people. They mingled and interacted.

That wasn't the beginning. It was just something that happened.

But little things grow. They talked and joined games together, roleplayed, commissioned each other's art. By the time they started mailing each other bad jokes halfway around the world, they were as close as sisters.

River Lenn - day

Coraline woke with a start and nearly toppled out of the boat, but then remembered herself just in time. She was in a boat, she needed to keep it balanced, she needed to not topple herself and her cats out into the river they were all, apparently, still lazily drifting down.

Tress stared at her worriedly from her lap before shrinking back into a ball of unusually tense Thimble. The two cats had not been at all happy about getting into a boat, and yet when Coraline had gotten in herself, they had still come, piling in right on top of her. It had made paddling difficult.

Agata, perched at the front, peered back disinterestedly before resuming her watch.

Coraline pulled herself up into a seated position, still being careful not to rock it too much, or disturb the pile of cat on top of her. The boat itself was tiny, and though it had an actual seat, she didn't really try that much at even entirely sitting up, let alone getting onto that. She was still completely exhausted, sore everywhere, and yet the worst thing of all was her head. And her eyes. And all the sunlight dancing across the water right into them.

She groaned and clapped a hand across her eyes and immediately felt 62% better. "Agata," she asked, "did we... was there something...?" Coraline gestured vaguely with her other arm. Or tried to. She just wanted to sleep.

"Everything is perfect," Agata said. "Utterly, absolutely, perfect."

Risking another peek out at the water to be sure, it really did look fine. Flat, calm, and horribly bright, but that was just fine. "That's great," she said, sliding back down into her nest in the hollow in the front of the seat. The wood was as soft as dreams.

Dreamscape

The snow was falling wetly around her, draping a soggy blanket across the landscape, drooping off of fencelines, hanging over edges of trees and roofs alike. The town looked deserted. The tracks were as snowy as anything. Coraline wiped some snow off her head and it melted in trickles around her fingers, dripping down her neck and back, slipping beneath her thick coat.

There were trolls around, but they would be dulled by the cold. They didn't like the wet especially. Babies' eyes. Running late. They didn't need to hurry. She could afford to stop.

She could afford to stop.

She stepped onto the station porch and peered about, noting the wetness, the leaves blown into the corners, wet and frozen. The ticketing machines were rusted with disuse. The door was shut, locked.

She tried it anyway.

It opened with difficulty, hinges resisting, screaking, grating all the way until it stuck, and a blast of stale air drifted out.

It didn't want to. It didn't want her here.

Down here, Agata's voice said, drifting out of corners. You'll want to see this.

The door was only partially open, only a little. Nowhere near enough to slip through.

Coraline glared at it, and pushed through regardless, squeezing past handle and frame, into the darkness full of shapes. Boxes stacked in the gloom, leering frames of cabinets, drawers hanging open, spiderwebs gaping, empty. She was neither spider nor fly. It was all already over.

The darkness hung like a sieve.

Down here, Agata repeated, driftingly, distant. Coraline followed the voice, twisting through the maze, turning the corners between stacks, deeper and deeper. It was a labyrinth, silent as the grave.

The door stopped her suddenly, looming up around a corner all at once, set into a wall, ordinary, plain. Standard industry handle. Standard frame painted the same as the walls. Walls, barren, unnotable. No windows.

She touched it and the surface vibrated. The paint stirred, bubbled, shifted. It was rough, but not, trembling.

The handle turned easily.

Beyond was only darkness, deep, looming, empty. Voices in the shadows. Singing in the depths. It went on and on, but there was only nothing. It went down, but the light stopped at the threshold. Darkness, darkness, darkness.

You'll want to see this, Agata repeated, the same words, the same voice, suddenly loud, right in front of her, all around.

The doorway, hanging open, beckoned, inviting. The darkness beyond hinted at shapes, ordered columns, singing against the black, and beyond it, more.

She almost tried to step forward, but she couldn't. She couldn't move, instead finding herself frozen in uncertainty and fear, paralysing, pulling her down as the dream dissolved around her, pulling, pulling, pulling, reaching, grasping.

River Lenn - afternoon

The first thing Coraline noticed was that, for some reason, she was standing waist-deep in the middle of the river.

The second thing Coraline noticed was that there seemed to be a hand stuck to her ankle.

The third thing she noticed was Agata, sitting on a rock several metres away, with Tress and Thimble, drenched and shivering, half-standing on top of her. Aside from being dripped on by two other cats, Agata seemed to be oddly not wet.

The hand grasping her ankle yanked her leg out from under her, and Coraline fell back into the cold water with a horrible splash. Completely surprised, she kicked at it and hit something that might have been a head. She stopped, peering blankly through the bubbles, as the sluggish current pulled her about. It was remarkably cold. Also she should probably breathe at some point. Shouldn't she be struggling right now?

Coraline thought about this, and it occurred to her that maybe she was drunk.

Coraline thought some more about this, and realised that, no, she was definitely drunk. Had she been sleep-drinking? She'd been sleep-drinking. How the hell had she been sleep drinking?

She probably needed air at some point.

Milky eyes that looked suspiciously not alive were staring at her out of a sagging, bloated head. She leaned forward and poked one of them. It squished and popped, oozing strange liquids into the already dirty water.

The head was attached to a similarly decomposing body.

This was not the body attached to the hand currently holding onto her ankle. This one only had one arm, and that was reaching for her... boob, apparently. It grabbed at it and slid off ineffectively, and Coraline gave it an annoyed look, before leaning down and to try to dislodge the other hand from her ankle just as all three of them were pulled right into a rock. Suddenly they were tumbling around that, and the hand let go regardless.

Coraline grabbed another rock, pulled herself out of the river, looked around blankly, and then, finally, remembered to actually start breathing again.

Agata and the other two cats half-climbing over her were now somewhat up-river from Coraline.

"Hello," Agata called out. "Having fun?"

Coraline shivered. It had been cold enough underwater, but now the brisk autumn wind was really not helping. "Um," she said, and her teeth started chattering as well, so she clamped them shut and tried again, yelling back, "What happened to the boat?"

Agata shook Thimble off her head and pointed to a small muddy beach further down with a paw, where the boat had apparently washed ashore. Then she wrapped the paw around Thimble's neck and started grooming his head. Tress was also drying herself at this point.

Coraline shivered violently and suddenly burst into flame. Panicking, she flailed, nearly fell back into the river, and then stopped, confused, when the flames went out almost as immediately as they'd started, leaving her only slightly singed. And dry.

A bloated face was staring at her out of the water.

Coraline glared at it.

The face stared back.

"Agata," Coraline yelled, "why are there dead people in the river?"

"They're called drowners," Agata said.

"But why?" Coraline asked. "Why are they there?"

"Why are you?" Agata said, and started grooming herself.

"I... what?" Coraline said.

The face was joined by another two faces. And a hand. The hand was holding a detached foot. It would have been creepy, except all they were doing was staring at her.

Coraline looked around blankly, realised her bag, at least, was still firmly secured to her belt, and tried to find her staff. Only after a bit of searching did she finally remmeber she'd had it out in the boat with her. And now there was something of an entire crowd of faces staring up at her out of the burbling waves. Several of them seemed to be little but bones, long since cleaned of flesh by the sand and stones.

So she pulled out the sword, instead. Barry's sword. Her name written all over it, he'd said.

None of the drowners were actually doing anything.

She unsheathed the sword carefully, examining the blade. Her name was written down the middle in flowing patterns, with engraved leaves dancing out around it. It was actually quite pretty, but it also looked remarkably functional even despite all this.

The drowners were still just staring up at her.

Fastending the scabbard to her belt, held fast over her thick wool skirts, she squatted down and poked one of the nearer ones with the sword, and it bobbed away, another taking its place.

She poked another and this one grabbed onto it, so she stood and pulled it out of the water, still clinging, first arms, head, shoulders, even an entire torso, before the hips and a bunch of what might have been the remains of organs fell off with a horrible sloughing.

Coraline regarded the undead head and torso for a moment.

The undead head and torso regarded her right back.

"What," Coraline said blankly, and shook the sword about a bit, trying to dislodge the unintended passenger, but it clung on surprisingly well, swinging about. A mass of further mostly liquefied organs sloshed out.

Finally she just scraped it off on the rock, held it down with a foot, and stabbed it through the head, trying not to hit the rock with the blade itself in the process. This seemed to kill it, and as it relaxed and quit moving, she kicked it back into the water.

So she sat down and started hacking at the ones in the river, too, grabbing a few of them as they got close with her spare hand to steady them, and they fell to pieces, losing coherence, drifting vaguely downstream like nothing more than random bits of refuse.

Another one loomed out from under the murk to also peer up at her from just beneath the water's surface, so she tried to impale that one too, but the blade just pushed it back under the water.

This was stupid. She had no idea how many were actually in the river, but they seemed to be completely harmless in practice. Really, she just didn't want to get wet again, but there didn't appear to be any other way to shore but by jumping back in and wading. And she needed to find her staff. And get the cats. More wading. Upriver.

Groaning and muttering various things perkele, she slid back into the icy water, slashed at a few more drowners, and forced her way back up toward the cats, falling over twice in the process. The second time, she found her staff just sitting on some rocks at the bottom of the river.

Somn's Post - evening

By the time Coraline got into the crossing town of Somns's Post, she was completely grumpy, and she finished the voyage off by crashing the boat into a particularly large rock at a particularly slow speed. The cats jumped out immediately. Coraline just sat there for a bit while the current slowly turned the tiny boat around and wedged it into another rock.

A few townsfolk were watching curiously.

A drowner drifted up out of an eddy and Coraline stood up suddenly, smacked it several times with her staff, and nearly fell into the river before a guy jumped out onto the rocks and pulled her ashore.

Coraline shook him off, muttered angrily, shot the drowner in the face, and only then turned back to the guy and demanded, "Where can I get a drink, hmm?"

Surprised, the guy took a step back. He looked like a rather common sort, but muscular and fairly well-dressed, and he had just been trying to help, she realised only a considerable moment later.

"Er, sorry," Coraline said. "It's been a long day. Thanks for, um, that." She gestured vaguely at the boat, which was just sort of bobbing between the two rocks.

He nodded, and said, "I'm Tanin. You came down in that?"

"Er... yes?" Coraline said.

"Impressive," Tanin said. "Inn's down the road over there," he added.

Coraline gave the boat one last dubious look, realised her mask had fallen off and was still sitting in the bottom of it, quickly grabbed that and two cats, and, nodding at the guy, headed off in the indicated direction.

String 39185

"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

Inn at Somn's Post - evening

Coraline entered the inn amidst only a little hubbub. It was not a busy town, just a town were folks passed through, and folks were passing through, hanging around the inn, getting drinks, chatting, not being terribly noisy.

In fact it was remarkably similar to her own inn, sans the hazard sticking out of the ceiling.

She collapsed into a stool at the bar next to a guy who looked surprisingly similar to how she felt, plopped a cat down in front of her, plopped the mask on top of the cat, and then plopped her head down on top of the mask.

This resulted in her getting a cheek full of metallic mask bits, so she shoved the mask out and tried again.

"Um," the innkeeper said, stopping in front of her.

"Hi," Coraline said, raising her head ever so slightly. "You got any rum?"

"Not after the incident with the Jenners," he said.

"Grog?" Coraline asked.

"No," the innkeeper said.

"Bourbon?"

"What?"

"Bluuugh," Coraline said, and gave up, collapsing back onto the cat. The cat, apparently 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 over to handle some other patrons.

Tress hopped onto the bar as well 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, and finally straightened up a bit into a more or less sitting position, much to Thimble's relief. The shalott helped, dulling both aches and voices, making her feel, if not entirely alive, at least slightly less grumpy.

"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.

Or something.

"Hi," she finally managed, giving him a small wave. "I could argue the alive."

"Yeah?" he said.

"It was him," Agata said, gesturing toward him with a paw, which she then proceeded to lick.

Coraline glanced at the Deathdealer and then looked curiously back to Agata.

"He killed my previous witch," the cat said.

"Oh," Coraline said. "Why?"

The guy 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?" he asked suspiciously.

"Why are you talking to a crazy lady?" Coraline retorted.

He smiled vaguely, shaking his head. "So you're a witch, then."

"You're a witcher," Coraline said.

"Am I?" the Deathdealer asked.

"Cows," Coraline replied. The shalott was definitely going to her head, and it was pretty great, all things considered. Aside from the fact that there wasn't any left. Her mug was empty.

Coraline glared at it disappointedly.

Agata padded over to the innkeeper, meowed loudly at him, and when he gave the cat a surprised look, she indicated back the way she'd come and said, "Need more shalott over there."

"Oh, er, okay," he said.

"And some yogurt for the cats," Agata added.

Coraline gave Agata a very surprised look as the cat padded her way back, weaving around a few scattered other mugs and bottles. The Deathdealer reached out to pet the cat as she passed, and Agata paused, taking a moment to sniff his fingers carefully, before curling her head into his hand as he scratched her behind the ears.

The mug in front of Coraline had mysteriously refilled itself, and she picked it up slowly, taking the time now to smell its full horror. It felt green, glowing, full of broken magic and decaying dreams. The shapes of shattered worlds swirled in its depths.

"You know how that stuff is made, right?" Agata asked, rolling over onto the Deathdealer's hand and sticking a paw up his sleeve.

"Like a fine wine," Coraline said, downing the mug. "With a full bouquet of pine cones."

"Exactly," Agata rumbled.

"That doesn't sound right," the Deathdealer said, pulling his arm out from under the cat, and Agata flopped back over unexpectedly, looking back at him with surprise and disdain.

He ignored this and added, "I know I know you from somewhere, and you're not fucking..." he stopped, then just asked, "Remind me, who are you?"

Coraline gave him a surprised look, which probably looked almost exactly like any of her other looks. Usually she was the one forgetting other people. Although she supposed she had forgotten his name. Or whether or not he'd actually introduced himself in the first place. Or if she had, either. They'd both been pretty drunk.

"Um," she said. "I think it was in Telegrin, we talked about gods and philosophy and how time works, and there was a lot of shouting, and drinking, and I'm not really sure what happened after that."

"Shit," he said. "That was you?"

Coraline nodded. "I woke up in some alley and you were there too, except you wouldn't wake up at all. But you seemed to be not dead, and not a... um..." she stopped. Not a Carrier, she almost said. She'd been so afraid then that she'd slip up, especially after she'd found out what it even was. She'd been so afraid that what she was doing wasn't enough, because all the lore said nothing could be enough, and all she was doing was drinking, for the first time in her life, far more than she ever would have imagined possible. She'd been so afraid that it would just get worse all over again.

Some guys nearby were arguing about something that seemed to translate only as 'sportsball'.

"Not what?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nothing" Coraline said. What had happened, anyway? Usually she had at least some memory even from when she was completely drunk, but it was entirely possible they'd gotten into more than just alcohol that night. Assuming it had been only one night. Assuming...

"Hah," he said. "So you just fucking left me there, did you?"

Coraline reached out and acquired a cat. "That was a... transitory period of my life," she explained, not really looking at him, "in which I wasn't really sure what I was doing and didn't necessarily want to always stick around and make things worse." She paused, then added, "Um, sorry."

"A joke," the Deathdealer said, gathering his things and scooting over to sit properly next to her. "The name's Vardaman. You said yours was Amadi, I think?"

Vardaman. That did sound familiar. Had it all been a lie, or completely true? It wasn't over, that much was clear as night. She still wasn't sure what she was doing, or where she was going, or anything. And sticking around had very definitely made things worse in Molstead...

She refilled her mug, but the bottle was almost empty as well, and the last trickles glooped sadly out.

"Perkele," Coraline muttered. Everything just felt off. Slightly upside down, not quite right. Pulling. She glanced over to Vardaman next to her in surprise. It seemed to be coming from him, but not.

He was carrying a black soul gem.

"I, uh, I need to go," she said hastily, scooting away. "Sleep. It's been a long day. We'll maybe talk later." Not looking back, she hurried over to the innkeeper to secure a room, wondering even more what she was even doing. The man was a Deathdealer. And among other things, Deathdealers hunted Carriers, with particular efficacy, because where to a common bounty hunter it was all about the profit, for Deathdealers it was a sacred matter, something they must do.

But she couldn't just run away again. She was too tired, too drunk.

And then he was there again, right next to her, and she could feel the pull, the strange, seductive pull of the black. He was helping her up the stairs, and she was losing herself again, the voices clamouring to get through the veil of shalott, but she couldn't lose herself, not here, not now, not...

Somewhere, amidst all the other voices, she heard someone say, "It's all right to be afraid. Rest, now."

Inn at Somn's Post - night

Coraline woke up slowly. She was in a bed, she realised, but the room was lit, and more than that, she wasn't alone. Vardaman, the Deathdealer, was sitting in a chair nearby, watching her, holding her mask in his lap. Agata was on the table next to him, along with Coraline's bag. Her staff and sword were leaning against the wall behind them.

She sat up uncertainly, and something shifted under her blouse. A necklace?

"You're a Carrier," Vardaman said.

Coraline just stopped and stared at him.

"How long has it been?" he asked.

She glanced at Agata, but at the moment the cat had nothing to offer either.

There was a scratching at the door.

"Were you turned in Molstead?" Vardaman asked. "Is that why you fled?"

Coraline shook her head slowly, looking away. "It was my fault," she said finally. "Carriers are attracted to other Carriers. I put them all in danger just by being there."

"You knew?" Vardaman asked.

"Found out shortly before I ran into you in Telegrin," she said. "That was why I was drinking so much. I just knew if I drank, it was fine, it wasn't... and if I drank a lot, I could... forget."

"That was four years ago," Vardaman said.

"Very interesting, isn't it?" Agata said. "Here we have a Carrier, and yet she's been so for years, and she's not getting any worse. Aren't you glad you listened to your god?"

