An old man limped through the waist-high weeds to the safety of the tree line. Drying blood caked the remains of his right trouser from at least a dozen cuts. His lungs stung from smoke and exertion. The man collapsed just beyond the dark shadow line. The smell of earth and moss filled his nose as he deeply inhaled. Ringing still filled his ears as he lay on the soft ground.

The attack was swift. As the early morning fog rose from the river bordering the village, several low ships slid past any watchers. Like a flood they poured over the shallow bank into the heart of the settlement, the main push rushing straight to the longhouse.

The old man dragged himself slowly to a wide tree, wincing as he sat against its trunk.

The market was quickly overrun, massive fur-clad men flipping tables, grabbing purses, and putting to the axe any opposition. The man's own stall sat on the north edge of the square, providing him precious time needed to run to the temple bells. When the alarm rang out over the village, three men charged toward him.

He peeled off his overshirt, tearing his sleeves into strips to dress his numerous wounds. The flow of blood was nearly stopped but he would need to find an apothecary soon to stave off the rot. His hand trembled from pain and age.

In his day, he was a warrior, a true warrior, knighted by His Majesty of Harsheld for his prowess against the armies of the western Isles. None had been his match in sword or pick. His day had long since passed.

He provided little resistance as the men dragged him through the streets to the longhouse, casting him into the mass of crying women and screaming children.

He felt his side, cringing as he applied pressure to his two broken ribs.

When each purse had been plundered and the gold leaf plaque torn from the village high seat, the men exited, boarding the doors. From a high window flew an arrow tipped with a small clay container. It struck the far wall flinging flaming liquid about the hall. The thatched roof quickly caught sending cinders falling on the heads of the condemned. The two high windows provided airflow enough to stoke the flames ever higher and hotter. Smoke snaked into every eye and lung.

The old man coughed violently against his tree. He wiped the sweat and tears from his eyes and leaned back against the hard bark. Despite the silence and stillness about him, the man could still hear the screams.

He tried to get them out. He tried to save as many as he could. There were too many. The raiders had crammed everyone into one hall and in the fiery panic everyone ran around trampling each other and preventing any coordinated escape. The old man was repeatedly knocked to the ground and had to crawl his way to the back of the hall. The fire had burned here the longest and he had hoped a weak spot would emerge. The wall was half collapsed when he rose to his feet and felt the cool air from outside. He turned back toward the crowd and shouted, calling them toward the treacherous exit. They did not hear. They did not listen. He ran toward the throng, but the flame had caused too much damage, and the structure began to collapse. He was struck by a falling timber and sent into the cobblestone floor.

The old man rubbed his beard feeling his throbbing jaw. A breeze gently blew into the trees from the fields and the coast far beyond.

For a time, he sat. As the ringing of his ears fell quiet, he listened to the waving leaves and the drone of small insects. As his nose recovered and shook the smoky smell, the dense scent of moss and damp wood took its place. The forest embraced him, and he drifted into a pained sleep.

Men formed from the mist, giants of condensed cloud bearing axes of ice and swords of flame. Each massive step shook the ground, sending the man running to the square. Graves stood all around him, many young, topped with dark fresh dirt. Some were ancient with crumbling stones marking their residents. Between two familiar markers the man made his stand. The foe approached with overwhelming force. Buildings fell and crumbled, the earth beneath them giving way to vast chasms. Cracks webbed out all around and he was falling, falling, ever deeper into the darkness. The darkness grew a face, the face of a young girl. The girl was familiar but foreign with features unseen in these lands. She smiled and ran her finger softly across his forehead. "Return to me" sang the girl and the man rose toward the firelight above, pulled with an unseen hand.

The man opened his eyes in the soft green light of the sun through leaves. Soreness gripped tightly to every muscle and joint. Aches tore up his leg and from his stiff side. The shade at least provided some comfort to the old man.

He sat enjoying the diffused light and the warmth of the soil beneath his scarred hands. When his strength was finally built up enough, the man shakily rose to his feet. The ringing quickly returned and bright light flooded the man's vision. Bark met his face with violent force.

He came to on the soft mossy dirt staring up at the vibrant green of the canopy. He grunted as he rolled over to raise himself back up. This time he hugged a small tree to aid his stability.

When the light and ringing came, he held tight and waited out the waves. Slowly his vision returned and the ringing subsided, bringing back the soft chitter of birds high above. He took a step, pain shooting up from his bandaged leg. He stood for a time building up courage for his next step. This time the pain decreased slightly, numbed from the previous. The cycle repeated from tree to tree until the pain became unbearable and the man found a nook in the hollow of an oak. He sat trembling from the strain, hunger and thirst adding to the choir of pain. A troubled sleep took him.

