This/Survivors song

Forward and on.

---

She gave him a look normally reserved for the criminally insane: utter fascination.

---

They passed through a few villages, if small clusters of three or four buildings could be called villages.

In one, unremarkable from any of the others, Merrs suddenly dismounted and went into one of the houses.

---

It began as a whispering. Something almost, but not entirely, out of sight, out of sound, and out of mind. A shadow of a shadow, except heard, not seen. Whispers at the edge of hearing, and even, as it were, the edge of thought.

She did not even notice them at first. Occasionally they would sneak in even without her noticing, but then as the hours and days went on, they became more insistent, more pressing, until there was nothing to do but listen.

Then they came as an onslaught. When she noticed, she noticed, and then there was simply nothing to do but notice. The voices poured in, beckoning, begging, screaming, asking, crying, shouting, an endless roar of a whisper, the torment of a thousand waves all crashing at once. And she heard them all so clearly, so plainly,

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 after and was. There was only room for voices, voices, voices. Speaking out of the shadows, never-ending.

She stumbled and continued, lost in the depths of her mind, reeling in the voices never-ending.

If only there were silence amidst the madness. But there was none; there was only madness and more madness, voices, and no silence.

Only voices, and shouting, and clamouring, and no silence amidst the voices, only more shouting and crying and pleading.

There was only the din, the overbearing loudness, the reverberation and roar and the place, the place that was all the same, the place that was all sound and no silence.

If there were sound and also silence, a respite, a sanctuary against the sound.

If there were the silence only distance, alone, without the sound, the sound of the voices, thousands, tens of thousands, never stopping, never ending...

But there was no silence.

Coraline wandered on, lost amidst the madness of the roar within her mind.

She knew nothing. She was no-one. The wind. A whisper and a shadow.

The world was not real.

Others passed her by, but they paid no heed. They were not real, and nor was she. Only the voices stood out, in their shout and their roar and their reverberation against the shadowy, flimsy backdrop of the world she saw with eyes. It was nothing.

Only the rock and the shadow, washed by the whirl of voices, so many souls that passed through, so many voices, shouting, shouting, always shouting and never heard. They were meaningless, and still they shouted, because they did not know, they could never know, but they were only the cicada, they were only the whisper, and yet they whispered on.

Whisper and whisper, shout and shout, question and question. The cacophony was never-ending, and yet all were lost within. No single soul stood out, no single voice was heard, only the masses, the unending masses, coming and coming. It was all. It was everything. Voices.

Only voices. No end to the voices, just voices shouting, voices pleading, voices lost without even hope to carry them on, but still echoing even now, for there was no hope here, only nothing, only echos, always echoes. This was the place of echoes, where echoes were only all. Only echos. Nelanor. Echos.

They pleaded, the echos. They called. They whispered secrets and shouted legends, for it was all they knew, and amongst the echos 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 echos the shadows.

But there is only nothing.

She realised 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. Someone said, quieter and yet somehow louder than all of the others, "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.

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 wodden 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 he could pay for it.

There was also no lighting in the rest of the room, as far as she could tell, The patrons drank in smoke and gloom, coming forth, perhaps, only as often as they had to. And here, at the bar, there were only the three lanterns. Kerosene, if she had to guess, and no apperture for anything better. This was all they had. They made do, though. People did, when it was as far as they had come, and indeed they were proud of it. They had come this far, after all. They had achieved real lanterns, right?

Or something along those lines. She wasn't sure what was going on, or how she had gotten here. There was, however, another mug in front of her. Had she already had one? It was hard to say.

For lack of a better idea she drank it.

For the first time in she didn't know how long, Coraline Henderson was thinking clearly. At least relatively so. She was also, from the feel of it, pretty decently drunk.

---

The mask was almost identical to the one she had in her notebook. Hers was a modern excuse for filigree: laser-cut aluminium. Here, intricate swirls and elaborate patterns arose out of the stone, mathematics of chaos that mostly worked out shifting in and out of focus. Only the circle at the top was empty, where the emblem should have been. The trinity.

"Who the hell are you?" she said.

---

"Then we'll have to come by later, get to know this new barkeep of yours." The officer nodded, tipped his hat at Coraline, and turned about and left, soldiers at his heels.

Delaroy just stared after them, panicked. "I... fuck!" He turned to Coraline, and said, "You need to get out of here. I can make up a yarn about how you fled, but you need to leave now if you're going to have any chance!"

"Wait," Coraline said, placing a hand on his arm. "Why not play it through?"

"What?"

She smiled disarmingly. "What's where, what do people usually get, what sort of cocktails are popular in the area? Tell me what I need to know, and I will be your barkeep."

He looked at her incredulously. "Do you know anything about bartending at all?"

"I know how to mix flavours so they work well together. I know a good barkeep judges the appropriate shalott based on body weight and height with some sort of scaling for apparent base tolerance." He looked sceptical, so she added, "I've seen it done a few times."

Delaroy sighed. "Look, I appreciate the offer, but I can't risk it. If it doesn't work, it'd be both our heads for sure."

"I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think it entirely doable," Coraline said. "Remember, it's both our heads on the line, mine too. And even if they buy your story otherwise, that'd still be a mark, whereas this way you come clean and get a barkeep on top. You do seem to have been looking for one for quite some time, after all."

"But..." Delaroy started, then he seemed to change his mind and shrugged. "You know what? Fine. Come on."

---

"When next you call me a monster, remember - you have a sword, and I am a collector of words."

---

Coraline woke up one morning, walked into her pub, and was immediately surprised to find that it was indeed a pub and not a library, though really the only significant difference in practice is that libraries tend to be more dangerous. Even ones without wheels.

So it was going to be one of those days, was it? Fine, then.

This was, after all, very much her pub. The counter gleamed because she made it gleam; the busboy scurried because she made him scurry; the shelves were full because she kept them full. So she didn't know all the mixes by heart; if someone wanted something special, they could either tell her what to do or suffer. She knew enough. The basics, at any rate. The usuals.

And she knew breakfast. Breakfast was what she had for lunch, and it usually involved an egg, some toast, a whop of coffee, and more brandy than she was likely to admit, and this she made now, munching her toast as one of the overnights came down burdened with a hangover. Wordlessly she passed him a coffee and moved onto a vague cleaning of a random glass. Barkeeps were always cleaning a random glass when someone else was around, so she did this too.

The overnight stared glumly at his coffee, disinclined to move.

"Drink it," she said. "It'll help." Not that she'd know. She had never had a hangover in her life. The odd headache waking up, yes, but when it was solved so simply as by drinking a glass of water, that hardly counted as a hangover, so far as Coraline was concerned. Hangovers were something else, something more mysterious, involving the aftereffects of alcohol killing various parts of the body, most assuredly. But these were the remedies, and so she administered them, good barkeep and innkeep that she was. Shuffled those too drunk into rooms for the night, administered to the hangovers in the morning, and wandered off into the day that was the afternoon.

It was a life, of sorts, though not what she would ever have expected. Coraline was a librarian in her heart of hearts, and she had trained to be a librarian. She even had a piece of paper attesting to this, though it was in another world in another language, where everyone had probably assumed her missing, and then, as the months and years went by, probably assumed her dead. But this wasn't that world; here words were precious, and libraries were rare, and trucks were at best a distant dream. Here she did what she could, and that was booze. It was really the same sort of thing, just liquids instead of words. Strange that either one could be so very effective at passing others into the worlds of dreams, but that suited her fine.

"Seriously, drink it," she said.

The guy, dressed in the typical rural attire of the area, stared at his coffee as though it were some strange and foreign potion, then downed it in three solid gulps.

Well, that'll do it, Coraline thought, absently wiping a random glass mug.

He stared at his own empty mug.

He seemed to stop.

Then he startled, twitched, stood up suddenly, and fell over.

Coraline peered over the counter, somewhat worried that she'd finally managed to accidentally kill someone, but the guy was already getting up. He shrugged himself off, looked at her suspiciously, and then asked, quietly, "Er, how much will that be?"

"Eight cela, including room and board. Breakfast is also on, if you want it."

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

"I made toast." Coraline was not known for her culinary expertise, something about how she usually didn't bother since the ingredients on hand around here tended to be absolutely worthless anyway.

"Okay," he said.

Wordlessly she passed him a piece of toast. He wandered out, munching.

She leaned on the counter. Some life, but it was a life, and a fairly stable one. Even the voices were passably quiet now, since so long as she kept at the booze they just faded to the general buzz of the background. And there was no lack of booze here. No lack at all.

---

"I killed her."

He sputtered. "And that was why..." He stopped. "Er, wait, why?"

"She asked me to. Said she'd 'been taken'." Coraline took a long drink and shook her head. "The whole area had been decimated."

"What... by the Death of Souls?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. The elves called it the 'scourge'?"

"Yeah, that's the Death of Souls." He looked at her. "Fuck, woman, that... you did good."

"Did I?"

"Yes."

"Doesn't feel like it."

"Never does."

---

"Francis Door," she said.

He took a long drink. "Yeah?"

"You know the story?"

"Yeah."

She downed her shalott and pushed the mug forward for a refill. "What do you make of it?"

He took a long breath. "Crazy shit," he said. "Damn crazy shit."

"How so?"

"Well," he paused, thinking. "You got this guy. A fuckin' normal guy. He loves a few things in life, his god, his work, his woman, and for them he'd give up anything. For any one of them he'd give up the others, if it came to it."

"Is that what happened?"

"Near enough. It was his wife's sister, if you can believe that. All the stories say it was his wife, what say it at all, but it was her fucking sister."

"What..."

"Right?"

They minded their drinks. Things swam swimmily around them, objects in space. They watched, and listened, and drank.

"Some folks would do anything for family," Coraline said. "Is that so wrong?"

He stared at his shalott and tipped it randomly. "'Snothing wrong or right about it. That's just it. Just shit what happens, an' choices what don't work out. Swhat makes it all so fucked up."

---

It was paperwork. The paperwork of the multiverse, niggling for completion.

Most of the paperwork was automatic, the random details filled in according to sender and origin, but there were two things that needed a specific answer. Choices on the part of the petitioner. Names. A place and a person. A castle and a king. Black sand everywhere. So much sand.

She blinked, not that there was anything much to see. Curtains, wall. No sand. Just a metaphor like the castle itself. Two names. Castle and king. Moonlight speckled across the curtains, trailing shadows of leaves.

"Here reigns king of the sandcastle, Kyrule of Arling Tor," she whispered. Sand drifted silently around her.

There. Paperwork filled out.

With that she fell asleep.

---

"Kyrule would have that I help you, though I do not know what all that would entail."

"So what, I should just trust you?" Then she shrugged. "Well, why not. So tell me, then. What do you know of the Death of Souls?"