Vardaman gave the cat an irate look before addressing Coraline again. "This mask," he said. "How did you come by it?"

Instead of answering, Coraline got up, and Vardaman rose as well, a hand falling to his sword.

She indicated her bag on the table. "May I?" she asked. When Vardaman nodded, she fished out a bunch of reciepts, frowned, yanked out a giant wad of bedding, pulled out a shovel, and finally just said, "What the crap?"

Vardaman was staring at her blankly.

"Um," Coraline said, "Did you go through my bag?"

"He tried," Agata said. "I warned him, but he tried."

Vardaman sighed, and asked, "What are you trying to find?"

"It's in here somewhere," Coraline muttered, and resumed digging. Several bottles of booze weren't even remotely it. Underwear wasn't it. Books weren't it. More books also weren't it. An undead foot wasn't... she pulled at the foot a bit more, and then found it to be attached to an entire undead leg when it kicked at her, got loose again, and pulled back into the bag.

She stopped, blinking. That... hadn't been expected. How had that even gotten in there?

"That was what he stopped at too," Agata said.

"Agata," Coraline said, turning back to the cat. "Why is there a dead person in my bag?"

"Hmm," the cat said, leaning over. "I was mistaken."

"About what?" Coraline asked.

"The dead guy was not where your Deathdealer gave up," Agata rasped.

"You have a dead guy in your bag?" Vardaman asked incredulously.

"Wait, what?" Coraline said.

"He stopped at the cat," Agata said.

"What cat?" Coraline asked. "Where... are my cats?"

Agata turned and nodded at the door, and it unlocked with a click. Almost immediately it was knocked open as Tress and Thimble pushed their way inside.

Coraline glanced back at Agata in utter confusion as Vardaman headed over to reclose the door.

"I hate to be the one to tell you this," Agata began, "but you have another cat."

"And a dead guy, apparently?" Coraline said, now eyeing her bag worriedly.

Vardaman was eyeing her worriedly.

"Hey," Coraline said, turning to the Deathdealer, "you're a Deathdealer. You can kill undead stuff, right?"

"Yes?" he said incredulously.

"So if I pull this dead guy out of my bag," she went on, "you could kill it for real, right?"

"It's undead?" he asked. "You have a fucking undead in your bag?"

"Well, there were these things in the river," Coraline began.

"Drowners," Agata corrected.

"There were these drowners," Coraline amended, "and one of them may have possibly gotten inside when I sort of maybe totally accidentally capsized my boat."

"You fucking capsized your boat in a fucking river infested with drowners?!" he said.

"In her defense, she was asleep," Agata said.

"You were... fucking asleep in a boat in a fucking river infested with drowners?" he said.

"I... didn't know it was infested with drowners?" Coraline said.

"There would have been signs," Vardaman said.

"Oh, I suppose you're really good at reading signs when you're asleep?" Coraline asked.

"How the fuck is she not dead?" Vardaman asked Agata.

Agata shrugged.

"I stabbed them," Coraline explained, reaching into her bag again. This time she pulled put what turned out to be a jar of fruit-based preservative spread with a spool of bowstrings stuck to it. "You know, like people do."

"You don't fucking stab drowners," the Deathdealer said.

"I do," Coraline told him, yanking out a particularly difficult chunk of detritus, which, after resisting quite effectively at first, finally tumbled out on top of her, knocking her backwards, reaching around her, grasping... hugging.

Coraline almost patted it awkwardly on the back before Vardaman shoved the thing away from her with a burst of energy from one hand and rushed forward and dispatched it entirely with his sword in the other.

The Deathdealer stared at it for a bit, then finally turned slowly back toward Coraline and said, "You weren't kidding."

"No?" she replied. Noticing something golden glinting from between the recorpsified corpse's ribs, she reached down to gingerly pick it up before realising what it was. "Oh, bugger, it ate it!" she said disgustedly, holding the coin out between two fingers. It was covered in partially liquified corpse bits.

Coraline looked around uncertainly for something with which to clean it off, and Vardaman handed her a towel.

After she'd gotten as much of the decomposing lipids and even worse substances off as she could, she held the still pretty gross coin out to him. "This," she said. "This is what I was trying to find."

It was large, for a coin, and ornate. On one side it was intricately detailed with a skull and mask - the very same mask as Coraline had wired to her sunglasses - and on the other was a set of scales. Judgement and death, balanced. The symbols of Kyrule, the God of the Dead. Kyrule, whom the Deathdealers served.

The Deathdealer took it and sighed. "Fuck," he said. "You're one of us."

"Am I?" Coraline said.

He sheathed his sword and pulled another coin, identical, out of his pocket, and held them both back out in the palm of his hand. "The Deathgod's coins," he said. "Granted to those who offer their lives to serve." He looked pointedly at Coraline. "And also to those who make another choice, more difficult still... what did you do?"

There was a long pause. Then Coraline said, uncertainly, "I killed someone."

"Why?" he asked.

"I... I don't know," she said. "I had to do something. It wasn't..." What? She wasn't even sure what had happened. It was all so jumbled. There had been blood in her coat, in her hair, for so long after.

Vardaman was nodding. "And in so doing, you caught the Deathgod's eye," he said. "As with this coin, you've earned his favour."

"So I did the right thing?" Coraline asked.

"Perhaps," Vardaman replied. "Perhaps not. But you chose, and you acted, where others might not have."

"That always was important in the stories," she murmured, cleaning her nails absent-mindedly. This made them worse, so then she grabbed the towel and tried cleaning them with that, instead.

This didn't help much either.

"How do you feel?" Vardaman asked.

"What?" Coraline asked.

"Afflicted with the Death of Souls, presumably you have symptoms," the Deathdealer said. "How are they now?"

"Now? But..." Coraline began, then just stopped. She felt fine. She hadn't even noticed before, but the voices seemed to be gone, she wasn't all that drunk, and all in all, she was feeling more alert and aware than she had in a very long time. She felt, if anything, almost awake.

"I'm fine?" she whispered, hardly daring to believe it. "Am I... did you... am I cured?" she asked.

Vardaman shook his head. "Not as such," he said. "I put an amulet on you while you slept. The hope was that it might mitigate the effects, and perhaps we could do more from there."

"Well, I think it worked," Coraline said, fishing it out from her blouse. It was small and black, set inexpertly on a loose chain, but the inconsistency of the edges made it seem like it had been broken off of something larger - some bits carved, others sharp and jagged. "What was it?" she asked.

"We're not sure," Vardaman told her. "Only a few pieces of the original artefact were recovered, and even that was largely by chance. But you should know that this is not a solution, and not without risks either."

"You tried it on the Carrier at Molstead, didn't you?" Agata said. "Naughty, naughty."

"According to the report, that fragment exploded," Vardaman said.

"Um," Coraline said, dropping the amulet hastily.

"Your circumstances differ sufficiently that we have no idea if that will happen," Vardaman told her.

"So what do you know?" she asked.

"We know that mages survive the longest," he said. "You're a witch?"

"I read about that," Coraline said. "But even Shalias only lasted a few months, and she was a very powerful warlock."

He nodded. "It seems to be tied to its use," Vardaman said, "not the power itself."

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, if she just kept going, 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.

"Yesss," 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. Then 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 moment anyone even suspects they try to kill me," Coraline said, looking away.

Vardaman raised his brow.

The thing was, 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. Essentially, 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, let down sister and... what? What was he to her, anyway?

It didn't matter. This would 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. 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 bloody 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, pulling me under, always trying to pull me under."

"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 between them.

Coraline looked at him in surprise, and then at the mask, looking almost like it, too, was watching her. 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 Vardaman why he 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 was a curse that spread to all with whom it came into contact, and in so doing, deprived 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, "You seemed to need it."

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, a distinction 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.

"Well, that's when it happened, 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. Still the same voices. Same shadows."

"What happened?" Vardaman asked.

Coraline shrugged. "It was a town, first I'd seen, but it all wrecked," she said, picking at a cookie. "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 went on. "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. It wasn't how it had happened at all.

A dream.

What she was remembering, had it 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 behind the altar, 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.

"Huh?" 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.

"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.

"Shifting how?" Vardaman's voice said, somewhere distant.

"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 angry Thimble.

"You passed out." He poured her a shalott. "Have a drink. Water for the flow."

She did, slowly, trembling, though she wasn't entirely sure shalott actually had any water in it to begin with. 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 slowed to a standstill, she went over it again and again...

And then, in the shadow of dream, she heard it.

"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."

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, but by giving in, letting the sweet filth 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 sweet sludge feeling pulling on her, urging her to do the same, to join in and break Alyre. Use the conduit and break her. Break her and take her.

But she didn't. She didn't join in, and instead reached 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, and I don't have to do what it says anyhow. So instead I just grab the woman and try to slit her throat," Coraline said, 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..." she trailed off.

That wasn't right.

"They aren't her screams. They don't stop," she said.

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 it was the noise that covered everything. 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...

Finally the screams gave way, and it was then that she heard the voices underneath 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 sweet 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, remembering the strangeness of the black. The familiarity of the threshhold, stranger still.

Agata yawned, emitting a horrible smell of fish. Tress leaned over to smell it up close.

"What happened next?" Vardaman asked finally.

Coraline shrugged. "I just wake up and I'm covered in blood," she 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... like a hangover when you're still very drunk."

In memory, the dream, 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, grabbing her by the arms, holding her still. "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, letting go. "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.

Coraline stared at Thimble.

"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. They didn't seem to be any of the same gods as they'd had where she was really from.

"Where did you get your mask, then?" Vardaman asked, indicating the mask-sunglasses still on the table, but now covered in half a Thimble. Because it was the same design. The exact same design. She just had no idea what it meant.

"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 surprise, which quickly turned into 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 managed to avoid jumping out of her seat again as well, but only barely. Instead she knocked a jar off the table with the back of her hand and then did her best to look like it had been entirely intentional, leaning over slightly to watch it fall with a crash.

Aeries - spring, three years past

They kept taking her for a wizard. Coraline had finally gotten to a town with people, real, normal people, humans and elves alike, and they kept taking her for a wizard.

For the most part, it was pretty neat. There was a general sense of wonder and curiosity everywhere she went, kids kept following her around asking her to make their siblings disappear and prying for stories, and to her face, the folks were all quite polite. There were a few things, though. Slammed doors as she went by. Parents trying to keep their kids away from her. A bit of fear, underneath everything else, as Coraline got supplies and cleaned out her bag and generally asked a whole lot of questions of her own.

She wound up in the local inn at the end of it, but here, at least, all the attention was elsewhere when she came in. Something going on in the corner, with a bit of a crowd of folks gathered around, complete with periodic booing and cheering.

Curious, Coraline went over to check it out as well, pushing her way through the crowd, only to find the focus to be two men across a table from each other with a deck of cards. One appeared to be a local, the other not so much - he wearing relatively fancy, though tattered, clothes in a style that looked almost greek. But it was his eyes that stood out the most. They were golden and mirrored, even stranger than any she'd seen on the elves so far, or indeed on anything living.

The local placed a card face-down in front of the outsider with the eyes, who turned it over. A duck. It even said 'a duck' in large, oddly shifting, letters at the bottom, just in case the image was unclear.

The crowd booed. Coraline looked around at them in confusion, but nobody paid her any mind.

The outsider took the deck, shuffled it, and placed a card in front of the local, who likewise turned it over. A frog in a dress.

Coraline raised an eyebrow.

The crowd nodded a bit at this.

A few more rounds went on, with some impossibly coloured seasons, a traveller, and a dead end that seemed to be nothing more than an enormous mass of tentacles, amidst varied responses and a fair bit of murmurring. Coraline was starting to lose interest, and moved to push her way back out of the crowd, when everything suddenly went horribly silent.

The card on the table was Death. It was a Grim Reaper, though masked like the skull on her coin, complete with bony grin and tattered robes and vicious scythe, and the label said simply 'Death'.

"Death," someone helpfully whispered near Coraline. She nodded sarcastically as they waited for a response from the table.

"Good," the outsider with the eyes said finally. It seemed the card had been dealt to him.

"No," the dealer said. "That's not good."

The crowd was shuffling now, clearly uneasy about something.

"Why not?" Coraline asked, pushing forward entirely and picking up the card. The dealer flinched away, but the outsider just turned his strange gaze on her, staring at, and almost, it seemed, even through her. "The Death card needn't necessarily mean 'death' at all," Coraline went on, "simply change and possibility, a transition from one state to another. The end of how things were, but a new beginning, of how things may and shall yet be."

Everyone just sort of stared at her.

"But that's just one interpretation, of course..." she added quickly. Or so she hoped; she had no idea what this game was supposed to be.

"Death is death," the dealer said.

"We who were living are now dying, with a little patience?" Coraline suggested.

"Yes," the outsider said, staring at the card in Coraline's hands.

"No," someone else in the audience said, much more forcefully.

"Oh." Coraline looked around. "So... what, then?" she asked, losing all her momentum.

A rather wild-haired man pushed his way through the crowd. He was dressed in similar, though less tattered, garb to the other outsider at the table. "You know what?" he said, hauling his companion out of his seat, "We were just leaving."

"No, I don't think so," the dealer said, also rising.

"No?" the man said warningly.

Coraline pulled her staff over her shoulder.

The dealer shook his head, giving the outsider with the eyes a long look. "No," he repeated, reaching for something in his pocket. "This man is condemned. Whatever his crime, we should see the sentence through."

Without even thinking, Coraline hit him over the head with her staff. It just seemed the thing to do.

The guy slid to the floor.

There was an alarmingly long pause, full of even more deathly silence.

A moment later, the crowd had exploded into utter chaos. Fists were flying every which way, brawling breaking out, grabbing and kicking and yelling and screaming. Coraline tried to dodge the bulk of it, to get out of the middle, pushing away at everything nearby and using her staff as a pry bar, but someone elbowed her hard and she nearly got trampled right there. Then someone else grabbed her and started pulling her in another direction, so she tried to hit him, instead.

"Hey! I'm not your enemy!" the guy yelled in her face, and she realised it was the other outsider, and stopped, confused, just clinging to her staff instead. He was attempting to haul his odd-eyed companion out, too, but the other guy wasn't even helping, so Coraline started swinging at everyone in front of them instead.

When they burst out into the sweet cool air behind the inn, the guy turned to Coraline, said, "I'm Costa, this is Merrs, and you should probably come with us."

"Er..." Coraline said.

Merrs stared vaguely off into space.

"Wait here," Costa said, and hurried off toward the stables, leaving Coraline with Merrs.

Coraline stared at him experimentally.

Merrs didn't say anything, instead turning vaguely away. He started as if to head off in what appeared to be a completely random direction, but then Coraline grabbed his sleeve and he stopped.

He looked tired and vacant, but more than that, he just seemed lost. Utterly, hopelessly lost.

Then Costa was leading three horses back, shoving the listless Merrs onto one, and shoving Coraline onto another, and then quickly thrusting her staff back into her hands when she dropped it as a result.

"Um," Coraline said, but then realised she didn't actually have anything to say, and that wherever this led, it couldn't be any worse than where she had been going.

Then Costa jumped into the saddle of the third, and, holding onto the leads of the other two, brought the three horses to a gallop around down a muddy track out.

Coraline wasn't entirely sure how to feel about this, but on the other hand, hey, free horse. Or something along those lines; she wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that, either.

For whatever reason, she still had the Death card.

Inn at Somn's Post - evening

Once they'd gotten the hairball and such cleaned up, dealt with the guy who'd fallen through the ceiling in the other room, and found Thimble again after he ran off as a result, Vardaman stuck a magelight to the ceiling and they settled down to resume. It was getting dark, and while they had a few lamps, the things weren't very bright.

"So to clarify," Vardaman said again, "when exactly did the voices start?"

"I don't know," Coraline said tiredly, poking at a cookie. "Just after I got here..."

"And you came here from Ord?" Vardaman asked.

She nodded. "It wasn't intentional. I guess you might say I fell through a hole," Coraline said, then added quickly, "I mean, I think that's what happened." 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 the cat 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 really just falling asleep on a witch's face will do it," Agata told her.

"How convenient," Coraline muttered.

Agata purred. 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.

"Magic," Agata said from the table. "She did magic. Went and threw everything off."

"Magic?" Vardaman asked. "But magic has been the only means carriers have had of fighting the Death of Souls. It only buys perhaps a little more time. You are saying that for you, it made it worse?"

Coraline gave him a weird look, but then just said, "Everything had been basically fine for a few more weeks, and I'd been travelling with these two guys when one of them got stabbed. So I healed him. I don't even know how, I just did it, and the voices exploded."

Vardaman frowned.

"I healed him and I just... drowned in voices," she said. "Completely blacked out. Now it gets worse until I sleep, but it goes mostly back to normal after. Every time I come back up it's a little worse."

"But not entirely," Vardaman said.

"It gets a little worse every time," Coraline said. "At least when it's major. I dunno if it matters with the little things."

"Like what?" Vardaman asked.

"If someone's sick, it's really easy to trigger an immune response," Coraline said. "Or a small scratch or scrape, it doesn't really seem to hurt me at all. But this guy had been real bashed up, major trauma, so it took a lot more energy."

"Those aren't spells," the Deathdealer mused.

"Er, no," Coraline said. "I don't... think so, anyway..."

"Not spells, but inate sorcery," Agata agreed. "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 made sense in the first place, but still.

Telegrin - spring, three years past

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. The voices returned in force. They came as an onslaught, 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.

Only blackness, and no silence.

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.

A shadow stopped her, bright against the black, 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 that were not there. 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.

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.

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.

Inn at Somn's Post - night

"That's what the drinking is for," Coraline told Vardaman over another mug of shalott. "As long as I stay drunk, it keeps the voices down."