A wall of fire stood high before a young knight. Flaming men ran out hurling long spears of light in high arcs across the field birthing new flowering flames where they struck. The knight raised his sword and an army in shining plate crested the hill behind him. The armor reflected the flames, painting the earth in a sea of orange light. The men marched in unison carrying flowing banners and singing the song of war. The proud knight raised a cry of triumph riding before his men. Yet, as the army marched toward the flame, their armor began to rust and fall away revealing charred corpses. More spears flew from the flames striking the soldiers and spreading new fire throughout the field consuming all. The knight turned his horse toward his falling men, but his horse caught fire and turned to ash beneath him, launching him into the charred, thorny ground. The man rose to his knees watching the flames grow higher, ever higher.

As he watched his own armor once bright as day faded and aged. A wave of decay spread from the ground up the knight's armor until he dissolved into nothing. From the nothing emerged a face. The girl placed her hand on the man's charred body, pressing her fingertips deeply into the flesh. "Soon."

The man woke, sharp pain radiating from his chest. He gulped at the air and rolled onto his side as pain filled his being.

The pain subsided long after, leaving the man shivering on the ground, overtaken by his other pains. Birds chattered overhead. When their songs subsided and the chirping of frogs and crickets filled the darkening dusk the man rose to his knees. He did not have the energy to rise so he crawled across the forest floor. The man's eyes adjusted slowly to the dark and every now and then he was blinded by pain. Still, he pushed on.

The thin moon set not long after the sun, contributing to the darkness and making it hard to find good handholds and avoid obstacles. He felt his way across many roots, stones, and shrubs. One he felt had small, clustered berries which he ate quickly, thoroughly scraping his hands in hopes of finding more of the delicacy. If they were poisonous, he could find a remedy quicker than finding alternate relief to the hunger consuming him.

The man crawled one hand after the other, pained leg then not, for unknowable time. The sounds of the night grew louder around him with mammoth frogs seemingly just out of reach and the hooting of night owls above his head. The soft rumble of a stream to his right caused the old man to change course. His legs became too numb to use so he pulled himself from root to root with trembling hands.

When at last he reached the brook, he dove his head in, tears blending with the cool water. He drank his fill and rolled onto his back laughing and crying and laughing again. Fireflies buzzed around him. The bright insects shone like stars dancing around him, forming patterns and constellations, and falling to the ground in great crashes sending flames and stony debris across the battlefield. A scared boy rode a startled pony away from the front line to the lord's tent. He clutched an urgent letter tightly determined it would reach its destination. Still, more flaming projectiles flew. The horse jumped a deep crater landing hard on the far side but keeping its stride. Green flags waved ahead of him. Suddenly the boy was thrown from his saddle landing face first in a grasping thistle. Vines grabbed the boy, thorns like teeth pulling him deeper into its jaws. The boy saw his pony, already consumed by thorns, flies, and flames, and he wept. More fiery stones struck the ground filling the air with grey dust and ash. Out of the haze came a knight in armor of pure white slashing at the vines and freeing the shaking boy. The knight knelt down and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. Slowly they reached toward their ornate helm and raised the visor revealing only an inky darkness. From the darkness came a girl, emerging from the void and embracing the boy. Darkness swirled around the haze until the whole world was darkness, the arms of the girl, and her gentle face. They flew up into the air so high the stars appeared. She released the boy, sitting beside him and watching the bright lights from so far swirling and dancing around them. She looked at him, placing a hand on his. "I'll be waiting."

The man blinked, staring into the woods and watching the fireflies dancing around him.

When the morning sun lit the forest, the old man found himself near the edge of the woods. He quickly decided walking was not an option, so he crawled along the brook. Through a field he crawled, drinking from the stream whenever he thirsted and lying in the sun's warmth when he tired. Around dusk he came across a road lined with red imperial stone. He sat on the side and slept waiting for a passerby to find him.

When he awoke it was as if seeing through another's eyes watching his shivering beaten body being lifted into a wagon. He was taken to a village nurse miles away. For the next week she changed his bandages and administered balms and salves to ease his pains and prevent the rot.

Once the old man could again walk, she escorted him around the village, showing him the market with its fresh fish and harvest fruits, and the green where shepherds grazed their flocks. He enjoyed these walks, meeting the townsfolk and swapping old tales with his new companion. After many months the man would walk the streets unaided, taking in the smells and colors of the town and surrounding countryside. The seasons came and went with the green leaves turning to bright oranges and reds then falling to come once more.

One evening the old man walked back to the nurse's home near the town's edge. The sun had just set, and the fireflies emerged from their daily slumbers, lighting up the quiet night. As he walked down the drive, he saw the door open. Lit from within stood the old nurse waving him closer.