"I know it is old, a curse that devours everything that a person is, and spreads to others in insatiable hunger. I know there have been crusade after crusade to try to eradicate it, and yet still it persists. I know there are stories told about it, theories and fantasies and even those who would try to master it, but it never helps. It never works."

She nodded.

"Is that what this is about? You're on... some kind of mission?"

"Not as such." She looked at him carefully, then said, "I'm afflicted. I carry the Death of Souls within me."

He didn't react, not like the others had. Instead he simply said, "I see."

"That's what the alcohol is for. It drives away the voices. Keeps me sane." She stopped and then corrected, "Well, maybe not sane, exactly, but it keeps me me."

"That's it? The solution is alcohol?"

"Doubt it," she said. "I think it's more just putting things off. Driving the hunger away in confusion, because how can it eat my proper self when my self is too buried in shalott to even show its face?" "I won't hurt anyone, though. Well, not with this, at least.

"So there's no cure."

"Not that I know of. But you do have resources. Books. I dunno, maybe there's something here..."

---

(possibly champion's/deathgods')

Three hundred years ago, Coraline Henderson, then going by the name Anja Torn, had been a regular customer at the Empty Cistern, even then one of the oldest taverns in the city.

It wasn't that the place was close to where she was staying (because it wasn't), it wasn't because it had good service (because it really didn't), it wasn't because the clientelle were respectable (if anything they were the opposite), and it wasn't because the booze was good, although it actually was most of the time. The reason she went here because because nobody cared - eveyrone here was here because nobody cared; nobody cared about the law, or about propriety, or about anyone else's business. People came, they went, and they got, if not exactly discretion, a good heaping dose of apathy.

So Coraline got no trouble here walking in dressed like an acolyte of Kyrule and ordering a triple-dose of 20-stone shalott, even though it was well-known that the acolytes were not permitted alcohol. Indeed, it seemed some of the temple's higher-ups had a made a point of visiting all the bars in town to let them know, just to be clear, but they would have skipped this one.

She got the same trouble as everyone else, of course. The general suspicion, shifty-eyed watching as she passed, the curiosity of what might be wrong with her that was gone as soon as she was, but that was really it. All in all, the Cistern of the time was the sort of place where the more normal you looked, the better off you were - if you looked normal, people had to guess, and the imagination often filled in far worse nightmares than reality ever could. And aside from the robes, Coraline looked pretty normal.

The only real trouble had come the first night she was there, or might have had she responded differently.

She had been sitting at the bar minding her shalott, wondering vaguely how drunk she could safely get and still maintain her cover, when someone sat down next to her and said, "Hey, you going to stop that?"

Not even sure what she should be stopping, she looked around. Turned out someone had died, something which often happened there - a body was slumped over a table and it sounded like people were bidding.

She took this in and just said, "I don't want him."

Somehow that settled it. The guy grinned gappily at her, slapped her on the shoulder, and left. This was the nature of the place, lawless, godless, and ruled only by the order of commerce, of what people wanted. And if someone died, that was valuable.

Of course, had she really been an acolyte of Kyrule and not just posing as one, that could have presented something of a problem. The religion was very much against the mistreatement of the dead, and selling bodies very much qualified as mistreatment in their book. But she wasn't one, and in her somewhat more practical view of things, the dead were already dead. They weren't apt to care.

Nor was anyone else, there. And so, during her stay in the city of Soransie, she came to frequent the place.

---

"I have spoken and that is final. Shut up leave me alone I'm drinking."

---

Basic Necromancy was at four. It covered the general theories, and would begin practical studies in reanimation in the next few weeks. Coraline was good at theories, but the reanimation part worried her. It sounded suspiciously like magic, and she had no idea if she could actually do magic.

Not normal magic, at any rate.

---

Coraline had a problem with elementals. Namely with the entire concept.

They were supposed to be summoning air elementals today, but though she pointed out air wasn't really an element, the professor wouldn't listen. So she tried to think of something that was air. Oxygen? An oxygen elemental would probably burst into flame. Nitrogen? But what the hell would be the use of that? It'd be invisible. Carbon dioxide? Good way to suffocate people, if nothing else... but not exactly an element either. Hydrogen would flat out explode. Helium would be funny but not very useful.

Something radioactive, perhaps. Radon? She could give everyone cancer! Okay, maybe not that either.

She sketched out a periodic table in search of ideas. Something further up the table, something inert. Neon? Nice noble gas, and nice and colourful if given electricity... sure, why not.

So she focussed her mind on neon - atomic number 10, simple assortment of electrons, nobody cares about the neutrons - and she twisted it into the spell they'd been going over all morning, with, of course, an added electrical current thrown into the weave to make it actually show up.

There was a brilliant flash of light, and then a form of intense red appeared before her. She giggled as the rest of the class turned to look, then shielded their eyes from the red-orange glare of the neon.

"As I said," she announced to the class, "Air is not an element. This, however, is. It's neon, one of the elements that is found in air."

"Cute," the professor said, and gestured to dismiss the elemental, though when Coraline felt a bit of a rush of warm air afterwards she was pretty sure it had just exploded.

---

"It's not that I'm incredibly drunk," she said. "It's just that I am incredibly drunk."

---

"It's not like I'm worried. If I could think straight about anything I'd be worried, though."

---

It hadn't been the sister. It had been the sister's dog.

---

She awoke to voices. They swirled around her, content to a roar, to a whisper, pleading and cajolling, begging and screaming and chittering. They were everything. The world. A whole lot of nothing. She had to think, to get away, to stop them, but they would not stop and she could not think, so instead she looked about in desperation and found a whole lot of some things. Some walls, mostly. Some furniture. Some objects. A couple of other objects that swirled with their own strange whispers, their own odd shadows. Souls. Mortals. The strange ones that came after. The strange ones that never were. A myth. A legend. And still the voices, yelling and shrieking and singing with madness.

One of the shadows mouthed words and they formed in the space, jostled by voices. They were torn to pieces before she could even try to read them, so she mouthed her own, told the shadows what she needed, whatever it was. She didn't know. The cacophony was too great to tell, there was only clamour and sense and what needed to be done, and so she did it, pulling out pieces from her bag and mixing them in the glass that was now before her. Vodka. Adder root. Seravos. Denna seeds. Less juice. Ghorram. A concoction that mixed to the rhythm of the voices, the voices that overwhelmed, the voices that defined the instant.

It hit her like a brick to the head. Possibly a gold brick. Possibly wrapped in a slice of lemon, possibly taken to the brain. She had no idea. Everything was just swimming. The voices were gone. The glass was empty. The men were staring at her in concern, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Gravity thought it did, but it really didn't matter either. She eyed it warily regardless.

"Whaaaah," Coraline said finally. Or something along those lines. She didn't really know. It didn't really matter. One of the men said something else, and the other responded, saying something as well. Whatever it was, it was lost on her. Then the latter was guiding her out of the swimming room into a swimming corridor and through swimming halls and everything was just gloriously fuzzy beyond belief.

Coraline's head hurt. She felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. Her body felt heavy. The blankets felt heavy. The hand on her shoulder felt heavy.

"Get up," the man in robes was telling her. "You need to get up."

She groaned, or tried to, though nothing really came out. The heaviness was immense, rather like the pain in her head. She could hardly even imagine what it would be to move. The scope of the very prospect seemed epic, a feat for the ages.

Then he was pulling her out of bed himself, and she was even helping, sort of, and then she was standing before him and he was looking at her uncertainly, and her head really hurt. The light hurt. The shadows hurt. His face hurt. Everything seemed to hurt. She closed her eyes.

That hurt too.

"Come," he said, and she realised even his voice hurt. But she followed him regardless.

Space around seemed to swim as it passed by. It still hurt her head, but swimmingly. So she stared instead at the guy's back, at the robe that rippled as he walked, but that, too, was swimming in strangeness. And that, too, hurt. She almost tried to think about what had happened, how this had happened, but the prospect of that, too, hurt. So she didn't, and simply followed.

---

He gave her the skull, and she held it in her hand uncertainly. She had absolutely no idea what was supposed to happen here, but clearly something was supposed to happen, so she held it up, and addressed it, "Alas! Poor Yorrick, I knew him well, Horatio, a man of infinite jest, of... er..." She looked around, then hastily handed the skull back. The keeper took it, looking rather surprised, but nodded.

Coraline stared at him blankly.

---

They were before an alter. Coraline looked at it blankly. It looked like an alter.

"Well?" the priest finally asked.

"Oh," she said.

"Will you pledge yourself to Kyrule?" the priest persisted.

"Sure," she said. "Why not?" Kyrule was fine. She'd not named him for nothing. Or had she? She couldn't really remember. Her head hurt too much to press the matter, anyhow.

There was an awkward silence.

On a whim, Coraline poked the alter. "Hi," she said.

Then she was surrounded by warmth, suspended in light. The pain faded away into nothing, and everything simply fadded away. She found herself floating amidst nothing at all, at peace with the world. At peace with nothing. Everything was simple, clear, laid out before her.

And then it all flooded back - not the pain in her head, but the world itself; the voices, just out of reach; the room swimming around her; the alter; the mask; the priests looking on, overseeing this ritual she had probably just completely butchered.

"Holy buckets," she said.

---

He saw her as soon as he entered: she was seated at the bar, hunched over a mug of shalott, her coat over her chair and staff and bag on the floor. Loose blonde hair shrouded her face as he took the seat next to her, but her clothing stood out - fine but worn, colourful but simple, in patterns that would have looked at almost at home anywhere. Almost.

Vardaman ordered a mug of the same, as well a couple bottles of vodka for the road. She ignored him, and he ignored her right back; they were both there for the shalott, not the company, and the barkeep likewise left them to it. It had been a long day, and to be able to put everything else aside for that bitter, sweet warmth was worth the world. Losing the mind in a controlled manner. An addiction that lasted a lifetime.

---

Coraline awoke face-down in the dirt. Not sure where she was, what was real, or even, for that matter, what had happened, she rolled over and peered into the early-dawn light.

It looked like winter probably looked in a much more moderate climate - namely in pretty much anywhere on her world further south than where she was from. But this wasn't her world, was it? If it were, why would she be further south?

Even so, the dreary light looked dreadfully normal, and the pain in her head and general whingeing of her sore muscles seemed pretty insistent that there was absolutely nothing supernatural going on here - probably just a particularly bad hangover or something? Not that she drank, but a bad bowl of noodles could do much the same. Or so she imagined. She didn't drink, after all.

And the whole conversation, the whole night and day before that she remembered, why, that was probably just a dream...

Probably? So where the hell was she, then?

She sat up and looked around more carefully. She was sitting by a small creek, almost frozen over, with leafless trees lining the banks, and brown grass and curled leaves all around. A light frost glittered on the edges. Her staff - the staff Sherandris had given her - was a couple metres away in some dead-looking shrubs, so clearly that much wasn't a dream. And dead-looking... the proliferation of twiggage suggested that it was definitely not actually dead, just waiting. So yes. Winter. Probably.