Though it had looked like quite a bit coming in, they'd finished a fairly hefty supper, and were now having at the booze with considerable gusto, especially in Vardaman's case. Now, though, he just spat out his shalott and stared at her.

"I found out by accident," Coraline explained. "I'd completely lost myself, just been wandering around Telegrin like any old Carrier, probably..."

"Stage three," Vardaman said, interrupting her.

Coraline shrugged. "Dunno how long that lasted," she said, "but at some point I'd apparently wandered into a bar and some guy bought me a shalott. And suddenly I was me again. Or mostly."

"And then it comes back when you sober up?" the Deathdealer said.

She nodded. "I just lose myself again, though if I really try I can still maintain a little control," she said. "A little. But it's horrible. I messed up so much at first."

Vardarman stared at her. Finally he said, "A walking nightmare..." 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, standing up. "I'm sorry. I didn't believe you, not entirely... 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 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 fucking understand."

"You think I know?!" she said.

"Fuck, no, obviously," he insisted, "But you have to realise this is completely new. Even Shalias only lasted two fucking months!"

"Oh, do I?" Coraline snarled, getting up as well. "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 bloody 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.

"I'm sorry," Coraline said tiredly, and righted her chair. "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 grey 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 colleague 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."

Amraeve - winter, three years past

Coraline had needed information, and finally, after coming to Soravia and hitting the first real library she'd seen on this whole book-forsaken planet, she had found something. She'd kind of had to steal it as part of what had turned out to be a surprisingly convoluted library heist, of course, but as far as she could tell, it had worked.

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 once her research had boiled it down to a single, highly-restricted candidate that had just happened to reside in this library, 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 of stories. It was titled The Heresies of Kyrule, and it was full of secrets.

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.

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. A couple started advancing with weapons, though they did so slowly, threateningly, as though trying to simply drive her back more 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 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!"

The crowd mumbled apologetically.

"If you destroy a library," Coraline went on, "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!"

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 largely 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, sort of humanoid, orcan-sized, with six 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. She was a librarian, after all. They had arsenals.

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.

They fled.

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. Perkele?

"You have done well, messenger," the angel went on. "You could have allowed events to unfold, however here we stand."

"I am a librarian!" she said 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 and people who didn't know what I was, 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 stinky 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!" At some point she'd reverted to Finnish, but she didn't even care.

"That's what I've got hanging on my shoulders, all of that, and yet only now you come, when I'm impersonating a bloody 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 upstairs - morning

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 lying diagonally across the bed with a leg hanging off the side, using another cat as a pillow.

The third cat was somehow stretched out 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 as it tried to climb up over his head and jump away. This just made it worse.

"Just help him up," Coraline said, rising from behind the other side of the bed, covered in blankets, like some sort of swamp thing. "Support his legs so he's not hanging."

"Gragh?" Vardaman yelled. Thimble hissed and tried to climb over Vardaman's head again, clawing it 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 by the butt and neck 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.

"Right," 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 in the case of Carriers might then be bolstering them against the Death of Souls."

"So where do witches usually get their powers?" she asked, getting out a bottle of whiskey.

He shrugged, pulling on his armour, which in another world would have perhaps amounted to biker gear. "Their familiars, maybe, or the people around them? Fucking witches tend not 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.

Inn at Somn's Post - morning

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.

Instead, the Deathdealer yawned massively and pulled the cap off 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, shaking the bottle upside down. It seemed to be basically solid, and didn't pour out at all.

"I have a condition," she said, sipping her whiskey.

"No shit," he said, then asked, "How does that work, do you know? The 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 rest of the line didn't really fit.

"I see," Vardaman said, giving up on the bottle and scooping out some of the shalott with a spoon.

Coraline stroked Agata vaguely, but she was looking at Thimble. "You know what the worst thing about all this is?" she asked after a bit.

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 spoonful of 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 fucking cheery," Vardaman said, then asked, "So what happens if you just don't use magic?"

"Dunno," Coraline said. "There's always something that comes up. I don't think it'd work, though. I've already gone too far."

He nodded, then banged the bottle on the table a bit in an attempt to get more out.

"Perhaps I should point out that alcohol is not supposed to be solid," Agata said dryly.

Vardaman gave the cat an annoyed look, then stuffed the bottle under Agata's belly. She hissed at him and then started licking herself.

Soravian hills - 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 metres 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 buckets?" she said to herself, watching it in the distance. Was it sick with something?

There still wasn't any sign of the adventurers she'd sent out after it, 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. This was a little worrisome, since the reason she'd gone after them at all was because ten minutes after they'd left she'd actually read the bounty description and realised there was basically no way they were actually up to the task.

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 metres 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 were 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 wispy clouds, punching holes in those instead.

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'.

"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, and over a small hill, and 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.

"Voi 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 go at figuring out how to get the 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 tried to gasp for deep breaths of air, but then he made a pained squeak 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 something about his spine also seemed to be a bit weird, 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.

In the meantime, 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 different, 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.

String 10923

"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

Inn at Somn's Post - noonish

Later, after two of the cats had jumped off the table after a moth, Vardaman asked, "Is there anything else that might be relevant that's happened?"

Coraline shrugged.

"Anything generally weird?" he then asked.

"Lots of things," Coraline said. "Some particularly annoying, too, like that time an angel showed up."

"Why?" Vardaman asked.

"These assholes wanted to burn a library and I couldn't be having with that," Coraline said. "And I guess this angel thought I needed help or something."

"Did you?" Vardaman asked.

"No," Coraline said. "Well, probably not. I kind of flipped out at it and told it to go fuck itself with a cactus, though."

"That's our witch," Agata said proudly, jumping back onto the table.

Vardaman gave Coraline a long look and rubbed his brow.

"Heh," Coraline said. She certainly hadn't been amused at the time, but it seemed a lot funnier in retrospect. "Really, though, I guess a lot of it was just... I was a bit bitter about this whole Death of Souls thing, and when the angel said it was 'in the service of Kyrule', that didn't help matters, not in the least because his name kept popping up every time someone tried to kill me."

"For that, I am truly sorry," Vardaman said. "That is not how it should have been."

"So after all of that an angel shows up to 'help' with the one thing in all the worlds I can actually do myself," Coraline went on, nodding. "I kind of lost it." She paused, then added, "Even if I didn't have a possessed goat skull on me."

"Why... 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, adopting a slightly more serious tone herself, but only slightly.

"Yes," Vardaman said slowly. "I do not know how your story will go, but there are resources there, information that may lead you to something concrete. A colleague of mine was 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?" Coraline asked.

"We will go to the Great Temple at Abearanoth," Vardaman told her.

"We?" Coraline said, giving him a look of pure death, as only a Finn can.

"Or... you could go alone," Vardaman said hastily, recoiling away from her. "Show them your coin, then, and speak only to the High Priest," he said, recovering. "Tell him, then, that Kyrule sent you. He should be expecting you and know what to do."

"And if he doesn't?" Coraline asked suspiciously.

"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, now rather dubiously.

"For this, you will have it," Vardaman said.

"Er," Coraline said. Gods. They weren't all bad, she supposed, but...

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.

The cat purred and curled his head into her hand.

"If not him, then trust me," Vardaman said.

Coraline nodded vaguely, fiddling 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. Coraline looked out at it sullenly.

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 as she ascended the last few steps. 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, for one, he wasn't glaring at them with all the viciousness of a very angry small dog, and for another, 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 tablet 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.

"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 relatively normal.

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 told her delightedly. "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 agreed. 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?" 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 huge, and meaningless. 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 grand, 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, and a few kids running around playing in the balls.

"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 would 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. "Not anymore. 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 embarrassment. 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. Probably a good sign. "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 the god 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.

"Sorry?" 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. This place, this was just... between. A space between worlds. A blackness without time. Like the Room, but not. 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.

"Sorry?" 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." And she'd just known it was there? What was she doing? 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 could he 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 for 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.

"Sorry?" Vardaman said.

"No, that's good," Coraline said, recovering. "Sorry. Just... ask me who I would say reigns, will you?"

"Why?" he said.

"Just... to test this." He should have asked it automatically in the first place. 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 vague 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, shaking his head.

"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.

Part 4 - Divergence

The Exodus, 2040 years ago to the date, was, essentially, the apocalypse. But human life endured. People survived, escaped the falling of the old world, and rebuilt on the new, making new lives for themselves from the ashes they brought with them.

Much was lost. Culture, technology, language, but even now things remain, little clues, hints, in names, in the ways people dress, in the things they accept, and reject.

The name of the old world.

Notes:

1. Placeholder languages may be chosen/generated by automated processes.
2. The Deathdealer has been condemned.
3. Insert metaphor as indicated in the instructions.
4. Sisu.
5. Do we have to make you a list, sweetling?
6. The name was eaten. Now we rename it: Socorra.

String 3106

"One always approaches the unknown with greater caution the first time around."

~ Dr. John Haugeland

Blocky structure - underground

There had been 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 said "Hi," and Nolan 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.

Blocky structure - underground

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, the door scraping its way ponderously aside.

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. This didn't slow him down any.

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 slid 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, and some encouragement from Erry, 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.

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 the 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. He did it again and the wall groaned and shifted, exploding 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 as soon as it was out.

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.

Lauhen sea - night

Erry awoke almost immediately when the four of them finally broke the surface, and promptly pulled her way free and sank. The other three trod 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?"

"Kit!" Jora said disappointedly.

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, hauling Erry aside, "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 back 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.

The fish flopped weakly, once, and then went still.

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.

Lauhen Sea - day

The problem with being adrift at sea for long periods of time, especially without having to worry about the whole issue of survival, is that above all else, it is exceedingly, excruciatingly, boring.

At first it wasn't too bad. The kids had a lot to talk about - things like what they were going to do now; how they were lost at sea; whose fault this was; how annoying the sunlight and general warmth was; how tired they were of fish; how they were seriously, somehow, lost at sea; how much random crap Kit could reasonably make out of the same magic ice as the raft itself; and how did anyone notice they were lost at sea? Because they were totally lost at sea.

At some point they rigged up something of an awning to keep the sun off, but there was still plenty else to complain about.

But then they slowly ran out of things. Even the last "So I couldn't help noticing we're still lost at sea..." trailed off into listless silence as they all sat around doing essentially nothing, only a few things bubbling upward. Nolan saying unsettling things under his breath that nobody cared to hear. Jora trying to meditate. Kit desalinating seawater and half-heartedly trying to come up with a better barrel design so it'd stop evaporating so much, but only sort of trying. Erry testing out an ice-forged fishing pole and getting the line tangled in her hair and then just giving up, hook still lost to her curls, staring out to sea.

Sometimes clouds wisped vaguely overhead, but for the most part everything was blue, blue, blue.

Evenings came late, sprinkled with inklings of colour, and the nights were almost as warm as the days.

One 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.

Another saw a contest in which everyone tried to see who could look more dead. Kit lost immediately due to his lips visibly bleeding. Nolan eventually won, having, as it turned out, fallen asleep.

A third saw the sky almost become cloudy.

"Look, clouds," Kit said.

The clouds dissipated shortly after.

At one point, Erry said, for the nth time, "It's so sunny. Why is it so sunny?" It was another day, bright and cloudless, full of warmth and blue. The kids were sprawled around the raft in listless boredom.

"Because it's summer," Nolan said absently, not really looking. This was, strangely, the first time he'd said this.

The next day, Erry said, "It's not summer."

Several hours later, Jora said, "It is, though." Her voice was utterly devoid of energy. "The days are longer than the nights. That only happens in summer."

Two days later, Erry retorted, "It was summer. It's not gonna be summer again."

"Different summer," Nolan said. "We're on the other side now."

No real significance of this registered with anyone.

Ten minutes later, Jora snapped and decided they should reconsider everything they had with them and made everyone turn out their pockets so she could tally up every item.

Unfortunately her initial demand came out completely listlessly, so it took a moment to register with the others.

"What?" Kit said finally.

Jora rubbed her back and sat up properly. "Turn out your pockets," she managed in what still turned out to be a much more authoritative, and, for that matter, awake croak. "All of you, pockets. We must have something more we can be doing with this."

The others stared at her.

So Jora upended her bag and pulled some stuff out of her own pockets. The pocket stuff was mostly lint, along with a few keys and a small knife, but it was the principle of the matter.

She indicated the pile and eyed the others expectantly, and finally Kit and Erry scooted over a bit toward her and the pile.

Nolan got up entirely and dropped a large stuffed bear on it, almost as larger as he was, giving no indication of where it had come from. Considering none of the others had even seen it up until now, this was a little alarming.

Kit registered his alarm by saying, "What," and vaguely gesturing toward it.

Wordlessly, Nolan then pulled out a shovel and then dropped a magic bag on top of the bear, causing part of its head to disappear, the bag collapsing flatly across it as though containing nothing.

"Oh," Kit said, while Erry scurried over and grabbed the bag to investigate, holding it up and peering inside. For a moment her head disappeared, and then she was pulling out various things and piling them up with everything else.

Kit tossed some things from his own pockets in.

Nolan very slowly added a sheep rib, a pair of mismatched socks, and a small knife to the pile.

"Anything else?" Jora said.

"Oh!" Erry exclaimed, "yeah!" She pulled a dirty lump out of one of her pockets and chucked that in.

Jora nodded.

It was a significant pile, ankle-high, full of lint, filling the centre of the raft with an oddly alien nostalgia. None of the stuff fit here. It was all a piece of another world. A world of land. Of stuff. Of people.

The tally came to mostly lint, partly junk, a whole lot of random toys and tools and bits of broken things, a surprisingly good spade, not nearly enough alchemical ingredients, an ineffective amount of currency, only some of which was Soravian, some random bits of food, enough martial weapons to wage a small war, and a giant wad of yarn.

"Well," Kit said.

"That's a lot of yarn," Erry said.

"This is who we are," Jora said, "distilled down to simple items."

"What?" Kit said.

"Er," Jora said quickly, and then pushed Nolan at the pile.

Nolan dug through it and picked up the flaky brown lump that had been the contents of Erry's pockets.

Kit accepted it gingerly and looked it over. Then he glanced at Erry. "Do I even wanna know?" he said.

"Do you ever?" Erry asked.

"So what is it?" Jora asked. "Dirt?"

Kit stared at it blankly.

Then Nolan reached over, took back 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 knuckle die, and several peach pits.

"Boom," Nolan said, holding up one of the pits.

String 19850

"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

Somn's Post streets - morning

Vardaman and the strange librarian parted ways easily enough, neither saying a word to each other as Vardaman saw the latter off, continuing on down the river now on a proper ferry.

He sighed heavily, only praying he wouldn't regret this, as he turned back toward the rest of town.

There was a boy staring up at him in awe.

"Yes?" he said.

"Are you a hunter?" the boy asked excitedly. "Like, a real one? Do you hunt monsters? Have you fought a werebear? Can you teach me?"

Vardaman gave the boy a long, flat stare, but this did nothing to dissuade him. Instead, the boy grinned hopefully, a small bit of drool oozing out of the side of his mouth.

"Werebears, trees, giant rats," Vardaman said finally, leaning down in a way that may or may not have been menacing. "I've even fought vampires, though they had nothing on the trees. Trees'll really get you, you know."

"Trees?" the boy asked, wide-eyed.

"Oh yes," Vardaman said. "Trees are some of the scariest monsters out there. Now there's folks who specialise in taking on trees, but I'd not go near them. Dangerous sorts."

"Lumberjacks!" the boy exclaimed.

"Yes..." Vardaman breathed. "They'll take on the biggest trees that walk..."

"Trees walk?" the boy said, hanging onto every word in a sort of half-incredulous fascination.

"The big ones do. The old ones," Vardaman said. "And they can be angry. Vicious sorts. Moving their roots only at night, stomping down with great force on all in their paths. A forest can move through a city, crushing it into pebbles."

"Really..." the boy said, grinning widely.

"Yes," Vardaman sighed, straightening up. "Though they have not done that in over a hundred years."

"So you haven't even seen it?" the boy said.

"Oh, I've seen it," Vardaman said.

"And you didn't stop it?" the boy asked.

"How do you propose I would do that, with a sword?" Vardaman said, drawing one with a quick yank at the holster.

The boy jumped back, losing his smile for a split moment, before it came back even wider.

"You tried using a sword on a tree, kid?" Vardaman asked, holding up the blade between them.

The boy shook his head mutely.

"Well, don't," Vardaman told him. "That's terrible for a blade."

Vardaman spun about, shaking his head, and ambled off with sword still out.

The boy stared after him.

The order came as Vardaman was checking the town's boards for bounty postings: Go west and follow the trails of blood. There is a message waiting with your brothers.

He sighed and slapped a particularly confusing note about something that had apparently eaten a little girl's chicken back on the board. Probably for the best, all things considered. None of the jobs here were really worth a whole lot, as much as he would have liked to find out what the deal had been with that chicken.

Merrilenn countryside - day

Vardaman got to the first battlefield in the late morning. 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 even 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 there he took a moment to thrust his sword into the ground, falling to his knees along with it, beginning a ritual to cleanse the place. He spoke softly but quickly, invoking old words and older magic.

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 that spread out slowly over the battlefield, 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.

"Fuck, 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.

"Ugh," he groaned, 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.

Soravian camp - noonish

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.

Considering how long it had taken them to get around to it, 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.

"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 corrected, 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.

Camp of the Guardians of the Passing - afternoon

They got to the adjacent, and much smaller, more orderly encampment of what turned out to be their own soldiers a few minutes later.

"Well, fuck," Vardaman said. "This you don't see every day."

"Not this side of the Dalarains, certainly," Nurunn agreed, then said, "We found the Carrier."

"Yeah?" Vardaman asked.

"It exploded," Nurunn said.

Another priest, Doranis, hurried over to meet them, and he smiled welcomingly. "You could only be the infamous Vardaman," Doranis said, bowing.