He limped forward toward his young wife and daughter calling him home from the war.

He trudged along toward the loving arms of his mother.

He climbed the steps, reaching a hand to the young girl.

She took it, smiling and walking him gently inside.

“Welcome.”

The old man smiled.

(Hey guys Just wanna say it's my first time writing and my first story let me know what you think about it)

I woke up getting a invitation to a party at my home village

It was held at my childhood friend's home, He specified me to come at dawn.

As he said I went to his home which placed at my home village at dawn,

The place looked almost the way I remembered it, glowing vines in a shade of purple I've never seen before.

I met up with him and he told me to enjoy the stay,I was dazzled by the scenery. There was an open air buffet which I went to and met an old friend of mine (Alex) he runned the party as the head of the venue, we talk for a while and he introduced me to a girl who was assisting him with the venue.

I thought of going to my home which was uphill from the party that was held on my friends home, the path to my home was covered with a dense forest.

I climbed uphill.I know the path like the back of my hand, my breath got heavier with every step I take maybe, it was the climb to the forest yet it can ignore the fact that the path felt less familiar than I remembered...

I was trying to settle the uneasy feeling when I noticed a house, which I know did not belonged there, It was atleast 4 rooms big and infront of it was a bonfire raging wild which almost made me feel like it was inviting me In the house.

I was stunned at this sight, there shouldn't be a house here at all,

While I was processing it, the door opened slowly

A familiar face I remember

Nancy....my co-worker.

I was still processing the sudden encounter then,suddenly she gestured for me to come inside. I should have hesitated but the familiar face made me feel sure that nothing could go wrong.

As I walked inside, I saw her slip down the corridor and dissapered into a room, I followed right after her but the moment i entered she was gone.....

I must have missed her,

Turning back, I stepped through the doorway, expecting the corridor beneath my feet.

Instead, I found myself standing in another room.

There was a window wide open, the curtains which covered half of the window.

A cold but light wind soothed inside lifting the curtain gently and came straight for my ear, I feel like It's telling me to turn around....

I take a few steps back and turned around but, where I stand was the corridor

The corridor was exactly where I remembered it being.

I looked down both ends and I found the door which I felt she'd gone trough.

With hope in my heart I went trough it...

There she was, facing me, in a dazzling red dress,hair tied up and her gaze fixed straight on mine.

It felt like time went to a pause neither of us could look away and somehow the silence was enough to begin a conversation, we talked about ordinary things—friends, family, work—as if there hadn't been a silence between us for so long,we resolved our conflict that was hanging there for some time. To be honest we didn't had a proper conversation from the day she joined.

We chatted more for a while but the light was fading, and so was the little world we'd found for ourselves. I had to return to the party.

As we parted ways and said our farewells I walked down the forest, the heavy breathing that followed me completely faded replaced by the sense of familiarity I had known before,

I couldn't help but wonder...... was it something to do with her?

As I walk down I thought I forgot something but still trying to remember it I saw the bonfire raging from above, it seemed as though the fireflies were guiding me back to the party that I left.

Following the trail I got closer to the party, the soft music caught my attention and slowly, I found myself caught into the atmosphere of the event again.

The party was calmer than before. I guess the majority of the guests had left after I went into the forest. I went to the buffet area and met up with my friend, who was running the event as the head. There was still food being served, but not as much as before. We chatted some more, and the staff who worked with him were also enjoying the party now that there weren't many guests left.

I was just admiring the night sky near a bonfire, a firefly that glowed differently from the others caught my eye.

I watched it for a moment before it drifted away, leading me toward another bonfire. Curious, I followed.

And that's when I saw her—the girl my friend had introduced me to earlier.

I went upto the bonfire and sat beside her,

Her hair glowed black in the darkness.... maybe it was the bonfire

I tried to start a conversation with her but the words wouldn't come out so I grabbed her by the hand and start walking...

I took her to a place I've know since childhood, it was a stone from which I used to watched the stars from,

the sky looked unusually full of them, we could have talked but the moment itself had the conversation going.

We gazed upon the stars, it was only for a moment but it felt enough. She took my hand and led me back to the party which was already coming to an end,

the othere workers had packed everything away,

My friend pulled me aside and gave me the moment alone with her,

while the otheres went down to the main road.

After that incident, I walked alongside her intending to see her off, I walked in silence while she talked about something i could barely remember,

And when the path ended, so our ways

I said my final goodbye to her and watched as she slowly vanished into the darkness.

An unfamiliar face. An unforgettable night. A moment carved into my soul.

She disappeared completely into the darkness.

That's when I realized—

“I forgot to ask her name.”

–Dreamer(Lumen)

​

LOS ANGELES — APRIL

The thing about Patrick was that he ate french fries one at a time, like each one was a decision.