So it was real. This wasn't her world. She didn't know what it was, or if it even had winters, but supposing it did, this would probably be it. Right? Maybe. Sure. Why not.

She got up, despite the protestations of her stiff limbs, and picked up the staff. Here she was, then, wherever here was.

There didn't appear to be any signs of civilisation in any direction, though the trees made it somewhat more ambiguous. She pushed through the shrubbery to get a better look away from the creek - it appeared to be only grassland beyond, not even cultivated fields, just hills and grass and the bones of trees, and some low mountains in the far distance. Same in the other direction? Seemed to be.

But there was, of course, a very good chance she was missing something obvious. Where was a ranger when she needed one? Or a sandwich?

She checked her bag, but all it had for food was half a box of crackers she'd grabbed for breakfast the previous morning. She pulled out a handful anyway and stuffed the box back into the abyss of her bag. Breakfast of lunatics.

The sun was higher. The frost was gone. Twiggage rustled in the breeze. There was nothing here but loneliness, and it seemed there would continue to be nothing so long as she remained.

"You're out of your mind, girl," she said to herself. She had wound up on this world, alone in the wilderness with nothing but her wits, a staff, and a bag full of random stuff, no idea where this was, how it was, or really anything at all about it, simply... because of a promise? She shook her head bemusedly.

Lost it or not, however, it was time to move. So she followed the creek, because as much as the videogames she had grown up on tended not to adhere to this, in real life water always leads somewhere.

---

Days passed and turned into weeks.

She encountered the usual problems, of course - what to eat, where to sleep, how to boil the water so it was actually safe to drink, but she used what she had and it worked. She tested the staff and it blasted a hole in a nearby tree, smoldering on the edges. She tested it again and achieved far more precise results - good for hunting, it seemed, but also good for starting fires. Her metal water bottle worked as a makeshift pot. Her coat was thick, probably more than needed here, and though she heard murmurs from time to time, it seemed she was indeed alone. Just the birds and the gophers. Some deer on the prairie. A huge winged creature soaring overhead, neither dinosaur nor bird.

She was out of crackers. It would be all gopher meat from there; though she realised the danger in that, she also realised she knew nothing of the local plantlife, and thus nothing of what would be safe to eat or otherwise.

She considered a deer, but had no idea what she would have done with it all.

The landscape changed. Hills gave way to valleys, plains gave way to forests. The days were long and the nights were cold, and though she sometimes heard shrieks in the distance, they could have been anything. Valley cats. Mountain cats. Not cats. Who knows. Doesn't matter. Snow fell. Winds blew. At night she stirred the fire. Sparks rose and joined the stars when they came out, but she recognised none, so she gave the constellations names of her own. The Blob. Mr. Scruffy. Thing That Looks Almost Like The Pleiades But Isn't. She wished she were home, but at the same time she was glad she wasn't.

Come day, she walked. Down, down, down, out of the highlands, out to the sea. Or that was the direction, at least. There was always a sea if you went down far enough.

The creek became a river. Tributaries flowed in, little and big, and the crossings took time, slowing her progress between nowhere and nowhere in particular. The hills around had risen into sheer cliffs; the valley was a gorge. Birds sang like voices in her head. Shielded from the wind, it was much warmer down here, and the plants much lusher, though many were still without leaves, merely mossed twiggage reaching for the clouds. Some of it almost looked familiar. Almost.

And then she found the road, a high bridge crossing her river like a figure out of legend, an elegant contraption of stone and more stone.

She climbed to its start, up the hill and through the trees, pulling on vines like guide ropes. It was a road, and it seemed maintained, but not like any she had seen in years. Cobbled, brick foundation with stones on a layer of sand, she found, and put the cobble back. Like the roads in ancient Rome, perhaps? And narrow. Road and bridge might suffer a single vehicle, but poorly. A bug perhaps would have managed, but with nothing on either side. But this wasn't a world of vehicles. Even now, she knew it. This road was made for walking - and possibly for riding. But riding what? And what...

And then she realised. This was another planet in another universe - he had been very clear on this. Roads, of course, were probably a fairly universal concept, but what of the builders? What would they be? Would there even be a way to communicate, any common ground at all? And what would they make of her, in her jeans and t-shirt and big fluffy coat?

But as ever, there was nothing for it but to walk. Pick a direction and move forward. Follow the road and find out, see where her story went. There was always a story, even if it was just pictures.

So she headed north, across the bridge, away from the path of the sun, not because north seemed like the best direction to go, but simply because of the bridge. A bridge like that clamoured to be crossed.

The road cut around hills, up and out of the gorge, back to the plains, though these were different from before. Rockier. Hills and ridges. Smoke in the distance, but it could have been anything. Stay on the road. The road was safer. She had what she needed right there; in the cold, water lasts, and saved meat lasts longer.

Stone piles marked offshoots, smaller paths heading away into the grass. They didn't look recently travelled, but finally she followed one for the hell of it, breaking through patches of old snow untouched but for rabbits and game.

It led to a husk of a village, years gone, or perhaps weeks, burned out and empty. Stone walls jostled with charred logs, crumbling into rubble. She touched one of the more intact buildings and it toppled around her.

Old bones poked from the snow. In the centre of the village, in the square, or perhaps what they would have called the green, dessicated bodies were piled around a stone obelisk. There were no scorch marks here, and no scavengers had touched them, but the elements had worn the bodies down to bone, skeletons mummified in their clothes.

They looked human, the dead.

It was unclear why or how, but the air felt strange. It was wrong, here, in this place, and she knew it. Where buildings once shielded the green from the wind, it should now tear through their ruins, but everything was still and silent, simply her and the dead and the obelisk, unmarked. There was nothing to be done. She turned back to the road. Even if she should find something left to scavenge, she would not have trusted it, not from this place.

At the outskirts the wind hit her suddenly, tearing with abandon and screaming in her ears, screaming, screaming. She turned her head against it and it almost stole her beanie, but at least the screaming stopped.

What had happened? What was wrong with the place? Was it wrong with the world? But there were no answers.

She strayed no more from the road.

---

The road led on. Up again, towards mountains and trees, ever rockier. There was nobody else around, nobody else travelling the path but ghosts. They drifted out of long shadows and dissipated in the light as she passed, uncertain in their very presence. Carrion birds circled above, cutting crisply through the icy air. Day and night. On and on. The cold bit in the night. Water ran low, but dirty snow distilled same as river water.

Shapes flickered and danced in the fire, babbling to themselves, as she watched and drifted into sleep, into Nightmare.

---

In the foothills, the trees closed around like an enveloping cloak, roaring whispers in the pines, and it felt like home, recalling winters in the mountains, skiing, sleighing, laughing in the twilight. Always surrounded by the roaring whisper. It was the sound of the forest, the life in the cold.

But there was another sound, too, further on. Voices? She walked faster, rounded the bend, and yes, others, other people, the first in... she didn't even know. Weeks? Months? How long had it been? But it didn't matter; in the now these figures were here. Wrapped in thick cloaks, two huddled around a third, lying against a rock. Something had gone amiss, and the worry in their voices and movements was obvious, though she couldn't make out the words over the whispers of the trees.

Then one noticed her and stood.

"Can you help?" he said. "Adaerivyn has fallen." His features were pointed, his eyes precise. There was no age to the face, but there was fear. The situation stank of it, and she didn't know why.

"What's wrong? What happened?" Coraline asked as she approached and got a better look at the fallen man, Adaerivyn. He was pale, sweating, even in the cold. The other, a woman, looked up with concern.

"He was hit by an arrow when we tried to escape Kalona. Neaya managed to close the wound, but without a healer to tend to him properly, it's gone bad and just gotten worse."

"Kalona?" she asked as the woman pulled back layers of clothing to show Coraline the wound, even without waiting for any indication if she could help. It was a small, stitched hole under the collarbone, clearly infected, with strange colours and pus oozing from the stitches, but though Coraline knew nothing of medicine, the despair in the air pushed her to at least try something. She looked through her bag. Perhaps... yes. A tube of antiseptic ointment? Probably a terrible idea at this point, but what had he got to lose?

Behind her, the man sighed hopelessly. "Eight days. Utter madness up there. The scourge has come, and it is as though the world has fallen. Survivors ratted down, and those who try to escape shot, but it's all for nothing. The taken are taken. The rest can only flee."

Coraline looked back as she unscrewed the cap. "Taken?" she asked, and subsequently dropped the cap on the cobbles.

He just shook his head.

She rubbed a small amount of ointment onto her fingers in the hope that maybe it would serve as a substitute for washing, then pulled out the stitches with a solid yank. The hole came open and a rush of foul liquid oozed down the man's chest, and a foul stench quickly followed. The woman turned away. The other knelt again beside them.

She gave the reddened skin next to the hole a quick jab. The man moaned as a smaller amount of pus came out.

"Just for the record," she said, stuffing a glob of ointment into the hole, "I have no idea if this will actually help. But it... might." She wiped her hands and went back into her bag. Did she have needles? Yes, and even curved ones, at that. Perfect. She threaded one with some floss, and reclosed the wound.

The woman was kneading his other shoulder with worry. "We will pray," she said.

"Thank you," the other said, handing Coraline the cap. "Not many would stop and help elves."

Coraline half-shrugged. She hadn't even realised they were elves, though that wouldn't have affected much regardless. "I hope it works out," she said. "So about Kalona, what, exactly...?"

The elf looked away, unable to meet her eyes. "You're headed that way, then?"

"Looks like."

"You'll only find death. The madness we fled will have died, for the scourge leaves nothing but ashes in its wake, but whatever brought you this way will leave you wanting in the days to get there."

She wanted to ask what it was, this 'scourge', but despite all the questions brimming on her mind, somehow it felt like a bad idea to voice any. These were things she should just know, things everyone knew, something that would immediately mark her as an outsider if she didn't, and... that would be bad. She didn't know why, just that it would be. "Maybe," she said instead.

"Don't go," the woman said. "A kind heart does not bear to witness."

"I've got to," Coraline said, moving away. She'd come this far, and when the only other direction was back the way she had come, the idea of turning back just didn't sit right. And something about elves. "Good luck to you," she said over her shoulder.

Eight days to Kalona. A name. A destination. Something. Finally. The whispers of the pines ushered her on, long and low, rising and falling. Despite the obvious alarm and poor state of the elves and the apparent horrors ahead, Coraline felt her excitement rising. It was starting.

What was, though?

---

Kalona was a cliché. The size of shopping area, perhaps, or an apartment complex, but it was the entire town, walled about in stone and eerily silent, an oasis of silence cradled amidst the trees. Not even cawing disturbed the whispers.