"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 suggested.

"Oh, I could, could I?" Vardaman said.

"This is Doranis," Nurunn said.

"I'm Vardaman," Vardaman said.

"Hello Vardaman," Doranis said.

"Hello," Vardaman said. "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 abomination thing a field back," he went on, gesturing back over his shoulder. "It was as though a pile of corpses had all stuck together and then got up and tried to smash me."

"Ugh," 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 cognisant hand."

"It is a possibility some budding young necromancer happened across the battlefield and tried to make such 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. "It's not important." Then he asked, "Your Carrier exploded? And 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 devastation.

"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 may yet get it," Vardaman mused, though for now he kept news of the new Carrier to himself.

Soravian camp - afternoon

Later, Vardaman and Nurunn broke from the camp once more to discuss other things. They wound up on a ridge overlooking the Soravian 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," the 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 bemused look.

Nurunn shook his head. "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, still holding his sword on Vardaman in a vaguely threatening manner, "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.

Lauhen Sea - morning

Morning just sort of happened. It was a little unclear how it had happened. Nobody was quite awake enough to say.

The thing was, of all the reasons why magic was not typically combined with agriculture on Cerris, the sheer effort involved did not top the list. Normally, the simple fact that wizards almost never actually knew the first thing about agriculture was enough all by itself.

Kit was only a slight exception to this rule. He'd picked up a few things here and there simply by nature of living next to a farm, but since he spent the vast majority of his time not actually around said farm, they were only a few things. Whereas his sister knew a rather similar amount even though she did go help out around the place sometimes and just never paid the slightest attention to what she was doing. She just cared that they gave her sweets.

Jora knew hunting far better than farming.

Nolan probably knew the most of any of them about farming, and since he and Kit both spoke fluent nerd in a way that was able to communicate some of this knowledge, they were between them able to successfully agriculture a tree using magic. It took three tries, a whole lot of wrangling and grief, one very large peach tree falling out of the raft and floating away, a small explosion, and all night, but at the end of it, there was a thick tree trunk lying across the raft like some sort of bizarre art project. One end of the trunk angled upward off the side of the raft, complete with a fully-formed, over-large crown with branches sticking out in every direction. The other looped down abruptly over the opposite side of the raft, with a large spread of roots jutting down rather deeply into the water in an unexpectedly successful attempt to keep the entire thing from tipping over.

Petals drifted by in the morning breeze. Somehow the thing was simultaneously blooming and dropping ripe peaches, mostly in the water, while growing out of pure seawater on the opposite end.

Kit would have been the only one even remotely capable of explaining this, but he was apparently in a coma.

This was discovered by Nolan announcing, "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, poking her brother with a peach.

"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. She pointed vaguely backwards over her shoulder. "Are trees supposed to do this?"

"Sure," Erry said, not that she had any idea what Jora was actually asking.

Merrilenn Shade docks - morning

Coraline booked passage aboard the Juniper's Bark, headed for Amraeve, and they set sail without issue. Nobody minded the cats. The trip was set to take about a week and then she'd need to find another way to get the rest of the way up the river to Soras, but assuming the 'Gateway' Vardaman had described worked, this would still be much faster than trying to go the entire way to Abaeranoth by ship.

In the meantime, she was prepared to be very, very bored.

Agata, on the other hand, was not, and hopped up onto the gunwale and puked out over the waves.

"Buggrit, you're making me sick," Coraline said.

"Believe me, Names," the cat replied amidst a few more wet hacks, "you're the only reason I'm doing as well as I am."

"Names?" Coraline asked.

"You seem to go through a few," Agata said.

Juniper's Bark cabins - evening

Evening came, full of disappointment. They expected her to eat dinner with them. Coraline stared at the assembled men - the captain and several other important-seeming sorts - all taking their seats around the table and grumbled to herself. So this was what happened when she actually paid her way aboard.

There was an empty seat next to the captain. He looked at her expectantly.

Coraline mentally cussed him out as she sat, and then proceeded to say absolutely nothing through the whole meal, merely shrugging and nodding a few times when questions were directed squarely at her, drinking what might have been more wine than everyone else at the table combined.

After, she fled, all of two doors down to her own cabin.

There was a man in it.

Coraline glared at him with all the cold, empty death she could muster, but he simply bounded past her and shut the door. "Please," he said, turning back, a pleading look on his rugged features. "Don't tell anyone I'm here."

"Huh?" she said blankly. The hell was he doing? Was this seriously happening again?

Agata was on a shelf, licking herself. Nothing seemed terribly amiss about the cabin itself.

"Please, my lady, I know I have no right to ask, but you must help me," the man said. "I'm not here, it's just..."

"You look here," Coraline said, and pointed and indicated him. "You," she added, and then indicated the room. "Here."

"Please," he repeated. He was starting to get on her nerves for the repetition alone. "If they find me, they'll throw me overboard, or worse. My House is fallen. I'm to Amraeve in search of asylum, but if they should find me..."

"Tell me you're not a stowaway," she said, then found herself wondering why she hadn't thought of doing that herself. Stowaways avoided everyone. It'd have been perfect.

"I'm afraid I am, my lady," he said.

"Great," she said. "So why are you in here?" She indicated the room.

"I..." he began. "I'm so hungry. I needed... do you have any food?"

Coraline realised she really had to pee, and glanced at Agata. The cat now had a leg sticking straight up, which was a little remarkable.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked," he said.

"You, stay put," Coraline said, pointing at him. She went to her bed and started fishing random crap out of her bag, but the food appeared to all be toward the bottom. After tugging out a particularly difficult wad of tangled bedding, she finally found some jars and other random packages of fairly long-lived food and chucked them at the guy.

She realised he was staring at her and said, "What?"

"Lady Sonmi averts Her gaze," the man said, and bowed. He quickly picked up the bits he'd failed to catch

Coraline gave him a blank stare, and then shooed him out. "It's not kindness," she muttered. "I just don't care."

"The path of least resistance is kinder than some," Agata said through a tongueful of hair, which she then proceeded to try to spit out.

A moment later this had turned into puking all over the floor, and Coraline was clinging to a beam trying not to be sick herself.

Winged Victory galley - summer, three years past

Coraline didn't really know where the ship was headed, let alone where she specifically was headed overall. She'd simply needed to be out of there, away from Telegrin, to comply with the one imperative that had kept her alive so far - to keep moving - and so she'd taken the first job she could get on a ship leaving port. It had wound up being a cook's position on the Winged Victory. They'd made a small fuss about her being a woman and a slightly bigger fuss about her not really having any relevant experience, but they were also on a tight schedule and she made a convincing argument.

And now here she was, manning the kitchen, or whatever they called it, chasing away rats, cooking up giant pots of various quasi-edibles, rationing food supplies with maths she had never thought she would actually use.

For their part, the folks who had hired her were quite impressed.

Coraline just hoped they would make it to wherever it was they had said they were going, and if anything did go wrong, her maths would cover it.

She was peeling some dried meat when a man burst into the kitchen.

"Uh... you're not supposed to be here," Coraline said, and waggled her rather large knife at him. She didn't recognise him, which was a little odd; most of the men had taken considerable effort to cozy up to her.

"Please, help me!" the man said. "Quickly, you need to hide me!"

"Uh..." Coraline said, not quite understanding. She did? Why? What?

He stared at her insistently a moment longer, and then jumped past, scrambling about, trying the cupboards, opening up the storage.

"Hey!" Coraline yelled indignantly and jumped at him with the knife, blocking his passage before he could mess up the entire kitchen.

He stopped, uncertainly, eyeing her and the knife.

The door burst open and several of the crew rushed in, grabbing the guy, restraining him even as he fought back.

"It's all right," one of them told Coraline. "You're safe now."

"The hell is going on?" Coraline asked as they left, hauling the still-struggling man away.

"Stowaway, ma'am," one of them said. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

Coraline shook her head. Not her. Her shelves, on the other hand...

Later, the crew bound the man, stabbed him, and tossed him overboard. He screamed all the while.

"Oh," Coraline whispered.

Merrilenn countryside - evening

The horse got Vardaman south toward the coast over at a nice lazy amble, partly because the horse was a rather laid-back sort itself, and partly because Vardaman was in no real 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 fucking 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.

Merrilenn countryside - night

Hours passed, or at least what felt like hours. The rain did not let up. It simply fell in sheets and waves, a drenching torrent that broke ground and visibility alike, obscuring all but the largest things in dancing mist.

It was miserable. Vardaman was soaked through. He was cold and tired, he could hardly see, his clothes were chafing, his boots were full of mud, and his armour, quite probably, was utterly ruined.

He was also beginning to seriously doubt he was even headed in the right direction. Vaguely down south had felt like the right direction before, but he'd been off the main roads and now he wasn't even sure he was going down, let alone south. Everything was just dark, with mud and wet and iceberg things looming up out of the rain, suddenly taking shape for a few quick moments before being lost once more.

Another shape loomed. This one was a rock. They were usually trees.

Vardaman navigated around it, more by feel than sight. Were his hands going numb? His hands were going numb.

Keep going, he told himself. Just keep going.

The next shape looming out of the drenching dark was a tree. He moved to go around that as well.

The tree moved to follow.

The tree was glowing.

Perhaps not a tree. He peered at it blankly, not even hoping it would be something helpful. Nothing was ever helpful when days went like this.

It peered back at him with vicious teeth, which darted at him hungrily.

"Whuh," Vardaman managed, before slipping and falling in the mud. He knew that shape. It was familiar, somehow. But still it took a moment to register as he hopped back up, sword at the ready, only for another one to fly right through him in a rush of sharp coldness.

He gasped, but there was no time to really react to this, either. Three more were coming right at him, and he slashed at them with his silver sword, clipping one as it passed. It shattered into shimmering mist as the others came about, glowing softly, with teeth gleaming, eyes beady, and fins cutting through the rain.

And then it registered.

Sharks.

He was being attacked by sharks.

This time he simply ducked away. Ghost sharks. They'd discussed this at the temple, back in training. It was one of those ridiculous things that just sounded totally awesome. They hadn't really believed, of course. It was too ridiculous. Just something out of a book.

Except theses things circling him now seemed to be quite real.

On the other hand, they were also ghosts. Surprise duly registered, Vardaman knew exactly how to deal with ghosts: he rose a hand in benediction, spoke a prayer against the din of the storm, and let out a blast of cleansing light that simply swept the sharks away into the distant splattering.

After, the wet darkness found him alone once more.

And also somewhat blinded.

Merrilenn Shade - dawn

Vardaman finally got into town around dawn, the rain letting up all very suddenly amidst the twilight glimmers.

The guards at the gate were just as wet as he was, and looked just as miserable. They all exchanged vaguely hopeless looks and then proceeded to ignore each other. It was not exactly the warmest welcome Vardaman had ever received, but it was rather reassuring, in rather the same way that tax collectors were reassuring, reminding folks that they weren't all completely forgotten and alone out here. Just mostly.

Given the time of day, Vardaman didn't even try to get a room, instead making straight for the harbour to see about getting out of there as soon as possible.

As soon as possible seemed to be on indefinite hold.

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."

Vardaman gave him an appropriately ludicrous look.

"Whatever they did," the harbourmaster went on, not even noticing, "they brought the wrath of Kikein up on us all, ancestors preserve us."

"Okay," Vardaman said. "I'm going to come back tomorrow-" Then he glanced out the window and remembered it already was tomorrow. "I'm going to come back later," he corrected, "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.

Shrimp's Run Inn - morning

It was the early morning and the inns were all packed, but the prevailing mood was that of a horde of zombies. Folks had just sort of moved into the taverns and inns' common rooms and never left, and now depressed men, worried women, and a whole lot of drink had combined with a lack of sleep to result in really depressed everyone, random fights breaking out everywhere, and a whole lot of stink.

Vardaman shoved his way in between two guys to get some shalott off the exhausted barkeep, not even bothering to feel bad about it. He already felt bad. Bad didn't cover it.

"It's all hopeless," the guy next to him mumbled, working on what was clearly his severalth ale.

Vardaman nodded vaguely and got a refill.

"I'll never find work now," the guy said.

A few refills later, Vardaman realised the guy was telling him something about what had happened, or something. "Just some stupid trinket anyhow," the guy went on. "They went and took it. Why'd they have to go and take it?"

Vardaman nodded, and said, "I really liked that fucking horse," by way of agreement.

The guy sighed heavily.

"You punch a dragon in the face and suddenly there's sharks and 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.

"A dragon? Where's that 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.

Merrilenn Shade alleyway - late afternoon

It was later. The cobblestones were digging into his face. The light was low and golden.

Vardaman groaned and sat up, trying to make sense of things. He was still drunk. He was hungover. He was sore. He had no idea whatsoever what time it was, where he was, or, for that matter, even entirely who he was.

"Morning, laddy," a guy said over him. It was probably a guy. His face looked a bit like a horse, but only a bit. The wispy hair was trailing out in all directions, and he wasn't even looking at Vardaman, just sort of standing there staring off into space. His clothing looked even worse. "You had a fine run last night, didn't ye?"

"Excuse me?" Vardaman asked blankly, checking that he still had his swords and stuff more out of habit than anything else. Miraculously, nothing appeared to have been stolen, at least that he could tell.

"You did at that, laddy," the guy said, still staring off into space.

Vardaman got up entirely, using the wall for support, but the guy didn't say anything else, or even look at him. Finally Vardaman asked, "Uh, who are you?"

"Fried Hornich, that," someone said behind him, and Vardaman spun around. The newcomer was probably the dirtiest person he had ever seen. His clothing was barely recognisable as clothing. His face was various shades of clumped black and brown. His hair might have been a hat. Or possibly the other way around.

"And... you?" Vardaman asked, eyeing him worriedly.

"I'm Jack," he said.

"Oh," Vardaman said.

"Dirty Jack," he added. "You?"

"Uh," Vardaman said, eyeing him blearily. "Vardaman?"

"Right, laddy," Hornich said, clapping Vardaman on the back. "You'll do 'er it."

"What, now?" Vardaman said, but Hornich was already steering him out, with Dirty Jack's oddly pristine grin following them closely.

Beneath the South Somn bridge - evening

There was a group of five or so odd vagrants gathered around a burning metal barrel. None of them were all that clean. A couple turned and said vaguely welcoming things as the three newcomers came and joined them. Vardaman was pushed up to the barrel in a surprisingly inscrutable manner, and someone handed him a piece of seared meat on a stick. Hornich and Dirty Jack took some as well.

After that, nobody really said anything.

The meat seemed to be edible enough, though Vardaman was really not sure what was going on at this point. The sun was definitely going down. The men around him were all fairly clearly vagrants of various sorts. They were in a camp under the end of the main bridge across the Somn, with bedding, a flock of pigeons, and a pile of signs nearby with phrases like help me I'm poor, and I'm not going to mug you, and for some money I won't follow you home written across them in large block letters.

"Um," Vardaman said, finishing his meat.

Nobody said anything. They were all mostly just staring at the flames. They were rather nice flames, he supposed.

A guy with a pigeon on his head made a loud croaking noise.

Another guy in a very flappy coat and a fellow covered almost from head to toe in random knitted things waved vaguely and ambled off into the night.

"Gotta get the'ifts covered, ey, laddie?" Hornich told Vardaman.

"Sure?" Vardaman agreed. He felt better now, at least. He was warm, and as stringy as the meat had been, it had, technically, been food, which was definitely doing something for his headache, but now all the weariness of all the long hours since he'd lost his horse was sinking in. He eyed the bedding longingly, and then nearly fell over when Dirty Jack steered him toward it.

Sleep took him almost immediately into its strange dark embrace.

Merrilenn Shade docks - morning

The next morning, Vardaman felt considerably better. He was still a bit hungover, of course, but he wasn't drunk, and it was morning, and he was actually awake.

He parted ways with the vagrants in a slurry of unintelligible valedictions and headed out, but not before one of them gave him a sandwich with a tail sticking out.

"Uh, thanks," Vardaman said, stuffing it in his pocket. "Just... why? Why are you helping me?"

The guy, a burly fellow wearing a top hat and ragged robes that didn't even seem to have a colour, just grinned at him and said, "No, I'm trying to kill you." And then wandered off.

Vardaman gave him a bemused look and then just shook his head and left.

Unfortunately nothing else in town was at all improved. The ships were still all sunk, the populace was in a pit of drunken despair, the sun was glaring down with horrible intensity, and 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 waxing moons hanging uselessly further on. Even the smallest boats were in, pulled ashore. It was just empty, only a few folks even looking on.

"I don't wanna deal 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, and he could just about feel his headache returning, but she looked sort of familiar, nearing middle age, wearing the noble clothes of the city. He couldn't place it.

"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, High Priestess of Kikein," she said. "The Goddess has seen you, and would allow you to prove yourself on behalf of those accursed."

"That's nice," Vardaman said.

"You cannot stay here," she said. "All who wish to leave Soravia must cross the turbulent waters."

"Or I could just go around. Soras has a Gateway."

"And what of your mission?" the priestess said. "The journey would take weeks."

"Yeah, so?" he said, and muttered, "How much worse could it get?"

Vorei frowned at him disapprovingly.

Vardaman wished the sun would stop shining so horribly.

She pursed her lips and huffed off in an alarmingly dainty fashion.

Vardaman pulled the sandwich out of his pocket and took a large bite as he watched her leave.

Scooter's Pub - morning

Vardaman wound up back at another pub, this one with some slightly suspicious stains on the walls, treating his waning 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, or whenever it had even been.

"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.

"Are you back here to avoid everyone else?" Vardaman asked.

Namar grunted.

Vardaman nodded, grabbed Namar's mug, and got up to grab them both some more drink.

Several drinks later, Namar said, "I didn't tell them any of that."

"Made it up, did they?" Vardaman said a bit later.