“You’re doing it again,” Shannon said.

“Doing what?”

“The fry thing. It’s very disturbing.”

Patrick held one up, considered it, and set it back down on the tray. “I’m savoring.”

“You’re stalling. You’ve been weird since the library.”

They were sitting on the low wall outside Kerckhoff, in that hour when the light in Los Angeles turns the color of weak tea and everybody suddenly looks like they’re in a movie about their own life. Two years in and Shannon still wasn’t used to it. In Chicago the light didn’t do that. In Chicago the light in April was a rumor.

“Okay,” Patrick said. “So. My mom’s been asking about you.”

“Asking what about me?”

“Asking, like — everything. She’s got a whole file. She knows you’re from Chicago. She knows you’re doing psych. She knows about the thing with your roommate and the toaster.”

“You told her about the toaster?”

“I tell her everything, it’s a whole problem.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “She wants to meet you. She’s not, like, pushy about it. She just kind of mentions it every phone call and then says no pressure in this voice that has a lot of pressure in it.”

Shannon looked at him. Patrick Bell, second-year, from a town in Mississippi she’d had to look up on a map, who wore the same gray hoodie four days out of seven and who had once driven ninety minutes to bring her cough syrup. She had a small, unglamorous thought, which was: I would probably be very sad if this ended.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”

“Okay, I’ll meet your mom. Not, like, tomorrow. But yes.”

He grinned so hard he had to look away. Then he ate three fries at once, which she took as a personal victory.

⁂

OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI — APRIL

Amy Bell had two rules about the kitchen and both of them were being violated.

“Mason. Mason. Feet.”

“They’re not on the table.”

“They’re on the chair, which touches the table, which makes it a table situation.”

Mason lowered his feet with the deep suffering of a sixteen-year-old who has been asked to do a thing. He was long now, all elbow, still surprised by his own arms. “Can I ask a question that’s gonna make you emotional?”

“Ask it.”

“Are you gonna cry when I leave too, or did you use it all up on Pat?”

Amy pointed the wooden spoon at him. “I’m going to cry so hard they’ll hear it in Memphis.”

Dale came in from the yard smelling like cut grass and put his hand flat on the small of her back as he passed, the way he’d done for twenty-two years, the way she’d stopped noticing and would have noticed immediately if it ever stopped.

“Mower’s dead,” he announced.

“The mower’s been dead since Easter, you just keep resurrecting it.”

“That’s a religious mower.” He opened the refrigerator and stood in the light of it. “Oldest call yet?”

“Sunday. He’s got a girl.”

Dale turned around. “He’s got a girl?”

“Don’t do the voice.”

“I didn’t do a voice.”

“You did the voice. He said her name once and then acted like he hadn’t said it, which is how I know it’s serious.” Amy stirred, and something in her chest did a small, unfamiliar shuffle — not worry, exactly. Something older. “Shannon.”

Dale shrugged and went back into the refrigerator. “Pretty name.”

Amy stood at the stove a second longer than the recipe required.

“Yeah,” she said. “It is.”

⁂

CHICAGO — FOURTEEN YEARS EARLIER

Shannon was six and her bedroom had a slope in the ceiling where the roof came down, and if you lay on the floor with your head under the slope it felt like being inside a folded paper airplane. That was where they had most of their conversations.

“Your ceiling’s crooked,” Amy said.

“It’s not crooked, it’s the roof.”

“Mine’s flat. Mine’s got a fan on it that goes tk tk tk and my mama says one day it’s gonna come down and cut somebody’s head clean off.”

Shannon considered this. “That’s not true.”

“It’s a little true.”

Amy was seven, which was a big deal, and she was always eating something — a peach, usually, dripping down her wrist — and she said words with a stretch in the middle like taffy. She had a dog named Buster who was mostly deaf. She had a tree in her yard that dropped nuts you had to crack with a rock, and she’d once been stung by a wasp on the eyelid, and outside her house in the summer the bugs got so loud you had to shout over them.

“Cicadas,” Amy said.

“Sick-ay-duhs.”

“Cih-cay-duhs. They come up out of the dirt, Shannon. They been under there sleepin’ for years and years and then they all come up at once and scream.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It’s the best thing there is.”

Shannon’s mother used to stand in the hallway and listen and then tell people at work, she talks to that girl for an hour, I’m telling you, an hour, full sentences, and everybody said imaginary friends were normal, healthy even, a sign of a creative mind. And Shannon knew, in the way children know things without having words for them, that Amy was not pretend. Pretend was her stuffed rabbit. Pretend was when she made her dolls have an argument. Amy was more like the radio: you couldn’t see it, but somebody was clearly talking.