And there should have been cawing. The heavy gate was ajar, but before it were bodies: three of them, collapsed in the road, discoloured corpses chilled but not quite frozen, arrows protruding from their backs. No sign of the shooters on the walls. No sign why the gate would still be open, if it were so imperative that nobody get out. But that would had been almost two weeks ago now. Now there was only silence.

As she approached, Coraline gripped her staff. She felt strangely vulnerable. This wasn't like the games, where one hit never kills and the player character could always be sure of a quick way out in case of danger - be it a powerful spell or simply running away. She had been good at running away.

This was much more interesting, she realised, skirting around the nearest body.

She ducked through the partially open gate and tried to take in everything at once, staff at the ready. It didn't work; instead she nearly hit herself on the head with the staff and got her foot stuck in an upturned wicker basket she'd failed to spot on the ground. She stopped and tried again.

There wasn't anyone about. No movement amidst the houses and workshops, though something creaked somewhere. Within the walls, the streets widened considerably, but they were strewn with objects that didn't make much sense, out of context and unrecognisable. A pile of sheets? Half a cart? A kitchen chair, a shovel, some rocks, a doll. A foot.

She heard a creak again, but nothing of the view had changed. Above her a flag flapped half-heartedly. She pulled the basket off her own foot.

The buildings were empty, at least of people. Not knowing what to look for, she searched for books, but found none. No people, no books, not even any bodies within the walls. Nothing besides the foot that had been lying so lonesomely in the street, in that graveyard of misplaced objects and empty houses. In some, it appeared as though the occupants had tried to pack up and leave, with shelves bare and tables cleared quickly, while others... in others, it was as though the occupants had simply vanished without warning. Fires burned down to ash, tables set, food out, tools in their places, houses only of ghosts.

There was little of use, but she pocketed a few things nonetheless - a bar of soap, some clean clothes (apparently just made; very little else was entirely clean here), a spoon, a bristle comb, a strip of what might have been aluminium but probably wasn't, a set of small pots, some dried food - and stared longingly at some of the other commodities that had once been employed by the people who had lived here not so long ago. How she missed pillows, and beds, and blankets. And heating! And a roof. And proper food. And people. Cats. Books. Comfy chairs. Moomin. Home.

All these homes, but nobody here would ever come back.

Leaving one of the last ones, she was startled by a creak again behind her, much louder, and then realised it was the door closing behind her, simply reminding the world that it was still there. It was still a door. It still functioned.

Again she looked around. Still nothing. Detritus and nothing. Dead objects littering the cobblestones, buildings gaping at the wind. Shutters hanging open, but doors shut tight, guarding the possessions of the dead. Because they were all dead. That much was clear, even if the bodies themselves were simply... missing.

Then movement caught her eye. Something around the corner over there. She moved towards it and a sheet billowed into view, carried by the wind. It caught on the ground.

And then, rounding the corner proper, she saw him. He had been an elf, but now he was simply mad, crazed, a hunched figure not aware of his surroundings, scrabbling at the ground as though chasing something that was not there, all the while jerking to the voices that existed only in his own head.

She could almost hear them as she watched. She had an idea or two exactly what that might be like, to completely lose it, but she also knew there was more to this. He hadn't just 'lost it'; he was no simple schizophrenic. Those often managed to function just fine even without medication, at least until they stabbed the neighbour's kid, screaming about the alien infestation and how he was an agent and had to be purged. Or at least that was what had happened down the road. But this was... different. This was a madness so complete it devoured everything, and yet he was still alive.

Surely normally they just died at that point?

She wished he would speak. She wished she could hear the Mad Words, to really hear them for what they were, but instead the elf said nothing, simply jerked and darted around, picking up objects and tossing them aside, moving from place to place as though oblivious of what were real and what were not.

He hadn't noticed her. She moved closer, but pointed the staff at him all the same.

"Hello?" she called to him. "Can you hear me?"

And he just stopped. It was as though the world had stopped with him, until he turned, slowly, oh so slowly, and stared at her with gleaming, hungry black eyes. He said nothing, simply stared, and she knew there was nothing left for him. He was dead. Whoever he was or had been was gone, replaced only by the hunger.

She took a step backwards, but kept the staff level.

He leapt.

Without thinking, Coraline fired, small radius, precise to... well, the side of the head, it turned out, but that was good enough. For her trouble she got a heap of dead elf-creature at her feat.

She let out a long breath. Was this it, then? Or were there others, too? Ruined survivors bereft of all self, scrounging in the rubble? Was this what the 'scourge' was?

She checked the body and found nothing but rags and dirt. No indication of who he had been. No real indication of anything at all, just questions without answers.

She had already checked most of the city. There was nothing here. Nothing at all. Just death, and ahead a solitary building, higher than the others, another one of those obelisks behind it. Whatever it was, it had been important - governance, a centre of commerce, perhaps a temple - but now it just looked empty same as everything else.

It was a temple. Upon entering, it was as though entering another world, untouched by death and madness, simply clean and normal. Like home. Like work. Ordinary. Regular people came here, and regular people left. There were seats and pews, and the usual doorways to chambers further in, but what drew the eye was the statue at the front, bathed in light. A female figure, solitary, one arm forward and one arm back, a look of joy on her face. She was the sort who was alone - but not for long. It reminded Coraline of Lyssa, almost, but it clearly wasn't. A sister, perhaps, the equivalent in this verse?

And there were no bodies, either. It hadn't been one of those cataclysms where everyone goes to temple to die. It hadn't been anything at all, at least so far as this place was concerned. In this place, whatever the cataclysm outside had been, it could almost be forgotten...

"Hello, a visitor?" someone said behind her. Coraline turned and found a rather pleasant-looking woman, middle-aged, dressed in autumn colours, standing in a doorway. She seemed lost but content, afraid but at peace, a walking contradiction, entirely in place with the dead town outside, but also unequivocally alive. Why?

"Oh, hello," Coraline said. 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.

"Come to see Alyre?" the woman said.

"The lady of masks?" Coraline asked without thinking. Or perhaps she had been thinking - again, of Lyssa.

The woman smiled. "Sometimes. But that depends on the masks."

"Always does, doesn't it," Coraline said. "But we've always got our masks, anyhow. Just different sorts depending on the occasion..."

"Life is a dance of masks," the woman said. "You've seen it. The joy and the sorrow and the faces we put on. And then it all ends and there's nothing left but one."

"Mayhap."

"Where do you come from, the outliers?"

Coraline shook her head. "Naw. Took a gander on the way in, but there wasn't much to see, just smoke, ashes. Towns what weren't quite right."

"Aye," the woman said sadly. "So it is. The lands have fallen."

"Fallen?" Coraline asked.

The woman smiled, and Coraline realised she was probably a priest. "It's the world's end, and nobody will remember. Just the end," she said.

Coraline looked at her, confused. "But why? How is it the end?" But the woman only looked away. "What happened?" Coraline pressed.

"He came one day, asked for shelter, for aid. We didn't know what he was, and this proved our downfall."

"The hungry man? With eyes of black?"

The priestess nodded. "One and the same. He was coherent then. Didn't suggest danger, just seemed lost. But the eyes... the eyes were odd. We should have known."

"But you didn't," Coraline said. "Strange folks happen. How do you tell the difference?"

"They are dangerous. We should have known."

"How?"

"I don't know. But we should have, shouldn't we? The gods would not desire our end so."

Coraline winced, but said only, "The gods do what the gods do. Everything ends eventually."

"And what, we should just accept it? Embrace our deaths?"

"Of course not. Fight to the end. But ends do come. And ends are beginnings as much as anything else."

The priestess snorted, and shook her head. "You talk like a priest."

"I talk like someone who's seen a piece of the world," Coraline said, though in truth she hadn't the foggiest idea what she was talking about. "Things always change. Things die, and things come back. The forest burns down in a ravenous blaze, but in the ashes there is rebirth. Seeds that do not open until the blaze, sapplings that will not grow without the fire. It's just life. Things change. Things get lost. Sometimes everyone dies, but the world moves on."

"But you say we shouldn't accept it."

"Of course not. Fight, and keep fighting. These are our lives. Ours! Those who come after will have to fend for themselves!" She had said it before, but those words had been empty, a simple click and move on. How strange they were now, coming from her own lips.

"Like the spring fights the winter?"

"Spring?" Shouldn't it have been winter fighting spring? "The nights fade, the summer arises. Or so it is at home, at least." Home. The word hit her as soon as she said it.

The priestess must have noticed her expression, since she asked, "Where are you from, then, if not about here?"

"Turku."

"I've not heard of it."

"It's far. Very far. A world not unlike this, but also very unlike this." She needed to stall. She didn't know why, but something seemed off. She cocked her head. "I can show you a piece, if you like."

"A piece?"

Coraline looked through her bag. "Well... not of Turku, but something we've dreamed up..." she said, pulling out a pair of books in a shower of old receipts that she'd never bothered to clear out. They fluttered down to the floor like snowfall, utterly out of place and flickering colours like shards of memory as they fell. "Er, sorry." Realising she'd also not managed to get the correct book, she stuffed it all back in and tried again.

The priestess simply stared as though she had never seen anything like this before. And perhaps she hadn't. Was it the paper? As much as Coraline's people took paper for granted, it hadn't always been so abundant on her world either. Never even mind the other details.

"Here." Coraline held up another book, this one smaller, bound in black. There was a picture of a woman crouched on the cover, unnaturally beautiful and bedecked in knives. "It's an art book."

"It's...?"

"Perfectly ordinary, really." And so Coraline showed her the art of another world, concepts and creation of, well, a videogame. Paintings from which it came to life. The people, the towering spires and narrow corridors, the city that destroyed the land, the stone forest and crystal sea. It had been huge. Bigger than anything they'd seen...

They talked of worlds and stories. It was nothing important, just things that were and things that weren't. Places they had come from. Childhood. Family. Loss and change.

Later, Coraline asked, "Where are the people?"

The priestess looked away. "They aren't here."

"And the bodies? What happened to them?"

She just looked sad, and shook her head. "You should go. There's nothing for you here."

"Where, then?" Coraline asked. "The villages to the south are dead, burned. To the north is winter."

"No. North the mountains end quickly. Through the pass, three days will take you to Aeries, in Verash. There you will find answers."

"Answers?" She didn't even know the questions.

"Go. Alyre wills it."

"Well, if the gods say so..." Coraline looked pointedly at the woman. "What aren't you telling me?"

"It's too much. It'd be too much for anyone."

"What is it?"

The priestess looked at her. "Something I would ask of you. A favour. A mercy."

"Mercy?"

"Kill me."

"Mercy," Coraline repeated.

"End my life. Send me to Kyrule."

"To...?" Coraline stared at her. "But... why?"