Namar grunted.

"Why?" Vardaman asked.

There was a long silence while Namar stared into his mug. Vardaman, meanwhile, stared off into space and suddenly remembered that the sandwich he'd eaten earlier had come from a guy saying he was trying to kill him.

"Whuh," Vardaman said by way of surprise.

"I was there," Namar told him vacantly. "I was on the Cloud Solas when she went down."

"Oh," Vardaman said. "Uh, how are you alive?"

Namar snorted with strained laughter. "Ship only sank about a hundred feet. I just swam up after."

"Oh," Vardaman said.

"Way it happened wasn't even interesting," Namar went on. "Some noble'd found a dead mermaid up the river, so we were there to return her to the sea, right? Only Kikein didn't see it that way. She was pissed."

"She's a bit unpredictable in the lore," Vardaman noted. "God of the seas as violent as the storms."

"She normally treats us fine," Namar said. "Sailors show their respects, she lets us pass. Was why we were doing the mermaid in the first place."

"What, she thought you'd killed it?" Vardaman asked.

"No," Namar whispered. "Crew on the Heart of Dreams dropped her. Head rolled clean off, fell into the ocean ahead."

Vardaman winced. As botched funerals went, that was pretty bad.

"Now okay, that happens, but then they just dump the rest of her in too and move to take the entire ship and flee, and that's when Kikein just went and sunk us. Couldn't be having with that," Namar said.

"She sunk the entire fucking harbour for that?" Vardaman asked.

"I don't know," Namar said. "All I know is by the time I got shoreside, they were all gone and everyone was in a panic and there just weren't any good answers for anyone."

"Well, shit," Vardaman said.

"And now Kikein wants someone to go find the dead mermaid for her. All the dead mermaid," Namar said blankly, in the same flat tone as the entire story had been. "It doesn't make any sense."

Vardaman stared at Namar consideringly for a bit before he realised someone was looming behind him, at which point he unceremoniously punched said loomer in the chin, knocking the guy backward into what turned out to be a whole crowd of loomers. Apparently the better part of the entire pub had probably been listening in the whole time and Vardaman had just been too drunk to notice.

"Oy, that wasn't very nice," one of them said.

"So where'd the mermaid come from?" Another asked.

"Where'd the mermaid go?" asked another still.

Namar buried his head in his hands.

Vardaman glared at them, but they were just getting started, asking questions, pushing closer, losing the guy he'd punched in a sea of legs.

Merrilenn Shade markets - afternoon

Three hours later, Vardaman had finally escaped the crowd by snapping, setting off a flash-bang spell, and fleeing in the ensuing chaos.

He wound up in one of the market areas. Here, at least, life was still going on. Regardless of what had happened, people still needed to eat, to buy and sell, to do the usual day-to-day things; Merrilenn Shade was a port town, but there was more to it than just the port, and the rest wasn't about to stop just because the port was down.

This would have been rather reassuring had it not been for the inordinate number of sailors and dockhands hanging about the markets, too.

Vardaman carefully avoided them, but then several noticed him anyway - his swords and armour stood out - and started asking him if it was going to be fixed any time soon, was everything going to be fine, do you know, do you know, do you know anything?

Vardaman shoved them aside, nearly ran into another priestess of Kikein, this time recognising the funny stole they tended to wear, and then stopped to glare at her.

"The High Priestess summons you, Deathdealer" she said. "Come. Merrilenn Shade needs you."

Vardaman glared at her, shoved another enquiring sailor away, and then said, utterly resolutely, "Get someone else."

Then he turned around and stomped away.

"But..." the priestess began behind him.

Vardaman ignored her and wound up at a pie stand.

There was a guy arguing with the proprietor; compared to her, he might have been a stick.

"But mom," the guy was saying, "I can't deliver there. I tried delivering there!"

"Look, boy, we got an order, and you're delivering it."

"I can't!" he insisted. "That's a tree! I can't go delivering pies to a damn tree!"

"Language, boy!" she snapped, shoving the stack of pies into his arms whether he wanted them or not. "You deliver those pies! Shoo!" She pushed him out with her foot.

Defeated, her son left with the pies.

Vardaman scooted up, eyeing the kid, and asked the woman, "What was that all about?"

"Egh, kids!" the woman snapped. "You here to buy pies, or what?"

"How many you got?" Vardaman asked.

"What, now? Four."

"I'll take them," he said.

"My kids?" the woman asked, taken aback.

"No, fuck, I meant the pies," Vardaman said tiredly.

Beneath the South Somn bridge - late afternoon

Vardaman brought six pies in all back with him as he returned to the vagrant camp, handing them over to basically whoever would take them and then squeezing in next to the obligatory flaming barrel. It was a slightly different crowd than had been the previous day, but Dirty Jack and the guy covered in knitting and the burly fellow who'd given him the sandwich were all there, among others. This time, however, they were joined by a guy who'd been painted to look exactly like a bronze statue, along with a spindly old woman who seemed completely batty. She even had what might have been a dead bat in her hair.

"You all live here?" Vardaman asked them later.

The statue nodded.

"No, I'm trying to kill you," the sandwich fellow said. Vardaman gave him an unimpressed look.

"Some days," knitting guy said.

"Tuesdays," the batty woman chimed in though a mouthful of pie.

"That we do," Dirty Jack said. "Problem?"

There was a long pause.

Then Vardaman said, "Can I join you?"

"Mmm, mmm," the batty woman said.

Dirty Jack grinned. "What you all think, we want him?" he asked the others.

"He brings a nice pie," the batty woman said.

"No, I'm trying to kill you," the sandwich fellow said.

The statue shrugged.

Someone vaulted down from the bridge above. It turned out to be the guy with the pigeon on his head, who then trotted over and placed another pigeon on Vardaman's head.

"Glowing," Dirty Jack said.

And that was that.

Vardaman wound up taking the bulk of his stuff, including his rather distinctive armour, swords, and portable liquor collection, and stuffing it all in a crevice in the bridge overhang. He placed a ward over it to hide it, eyeballed it suspiciously, and then glanced back at the statue, who'd been standing behind him watching the entire time.

"Sorry?" he asked.

The statue nodded at him.

Vardaman gave the statue a suspicious look, then glanced down at his own self consideringly. His street clothes weren't exactly the best, largely because he liked them and basically always wore the same ones under everything else, and so he probably fit in well enough already, but just for good measure he took a quick nip walking in and out of the silty river. He came back out covered in a pile of grimy seaweed, which he pulled off and tossed at the pigeons.

The statue gave him a thumbs up.

"Great," Vardaman said. "Now let's see if it fools those fucking priestesses."

The statue mimed laughter.

"Don't say much, do you?" Vardaman asked.

The statue shrugged.

"What about him?" Vardaman asked, indicating the sandwich fellow. "He ever say anything that's not 'No, I'm going to kill you'?"

The statue looked sad, and then shook his head.

Lauhen Sea - day

Kit woke up suddenly, coughing, and Erry quickly yanked away the peach she'd been smashing on his mouth and tried to look innocent.

It had been a few days and somehow 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 once he'd recovered. Jora helped him up. Erry was pointedly not looking at him. Nolan was holding a fish.

"You did that," Jora said. "Pretty impressive, huh?"

Kit nodded, and opened his mouth to respond in full, but then Erry turned around and shoved another peach in it.

"Mmph," he said instead, and then found his hands full as well when Nolan shoved the large fish into them.

"Nrrnk," Kit added.

Later, after he'd lethargically cooked the fish up into 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.

"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 mere 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 drily.. "How important could it be?"

Kit shrugged and boiled the shrimp.

Lauhen Sea - day

The routines of listlessness resumed, though with a somewhat less hopeless air than previously. 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 to her hand and she'd grab it and toss it into the raft, but mostly she just hung.

Jora now had Kit employed making some more weapons out of the same magic ice as they'd used for everything else, because even though they already had too many weapons, she thought they needed more, and Kit had quickly given up arguing with her. Instead, he played word games with Nolan as they went. 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 back, 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 tension, but it also needs to be distributed more... evenly 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 later.

Juniper's Bark deck - night

As the voyage went on, everything seemed to be remarkably fine, aside from Agata, and the fact that nothing at all catly seemed to be adding up at present.

Tress and Thimble seemed to be missing.

Coraline was asking around if anyone had seen them when one sailor made a mistake of mentioning the vessel's rat problem.

"If they'd got below," the sailor was saying, "they might have run afoul the rats."

"What rats?" Coraline asked.

"The big ones," he said.

"How big?" Coraline asked.

"Really big," he said, gesturing with his arms. It did indeed seem pretty big.

"Big like a moose?" Coraline asked.

"Er," the sailor said.

"Great," Coraline said, and headed below.

"Great?" the sailor repeated blankly behind her.

Juniper's Bark lower hold - night

The rats weren't so big. They were only badger-sized, and they seemed to utterly hate the light Coraline shone in their direction, fleeing in a clattering frenzy from the beam.

She wished she could do magelights, just stick a few everywhere and maybe drive the rats out entirely, but she'd never managed an actual spell before. And what were spells, anyway? Shaping things, maybe? Balling her hand into a fist, she supposed she knew the shape of light. Waves, photons, energy levels rising and falling, a sustained emergence and collapse. So simple. She could see it unfolding in her mind.

She opened her fist, but there was only a single dancing flame within.

"Voi paska," she whispered, and quickly shook it out, wiping off her palm on her trousers. Setting everything on fire now was the last thing she needed.

In the dull glow out of the beam itself, twin saucers glared at her from under an angry brow.

Rather like the rats, Thimble jumped away when she shone the torch on him.

"You crazy cat," Coraline murmured. "Tress?" she called out into the gloom. "You in here too?"

Something brushed past her foot and she nearly jumped, but shining her torch down revealed nothing, just more jumping shadows.

In the gloom, things stirred. The ship creaked under the pressure of the waves. Containers shifted slightly.

"Hello?" she said quietly, readying her other hand for... she wasn't sure what.

Clicking scuttled about on the ground.

Something jumped at her and she punched it, stopping it mid-flight, and a large rat tumbled down by her feet and quickly tried to scurry away.

"Oh, no you don't," Coraline said, and stomped on it with her other foot. Considering the rat was the size of a medium dog, this had remarkably little effect.

Then Thimble jumped out of the shadows, going straight for the throat. The rat was bigger than he was and managed to fend him off fairly easily, but he had backup: Tress dropped down a moment later and sunk her teeth into the back of the rat's neck, and the thing started thrashing about almost immediately after.

Tress was clinging for dear life, and Coraline dropped down and grabbed the rat as well, willing it to calm, to cease, to still.

The rat gave one last shudder and obliged, slipping into death.

Coraline grabbed her torch, hauled up the now very dead and bloody rat, and glared at her two mousers. "This one's mine. But if either of you get yourselves killed down here, I'm not cleaning up the mess," she said, and marched out.

Juniper's Bark deck - early morning

Coraline dumped the giant, bloody dead rat in front of the first mate and and asked, "Why?"

This didn't get her very far, as he apparently didn't actually know anything. Instead he just sort of stared at the rat, pointed sporadically, and babbled incoherently a bit.

"Hmph," Coraline said.

Beneath the South Somn bridge - evening

The folks under the bridge were, as it turned out, not an official chapter of the Beggar's Guild. Sometimes a representative would come by with a pile of forms and try to get everyone to sign up, listing off the benefits, getting offered various burnt birds, and nearly getting a hug from Fried Hornich, but as with always, the guy quickly gave up and left.

They were, however, an unofficial chapter, which meant it was in everyone's best interest if at least some of the group occasionally got out and appeared to be begging.

Hornich was still holding his sign for the day. It read, money money money, and didn't appear to be very effective. He had the remains of a tomato stuck to the side of his head. It was unclear if this was related.

"Always doin'at, ey laddie?" Hornich said, possibly to Vardaman. As usual, he was just sort of staring off into space.

"Sure," Vardaman said, reclining against some rocks with a bottle of wine. He was starting to get the hang of this again. Relaxing. Like the horse had done. He could relax. Yes. Honour his horse's memory by relaxing. Totally sensible.

Hornich nodded resolutely and dumped the sign in the pile.

Lauhen Sea - day

Erry was once again hanging over the side of the raft when she 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, asking what was wrong. Kit popped up on the other side of the tree trunk and 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 girl 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, with Jora's bemused help, dunking the girl's entire arm in a bucket of Nolan's peach mixture.

"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, looking at it. "What?"

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." Using the goo on the knife, he sketched out the spell and jabbed it at his sister in a panic.

There was a funky noise, but then 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.

Nolan stuck his face in Erry's.

Kit stared tensely.

"She's not breathing," Jora whispered.

"BLOOG!" Nolan yelled, very, very loudly, and very, very suddenly, and Erry woke up and flipped out and very 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.

Beneath the South Somn bridge - afternoon

When another priestess of Kekein finally found Vardaman a week later, he was, along with several other vagrants, loitering around a flaming barrel. It was just what they did. Nobody questioned it.

The priestess stopped uncertainly several paces away, eyeing the scene, before finally marching up to Vardaman and tapping him pointedly on the shoulder.

"I do not know what you hope to achieve by hiding amongst these homeless people, but..." she began, but was quickly interrupted by someone else tapping her on the shoulder. It was the guy covered in knitted things.

"I'm not homeless," he said.

"Well that's great," she began, but then he continued on over her:

"Contrarywise, I have a fine home with my wife."

"Then what are you doing out here?" the priestess asked, taken aback.

"Oh, you know," he replied. "Sometimes we need a break from each other."

The priestess stared at him before the batty woman chimed in, "She's batty. Utterly loon. But you know Todd loves her because he always goes back, and he wears everything she makes him. The sweetest thing."

"Most of us got homes, what," a guy with massive dreads added. "We just likes the company, or need time out, or what."

"What he said," someone else agreed.

"It's just my husband won't let me back in until I take a bath," Dirty Jack lamented, earning himself several surprised looks.

"Yes, well," the priestess said, brushing all that aside and focusing once more on Vardaman. "Regardless of who exactly these people are, you're needed. For the love of the Goddess, just come, hear us out."

Vardaman gave her an annoyed look and said, "As I told your colleague, get someone else."

"There is noone else!" the priestess insisted.

Vardaman gave her a somewhat incredulous look. "In a town this size, you're fucking telling me you've got fucking nobody? No mercenaries, no wannabe adventurers, no crew with adequate experience, no fucking available professionals at all?"

The priestess shook her head. "None with the needed tact."

Vardaman gave her a long look. The others loomed helpfully.

Finally, he repeated, "Tact."

"Yes!" she insisted.

"Tact," Vardaman said again, rolling the word around on his tongue like something completely alien.

She stared at him pleadingly.

"The fuck?" he said, gesturing vaguely toward himself. A few of the vagrants nodded.

Then Fried Hornich took the opportunity to come up behind the priestess and hug her in a surprisingly non-fondling fashion. The priestess gasped and tried to squirm away, but Hornich just picked her up entirely.

"What the... help! Put me down!" she cried, desperately trying to figure out who had even done this in the first place.

"Hornich," Vardaman began, and then realised he didn't even know what he wanted Hornich to do, let alone any reason why Hornich should do it.

Hornich dropped her anyway a moment later.

The priestess sidled away, flustered.

"Oh, pretty lady," the batty woman said, stopping the priestess while absentmindedly removing the dead bat from her hair. "Maybe where you're from you can get away with being all insistent and forceful, but out here, this is the real world." She stopped a moment to examine the bat, looking quite surprised to find it, then continued, "Try being polite. Say the magic words." She waved the bat a bit for emphasis.

The priestess stared at her blankly. "Magic... words? What, some sort of passphrase or something?" She looked around at the assembled vagrants before sputtering, "I have no idea what you... people would consider a passphrase."

"No, not a passphrase," the batty woman said idly, stuffing the bat back into her hair.

"What..." the priestess said, now even more confused.

Vardaman shrugged slightly.

"No, I'm trying to kill you," someone said.

The priestess jumped.

"Trying saying 'please'," the guy covered in knitting suggested.

Completely bewildered, the priestess turned back to Vardaman and asked, "Will you... please come?"

There was a long pause as Vardaman stared at her consideringly and everyone else stared at him expectantly.

This was followed by a slightly longer pause in which even less happened.

Then the batty woman hugged him and said, "I'll miss you, sweetling."

She proceeded to not let go while the others gathered around to say their goodbyes as well, and Vardaman just sort of stood there in her wiry embrace.

"You'll got'l us," Fried Hornich told him.

"Do what you need to," Dirty Jack said. "We'll be here."

"Always welcome here," someone else said, to a general chorus of 'yups' and 'ayes'.

"Here," the guy covered in knitting said, and shoved something on Vardaman's head, covering a great deal of it, including one of his eyes, in lumpy, itchy warmth. Considering the batty woman still had an exceedingly firm grip on him, he couldn't do a whole lot about it.

"Most hideous hat I've seen," the batty woman told his ear.

"Great," Vardaman said. "Thank you all. Will you now let go?"

"Mmmm, no," the batty woman said, snuggling into his ear, but then the pigeon guy placed a pigeon on her head and she finally let go anyway.

Vardaman spun around, keeping an eye on her in case she tried anything again, and adjusted the hat so it was seated better on his head. Then, still keeping an eye on the batty woman, nodded at the priestess and backed away to get his stuff.

Merrilenn Temple to Kikein - evening

Vorei, the High Priestess, was standing at the front of the temple when they entered, the other priestess leading, Vardaman trailing behind at a stately amble of not really hurrying and also vaguely wishing his foot would quit hurting but not actually stopping to do anything about it. He wasn't even sure why his foot was hurting, but it had been like this for awhile now.

"Eminence," the priestess said, gesturing Vardaman forward. "The Deathdealer."