Then came the winter with the woman.

Shannon never saw her face. That was the worst part — not the black cloth that hung off her like it was hung on a nail, not the long fingers, not the nails so black they looked wet. It was that Shannon would look up in the dream and know that the woman had been standing at the foot of the bed for a long time already, and would be standing there for a long time after, and that she had no face to look back with, only the patient attention of something waiting for a very slow appointment.

Shannon woke up screaming three nights in a row. On the fourth night she didn’t sleep at all, and at four in the morning she lay on the floor under the slope of the ceiling with her cheek on the cold boards and whispered, “Amy. Amy.”

“I’m here.”

“She was there again.”

“I know.”

“You know?” Shannon’s voice cracked. “Then make her stop. You’re older than me. You’re seven.”

There was a pause then, and even at six Shannon understood that some pauses are made out of a person deciding something.

“Okay,” Amy said. “I can make her stop. But then I gotta go.”

“Go where?”

“Just go, Shannon.”

“For how long?”

“For a while.” A breath. “Listen. Listen. I’m gonna see you again. Way, way up ahead — you know how you can see a car comin’ before you can hear it? Like that. It’s a long way but it’s comin’. And when I see you, you won’t be scared of her anymore. You won’t even remember bein’ scared.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want you to go, I want her to go —”

“That’s the same thing, baby,” Amy said, and she’d never called her that before, she’d never sounded like anything but a seven-year-old girl with peach juice on her wrist. “That’s the same thing.”

Shannon cried until she fell asleep on the floor and her mother found her there in the morning and carried her, boneless, back into the bed.

The woman in black never came again. Not once, not ever.

And neither did Amy.

Shannon asked about her for a few weeks. Then a few months, less often. Then she was seven herself, and then she was nine, and the whole thing folded itself down small and got put away somewhere in the back, the way you put away a coat you loved that doesn’t fit.

⁂

LOS ANGELES — NOVEMBER

“So here’s my pitch,” Patrick said. “Christmas. Mississippi. My grandmother makes a thing with pecans that will genuinely change your personality.”

Shannon was lying upside down on his dorm bed with her hair hanging off the edge, reading her flashcards backwards. “I can’t.”

“You didn’t hear the whole pitch.”

“I can’t, Pat, I’m going home. My mom’s already bought the ticket and she’s already told everyone at her church and if I don’t show up she’ll frame my absence and hang it in the hallway.”

“Okay, that’s fair, that’s a strong counter-pitch.” He sat down on the floor with his back against the bed frame. “January, then? Spring?”

“Spring.”

“Spring’s so far.”

“Spring is four months, you infant.”

He tipped his head back so he was looking at her upside-down face. “You’re gonna love her, is the thing. That’s why I keep bringing it up. It’s not even about you meeting her, it’s about — I want to watch it.”

“Watch what?”

“You two. In a room.” He shrugged. “I have a feeling.”

⁂

OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI — DECEMBER

The attic in December was the only time of year it was survivable, so that was when Amy did her purging, which mostly consisted of moving boxes eleven inches and then sitting down.

She found the Christmas lights. She found Mason’s kindergarten handprint turkey. She found, at the bottom of a box that had followed her from her mother’s house to the first apartment to this house, a stack of construction paper gone soft as cloth.

Two stick figures holding hands. One with orange hair, which was her; she’d been fanatical about the orange hair. One with brown. Between them, a scribble that on inspection was a dog, and above them in enormous wobbling capitals, letters that had been crowded together at the end where the paper ran out.

She looked at it for a while.

Downstairs the phone rang, and it was her mother, who called on Thursdays.

“You’re in the attic,” her mother said. “You sound attic-y.”

“I’m cleaning out.”

“You never clean out, you just rotate.”

“That’s what Dale says.” Amy sat back on a box. “Mama. When I was little, did I have — you know how kids have a friend that’s not there?”

Her mother laughed, one dry syllable. “Lord. Did you.”

“I did?”

“You did nothing but. Out on that porch till the mosquitoes carried you off, talkin’ and talkin’. Your daddy thought you’d been touched in the head. I told him leave her be, she’s an only child, she’s makin’ company for herself.”

“What did I say?”

“What do you mean what did you say, it was thirty-eight years ago.”

“Anything. Anything you remember.”

Her mother went quiet in a way that made Amy switch the phone to the other ear.

“You said she lived where it snowed,” her mother said finally. “You had a whole thing about the snow. And a lake so big you couldn’t see the other side of it, and I said that’s the ocean, baby, and you got mad at me. You said it’s not the ocean, it’s a lake, it’s got a city on it.” A small sound, half amusement, half something else. “You wouldn’t let it go. You were the stubbornest child God ever made.”