"I've been taken too," the priestess whispered. "I can feel it, even now, changing me, eating who I am."

"Like the hungry man."

The priestess nodded. "It's... a curse. A corruption. It's passed through... well, people lose themselves when they're taken. The more they lose, the more they want it back, but of course that's impossible. Gone is gone. So they take from others when they don't have - memories, self, sanity. Sometimes the others just die, if they're lucky. Other times... they wind up taken as well, and they, too, lose themselves, and they, too, begin to hunger..." She looked at Coraline, pleading her to understand. "It eats the mind, but more than that, it eats the soul."

"And he passed it to you?"

"Yes."

"So you want to die?" Coraline said.

"It's the only way out." She shook her head. "I've never been strong, and this... it's stronger. Fear of death is stronger, it always is. It's why the taken keep fighting so hard even after they've already lost everything. I don't want it, but I can't stop it! I can't."

"But..."

"Please! Help me die as me."

"And what, just..." Coraline made a knifing motion, "Stab you or something?"

The priestess smiled. "That would work."

"Nnnrg," Coraline said.

"I'm sorry," the other said, turning away. "It was too much." She knelt before the statue, a lost figure in colours too bright for the situation before an image that could do nothing.

Coraline glanced at the statue as well. She could do it and she knew it. Lives were fragile, and after all the stories, all the nightmares she'd woven, she had no lack of methods. If this was to be the world she'd entered, dark and getting darker, then perhaps they would serve another purpose now. It would have to be a quick death. No strangling, no bleeding out, just...

Coraline pulled the larger kitchen knife out of her bag and stood behind the priestess. "May you go to your gods as you," she whispered, and with all her strength brought the blade down through the woman's skull. She jumped back as the body fell to one side, unequivocally dead, the handle extruding from the top of its head like some kind of bizarre growth.

For a moment she just stared in shock. She had seriously just done that. Okay.

Then she heard voices rising around her, whispering, taunting, cajoling, a roar of echoes rising into a cacophony before suddenly dying out all at once. In the same instant, there was a flash of light in front of her, and priestess's body was reduced to ash.

Coraline knelt down to retrieve her knife, and saw something else glinting in the ash. Trying to avoid touching too much of what had once been a perfectly friendly woman, she picked it up as well. It was a golden coin, intricately detailed on one side with a skull and mask, and on the other with a set of scales.

She pocketed it quickly and backed away.

This was not somewhere she wanted to be. Though night was coming, the idea of spending it within these walls seemed appalling, and so she set out for the north gate, and from there, toward Aeries.

---

Coraline kind of regretted the decision to leave immediately, but only kind of. The nights were colder up here than on the plains, and the pass snowy, but she simply kept walking, following the apparent road until she came to an old guard tower, or whatever it was. It looked insulatable, so there she set up camp: a fire in the doorway, and warmth within.

From there, it was simply down once more. Down, down, and around, out of the foothills, onto high plains, lakes in the distance. Lands more lush than before, grasses sighing in the wind. Life once more. Trails of smoke marked the odd farmhouse; wisps of cloud marked the spring. Cattle-like animals grazed in herds. There was the odd whisper, but nothing more.

Another few days brought her to what was probably Aeries itself; it seemed the three days estimate had not accounted for the weather, which had turned oddly muggy amidst the cold. It was a village much smaller than Kalona, with a few buildings clustered around the road. A mill, an apothecary, a general shop and feed store, an inn. Some others she didn't recognise as anything in particular.

A man ducked out of one building and into another. He nodded at Coraline as he passed, but in this weather there wasn't much desire to stay out of doors and dally.

Coraline went for the shop. The inside was full of odds and ends, cans, bags, clothes, utensils, items for all pieces of life, though some of the shelves were getting a bit on the barer side. Two men stood by the stove, but they looked up when she entered.

"Heya!" the older one called.

"Hey," Coraline said, pulling off her hat and unzipping her coat. It was uncomfortably warm in here.

The older man nudged the younger, who looked confused for a moment, then said, "Oh, right." He walked to the counter. "Whaddya need, m'lady wizard?"

She looked at them askance. "Wizard?"

"You gots a staff," he said. "And you ain't from around here. Ain't ye a wizard?"

"Mayhap." Coraline said. "You take trades?"

The young man glanced toward the other, who nodded. "Sure," he said.

Coraline realised they were probably father and son. "Excellent."

They gave her weird looks at the inevitable avalanche of receipts when she dug beyond the food and clothes, of course, and even weirder upon her pulling out her cuddly sea-anemone toy, though this apparently also cemented the idea in their minds that she was indeed a wizard, for why would anyone who wasn't one have such a thing? But she also made some coin selling odds and ends - a few furs she'd managed to salvage over the past few weeks, her keychain, a wad of foil she'd not even realised she still had, that strange strip of metal she'd picked up in Kalona, a single glove without a match, even the receipts themselves since, "sure, these could be useful to someone", the father said - and picked up some supplies on the side. She still didn't know where she was going, of course, but doubted she'd be staying here very long either.

"Thanks for yer... er... what?" the son said.

"Custom, son."

He turned red and tried to back away through the wall, which didn't actually work. "Right," he said, looking pointedly away.

Coraline bowed slightly at them as she headed out the door, trying to cover her grin.

The inn was like something out of the old west - dark and smoky and full of tough-looking men bored out of their skulls - and all in all, not actually all that interesting. She hrmphed slightly to herself, not really sure what she had been expecting. But it was an inn, bar and restaurant at the base, rooms above, catering to travellers and townsfolk both. Now it seemed there were mostly the latter about, chatting amongst themselves and eyeing her as though they'd expected someone else entirely to walk in the front door.

They probably had. People had rarely seen Coraline coming even in her own world.

There seemed to be something going on in the corner, so Coraline went to look. Seeing this, everyone else put their attention back there as well.

It turned out to be a card game of sorts. She couldn't really make sense of it. One would play a card, and the other would turn it, and that seemed to be about it.

Finally the other said, "Play me," and the one dealt another card as though this were the most important one of all.

"Death," the dealer said. The card had a fairly traditional, though masked, Grim Reaper on it.

"Good," the other said.

"No," the dealer said. "That's not good." One of the on-lookers put his head in his hands.

"Why not?" Coraline asked. "The Death card needn't necessarily mean 'death' at all, simply change and possibility, a transition from one state to another. The end of how things were, but a new beginning, of how things are and shall yet be."

Everyone just sort of stared at her, and suddenly she realised this probably was not actually Tarot-related.

"But that's just one interpretation, of course..." she said quickly.

"Death is death," the dealer said.

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

"Yes," the player said, staring at the card.

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

"Oh." Coraline looked around. "So... what, then?"

"You know what?" someone said behind them. It turned out to be the guy at the bar who had had his head in his hands, a robed fellow with wild hair. He walked up and pulled the Death-dealt player up out of his seat. "We were just leaving."

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

"No?" the robed man said.

The dealer stood, and gave the player a long look. The player just sort of stared off into space. "No," the dealer repeated. "This man is condemned. Whatever his crime, we should see the sentence through." He started to reach into his pocket, but before he could do anything else, Coraline hit him with her staff.

It was mostly a reflex, brought on by the sheer nonsensicality of the nonsense he had been spouting. It was also, she realised as soon as she realised what she had done, probably just about the stupidest thing she could have done in this situation.

Oops.

"Yeah, okay, that's enough of that," the robed man said, and, grabbing Coraline as well, dragged her and the player both back out into the cold while the rest of the inn suddenly exploded in an uproar.

"This way," the man said, pushing her towards the stables behind the inn, still pulling the other fellow along as well, though the fellow in question didn't appear to care one way or another. He seemed to just be going along at present because it was less effort than not going along.

The robed fellow saddled the horses, leaving Coraline and the other, who promptly started to turn away in a random direction, by the door. She reached out and grabbed his arm before he could wander off entirely and stared at him suspiciously - it was like minding a small child, except he looked to be in his 30s or 40s. And he had funny eyes, as though slightly mirrored, though for all she knew that was entirely normal around here. Then the robed fellow was leading three horses back, shoving the listless other onto one, shoving Coraline's bag onto another, and then lifting her on as well before she could respond. Then he was in the saddle of the third, and, holding onto the leads of the other two, he brought the three horses out of the stable door and to a gallop 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.

In the meantime, the path beckoned, hooves clomped, and distance passed as Coraline fell into the rhythms of her youth, the rhythms of the saddle.

"You were right, you know," the robed man yelled to her once they'd slowed down a good distance from the village.

"What?"

He nudged his horse back towards her, and said more normally, "The Death card does mean change."

"So why didn't they know that, then?" she shouted back.

"Oh, you know," he said. "It's practically the end of the world out here. Folks have their superstitions and paranoias. Makes them happy."

"Happy?" Suddenly she realised the other fellow had drawn ahead and was meandering off into a stand of trees. "Oy!" she yelled after him and tried to urge the horse along faster, though it would have nothing of it.

The robed man, however, got the message and caught up with the other fellow's horse and pulled it back onto the path.

Oh blimey, Coraline thought to herself.

They continued until around nightfall, stopping in a small hollow as the fogs set in.

The robed man gathered logs from some nearby trees. The horses were tethered nearby. Coraline was left to mind the other fellow, which was to say to keep him from wandering off. Apparently he did that a lot, and in the fog it could have been particularly problematic.

And it was all fogs this side of the mountains, it seemed - it didn't even freeze, just fogged and mugged, making everything damp and then, once they'd all sat down, ruining the robed fellow's attempts to start a fire.

Coraline watched him try a few more times and then just stood up and shot the kindling with her staff.

He looked at her consideringly as she sat back down before the now roaring fire. The other fellow didn't seem to notice at all.

"So," she said.

"So."

"Who, exactly, are you people?"

The man smiled nervously. "Well, I'm Darren Costa." He gestured toward the other fellow. "This is Merrs," he said, "and that is a bit of a long story."

Coraline snorted. "Hi."

"Hi," Costa said.

Merrs said nothing, and simply stared into the fire, or possibly through it. It was hard to tell.

"Gloria," Coraline said by way of her own introduction. It was a name that meant nothing, simply there for the taking and leaving, one she used from time to time for lack of any better. At the moment, she realised she was more interested in watching Merrs. She got the strange feeling that the fellow didn't necessarily live in quite the same world as anyone else. He was almost like a trainwreck, but without the train. Or possibly the wreck.

Costa nodded. "You're free to go your own way from here, of course," he said. "I didn't feel proper letting anything happen there, but... well, this wasn't a kidnapping, I assure you. I mean..." he looked flustered. "It was for your own good."

"Right..." Coraline said, and laughed. He looked more worried than threatening, so she said, "It's fine. I'm headed this way anyhow, and a horse makes it a lot faster."