"Welcome," Vorei said, though she eyed his hat with distaste. "I trust that you have reconsidered your stance?"

Vardaman tested his foot a bit and rolled it around on the ground a bit before giving her a slight bow. "My apologies for my reaction before," he said. "It was not a good day."

"Not for any of us, Deathdealer," Vorei said, apparently satisfied. "Come," she added, leading him toward one of the other rooms.

"I do have a name, you know," Vardaman pointed out, following.

"Do not Deathdealers give up their names?" the other priestess asked, also apparently coming with.

Vardaman gave her a sidelong look. "Oh, yes, of course," he said. "We're all known as 'Deathdealer'. Ever get two of us in a room and it's a fucking party."

She gave him a blank look, so he just said, "I'm Vardaman," and kicked at a random pillar. Immediately his foot exploded in pain and he nearly fell over, but then the priestess grabbed him and managed to keep him mostly upright.

"Aaaagh," Vardaman managed, clinging to her and holding up his foot. "Fuckfuckfuckfuck?"

Vorei turned around as well, eyeing him with alarm. "Are you... entirely well?"

"I... yeah," Vardaman said, letting go and almost putting his foot back down on the ground, but then stopping right before. "I think my foot is broken," he added, surprised.

Vorei gave him an uncertain look.

"Hold on," he told her, hopping away and bracing himself on the pillar and casting a quick spell to heal the break. He put the foot down delicately, making sure it really was fixed, before putting his full weight on it again. It seemed to be fine, but how the fuck had that even happened?

"Better?" Vorei asked. He nodded, so she ushered him into another room, sat primly behind the desk, and went on as though nothing had happened, "Good. Now the situation is simple enough. About a week ago, there was an incident of some distaste. I will spare you the details, but suffice to say the body must be recovered."

"The mermaid?" Vardaman asked.

Vorei raised an eyebrow. "Indeed," she said. "The one who has it is known only as Taklin. He is a very disturbed individual, but he has the Goddess' protection, and so you must find a peaceable resolution to this matter. He must not be harmed."

"Okay..." Vardaman said. "And how might I find him?"

"He lives in a tree," Vorei said.

"I see," Vardaman said slowly. Unfortunately he was afraid he really was beginning to see. "What happened when you tried talking to him?"

"He would not see us," Vorei said.

"And he lives in a tree," Vardaman said.

"Yes."

"Great," Vardaman said.

Merrilenn Shade markets - night

Vardaman found the pie stand again quickly enough. This time a customer was arguing with the proprietor.

"I ordered bird," the guy was insisting. "This isn't bird."

"So what, you're saying I plucked and butchered that bird and just misplaced it, are you?" the proprietor replied. "That," she said, jabbing a finger at it with the full force of her considerable girth, "is bird."

"Well..." the guy said.

Vardaman came up behind the guy and said, "Hello."

The guy jumped and then sidled away.

"Oh, it's you again," the proprietor said, seeing Vardaman.

"Yes, hello," Vardaman repeated. "Did you say you got an order from a tree?"

"Hmph," she said. "Yes. Damn boy never even got delivered."

"Mind if I take that over?" Vardaman asked.

"You want to make the delivery?" she asked, surprised. "Well it's no good now, all those pies are spent."

"Sure," Vardaman said. "Can you maybe repeat the order, or near enough? Give me directions, I'll just buy the pies off you now..."

"I dunno what you're planning, but I ain't saying no to paying customers," the proprietor said, getting out a stack of pies.

Woods outside Merrilenn Shade - night

Vardaman wasn't entirely sure what he was planning himself, but in truth a lot of his plans seemed to start this way, largely because when he did plan things out in full, said plans never stood up to reality anyway.

What he did know was that he was now standing outside a tree with five pies and a keg of ale.

He looked around suspiciously, just in case this was totally wrong and anyone was watching. Nobody seemed to be.

Then he pounded on the tree with a first and yelled, "Taklin? Pie delivery!"

Nothing really happened for a bit, and then a quiet voice trickled out of nowhere in particular. "Go away!" it said.

"I'm not fucking going away until you open up and take these pies!" Vardaman yelled after it.

This time there was no reply.

Vardaman narrowed his eyes, then said loudly, "I'm just going to sit here and fucking wait! With these pies. And this ale."

And then he plonked down on the ground next to the tree, cracked into the ale, and then just sort of had at it.

String 24249

"Every act of perception is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination."

~ Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: La musique, le cerveau et nous

Amraeve - afternoon

Amraeve was about how Coraline remembered it - a larger city than Merrilenn Shade, with terraces of low buildings built into the sides of the hills, rising all around the extensive harbour. Like all the ports Coraline had been through since coming to Cerris, the harbour itself was a bit upriver in order to avoid some of the more problematic effects of the planet's extreme tides, but it apparently wasn't enough currently - the river was low this time of year, and the tide was against them, and so they waited a good two days out for it to come back and raise the river enough for them to get the ship in properly.

While they had offered to ferry Coraline in on a rowboat, she hadn't really wanted to be stuck on a rowboat with a puking cat, let alone two really bloody cats and a puking cat, for any length of time.

Now, Thimble had a chunk of rat hanging out of his mouth, and was watching the shore with a strange gleam in his eye as it approached.

Coraline gave him a worried look and scooted a step away from him. At least he wasn't covered in blood anymore, but still.

Thimble trotted into the space she'd vacated and dropped the chunk of rat.

"Mmm, now this is the stench of life," Agata rasped from Coraline's shoulders as they finally disembarked amidst the general hubbub of unloading.

"Stench is right," Coraline muttered, but she couldn't object to the sudden solidness beneath her feet. Almost immediately Agata seemed to be less ill now that they were back on land, and her own lingering feeling of general urgh had lifted as well.

As they ascended the terraces, the other two cats at her heels, she saw the stowaway scooting away.

"I'd want to guess he's some sort of assassin or something," Coraline remarked to Agata, "but frankly an assassin would probably have planned things better."

"He smelled like he was telling true," Agata said.

"Huh," Coraline said, heading in a random direction. "Stupid war."

"Usually are," Agata murred. "We going somewhere in particular?"

"Today? Nope," Coraline said. Were they? She couldn't actually remember.

"Grand," Agata said.

Hag's End; Amraeve - evening

They wound up wandering the city fairly aimlessly, Thimble taking the lead, Coraline and the other two cats trailing after, each wandering off from time to time to investigate this, that, and the other. It was nice travelling with no luggage, no real hurry, no appointments to meet, just a vague goal and three cats. It was nice having a goal at all, and understanding enough of the world to be not too worried about it. It was nice not being alone.

The last time she'd been through here, she'd been terrified, and lost, and so very alone. She'd just walked, and not stopped, with no aim at all, only when she'd seen the library had she found this place had anything familiar in it at all. Not just familiar, but useful.

Amongst the whispers in the back of her mind, one stood out, familar. Perhaps not just familiar, but also useful.

Agata? Coraline said. She wasn't sure how she said it, but then in truth she wasn't sure how she said anything. Like all muscles, it just sort of happened.

Sup? the cat replied.

I would like to register my surprise and alarm that we are evidently talking in this manner, Coraline said, then added, Should I be alarmed?

Only as alarmed as you are about anything, Agata purred. It's a witch thing.

But how am I witch? Coraline asked.

Thimble took a hard turn and darted into a dark alleyway, and Tress jumped after him.

You just are, Agata said, slowing. Really, you're asking now?

But how? Coraline pressed. The alley was dark compared to much of the city, threading between two neighbourhoods of stacked buildings like some sort of dark threading thing, but she turned into it all the same. Posts poking out of the cobbled ground alongside the running gutter going down the middle made it into something of an obstacle cource. Strings of hung clothing flapped overhead. A tall, older woman was leaning out a doorway smoking.

Agata jumped onto Coraline's shoulder and said, Witches are. You're born to it, to your knacks. What you do with it is up to you, obviously, but you know. Witches.

I wasn't, Coraline said. We don't even have witches where I'm from.

That mysterious no-place that isn't Ord, Agata said, then yawned hugely from Coraline's shoulder and added aloud, in a completely disinterested tone, "We might be lost."

Tress hopped onto a post a few metres ahead and then proceeded to sniff at her paw a few times, not even trying to clean it.

Coraline stopped and eyed the pointed cat.

Tress gave her a pleading look and murred.

"Uh... Agata?" Coraline asked blankly.

Agata hopped down onto the nearest post and then hopped over the two intermediary posts as stepping stones to join Tress on hers, climbing over the other cat for lack of space, and licked her nose. Then Agata sniffed at the paw as well.

Tress mewed.

Agata took a moment to react and then suddenly put her ears back and hissed.

The woman in the doorway chuckled and retreated back inside, and suddenly the entire alleyway felt like an impending cave-in. Everything was quiet. Nobody was around, and even the sounds from the rest of the city beyond were strangely muffled.

Coraline hurried over to the cats' post and stopped. Thimble, out of nowhere, leaned into her legs.

Clothes flapped overhead in the breeze and Coraline almost jumped. The cats were all looking up too, Agata stopped half-step on Tress's head.

"What is going on?" Coraline whispered, picking up Thimble. His back was arched horribly, though he relaxed slightly in her arms. Slightly.

"Fear," Agata growled. She was still standing partially on Tress, her stomach arched over the other cat's back. Both had their hair straight on end.

Coraline glanced around, but there was no overt sign of anything actually amiss. As much as there was nobody else immediately about, the alley itself was practically a gutter, so there wouldn't have been much reason for folks to come through here to begin with.

It all made sense.

Except it all felt so wrong.

Something splattered on the cobbles down the way, wet and thick. Coraline equipped Thimble one-handed and readied her staff in the other, but there was nothing there. She glanced up again. Something from the windows above?

Thimble hissed in her arm. Something was coalescing in front of them, pulling light out of the air in ripples, taking shape in shimmering shadows.

Coraline pointed her staff at it uncertainly. "Agata?" she said slowly, "am I hallucinating?"

Thimble hissed at it again almost as if in answer to her question, and then started growling for good measure.

"Something is there," Agata growled behind her. "And it is not alone."

Coraline glanced back just long enough to notice Agata was still standing half on top of Tress on the post, and to see that there was indeed another dark cowled thing on the other side of the cats, torn dark fabric flowing off it in strange waves. When she looked back, the wraith in front of her was also fully-formed, hovering vaguely.

"Uh..." she said, "hi?"

"Keeper," it whispered in a strange, sweet voice that tore into her mind. Thimble tried to twist away, out of her arm.

"Egh?" Coraline said, holding the cat even more tightly. He hissed again. Then she said, gesturing with her staff, "Look, could you maybe back up a bit? The cats really don't seem to like you."

The wraiths did, backing off a few metres in a trailing of tattered cloth. Almost immediately some of the cave-in feel dissipated, though not all.

"Thanks," Coraline told them, surprised.

"Keeper," the one before her whispered again, and then there was another dark shimmering beside it. The one from behind the cats. Apparently they could move without even moving.

"Yes?" Coraline asked. They seemed to be addressing her, at least, but keeper of what? She kept a lot of things.

"A story," it whispered.

"What story?" she asked. Thimble had his claws hooked deep in her arm, but it was barely even registering. Like the voices murmuring in the back of her mind, it was simply somewhere else.

The wraith reached out a hand from the depths of its rags, almost skeletal, but rotten, dark, beckoning her forward.

She lowered her staff and stepped toward the wraiths curiously. Thimble growled. It was probably Thimble. It didn't really matter.

"Names!" Agata screamed after her, but then the hand was at her head, trailing stained fingernails delicately across her temples.

The world exploded in brilliant strangeness.

Cave - underground

Vardaman awoke to dripping and groaned. Had he really done that again? He had really done that again.

He seemed to be in a cave.

It was dark. Something was dripping.

He got up abruptly, reaching for his swords, but in the gloom nothing stirred. Only the dripping echoed through the cavern.

"Hello?" he said, suddenly feeling very light-headed. The word echoed off the walls and columns, drifting in and out of crevices.

A moment later, a small voice trickled out of the gloom. "I didn't do it!" it said.

"And what didn't you do, then?" Vardaman called after it.

"I didn't do it," it repeated. It was unclear where the voice was coming from; the echoes were all around, and all very small.

Vardaman checked behind a few stalactites, and asked, loudly, "Who are you?"

The echoes died in silence once more, broken only by dripping.

"Where is this?" Vardaman tried again, nudging a pool with his boot. The echoes rippled across the water's surface.

Then the voice trickled out once more: "Taklin's place." This time, however, it was accompanied by a face, vaguely fishy, poking around a protuberance of rock, eyeing him nervously.

"You Taklin?" Vardaman asked, nodding at him.

The face nodded and the body it belonged to stepped out. Altogether Taklin looked nothing like a merman, and everything like an escaped madman dressed up like a merman dressed up like some kind of deranged carnie.

For lack of any better idea Vardaman then asked, "You a mer?"

Taklin started to shrug and then shook his head.

Vardaman raised his brow, and said, "I'm Vardaman." Taklin didn't respond to this, so then he noted, "I note you took the ale and left my swords. Interesting choice."

"You said it was a delivery," Taklin said.

Vardaman nodded. "That it was. But why bring me here?"

"Er," Taklin said. He was staring at Vardaman with a disconcerting intensity.

"Good," Vardaman said. "We need to talk."

"I like your hat," Taklin said nervously, taking a step back.

"Talk," Vardaman repeated. "Sit down and have a conversation. You got chairs?"

Taklin stared at him for a long moment and then said, very, very quietly, "I didn't do it."

"What?" Vardaman said.

"I didn't do it!" Taklin said, much more loudly, and darted forward a few steps before stopping as suddenly as he started. Then he added, "I got chairs. Nice chairs," and ran off past Vardaman into a large crack in the wall.

Vardaman followed warily.

The crack opened up into another chamber, this one complete with various living accoutrements, though all the furnishings had a vaguely wet look to them: chairs encrusted in seashells, a table that appeared to either be fashioned out of or into a giant hunk of coral, a large octopus heaped in a corner. The octopus blinked vacantly at them as they entered.

There was also a small counter; on it were the remains of the pies. And the ale.

Taklin dropped into a chair, staring at Vardaman expectantly.

Vardaman headed to the chair across the table and pulled it out. Most of the points of the shells seemed to be pointing down, but only most. He gave it an annoyed look and sat regardless.

Taklin was staring at him.

Vardaman eyed the fish man consideringly.

Taklin continued to stare at him.

"Hmm," Vardaman said.

Taklin continued to stare at him.

"You live here?" Vardaman said, indicating the cave.

Taklin nodded, still staring.

"Do you leave?" Vardaman asked. "Have you anyone to talk to?"

Taklin stared at him.

"Are you... completely alone here?" Vardaman asked.

Taklin looked around worriedly. "I talk to the sea," he said in a small voice. "And those who speak, and those who listen. I whisper in their minds."

Vardaman nodded. "What do you tell them?" he asked.

"Little things. Where to go. How to dream. That it's all right to be afraid."

"And pie orders?" Vardaman ventured.

"Yes," Taklin said, suddenly back to staring with his strange, fishy intensity.

"Why take her?" Vardaman asked.

Taklin flinched.

"The dead mermaid. Why take her?" Vardaman pressed.

"I didn't," Taklin said.

"No?" Vardaman said quietly.

"I found her," Taklin said in a tiny voice.

"Was it because of your mother?" Vardaman asked.

Taklin just stopped.

After a long moment, the voice trickled out once more, out of nowhere, all around, utterly minuscule. "No." It was clearly Taklin's, and yet he still hadn't moved.

"It's all right," Vardaman said. "She just wants the mermaid back. That's all."

"How did you know?" Taklin whispered.

"In the lore, there are unions and daughters, and yet never sons," Vardaman explained. "The priestesses who had no respect for you, and yet could not allow you harm? What else am I to think?"

Taklin stared at him.

"Kikein is your mother," Vardaman said simply.

"I hate her," Taklin said, jumping out of his seat. "I hate her and I wish she'd go away!" His chair clattered back behind him.

The octopus in the corner waved a tentacle lethargically.

Vardaman simply watched from the other chair.

"She won't leave me alone!" Taklin screamed. The last three words echoed horribly, bouncing off the walls, drilling into Vardaman's brain like an auger. "She comes by constantly, pestering, trying to set me up with dates, complaining about the caves. Oh, they're not finished, they're not nice enough, she needs to fix them, I need a new one, every time, every time!" He was practically screaming. Green flames were flickering around his head and shoulders, dancing off the frills of his collar.

"Um," Vardaman said.

"And I'm not married. Always that I'm not married, none of it's good enough to get married, none of the girls are nice enough, I'm not good enough!" Taklin said, dropping back to normal, the flames dying out. "I can't do anything. None of it's good enough," he repeated.

"And the mermaid?" Vardman asked.

"I was mad!" Taklin said hopelessly. "I just thought... I thought..." he trailed off, like he didn't even know himself.

"You thought it was important to her, so you decided to take it," Vardaman mused. "You wanted to strike back at her."

"Too much, too much," Taklin muttered, shaking his head. "Take her shinies, set her temples on fire, put ants in her shoes... I could, I could do it, you know. I didn't do it."

"I need that mermaid," Vardaman said simply.

Taklin stopped and stared at him. "You can't," the fish man said. "Can't have her."

"It's the body of the dead," Vardaman said. "Let her go."

"No," Taklin said.

"Please?" Vardaman said.

Taklin fidgeted, and then suddenly ducked down and picked up his chair, righting it back by the table.

He sat down, now staring at Vardaman with even more intensity than previously.

"Hi," Vardaman said after a bit.

"Okay," Taklin's voice said, trickling out of the walls around.

Vardaman bowed his head. "Thank you," he said.

"On one condition," Taklin said.

"What condition?" Vardaman asked warily.

There was a long pause.