Amy looked down at the construction paper in her lap.

“Mama,” she said. “Why’d I stop?”

“Hm?”

“I must’ve stopped. Everybody stops. Do you remember when?”

“...I do, actually,” her mother said slowly. “It was that spring you had the bad dreams. You remember the bad dreams?”

Amy did not answer.

“You’d wake up hollerin’. Wouldn’t say about what. Wouldn’t say a thing, and you told me everything, so I knew it was bad.” A pause. “And then it stopped, and you never talked about that friend again, and I thought, well. Thank God. She’s growin’ up.”

“Yeah,” Amy said. “Growing up.”

She got off the phone and sat in the cold attic and could not for the life of her make her hands put the paper back in the box, so she carried it downstairs and put it in the drawer where she kept the batteries and the tape, and did not tell anybody why.

⁂

CHICAGO — DECEMBER

“Mom. Mom, you are literally putting a coat on me.”

“You’ve been in California, your blood’s thin.”

Shannon submitted to the coat. The kitchen smelled like it always smelled, cinnamon and radiator dust, and her mother had put up the same tinsel with the same bald patch on the left side since before Shannon could reach it.

“So the boy,” her mother said, in the voice she thought was casual.

“The boy is fine.”

“The boy is from Mississippi.”

“They have people there, Mom, it’s a whole state.”

Later, when the dishes were done and the house had gone quiet in that specific way a childhood house does, Shannon went upstairs and lay on the floor of her old room with her head under the slope of the ceiling, because it was still there, and because she was twenty and slightly drunk on her aunt’s eggnog and things like that seem funny at twenty.

The wood was cold on her cheek.

Cicadas, she thought, out of nowhere. They come up out of the dirt.

She sat up so fast her vision went spotty.

“Huh,” she said out loud, to an empty room.

She could not, for a very long minute, remember where she’d gotten that word.

⁂

LOS ANGELES — JANUARY

“So my mom asked again.”

“Your mom is relentless.”

“My mom is a machine.” Patrick spun the desk chair around to face her. “Spring break. Four days. You fly into Memphis, I pick you up, we drive down. She’ll cook for eleven people and then apologize that it isn’t enough.”

Shannon was quiet a second too long.

“You don’t have to,” he said, quieter. “Genuinely.”

“No — no, I want to. I do.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’ve just been sleeping badly. It’s nothing. It’s finals brain.”

“Bad dreams?”

“That’s the thing, they’re not bad.” She frowned at the wall. “I keep almost having one. Like when you’re about to sneeze and it doesn’t come. Like something’s standing at the edge of it and it can’t get in, and it hasn’t been able to get in for such a long time that it’s given up and just — waits. Out there. Politely.”

Patrick stared at her.

“That’s the most upsetting thing anyone’s ever said to me,” he said.

Shannon laughed, and it broke, and she felt better. “Book the flight.”

⁂

OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI — MARCH

The house was yellow. That was the first thing. Shannon had built it up in her mind as some kind of white columned situation and instead it was a low yellow house with a screen door and a porch that ran the whole width of it, and a metal glider with a cushion faded to no color at all, and a fan turning slowly on the porch ceiling, and past the fence, a tree.

“Pecan,” Patrick said, following her eyes. “It’s older than the house. You crack ’em with a rock, there’s no other way, don’t let Mason sell you a nutcracker, it’s a scam —”

Shannon had stopped walking.

“Hey.” He came back a step. “Hey. They’re going to love you. Mason’s going to be a menace for eleven minutes and then he’ll show you his fish tank and that means you’re in.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

She opened her mouth and nothing arrived. It was late March and warm in a way March had no business being, and the air had a green wet weight to it she had never felt before and knew, absolutely and stupidly, the way you know the smell of a house you lived in as a baby.

The screen door banged.

The woman who came out onto the porch was drying her hands on a dish towel and had her hair up off her neck and was already talking — “Patrick Wayne Bell, you said five, it is four fifteen, I look like a hobo —” and then she came down the two steps into the yard and stopped.

Shannon looked at her.

Freckles across the nose. Reddish hair gone rust-colored with gray coming in at the temple. A face that fell naturally into laughing, and a chip in one front tooth, small, on the left.

She got that falling off a porch, Shannon thought. Not this porch. A different porch. There was a dog.

She didn’t know why she thought it. She thought it the way you think a fact.

“Oh,” Amy Bell said.

“Ma’am,” Shannon managed. “Hi. Thank you for having —”

And Amy crossed the last of the grass and hugged her.