"Erm." Now he looked really flustered.

"You stole the horse, didn't you?"

"I didn't know what else to do!" Costa said. "It was entirely improper, heat of the moment, but... but... I didn't know what to do!"

"Yeah, whatever," Coraline said. "So you stole a horse. Not exactly a mortal sin, is it?"

"Well..."

"No," Merrs said. "To save an innocent, a theft is hardly mortal sin."

"Innocent, are you?" Coraline said.

Merrs simply stared at her, or possibly through her.

Costa looked away, but all the same he nodded. He looked relieved.

Strange people, Coraline thought to herself. She found herself wondering about insanity, but people here were strange and she had little yet by which to judge them.

Gnawing on some fruit, she poked for stories.

She didn't get a whole lot. It turned out Costa was some sort of priest, hence the robes, and Merrs some sort of holy man whom Costa was trying to escort to... somewhere. The priest didn't seem particularly inclined to go into details, skirting around further questions like a glob of butter in a particularly problematic batch of cake, though on the other hand the holy man didn't seem particularly inclined to say much of anything.

They didn't seem averse to her travelling with them for a time, however; Costa even seemed glad of it when she asked. Whatever the details were, there would be time yet for her to find out.

The night settled like velvet.

Costa watched the east, back the way they had come, though in the fog there was nothing to see.

Merrs twirled a knife. It glinted in the light from the fire, but the effect was dulled by the fog.

The flames danced and cackled, ushering Coraline into Nightmare.

---

The days passed with the horses comfortably clomping along through hills and valleys, leafless trees scattered throughout the land almost at random. It was very green.

The cold was no longer bitter, instead manifesting as an insidious wetness that seeped into the bones as they rode through clouds and rain alike. Coraline's thick coat had not been made for this, but her new companions fared no better with their layers and cloaks.

There was little to say, and less energy with which to say it. Merrs tried to wander off a few more times.

Coraline asked Costa why he didn't just tie the guy down. Put him on a leash or something.

"It would be wrong," he said. "There has been too much of that already."

He would say no more on it.

Simply riding and stopping. Stopping and riding. Grazing for the horses, hunting for the humans. Flames to suck the moisture out of the air, flames that roared and whispered, hissing secrets that nobody heard. Stars that tried to come out but quickly retreated when they did. The odd comment about ferns. Merrs saying something about how unnecessary this was, really, Costa could just leave him. An exasperated explanation from Coraline why it was so important to boil creekwater (or in this case, ditchwater) before drinking it that wound up completely lost on the others.

Once Coraline heard a sort of thimphk sound off the road, but there was no indication what might have caused it. The others never even looked up.

The rain erased all.

Another night Merrs asked Coraline just where it was she had come from. She was different, he said, not like anyone he'd ever seen.

She shook her head and made an excuse. Later, she said. She was trying to dry her coat.

Later, with the others asleep - Costa by the fire, Merrs sprawled half over one of the horses as it slept, and the other two horses standing guard nearby - Coraline wondered just what she could say. To anyone. Though these didn't want to trust her for whatever reason, she doubted she could trust them either. She doubted she could trust anyone in this world, really, and that was the problem. Worlds this backwater were dangerous. Aeries had hinted at danger enough.

And yet here she had the entire world to work with, and she didn't even know it enough to make something up that would fit. She might as well say she was from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.

Perhaps she would say she was from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.

She flipped the unusual coin and caught it on her hand. Skull side up, masked like the Reaper. It felt like death.

In the morning she fried some potatoes and onions in fat, mixed in some dried meat and a bit of salt, and declared it breakfast. It was strange, not just because it was the first fried thing the others had apparently ever seen, judging by their expressions, but also because it was also the first whole meal anyone in the party had offered to share.

Merrs tried it first. He said nothing, and simply passed the pan to Costa, who tasted a tentative spoonful as Coraline watched, smiling.

"This..." he finally said. "It's potatoes? How?"

Merrs smiled as well, for the first time Coraline had seen. She burst out laughing.

"We call it frituras," she said, then realised there didn't seem to be a word for it in this language and she'd apparently used spanish instead for some reason. What language was this, for that matter?

"Frituras?" Costa said.

"The fat boils at a lot hotter than water, so the food cooks differently in it." She took a glob of the fried potato stuff herself and eyed it oddly before digging in as well. So unusual they didn't even have a word for it, eh? Strange people indeed.

"Sounds like tempura," Merrs said as they all passed the pan around again. But that was not the word he had really used either. None of the words were, and yet she was using them too, and it seemed her brain hadn't even noticed. This was getting stranger and stranger.

She shrugged. "Maybe."

"It's delicious," Costa said.

"Not half as much so as some of the things I grew up on," Coraline said. She told them a bit about it, where she was from, the food, the lifestyle. But she was also vague, leaving out names and other details about the world itself, as well as the specifics of how she had gotten where she had, only implying that there had been some sort of magical accident.

"You're not from the outer planes, are you?" Costa asked as he gave the now empty pan back to Coraline.

Scraping out a few burnt bits, she laughed and said no, she didn't think so, and started banging the pan on a rock in lieu of a real cleaning.

Costa went to pack up and ready the horses. When she looked up, Merrs' was staring at her.

"Something on my nose?" she asked it. It looked away.

They were soon on the move once more.

The day decided to be weird. The clouds cleared up and the sun came out and shone like anything, come afternoon. It was almost warm. Merrs drew well ahead, but Costa let him; he was headed in the right direction and the visibility was excellent.

"So Costa," Coraline said, "Just who are you, anyhow?"

"I'm a priest of Azorres."

She almost asked if Azorres was a god, but then said more vaguely, "Tell me about Azorres." No point coming across as that clueless, even if she really was.

He looked at her sceptically. "You'd ask a priest about a god? That's pretty much the only sure way to get a completely biased response."

This she hadn't expected. "Why not? Biased or not, you'd probably know more than most, at least."

"Well... let's just say I'm not the sort of priest who goes out preaching to the masses."

"So what do you do?"

He hesitated, then said, "It has been my life's work to seek out and, if possible, bring forth the Light of Azorres," Costa said. "A chosen one who would lead the faithful, acting as a guiding star in the world of the living, out of their suffering."

They rode in silence for a moment, then it hit her. "Merrs?"

"So it would seem."

"So what exactly..." she trailed off. Merrs had stopped ahead, held up by a group of what appeared to be bandits of some sort. "...do they want?"

"Agh!" Costa yelled, and drove his horse forward.

There were four of them. They seemed to be telling Merrs to get off his horse, or something along those lines. Whatever it was, he wasn't doing it, instead just sitting there, apathetically ignoring them as they shoved swords at him and yelled crudely.

Costa, of course, was yelling at the top of his lungs as well as he approached, trying to get their attention. Finally he got it and they turned toward him instead.

"Oh, look what we have here, gents!" one of them said, probably the leader. The bandit swaggered forward as Merrs slid sideways off his horse behind him. "Reinforcements!"

"You rat bastards!" Costa screamed, and then he was bringing down the fury of his god, thunder and lightning that shook the very ground and obliterated three of four in an instant. Then the last bandit, who had escaped through some stroke of luck, was fleeing, and the horses bolted, at least the ones with riders - leaving Costa clinging for dear life in an attempt to get his back under control, and Coraline on the ground not far away where hers had thrown her.

For some reason Merrs' was still just standing there.

Coraline dusted herself off as she got up, but she seemed to be fine, nothing broken. Merrs, on the other hand, wasn't moving. As she walked toward him, she raised the staff and fired, hitting the fleeing bandit in the back. She watched the man fall without expression, and only as she dropped to her knees beside him did a look of concern cross her face.

"Merrs?" she said, rolling him over.

He groaned. There was blood on his jacket. It seemed one of the bandits had thought it funny to poke him when he didn't cooperate.

"You idiot." She pushed aside a few layers of shirts and jackets to find the wound in his gut, still bleeding. It looked deep, but she didn't know how deep especially with all the blood. Whatever the case, she also had absolutely no idea what to do about it - even if she could stop the bleeding, there were important organs in there, and such.

So she put her hand on it, instead, feeling the blood and the heat and the sense of pain and hurt, and then there were voices rising all around her, a strange sensation of drowning in nothing, and after the screaming, only blackness.

Coraline woke to the cackle of flames: hissing, spitting, the fire babbled to itself in its own strange language. Twilight glowed off the broken clouds, mirroring the colours of the flames across the landscape.

She sat up, rubbing her head. Was it morning or evening?

"Darren's still trying to find your horse," Merrs said beside her. She started; she hadn't realised he was there.

"What..." she began, then stopped. "Oh. Are you okay?"

"No worse for wear," he said, closing his eyes. "It is a rare gift you have."

"Gift?"

"The ability to heal with a touch is one not many gods bestow. Tell me, which has touched you..." He paused, almost, but not quite, imperceptibly. "Gloria?"

"No gods," Coraline said wearily, then stopped. "Unless you mean... literally?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"Er." She shook her head. "Nevermind."

He smiled. "Oh, but you are a mystery."

"And you're depressed."

The smile faded. "Am I? Maybe I just don't see the point."

"Point of what, now?"

He said nothing.

"Is this about Azorres?"

He continued to say nothing.

"You don't want to be a chosen one, do you?"

He looked at her with that vague, apathetic gaze. At, and possibly through. "Would you?" he asked flatly.

"I don't know." She looked away. Finally she said, quietly, "Sometimes I think I'd be a wee bit happier if someone wanted me around, even if it was a... god."

He was still looking at her, expression unchanged.

"I'm sorry," she said. There never had been many folks around who had been inclined to put up with her long-term. Was that why she had wound up here? part of her wondered.

Merrs said nothing, and simply looked away.

And what had she done since she'd wound up here, Coraline wondered. Walked a lot. Wrecked stuff, mostly. Killed some folks. Maybe helped an elf, but probably not. Caused someone to steal a horse. Stabbed a woman through the skull. It had moved. The bone. She had felt it move as the voices had risen and the knife had...

Stop dwelling on it, she told herself. Think of... bunnies. Cute, fluffy, village-eating bunnies. Bunnies were nice and scary.

She realised the coin was in her hand, so she flipped it. Skull-side up. Death.

They looked up as they heard Costa return, noticeably without a second horse. He dismounted. "Sorry," he said to Coraline. "I'm afraid your horse seems to have gotten away. That said, I was able to—"

And then he tripped on a rock and fell on his face.

Coraline stared for a moment in surprise. Of all the things, she had not expected that to happen. Clearly this wasn't being much of a good day for any of them.

Then she got over it and helped him up, and he rubbed some peeled skin off his cheekbone, but refused when she tried to give it a closer look.

"I'm fine." He smiled tiredly. "We're all fine. Thanks to you."