This was followed by a slightly longer pause in which Taklin seemed almost to be shrinking into himself.

Finally, in what might have been his tiniest voice yet, Taklin squeaked, "Marry me?"

Vardaman gave Taklin a long, level look, and then asked simply, "And you'll give me the mermaid?"

Taklin nodded.

Vardaman sighed, rolled his eyes, and then stood, holding out a hand, palm down, toward Taklin.

Taklin stared at it.

Taklin stared at Vardaman.

Taklin stared at the hand again.

Then he suddenly bounded forward onto the table and stared at the hand right up close, ducking foreward and putting his face right next to it. He sniffed it.

Vardaman loudly cleared his throat.

Taklin straightened up, stared down at the hand some more, stared at Vardaman, stared at the hand again, and then jumped off the table with a flounce.

He slowly, hesitantly, placed his own fishy hand on Vardaman's, and then said, "Words?"

There was a long pause.

"Two hands," Vardaman said finally.

"Two hands," Taklin repeated in a small voice.

"As one," Vardaman finished.

Taklin stared at him.

"Two souls," Vardaman went on, "as one."

"Two souls," Taklin's voice trickled around them.

"For a life, to our deaths," Vardaman said. "We are bound together. By the gods, I do not deny it. Do you?" he asked.

"No?" Taklin said.

"Then it's done," Vardaman said, withdrawing his hand.

Suddenly unsupported, Taklin's hand fell back down as well, hitting the fish man's skirt with a wet slap.

"We're married," Vardaman said pointedly.

Taklin stared at him.

"Mermaid?" Vardaman suggested.

"I didn't do it!" Taklin squeaked, and darted off. A moment later he was dragging a small, wrapped bag over to Vardaman, which he deposited at the Deathdealer's feet. It was the size of a small child.

Vardaman sighed and picked it up, tucking it under an arm. "Thank you," he said, and then shook his head. "Now we'll never find ourselves some nice girls."

Taklin stared at him. "I never was that interested in girls," he said.

"Really," Vardaman mused.

Old Tairne - time unremembered

The field was full of flax, soft and blue, undulating in the warm summer breeze. The elves, three brothers, stood side-by-side, knee deep in the weeds. Aran was grinning vaguely. Tulso was staring at a bird, rubbing his beard bemusedly. Only Kalmoroff, the tallest, looked heavy-hearted, despite the overwhelming weight hanging in the air.

Or was the weight only him regardless?

Coraline stood by the treeline, watching curiously, fiddling with the skirt of her dress. Blue, always blue, so familiar.

But that wasn't important. She skipped over to the brothers, skirting around them, peering up at them, but they paid her no mind, like she wasn't even there.

"Once more," Kalmoroff said, drawing his sword. "We shall raise our blades once more!"

Tulso startled and nearly fell over, but then Aran grabbed his shoulder and righted him, only to get batted away as Tulso hastily yanked out his own sword.

Kalmoroff just sighed, shaking his head.

"We'll be heroes, man," Aran said, and winked at Coraline.

She stopped, unsure if she'd actually seen that, then asked, "And were you?"

"No," Kalmoroff said, his voice cutting through the scene like a brick through canvas.

The colours drained away into darkness, and then they were somewhere else. A cabin in the woods, secluded, wet, with filtered light dappling down to the ground.

Aran pounded on the door with a fist.

The brothers exchanged glances in the ensuing silence. Something screamed in the woods beyond.

There was a scraping and the door creaked open slightly, and an old woman poked her head out. "Yeah? Whaddya want?" she said grumpily.

"Directions," Kalmoroff said.

"A map, my dear lady, if you would be so kind," Aran said, and bowed with a flourish.

"Do I look like a lady?" she asked him suspiciously.

Aran grinned. "You do indeed," he said.

Tulso nodded vaguely.

Kalmoroff rolled his eyes and handed the woman a small, cloth-wrapped package. "This might help persuade you," He said.

She unwrapped it carefully, unrolling the bundle until a small pendant was revealed, intricate and gleaming, with small gems circling about a peculiar glyph cut into the main stone. "What's this?" she asked, interest lighting up her features with a strange rejuvenation. She touched it carefully, and it glowed beneath her fingertips, pulsing once, twice...

"The heart of a god," Kalmoroff said. "Yours, for the price of a map, if you can only keep it safe."

The woman nodded, not looking up, mesmerised by the pulsing light.

The light exploded and the scene shifted once more in swirling colour.

They were in a cave, underground, in a strange vast cavern of mounded depths and massive spars of crystal jutting from wall to wall. Torchlight glittered wetly off the edges, strange and rounded, flickering.

"Kullimetsä," Coraline muttered, eyeing the stalagamites.

"It all went wrong here," Kalmoroff said.

"How so?" Coraline asked him.

Aran waved the torch around a bit for emphasis, and gestured forward. Tulso strode forward deliberately, past the great crystal spars, into the passage between them.

"Hey, wait up!" Aran yelled, running after, and Kalmoroff, too, was following.

"Should you really be yelling, here?" Coraline muttered, trailing after.

Tulso had stopped at the other side of the crystals, staring, his sword hanging limply in hand, and as the others spilled out around him, there was no question why. They had come out into a vast chamber, ringed with great spars criss-crossing overhead, shorter crystals covering every surface in vivid hues of blue and purple, pointed inward. In their vast numbers, they seemed as if to be glowing, alive, their refractions multiplying and returning the torchlight in alien flickers.

In the centre was the dragon, old, black, watching the intruders with dead eyes.

They were fighting, sword and shield against breath and claw. Even Coraline was holding a sword now, though she had no idea what to actually do with it. She waved it vaguely at the dragon and it turned to Aran instead, attacking in great bursts and lunges, swiping with a wing, swinging talons around and about.

Tulso had already fallen.

"You know, I hate to be the one to say this," Aran yelled, jumping back from a particularly brutal bite, "But I don't think this is really working!"

"No," Kalmoroff agreed, spinning away.

"So what, do the thing?" Aran asked.

"We do the thing," Kalmoroff said.

They were facing the dragon, Coraline too, holding their swords gripped to their chests, blades up, resting up upon their foreheads. For some reason they were floating, held aloft by the magic of the words as they rose around them, bouncing. Coraline couldn't make them out, but she, too, was saying them, caught up in the grip of the memory, an extension of the two remaining brothers.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that if they had really had three at the time, this would have worked. But Tulso was lying broken against the crystal, scorched and bloodied...

The dragon roared, and the magic fractured, a horrible shattering break cutting through the channels of power, twisting through the chamber, obscuring all in pooling darkness.

They were twisted and contorted, stripped of flesh but not life, of colour but not existence.

There was agony and silence.

The magic was gone.

The magic was different.

The voices would not quiet.

Agony, and voices, and no silence.

They were bound, bound to the dragon's will, acting as it directed, no choice, no freedom, only a vague memory of who they'd been, of once being free, of how wrong this now was.

It wasn't a dragon.

The voices were everywhere, screaming, clamouring, whispering in the back of her mind. This wasn't part of it. This wasn't anything at all.

There were cracks, cracks in the dragon's grip, cracks that could be plied, and widened. Cracks that spread as the whispers wore on.

Her whispers. Not theirs.

Everything was different. A strangeness, a light. A freedom, of sorts, still bound, but no dragon. A voice, voices. Their own. Wills, their own.

They could see clearly. Even now, in these forms, they recognised each other. Bothers. Kalmoroff and Aran.

Aran threw his head back and roared with laughter.

It didn't end. The laughter tumbled through the centuries, tearing from scene to scene, swirling in blacks and greys, as nothing, nothing, nothing happened. They drifted, they travelled. They tried to return home only to find no home remained. They tried to find rest only to find no rest to be found. Only madness remained. Only horror. Only the voices and the pain.

So they lingered instead. Lingered as the old world fell, lingered as the new one was built up in its place, lingered as the town encroached, as the city rose up on top of them. They lingered and they screamed for release, for anyone to listen, to hear, to set them free.

Instead they were buried.

In the darkness, in the muffled quiet, there was finally peace. But still they were restless.

They heard her the first time, with the book. A Voice. A Keeper. Singing.

When they reached the surface, she was gone.

The second time, she was called, and she came to them.

Crypt of the Ar Avas - darkness

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 the cold stone, 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. 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.

Lauhen Sea - morning

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 swatting at him and 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, food made, and sunglasses donned, 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 swords and everything else 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.

"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.

"Apa itu? Adakah anda berkembang dusun?" one of them yelled mockingly, pointing at the tree.

"Anda kanak-kanak hilang?" another asked.

A third got in an something of an argument with a fourth.

"Woggly banga hatuchi habanga!" Erry yelled 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.

"Gadis kecil, anda gembira di sini? Tiada tempat untuk bermain," one of them said to Erry.

"Andal shoops," Erry said back. "Fatso gonk."

Kit rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that'll go over well," he said.

Nolan grabbed a rope and scrambled up onto the ship and started making hand gestures at the crew. Surprisingly, one of the crewmen started signing back.

They were really getting going as the other three came aboard, the sailor also talking to a few of his fellows as he went, though most of them had headed over to the side of the ship to oggle the tree, which really did look quite ridiculous.

"Mereka terkandas di laut. Perlu laluan untuk mendarat," the guy was saying.

"Well?" Kit said, scooting up to Nolan.

"Pirates," Nolan told him.

"Really?" Erry said.

Jora was 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.

"Mereka bukan dari deslan," sign language guy said. "Ada sihir."

"Katakan kepada mereka itu menyalahi undang-undang," another told him. There was some laughter.

"Mereka akan sesuai betul-betul di dengan kami," someone else said. This one looked like he might have been the captain.

Sign language guy seemed to agree and signed something to Nolan.

"Hanya perlu menjadi kurang jelas mengenainya," the captain said. "Harus denda."

Jora eyed them worriedly.

"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."

"Perlu menghilangkan pokok itu," one of them said, laughing, and sign language guy translated.

"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 that was considerably longer, and said, "Mostly peaches."

"They can have all they want," Kit said.

"Mostly?" Jora asked.

"Yes," Nolan said, and then strolled off and started climbing up a mast.

The others exchanged glances. The pirates laughed.

"Selamat datang," a few said.

"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, after shooing a groggy guy out, into a small room with four hammocks and a bunch of drawers. Apparently this was theirs.

The pirates grinned at them, pointed out a bunch of things saying what and where they were, 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? It's probably all they have," 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.

"Ew," Erry said.

Jora smacked the magelight with a soggy curtain and it went out in a curl of sparkly smoke.

Merrilenn Shade harbour - morning

In retrospect, Vardaman had absolutely no idea why he'd agreed to this, but it was a bit too late to argue when he was being bodily dragged, underwater, by the fucking goddess of the sea herself.

Kikein, on the other hand, seemed to be humming happily to herself.

Vardaman was not at all certain of what to make of this, and instead simply clung even tighter to the wrapped parcel of mermaid corpse he'd been hanging onto the entire time. It would be over soon. Of course it would be. Just wait, breathe, don't panic.

The waterbreathing spell he'd cast was only good for about an hour.

How long had it been? Why had he agreed to this? Why had he simply not just left on his own, swum to the surface of the damn fucking lake, and walked back into town like a civilised person? Why was he so fucking lazy?

When Taklin had offered to take him, it had made as much sense as anything. But then Kikein had showed up and insisted she take her new son back into town instead, it would be some quality bonding time, a perfect opportunity to make an assessment.

Taklin hadn't been able to put up much of an argument, and in fact had just fled as soon as she showed up, at which point Vardaman hadn't been able to put up much of an argument either.

Vardaman mumbled incoherently.

Kikein did some swoops, drawing him up toward the surface before sliding back down into murk and suddenly turning about and holding Vardaman up at arms length, face to face.

Vardaman gave her a worried look. He couldn't help noticing that compared to her, her tails drifting off almost out of sight in the murky waters, he was very small.

Kikein smiled, her pointed grin growing horribly out of her alien blue features. Her eyes were huge and glowing.

Vardaman watched her, and especially her teeth, worriedly.

Finally she nodded, and said, "You'll do," and hurled Vardaman up and out of the water.

There was a moment of panicked one-armed flailing as he sailed through the air before the rough, hard surface of the pier suddenly showed up to greet his face.

Vardaman collapsed in a wet, painful heap and didn't even try to get up. He didn't care anymore. This was it. He just didn't care. He needed a drink and he didn't fucking care. Nope.

The rough stone of the pier was digging into his face. His back was twisted horribly.

Someone cleared their throat over him.

Vardaman finally rolled over and looked up, only to find the stern features of Vorei staring down at him.

Vardaman groaned and rolled over again, clutching his hat. He wound up on top of the bundled mermaid.

Vorei cleared her throat again. Loudly.

Vardaman rolled over again, this time bringing the parcel with him, and held it up to Vorei with both hands. "Here," he said. "I am told this is the mermaid. I have not verified this."

She took it carefully, and nodded, satisfied. "Kikein thanks you," she told Vardaman.

"Really?" he said, peering up at the high priestess. "I thought she only said I'd 'do'."

Vorei gave him a suspicious look, then spun on her heels and passed off the parcel to some of the other priestesses with a few quick words.

As Vardaman finally sat up, he realised there was an entire large crowd of people gathered about the edges of the harbour, watching with bated breath, kept only off this particular pier by a blockade of priestesses.

"The fuck," he said.

There was a massive sound of a whole lot of sunk ships getting chucked out of the water back onto the surface of the harbour.

The crowd started cheering.

Vardaman got up entirely in time to see a whole lot of rather soggy ships sitting back on the surface of the harbour, water streaming off them.

"Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck," he muttered, eyeing the crowd once more. People on the edges were jumping into the water, some of them swimming out toward the ships, others apparently coming right for him.

The gaggle of priestesses were still blocking off the end of the pier itself.

The guys in the water were getting closer.

Vardaman hurried over to the priestesses, and Vorei turned back to greet him once more, but before she could say anything, he said, pointing at her, "You. Can you annul a marriage?"

"You... married him?" she said, taken aback.

"Nevermind," Vardaman said, took a step back, and then, with a small bit of running start, headbutted his way through the blockade.

Tap Shack bar - morning

The nearest pub was both unlocked and empty, so Vardaman simply slipped inside, sat himself, reached over the bar, and grabbed a bottle of whiskey.

He tilted it slightly, watching the liquid slosh in the almost opaque bottle, before uncorking it. "Water for the flow," he said. "Flowing through the worlds." Not that it was water. Not that it mattered.

Two bottles later, he was half-passed out across the bar, still not caring, still wishing the world would simply go away. Other people, including the bartender, had also begun to trickle back in at this point.

None of them really registered.

Hag's End; Amraeve - morning

Mother Annabelle did not appreciate other hags. As a general rule, they were irritating, needless, and simply got in the way when she already had things well enough in hand, insisting they knew better and subsequently only making matters worse.

This one, on the other hand, was, even with the wraiths, coming across as quite agreeable, possibly due to being unconscious.

Mother Annabelle was not complaining, and just asked the largest of the cats, perched atop the woman's chest, if they needed anything.

"You be needing anything?" were her exact words. She had set the young hag and cats up in her oldest son's room, and was now leaning on the doorway, peering in.

The cat gave her a half-shrug and said, "Some brandy for when she wakes up. We couldn't hope for a dead rat."

"Do I look like the sort of creature who keeps dead rats lying about?" Mother Annabelle asked indignantly.

"You look like you have exactly what's needed," the cat said disinterestedly.

The other two cats just purred in agreement.

"Hmph," the old hag said, though she could hardly disagree. There was even a sandbox in the corner.

As she shuffled back into the kitchen, putting on a pot of tea, she gave the two wraiths that had set up camp there when the young hag had been brought in an annoyed look, waving them out of her way.

She wondered what the woman had done. The wraiths were quiet, sated. Waiting. What had she said?

But any hag should know better than trying to speak to the dead, even one that young, unless... some could do it naturally, if they just had the knack. Did this one?

Mother Annabelle considered the bottle of brandy and then dumped some in her tea for good measure.

"So," she said, addressing the wraiths over her cup. "What'd the girl do, hmm?"

The wraiths didn't respond.

"No, I don't suppose you can hear me, can you," she mused. "I'm not going to try doing the dead voice on you, either," she added, waggling a finger.

One of them rocked its head slightly in time with the finger.

Mother Annabelle chuckled at this, and leaned back against the counter, finishing her tea.

"If only I had some columbine, that might do it... a garland, perhaps." She shrugged. "Well, whatever it is you want, there's no rush, is there?" she supposed.

One of the cats was rubbing against her feet. The angry-looking one, who was anything but angry.

"No rush at all, not anymore," Mother Annabelle said, picking up the cat.

Beneath the South Somn bridge - noonish

Vardaman was hiding. That was the only accurate way to describe it. Having fled the pub and a very sudden crowd of people all around him as soon as he'd woken up, he was back with the vagrants and hiding.

It just wasn't working at all this time.

Instead the entire town was insisting upon taking him aboard as soon as they got their ships fixed, and even now several of them were suffering hugs from Fried Hornich in order to remind him of this.

"It's all very normal, you know," the batty woman was telling Vardaman, who was backed into a corner of broken furniture, surrounded by pigeons. "Kikein sinking the harbour over random things, perfectly normal. Happens every few decades." She nodded proudly.

"That's great," Vardaman told her, eyeing a pigeon. It was uncomfortably near his head.

The batty woman reached up to tuck some of Vardaman's hair back into his hat. "Your mum must be so proud," she added happily.

Vardaman grabbed her wrist, holding it away from his face. "I am seeking a ship to Av Doran, in Kartheldrin. Might you be willing to enquire on my behalf?"

"For you, dear, worlds," the batty woman said.

Surprised, Vardaman let go of her wrist, and she scooted off.