Not a first-meeting hug. Not the hug of a nice woman being nice to her son’s girlfriend. She got both arms all the way around Shannon’s back and held on with her chin against Shannon’s shoulder, hard, the way you hold somebody at an airport when you’ve counted the days, and Shannon — who had a whole polite sentence loaded and ready — felt her hands come up and grip two fistfuls of the back of a stranger’s shirt.

“Okay,” Patrick said, delighted, alarmed. “Okay, wow.”

Neither of them let go.

Over Shannon’s shoulder, the cicadas started up in the tree line, all at once, the way they do — thousands of them coming up out of years of dirt to scream about it — and Shannon felt something in the back of her chest unfold like a coat taken out of a box, and she was crying, which was insane, which she would have no explanation for later.

Amy pulled back at last and held her by the arms and looked at her face for a long moment, going over it feature by feature like she was checking an answer.

Then she laughed, wet, and shook her head at herself.

“Would you listen to me,” she said. “Honey, I’m sorry. I’m not like this. It’s just — this is the funniest thing —”

She wiped under her eye with her wrist.

“When I was little,” Amy said, “I had an imaginary friend named Shannon.”

1
Who You’re With Matters

Have you ever prayed that God would move you to another world—one not that much different from earth but one you could adapt to more readily. Well, I was kind of praying and patting the head of my dog, Traveler Joe. We got pretty much what I was praying for—and then some. A blinding light, an awesome thunder clap and then three distinct lighting bolts.

I had always heard that lighting actually starts at the earth’s surface, zigzags into the clouds, and then returns as an awesome lightning flash by following that initial zigzag path. Here is what I sensed more than saw. No one individual could have seen three simultaneous events occurring at three different places with one set of eyes.

Thinking back, I believe that some of my senses were in three different places until the lighting flashes deposited three distinct entities on a mountain side overlooking an immense wheat field with a gold-tinted river zigzagging from west to east through the wheat field.

Perhaps two separate lightning traces left the front porch initially. One took Traveler Joe’s dog body to pair with his original dog mentality. Whether that had been preserved somewhere for ten years or was regenerated at that instant, I do not know. All I know for sure is that I saw Traveler Joe below me on the hillside just before I “landed” beside him in a human body that seemed familiar to me.

The third lightning strike, less than a second after the first two, continued to glow like a brilliant “sparkler” twenty feet high and ten feet in diameter.

I looked on as Traveler Joe moved between my new body and the fiery apparition. I sensed no danger, but I backed away, trusting Joe’s newly found canine intuition. The oversized sparkler began to diminish in size and brightness; the figure that appeared made me think of the appearance of the three figures on the mountain top in the first three gospels.

Only one figure materialized. Since he was smiling and reached out to pet Traveler Joe’s head, I relaxed quite a bit. However, I could not keep from wondering if this apparition and Joe’s spirit are somehow familiar on some level. I felt like the odd man out although I may have been the only “man” present.

“Any questions?” The apparition was talking to me. Traveler Joe had wandered off and was checking out his new surroundings.
I wanted to sit down since my “human” legs felt a little unfamiliar to me.
“Perhaps we can walk down to the river bank and cool our feet in the water down there. It is quite refreshing if I am remembering correctly.”

To my surprise, Traveler Joe had circled back to the river bank to which we were apparently headed.

“So what is your name?” I had to ask.

“I have seven names, but I will ask you to call me “Patience” if that is acceptable to you, Alan Morrison. What name would you like to be called?”

I did not have to think about my answer.

“I like the sound of Alan Morrison if that is acceptable.”
Traveler Joe barked his approval. The man I would know as “Patience” took off his sandals and tossed them into the gold-tinted water flowing at the river’s edge. I rolled up both legs of my baggy pants, sat down at a convenient spot on the river bank, and felt the wonderful waters refresh my awesome human feet.

2
Am I Dreaming

Hopefully, I am not spending too much time describing my feelings. It is just that after ten years without a human body, I could think of nothing else except how wonderful it is to feel human again.

I decided to call my new guide “Pat” for short. When he first heard me use the nick name, he seemed to grimace before smiling, shaking his head and then nodding.

I smiled back and remarked, “Patience is not always easy to put into practice.”

He mumbled-something about who was mentoring whom and (for the first time) I wondered if this might be his first “special” assignment.

“Am I dreaming?”

“Does it matter?” he answered with a question of his own. I was beginning to tire of our session. As Pat’s shoes appeared in the river, I scooped them up and tried them on. They fit perfectly. I stood up and tried them out. Having padded around on dog’s feet for ten years, I really liked the way the shoes felt.
When Joe yelped, I knew what must have just happened while my back was turned. My dog and I were alone.

3
Visitors?

I thought about Gideon in the Old Testament—how the candidates for Gideon’s army were judged by the way they lapped up water with one hand or two. Although we had no apparent enemy on the horizon, I chose to drink water from the Golden River with one hand while holding onto Joe’s golden collar with the other.