"Erm," Coraline said. Was it thanks to her? She sort of doubted that.

He didn't seem to notice. "Anyway, I found your bag, at least. Here." He passed it over and sat tiredly by the fire. "No dinner, then?"

"Hah! I haven't really been conscious long enough to do anything, and Merrs... well, you know Merrs," Coraline said, sitting back down as well between them. Merrs never had been one to bother cooking. She had this nagging feeling he would have probably just let himself slowly starve if she and Costa hadn't specifically been giving him food on a fairly regular basis.

"I'm kidding," Costa said. "That's fine. Travel food doesn't really need... ungh." He slumped forward.

Coraline shook her head bemusedly. "Damn, man, you really are tired, aren't you."

"My own fault," he said. "Channelling that kind of energy takes its toll, but I didn't really stop to think about it at all, you know? Skies, if they'd really killed him..."

Merrs looked at Costa with that same unreadable expression. He seemed almost concerned, however. Almost.

"Yeah, I know," Coraline said. "It's fine. I'll find everyone something to eat, just pass me your bag or something. And then we can all just sleep. No problem. Tomorrow'll be better."

He nodded gratefully and did as she said. Didn't think, just passed the bag and stared into the fire.

Coraline took the opportunity to check out what else he had in there as she fetched some food for everyone, of course, but there didn't seem to be anything particularly interesting. Just the usual travel stuff, from the look of it. Some holy symbols. A book in a script that seemed to shimmer before her eyes, sending whispers through her mind.

She realised Merrs was watching her again, and passed out dinner.

Costa ate without paying much attention at all and fell asleep almost immediately. Merrs drifted off pretty quickly too, but Coraline wasn't really tired. Probably something about having already spent most of the afternoon unconscious - maybe she had just been asleep? It was hard to say. And what had been that screaming? It had sounded so familiar, as though it were something she knew well, something that had always been there.

Coraline stared into the flames, but they were just flames. They weren't even talking, just curling around the settling coals as the night wore on and the stars come out. She saw the Thing That Looks Almost Like The Pleiades But Isn't, now near the horizon, and the Ravenous Thing That Hates Eyeballs over there, and they gave her comfort of a sort. At least there were some things about this place that made sense. Some that tied it to home, any home at all. Even if she had just named them herself after she'd arrived.

And there was the coin. She wasn't at all sure where it had come from, either - had it belonged to the priestess? Had it just been there before? Or something else? Really, she had been trying to avoid thinking about it at all because the entire experience had been so traumatic, but there was something about it that just seemed important for some reason. It was important. Perhaps that was why she had picked it up in the first place.

She would have to ask about it at some point. Maybe one of the others would know something?

She looked at it in the light of the fire. The mask was very much like the one she had in her notebook, really, and the scales... she felt like she'd seen those somewhere too. But flipping it, it always fell skull-side up. Mask-side up. Death-side.

She flipped it. Death.

Flipped it again. Death.

Again. Death.

Death.

Death.

Might as well be jelly and ice cream, she supposed.

Come morning, the question, of course, was now what? They were down a horse. Would they all just walk? Share horses? Leave Coraline behind? But despite her suggesting that last one herself, the others wouldn't hear of it.

But she felt kind of bad about all this, really - they really hadn't needed her along, or to have had to deal with her. It had just sort of happened. And now she slowing them down.

"Gloria," Costa said, "We're still alive because of you. Shut up."

She didn't know what to say to that.

"Let's walk," Merrs said. "It's nice enough. Might as well."

And that was that. They walked toward the west, toward the sea, however far it was. The river way back where she'd begun had seemed to think there was one, at any rate. So she asked about the geography - was this still Verash? How big was it? What else was around? She explained that she'd come up through... well, she wasn't really sure, frankly. She had been heading north toward Aeries, but there had been a river along the way...?

"Would have been the Ekreath," Costa said. "Heads west and south until it hits the Deerid Sea. So you would have been coming up the East Road through Hadrin, then? You must have passed through Kalona..."

"Dead," she said. "All dead."

He sighed, but looked concerned. "Then the rumours are true. The madness came and went?"

Coraline nodded. She couldn't really bring herself to say anything.

Merrs said nothing as well.

"What did you see?" Costa asked.

"Nothing to see. There was only death."

It was much easier to converse on foot, leading the remaining horses. Finding things to converse about was another matter.

Later, there was another thumphk behind them.

"Anvils," one of the horses said. At least Coraline thought it had, though in all likelihood she had simply imagined it. It was easy to conjure up words in the voices of her mind, after all. Unless she suddenly understood horse speak too.

She didn't go back to investigate.

Later in the day they took to the horses again. Coraline now rode with Merrs; despite concerns of overburdening, both of were fairly small and it seemed to work just fine.

Even concerns of awkwardness were allayed when it was discovered that two people zoning out on one horse was pretty much the same as two people zoning out on two horses, though it did mean Costa didn't have to worry about Merrs wandering off anymore. Now he had to worry about both of them wandering off instead, because for whatever reason, Coraline wasn't really paying attention anymore.

She fiddled with her coin from time to time. Untended fields drifted in and out of view. Birds shrieked as they passed.

The day settled in silence and died as they made camp. Shadows painted the night amidst a chittering of insects. It sounded like spring.

They continued on. Mornings, evenings, afternoons.

A deer, or something deer-like, darted in front of them and Coraline pulled her staff free from the saddle straps and shot it. Her aim was getting good, even from horseback, though she accidentally smacked Merrs with the butt of the staff in the process.

"Sorry," she said. "Reflex."

He said nothing.

Costa dismounted and gave the deer a poke. "Well," he said, "that's a kill."

They made camp then and there. Costa showed Coraline how to properly butcher a large animal, since she'd only ever fudged the smaller ones, and while he set up a smoker, she and Merrs went about getting the rest of the meat off the bones.

"All this meat," Coraline said. "Just imagine if it were to sprout fangs and start squelching around."

"Um... what?" Costa looked back at her, confused.

"Nevermind," she said with a smile. Fanged hams were probably not something that they would understand as a general concept.

Piles of meat grew around them. They ate a fair bit of it as they went as well, roasting it in the flames.

"You're not going home, are you?" Merrs said quietly.

Coraline shook her head. "I don't know. I really don't." She decided to try shifting the subject. "Where are you guys headed?"

"Telegrin."

"Whatsit?"

"It's a port town. Costa thinks to purchase passage by ship from there, but it won't work."

"Oh," she said. "Why not?"

"I don't know."

They hung the strips over the smoky fire, with the hide serving as a partial enclosure to keep more of the smoke in.

"Nice," Coraline said when it was all set up.

"Leave it overnight and it should all be done come morning," Costa said. "Need to keep it going, though." It was getting late already, and chilly, but after all the smoke and meat, being near the fire was now proving a bit much for them.

"Right, stay put," Coraline said. "I'ma get some wood for another fire."

"Always burning. Everything is always burning," Merrs said as she headed off into the fading light.

But she grinned to herself as she headed toward the trees. Though she'd kept it to herself as they'd ridden, she was feeling strangely happy. This, these people, they reminded her of a mystery, and they didn't even mind having her around. And there were words. Words that meant more than words.

And there was magic! She practically bounced at that. This world had magic. It very definitely had magic. And gods. And magic. And horrible curse-like plagues.

And magic.

Coraline had always wanted magic. Through her entire life, it had been a bit of a dream, a longing, a need for something more beyond the bland, bland world to which she belonged. Eventually she'd grown up a bit and her focus had shifted to words, which were their own sort of magic - the only magic her world had - and to dreams, where it didn't matter what was real and what wasn't. But dreams ended. Worlds faded as she always awoke, and after that there were only words. Sweet, sweet, tantalising words that still left her wanting at the end, because they, too, were never enough.

So she had pushed it away, that want, that need, and she had dreamed amidst her hoarded words.

But now she was here. And here there was magic. And it was real.

She wanted to be excited. She was excited. She wanted to sing and dance and shout into the wind, but the wind was elsewhere, taking the evening off. Something about it felt off.

And that's where the uncertainty crept in. Something wasn't right, because it couldn't be.

It couldn't be real. There was no way it could be real. It hadn't happened. None of it had happened.

Had she simply hit her head, lost her mind, fallen into a fugue? Was she simply sitting in some white cell back in that world she had 'left', blind to the walls around her? Dreaming up a new life? A new reality? A new world with simple answers and big dreams and strange magics... and escape.

A way out.

She was a coward. After everything, she had proven a coward. All the dreams of being strong. All the daydreams and the nightmares and the playing with swords, after the chainmail shirts and the trebuchets and the illusions of power. Even when her parents had told her, no, no, little girls are not Roman soldiers, little girls are not alien commanders, they're... princesses or something, she had still wanted to fight, to take on the world, to be that elf on the elephant, leading the army into the light. And a princess too, of course, but not just any princess. But then the brick of real life had hit her, and after everything she wasn't a princess at all. Not any princess. And she couldn't handle it.

And now here she was. Playing the hero, the strong, the gal who had everything in order save for a place to belong, because in this place that she had escaped to, she could never belong. There was no way. No way at all.

It wasn't real.

Some day she would awaken only to suffer for this silly dream, as she had suffered for all the others. As everyone had always said she would, from all of those that had come before. There would be no option to simply 'show them', for there was never anything to show.

The realisation hit her like real life all over again. That horrible search for a job. That wave of despair, those months teetering on the edge, those stories and dreams and words that had kept her afloat through it all, but only barely. That final surrender before it all ended. Here she was, wherever she was, alone. Hopeless. No future at all, just useless and dreaming. Hiding behind her dreaming, but the dreaming was shallow and it could not protect her. Nothing could protect her.

She heard them now, through the silky darkness of the night, the voices of her past and present. Calling out to her. Laughing. Mocking. Wondering. They didn't even care, for she was already lost, but sometimes they wondered. Whatever had happened to Coraline? Whatever had happened to that gal down the block, that girl in Databases who had always dressed up, that barrista with the funny hair? Oh, but she had failed, disappeared, fallen off the radar, never made it anywhere, not even out her own front door. They mocked and they chattered and they questioned. Who are you, little dreamer? Who do you think you are? Did you really believe it could be true? Are you this silly, this hopeless, this ridiculous? Oh, you pathetic little girl, you, who could not even handle real life!

Voices that rose around her, shrouding like a second night, voices that called to her fears and failings, voices that reminded her of who she had been and what she had lost, voices that left no room for escape, not now, not this time. And other voices too. Others which were not her own, others which were older, stranger, but just as bereft of hope as she was.

As the blackness pulled her under, there was not even silence in its shadows.

She woke screaming. She couldn't help it, couldn't stop. Then the others were holding her down, holding her back, gagging her, silencing here, but even still she tried to scream, scream through the cacophony, scream for silence and respite, for an end, for an escape.