Hag's End; Amraeve - afternoon

Coraline awoke to purring. This was not exactly unusual. What was unusual was the fact that she was in a real bed again, properly covered in cats, as if nothing of the past couple of weeks had actually happened.

Except this wasn't her inn.

One of the cats wasn't hers.

The brandy by the bed wasn't her brandy, though she downed it anyway, using it as an excuse to pry herself out of bed.

The past couple of weeks had definitely happened.

"Ah, you're awake," someone said from the doorway, and the extra cat trotted out as well. It was the woman she'd seen in the alley before, standing tall and weathered, though she held herself with a particular elegance that made it difficult to tell her exact age.

"I've got some wraiths in my kitchen you'll want to be tending to," the woman went on. "I'm Mother Annabelle, resident hag of the area, but you can just call me Tess, hag to hag."

"See, you're totally witchy," Agata said from the bed. "Another witch agrees."

Coraline gave the cat a confused look before turning back to the other woman. "Um, hi," she said. "Thank you for this? You said something about... wraiths?"

"In my kitchen, yes," Mother Annabelle said.

"What," Coraline said.

Mother Annabelle turned about, gesturing for Coraline to follow.

The kitchen did, indeed, contain two wraiths, the same as before, the same as the brothers. She recognised them each exactly now. Now, however, they were just waiting. The wrongness they had exuded was faded. The fear was gone. Even the cats seemed comfortable in their presence now.

Coraline gave them a confused look, glanced back at Mother Annabelle, who simply gave her an encouraging nod, and then stared at the wraiths blankly.

They didn't respond, but they were watching her. Even as they had no faces to show from within their shrouds, she could feel them watching.

"Aran? Kalmoroff?" she said. "You need to go, now." She held out a hand to each.

The brothers drifted forward in whispers, each taking a hand in their own, cold, unreal, the tattered rags drifting slowly after, around them, as if underwater.

"Remarkable," Mother Annabelle murmured behind her.

"Go," Coraline said, giving them a vague push, feeling almost like she was about to fall over herself. "Be free."

The two wraiths drifted back uncertainly, hanging for a moment to nothing at all, before falling back entirely, rippling into the air, and disappearing.

A curtain shifted in the breeze. The sounds of the city drifted in from the windows.

"Do you know what you did?" Mother Annabelle asked, coming around the island, trailing a finger across some pots.

"Haven't the foggiest," Coraline said. She really didn't.

Agata hopped onto the island counter next to them and started nonchalantly licking herself.

"You weren't trained by a hag," Mother Annabelle said, "that's clear as night." She handed Coraline a bowl of stew, and put down another for the cats, groaning slightly as she straightened back up. "What you did there, that was the dead voice. You speak like you was born to it. Little wonder they flocked to you, when you could talk... and listen."

Coraline frowned, poking at the stew.

"They tell you anything?" Mother Annabelle then asked.

"Their story," Coraline said. "They weren't dead, they couldn't die."

"Not dead?" Mother Annabelle asked. "You really think they weren't dead?"

"They had life in them," Coraline said. "They couldn't get rid of it, and it hurt them, but it was life, of a sort. Life's not necessarily a good thing, it just is."

Mother Annabelle was nodding, pleased. "Kyrule might take issue with that definition, but Azorres wouldn't. Very good. What were you trained in, then?"

"I'm a librarian," Coraline said. "Are the gods against each other?"

"Naw," Mother Annabelle chuckled. "Those two, they're thick as rain on most things. But that's the trouble with gods. You always gotta listen, because they're not always right. Or helpful."

"Is Azorres right?" Coraline asked.

"Oh, they're both right," Mother Annabelle said. "Dead but not? Alive and suffering? Reckon the second's more useful, here. Sometimes neither will be." She scribbled something on a scrap of paper. "Speaking of useful, I'd got a bounty out on these years back hoping some Deathdealer or what might come through here and handle it, but you I daresay have done a far better job of it than they would have. Much less messy." She handed it to Coraline. "Take this by the castle if you want to collect."

"Thanks," Coraline said, pocketing it. "I was actually looking to head upriver. Would you happen to know the best way to go about that?"

"Horse, definitely," Mother Annabelle said. "This year the river's gotten so low they can't even pull the boats. Should clear up in a month or two, of course, but..."

Coraline and Agata exchanged glances. They weren't exactly hurrying as was, but that was quite awhile.

"Get yourself a horse," Mother Annabelle told them. "Or three. How convenient that the bounty should more than cover it, hmm?"

Amraeve Castle offices - evening

"Convenient," was exactly what the desk clerk said, in a very beige tone, when Coraline showed him the note.

Coraline glared at him. He was exactly the sort of small-minded, small-bodied, probably small... other-thingsed individual she had gotten so tired of dealing with at her university, and yet, as it turned out, infuriating bureaucrats appeared to be an interuniversal phenomenon.

"Yes," she said slowly. "It is."

They were in something of an office area off the main halls, with a few other desks and a small queue of random people also waiting around. Some of them were paying no attention whatsoever. A few were paying some attention altogether.

The clerk very exactingly flicked a strand of hair out of his eyes. "You mean to tell me," he said, blinking slowly, "that you took on and dusted two wraiths."

"Yes," Coraline said. Her death glares were rolling right off him.

"A woman," he said.

Coraline glared at him.

"A small woman," he said.

There was a stack of papers by his arm. It looked remarkably flammable. The whole room looked a bit swimming.

"Am I small?" Coraline asked.

"Some kind of witch," he said, utterly monotonously.

Agata peered at the man over Coraline's shoulder and bared a gleaming set of teeth.

Coraline gave him a long look and then spun around and addressed the queue's gaggle, instead, a few of whom suddenly became very interested in their shoes, each other's hair, and in one case, a dead potted plant. "Out of curiosity," she said loudly, indicating the clerk behind her, "Would any of you object terribly were I simply to kill this man right now?"

A few of them actually looked at her this time. There was a bit of blinking involved.

Then one old woman rose a hand slowly. "I might," the woman ventured. "I need him to sign my papers."

"But supposing he were dead and someone else had to sign them instead," Coraline suggested. "Aside from the delay inherent, would you object terribly?"

The woman rocked her head a bit, thinking, before ending with a shrug. "Not terribly," she said.

"Good to know," Coraline said, and spun back around, Agata clinging to her shoulder by all claws. She slammed one of her better knives down onto the desk and gave the desk clerk a pointed look.

The clerk flicked a strand of hair out of his eyes.

Coraline picked up the knife and tried to pretend she'd totally meant to do that.

"This will be annotated," he said, rising. "If you'll come with me, then."

Amraeve Castle nicer offices - evening

These offices were nicer than the previous. The one they were in was nicest of all. The guy at this desk was well-dressed, surrounded by papers, and looked completely overwhelmed.

The sofa nearby, on the other hand, looked extraordinarily comfy.

"...she continued to threaten my person with bodily harm," the clerk was saying.

Very comfy. Almost a bit like the one she'd had before this whole wrong universe thing had started.

"Sternes, this is the fourth time this week," the guy at the desk said tiredly. "And it's secondday."

Coraline plonked down on the sofa, sinking in and making herself comfortable. The cushions were a bit harder than she'd have liked, but other than that it was indeed quite nice.

"Hmm," Coraline said.

"Do you like the sofa?" the guy then said.

The clerk, apparently Sternes, was glaring at her in a horribly beige manner.

"Yeah, it's good," Coraline said. "Reminds me a bit of the one I used to have. Bit dense, though." She eyed Sternes pointedly when she said the word 'dense'.

The guy nodded. "Who made yours?" he asked.

"IKEA," Coraline said. "You won't be seeing them around here, though. Yet, anyway. They get around. They're very big. Very... big."

The guy gave her a curious look.

"Look," Coraline then said, "I just came here to pick a bounty." She waved Mother Annabelle's note. "Can I do that or not?"

"May I?" the guy said, indicating for her to pass it over.

Coraline glanced at the note, then at the sofa, and then finally just sighed and got up and handed it over.

The guy read it and nodded. "Sternes, get her the bounty."

"My lord, according to statute 32D, bounties are for hunters," Sternes said flatly. Very, very flatly. "This is not a hunter."

"Sternes," the guy said warningly, "Keep this up and I may just sanction these threats you keep receiving."

Sternes stared at her blandly, and Coraline wondered vaguely why she hadn't gotten her staff out for all this. That might have made it all easier to believe.

Not with him, Agata's voice murmurred in the back of her mind.

Sternes continued to stare at her.

"Sternes!" the guy shouted, rising from behind the desk like an iceberg.

"Under protest," Sternes said with his same toneless beigeness. "If you'll come with me, then."

Merrilenn Shade docks - evening

The vessel the batty lady found for Vardaman, and, apparently, had already secured passage for him on by the time he actually showed up, was quite possibly the tackiest thing the Deathdealer had ever seen. It had a large, brightly-painted statue of a triple-breasted mermaid at the front. Stencilled on the side, in flaking golden letters, lined with maybe fifty different colours, were the words The Throaty Mermaid. Everywhere was trimmed with random colours and pointless greebles. The sails were all different colours, all very bright.

Vardaman stared at it. Then he stared at the batty woman.

The batty woman beamed at him and offered him a dead bat.

Vardaman shook his head and stared at what was apparently the crew. They looked like normal people. Dressed in normal attire. Unenthused. Drab. Compared to the ship, particularly drab.

A couple of them nodded at him. "Glad to have ya," one of them said. He didn't sound glad. He didn't sound much of anything.

Vardaman gave the batty woman another, now somewhat worried look.

She shrugged, and her smile faltered slightly. "Oh, dear, it'll work, right?" she asked.

"Fucking hells," Vardaman said.

The crew were just sort of standing about, on the ship, on the pier. There was something very, very wrong about this.

"A few other captains did offered," the batty woman told him. "Said it wouldn't be too far out of the way to take you with, not after everything you did."

"No, no," Vardaman said. "This is good. Thank you." He gave the batty woman a one-armed hug and headed over to the ship.

When the crew settled him in, it felt detached, unreal. Like they were all going through the motions, and not a one cared. Not a one cared about anything.

Of the captain there was no sign.

When the Throaty Mermaid set out, a crowd had gathered at the piers, seeing them off, cheering, saying thank yous and goodbyes.

Aboard, nobody cheered.

Nobody responded.

Motions, nothing more, efficient and soulless.

Skidrow; Amraeve - night

The bounty had paid out for quite a bit, but the night was growing old, now. The bars Coraline had hit were many.

It was only as the sky was already beginning to lighten that Coraline realised she'd completely forgotten to sleep. She was certainly drunk enough. The realisation itself wandered in and out of her mind a few times before it even set in.

The cats were all sitting on the ground looking at her.

A worker, passing by, eyed her curiously.

She should be asleep right now. Of all the things she was not certain of right now, that was not one of them. It wasn't even because of the alcohol, either. As much as she drank, Coraline was actually very good at not passing out under normal circumstances; she knew when to stop. It was the time of day.

She had actually gotten into something of a 'normal' sleeping schedule of late.

This realisation hit her with enough force that she nearly fell over.

Except that was actually a guy who'd run into her, not the realisation itself.

The second guy didn't run into her, and instead went around her, scuttling past on four legs, keeping his raptorial forelimbs to himself. Like a civilised person.

Coraline stared blankly after them as they turned a corner, and disappeared.

"What," she said, several minutes later.

"I don't want to alarm you," Agata said, still sitting serenely between the two mousers, "but I think you're drunk." They looked like an honour guard on either side of her.

Thimble suddenly leaned over and started to clean his butt, completely ruining the effect.

"Oh," Coraline said.

"Exceedingly drunk," Agata said.

Coraline nodded. "Where are the... whatever it was I was after after?" she asked.

"Horses?" Agata suggested.

"Yeah-huh," Coraline said.

"Probably... this direction," the tortoiseshell said, and padded off in a direction that seemed, if nothing else, to be vaguely down.

Amraeve outskirts - morning

They ultimately found the city's stables largely by smell, specifically Tress's, specifically by following her nose in the direction the brown-pointed cat least wanted to go.

Somehow they then even found a stable specifically selling horses.

The stable guy, a very morose-looking elf, asked what she was after.

Coraline didn't know. It was nearing midmorning, but she still hadn't sobered up much, and she'd never really known that much about horses to begin with.

Finally she said, "A horse?"

"What you meaning to do with said horse, hmm?" he asked.

"Travel, go stuff," Coraline said. "Ride it?"

The stable guy gave her an unamused look.

Tell him you want two horses, good stock, reasonably fast, but better endurance, Agata suggested.

"Look, I need two horses, good stock, reasonably fast, but better endurance," Coraline repeated, for lack of any better idea.

"You got coin?" the guy asked, and yawned.

Coraline was about to respond with some meme-filled profanity when Agata interrupted her. "She's got coin," the cat said irritably from Coraline's shoulders. "She's just drunk, that's all."

The stable guy visibly startled, though he quickly recovered. "Well, if you think it'll mean anything to you, come on," he said. "I'll show you what we got."

Professional, Coraline said, then stopped. Er, did I say that aloud?

No, Agata replied.

Oh, Coraline said. That's great.

String 44158

"The sea is very good. The setting sun is beautiful! The sea is wide. Very... very wide! They were fluttering in the sky, making the sky magnificent. I let the worldly people understand their grandness! Go ahead! Mother stand on you!"

~ Various

Lauhen sea - day

Having people around helped. Having space to move about helped. But most of all just getting away from each other, even if only a little bit, helped. Nolan perched up high; Jora sparred with the sailors; Kit tried to work out some sort of easily-obfuscated binding for a translation spell that nobody would notice; and Erry ran around trying to get in the way. Somehow she wound up accidentally helping out in a few cases.

So far, the pirates seemed like pretty decent folk, giving them space, welcoming them in, not really seeming to mind.

Seeming was only seeming. They needed translations.

Kit was in the dining area testing spell placements. He could get the spells to stick easily enough, though this was really the first time he'd tried specifically enchanting objects, but the objects themselves kept then glowing as a result. He wasn't sure what to do about that.

He was in the middle of trying another one when a youngish looking pirate sat down across from him.

"Um," Kit said, freezing halfway through a cast.

"Not bad," the pirate said, chewing something, and nodded. One of the previous placements was still active and translating, though there was a definite echo involved. "Good form, very solid casting. How's the magic where you're from?"

"Legal," Kit said. "So I have no idea how to, er, hide it."

"Yurp," the guy said. "That'll get you. But if you're trying to place it firmly enough that folks don't notice there's a spell set, I think you're there already."

"How?" Kit said dubiously. The objects he'd been casting on, some bits of wood and metal and a piece of rope, were practically glowing.

"A practiced mage might see this," the pirate said, indicating the glow, "but most of what you'll be dealing with'll just be commons, so as long as it's solid and not doing anything weird, you're good. And then you can just cover up the glow itself with an illusion like so..." he cast a quick spell that seemed almost to invert the magic in upon itself, and the glow disappeared.

"Oh," Kit said. He hadn't even thought of just putting an illusion over it. He gave it a try himself, building the illusion into the main translation fixture, then folding the entire thing over into a piece of wood.

"You're a quick one, ain't ye?" the pirate said.

Kit shrugged and started putting out the spells on all the other bits. "Assuming it even worked..." He did the last one and then asked, "Did it work?"

The pirate mage nodded, grinning. "Now you just need to hide that echo..."

The ship was called the Growler. Specifically, it was the Growler Number III, with no explanation what numbers one and two had been, but everyone just called it the Growler like there had only ever been the one.

It wasn't growling now, but Nolan could see how it might, especially if it were properly loaded with sheep. It would happen sooner or later, if the vessel survived long enough, but this would be well after the kids were all long gone. Thus far it had already been loaded with cattle on one particularly stinky occasion. Even now some of the smell lingered.

Cattle smell was distinct, and distinctly not sheep.

Kit was walking toward him.

Kit was standing in front of him.

Kit was saying, "Put this on," and pushing a ring into his hands.

Nolan examined the ring and then nodded, once, vaguely, and put it on. This would work. Probability of discovery less than .05. Reasonable. They needed to avoid the mushrooms.

Then Kit asked, "This will work, right?"

"Yes," Nolan said. Probably.

Kit sighed. "I dunno about you," the wizardling said, "but this, of all the things, was not what I was expecting."

"Has Erry stopped vomiting yet?" Nolan asked. Conversational. This was conversational. Then he said, "They don't want us here."

"She's getting better," Kit said.

"Backups?" Nolan then asked.

"Huh?" Kit said.

Nolan held up his hand with the ring. "A single point of failure is ill advised."

"Of course it is," Kit muttered.

From up high, the ocean drifted near and far, near and far. The sky loomed bright and blue, giving way in trickles, first to dark, then to light. The stars that weren't their own said many things, and the men nearby said many more.

They'll be good for you.

A tern above.

A crow in the nest.

Give us a holler.

Like a fucking migraine.

South? Southwest. 18 degrees. He called down adjustments and his deslau was a match for their own. Good spell. Good fallback. Nobody would take that. Not that. They'd be gone soon enough.

Sixteen days out, there would be land, and with landfall, there would be sheep.

Jora, below, was looking up, not speaking, just thinking, considering. She was smarter than she let on. The wildcard. The guardian who would surprise them all. A pirate tapped her on the shoulder, an invitation to spar, and she spun around, swinging with her stave, and he blocked and returned, dancing about. As she danced away in turn, pressing and falling back, Nolan noted their movements, betraying them. Three more parries and she would be disarmed. Two more and he could be tripped. One more and her sword clattered away, and she jumped about, tripping him forward. Onlookers jeered, and amidst cursing, got back to their tasks.

The captain patted her encouragingly on the back.

When they asked how far to Anla, Nolan said, "Sixteen days," and pointed to the tern, high above, gliding with them.