And then she realised it was gone, it was over, whatever it was, and finally stopped. She was alive, and free, and here, and here there were no voices, just the wind's singing, just Costa holding her back and Merrs peering down curiously, just her overwhelming exhaustion, just a bird calling out to the day.

"Gloria?" Costa said.

She nodded slightly.

"If I take this out, you're not going to start up again, are you?"

She shook her head, and he ungagged her. She tried to sit up and had some trouble at first, but then managed it. She was so tired. She couldn't recall ever being so tired.

"The hell?" she said weakly.

"I could ask you that," Costa said. "What happened? Do you know?"

She shook her head. "How... I feel awful." Merrs sat down beside her. They were by the smoker, now cold and empty, at the campsite that had not yet been built. It was midday and the sun was gleaming with the brilliant force of spring, but though the day itself was warm, she felt cold, even wrapped in her coat.

"You've been out an entire day," Costa said, giving her some dried yam. "We found you by the trees, unconscious, but when I tried to heal you it was as though nothing was wrong. Nothing physically, at least."

"Oh," Coraline said.

"Oh?" Merrs queried.

She didn't know what to say. Was this... she didn't even want to think it. So instead she chewed on the yam and stared at the ground. Nice, solid ground. Lots of dirt and rocks and little half-dead plants and bits of twiggy things.

"Has anything like this happened before?" Merrs asked.

She shook her head. Not like this. She had heard voices before, but those had been... different? Quieter? Her own? It had been like what she had heard when she'd apparently healed Merrs, she realised, but that time they had stopped when she had blacked out, not like this. This had been so much worse. And this time there had been a feeling that had come with them. A sense of space, of vastness.

The voices, though. How long had she heard them, whispering at the edge of consciousness, bubbling up in everyday, mundane things?

"When I healed you," she said. "It was kind of like that, only not really."

"And you feel better now?" he asked.

"Better," she said. "I feel like I got eaten by cat with a gizzard full of toasters."

"But it already happened, and now it's over." Merrs said. "Now you feel better."

"That's..." It was a reasonable way to look at things, she supposed. Coraline laughed slightly at that. "Sure."

Merrs stood and helped her up as well. "Come," he said, taking her arm. "Let's walk."

It was difficult at first, as she was quite stiff and quite sore, but as they got moving she began to really feel better. The stiffness and the pain subsided. She realised she was shivering, and drew her coat tighter. But she was all right.

Costa caught up a little later with the horses and everything packed up.

It was strange going, however. The world felt wrong. Not real. Not like a hallucination, necessarily, but like how it had felt going outside after spending 40-odd hours straight in a basement staring at four computer screens working on her animation final project, getting the last bits of details in the objects, setting up the lights and camera paths, and rendering, rendering, tweaking, and rendering.

Then she'd stepped outside with it all on a cd and the real world had just looked wrong. The leaves on the trees both too clear and not clear enough, the sunlight and the shadows too bright and too dark.

This felt like that.

And it was spring. Finally spring, determinedly spring, green moss and grass gleaming in the sun same as it had previously on the rare occasions the sun had even come out, but now with feeling, and accompanied with buds and new growth. There weren't leaves on the trees yet here for her to gawk at their surreality, but there would be soon.

"Blimey," she said to herself.

The feeling didn't fade, but it didn't get any weirder, either. Costa scouted around while Coraline and Merrs continued on foot. Keep moving, Merrs said. Keep moving. And so they did.

As dusk settled in, Costa returned and brought them on horseback to a nearby farmhouse. A woman was standing outside, an ageing farmer proud of her station, and with reason to be so. The place was well-kept and sturdy, the crop was almost ready to be planted even now, and the animals were tended. She helped Coraline down when Merrs parked the horse.

"No..." Coraline said helplessly. This was bad enough already. She didn't need more. Not more. More? She wasn't even thinking straight.

"C'mon, dear, let's get you a bath and a proper bed," the woman said, guiding her inside. "It's all right, your friend explained what's what. Come on."

Coraline didn't resist. The evening turned into a blur of warmth, moving from place to place. Soup. Hot water. Merrs gesturing parts of a story. Tea. Bed. Pillow. Sleep. Sweet, proper sleep.

---

She woke to whispering, but it wasn't real. Just the voices that wouldn't fade. Voices which had been with her all along, voices that had been almost, but not entirely, out of sight, out of sound, and out of mind. She had not even noticed them even as they had snuck into her conscious thoughts, but they had been there, even then.

Now she was aware. That was the only difference. Perhaps they were louder?

She curled the pillow around her ears and stared at the ceiling. Bare studs and boards. Rough construction, but solid, like many of the older townhomes where she had grown up.

Oh, right, she should probably get out of bed at some point, shouldn't she?

Coraline slid over the side of the bed and flopped onto the bedroom floor.

Progress. Sort of. She got up and shook herself off. She was wearing a nightgown, but there were clothes laid out on the chair, so she put them on - woollen skirts and a top. Not her style, but clean.

When she peered out into the hall, the place was quiet, the other doors shut. She headed downstairs, into the kitchen, and found Merrs at the table with one of her books. He looked up as she entered.

"Good morning," he said.

"Can you read that?" Coraline asked. It was House of Leaves - a book that, arguably, wasn't even supposed to be read, at least never in full. She had gotten it for precisely that reason, of course, and never made it past the start, nor started before the middle.

"No," he said.

"Oh," she said. "You may or may not be missing out." Seeing a pot on the stove, she went to investigate. Food. She got herself a bowl and sat down with Merrs.

He was watching her, staring at, or possibly through, her with that same disconcerting look as had grown so familiar.

"So..." she began over her porridge.

He said nothing.

"What's the story? Where are we?"

He looked away and said quietly, "You won't last much longer."

She stopped in the middle of a heaping spoonful. "What?"

"Lydia Morrison owns this place," he said more normally. "In exchange for some venison, she was more than happy to put us up for the night. No lack of space with the rest of her family moved on."

"Oh," Coraline said.

"Darren is out helping her prepare some of the fields."

She nodded.

He placed something on the table and slid it toward her. It was her coin. "Why?" he asked. "Why is it always suffering? Why so much pain and loss? Love that leads only to heartbreak, and life that leads only to the coldness of death?"

She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. "Because."

Merrs looked at her.

"Because it's life?" Coraline said.

"That's all?" he asked.

Coraline shrugged. "I could spin you some pretty lies if you'd like, but they wouldn't make things any better."

Merrs said nothing, though he seemed to be considering something.

"What?" she finally asked.

"How did you come by it? That coin."

She hesitated, then said, "I'd... rather not say."

He sighed. "No," he said. "Kyrule only ever gives them to those who do the most difficult things."

"And who is Kyrule?" she asked.

"Kyrule, Kheris, Irin. He is the god of death, the only god that all mortals are assured to meet." He paused. "You committed a terrible act, but a necessary one. A life, perhaps. Or more?"

"Might have been," Coraline mumbled. Gods watching? Now that was just great.

"Then that coin is your reminder that whatever you chose to do, even if you chose without all the facts, you did choose."

Coraline stared at it. "And what if I chose wrong?"

"You may never know. But that's not what matters, at least to Kyrule. For him, it's that you chose at all. You erred on the side of mercy, even if you couldn't know."

"Blugh," she said. "Gods."

Merrs looked at her.

"What about Azorres?" Coraline asked after a bit. "What's Azorres the god of?"

"Life, among other things. But she and Kyrule have far more in common than in contrast."

"Because of the other things?"

"They are two sides of the same coin. Each gods of mercy in their own ways," he said.

Coraline spun the coin on the table. It came to rest, of course, skull-side up. The whispers were quieter, as though they were holding back, waiting for something, but she could hear them even now in the silence of the kitchen.

"Why do you want to die, Light of Azorres?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

She leaned forward, a half-smile on her lips. "Alternately, why were you going through my stuff?"

"Darren had hoped to find clues as to what was wrong."

"Did he?" Coraline asked hopefully.

Merrs shook his head. "The closest was the deathgod's coin, but it's not an answer."

There was a slam and a clatter from the back as Costa and the woman, Lydia, came in and got out of their muddy boots.

"Oh, hello there," Lydia said. "You look much better today."

"I feel better," Coraline said, standing. "I understand I have your hospitality to thank."

Lydia beamed at this, but pushed Coraline back into her chair with a surprisingly strong hand as she bustled past. "Oh, don't you get up on my account, dear."

Costa snorted and pulled up a chair as well, gratefully sitting down as Lydia bustled around the stove. "So you're all better, then?" he said. "All just a random fluke. Vapours in the air, clearly."

"Oh, no," she said. "It's hopeless, see. I'm going to die horribly, and it'll be horrible, and then there will be darkness and plagues and unending winter and a rain of burning dogs."

He barked a laugh. "End of the world show, eh?"

"Totes," Coraline said with a grin.

In the meantime, Lydia cooked up a whopping lunch, or dinner, or possibly supper, refusing any help at all. "You're guests!" she insisted, leaving the others to chat about the weather, and fields, and nothing terribly interesting a all while they waited.

After that it was simply a matter of food - not exactly a feast, but certainly a meal Lydia could be proud of. Or so Coraline assumed since Lydia certainly seemed to be proud of it.

Later Coraline managed to help with the dishes while Costa and Merrs tried to figure out how to repair one of the chairs, which wobbled slightly due to a loose joint. She wasn't sure how they intended to do so without glue, but it was funnier to stand back and watch than to intervene, and the rinsewater provided a nice, inconspicuous view.

Then Costa sorted it out by stuffing a piece of twine into the gap in the joint. Lydia rolled her eyes but accepted it.

The next morning they bid Lydia goodbye and continued on, ever westward. Coraline didn't mention the voices, but they stayed with her as they travelled on, there but not.

stuff

• wallet
• phone
• bluetooth
• mouse
• three flashdrives
• bus passes
• cuddly sea-anemone toy

• two books - House of Leaves, Guild Wars Factions art book
• pens/pencils
• notebook/pad thingie
• wad of eraser - 'kneaded rubber'

• floss
• screwdriver set
• wirecutters
• pliers
• two knives
• set of upholstery needles
• file
• pair of chopsticks
• small scissors
• MAGNETS

• hairclips
• sunglasses
• extra socks
• small mask (filigree-style)

• tube of ointment
• superglue
• deodorant
• lip colour (paint stuff and balm)

• empty metal water bottle

• bars of soap
• clothes
• spoon
• bristle comb
• set of small pots
• some dried food
• smoked meat
• waterskin
• some money (Verash currency)
• rope

• Strange coin

• jeans
• xkcd sysadmin t-shirt
• huge-ass coat
• scarf
• beanie
• mittens
• boots

...and a staff weapon. Dzang, girl, you go into the world with an odd assortment of junk.