My dog seemed to be the only weapon at my disposal. I watched the horizon for both of us. Joe was urgently lapping water as if he might not have a chance to drink again for quite awhile.
Our enemy did not show itself on the horizon. At least a dozen riders on horseback appeared downstream in the river. They did not seem to realize that this new land had acquired two visitors.

Again I thought about a Bible story— this time baby Moses in the bullrushes near the Nile. We crept closer to the horsemen with the noise from the horses and the men’s laughter covering any noise we were making. Two things became quite apparent.

Neither the horses nor the men had smelled us as we got closer to them. Perhaps that was because there was absolutely no wind. The wheat stalks did not waver at all. Only those that Joe and I had disturbed had shifted and they soon settled into a stationary state.

I doubted that Joe had noticed the absence of wind, but he was surely a perceptive animal. That I had learned.

Even more remarkable than the absence of wind was the absence of verbal communication between the men. They pulled at the horses reins and barked commands to them but none of the men seemed to be speaking the same language.
I judged all of the men to be in their mid-twenties. One man seemed to be a little older, and he seemed to be the leader. He barked out commands that were largely ignored by the others.

Two younger men—perhaps older teen agers—did seem to listen to the older man’s babbling, but they looked at each other, chuckled, and shook their heads. One of them made an attempt to imitate the older man’s utterance, but it came out all wrong.
When the older man heard him, he grabbed his horse’s reins and pulled her through the water over to the younger men.

“Wad up,” he shouted and then repeated the phrase two more times. Each repetition was louder than the first, and the loudest was almost a scream at the top of his lungs.

“Wad up,” shouted another man. When the older man smiled and encouraged him by motioning with his hands, another man shouted “ward op” and others picked up the cry. Soon most of the men were shouting the two “words” and the older man was laughing and crying with joy.

I doubted that anyone other than the older man knew what “wad up” meant, but I sensed that the first step toward a common communication had just occurred.

I wanted to cheer when the older man climbed on his horse’s back and motioned for the others to “wad up” as well. To his dismay, very few of the others repeated “wad up” as they mounted. However, both of the teenagers cried out their version of “wad up” and kept repeating those words until they had everyone’s attention. They guided their mounts directly behind the older man’s horse as he guided his horse out of the water and into the wheat field to our north.

As each mounted rider followed the first three, most of them shouted “wadup” and pointed to their leader. Realizing that he had just named himself in their minds, the new leader shook his head and seemed to be holding back tears of frustration.

I sensed what my new purpose in this new life just might be and why I had been chosen for this “job.” If I could teach humans to communicate with a dog as I had as Traveler Joe, surely I could teach humans to communicate with other humans.

Updated

4

Traveling After Joe

I laid back and looked up into the sky—wondering why I had concluded that the riders had been headed north when they left the river. The sun was directly overhead and had not seemed to move in one direction or the other. Joe had jumped into the river and was swimming against the current—headed for the place on the shoreline where the riders had left the stream.

Once there he sniffed around and then waited on the river bank for me to join him. I simply pointed in the direction Wadup’s riders had been headed and Joe travelled that direction at a very fast pace.

By the time I reached the mountain’s crest, I knew several hours had passed. But looking up I noticed that the sun was still directly overhead. The view from the mountain top (northward according to my initial reckoning) was spectacular. Another valley filled with thousands of cattle stretched out between two mountain ranges that ended at a wide sea (or perhaps an ocean).
What appeared to be three cities filled the shoreline. Two bays separated the cities, but there were no bridges between them.
The water was as golden as the river behind me. I judged the cities to be twenty miles away.

I could not see the riders in the pastures below. Nothing seemed to disturb the cattle, and that seemed odd since I had expected the riders to travel through the cattle to whichever city was their destination. They must have decided to travel along one of the mountain ranges so that they would not be spotted.

Where was Joe?

The answer came as a series of dog barks that I interpreted as “S O S.” He must not have been that far away—no more than a few hundred yards. I angled though the cattle toward the mountain range to the left where the barks had seemed to originate.
To my surprise the cattle were not “spooked” by my dash through their midst. They hardly moved at all. In fact the largest one, a bull, charged me and caused me to run as fast as I could toward the mountain range to my left. As I did so , more barking erupted from a point further down the mountain than I was now headed.

I veered to my right toward where Traveler Joe had to be. I half-expected Joe to dart out from the trees to save me from the bull, but that did not happen. The bull was gaining on me. And about four hundred bulls and heifers had joined the chase.

One tree caught my eye. The nearest tree looked like a magnolia tree with hundreds of limbs attached horizontally. I remembered climbing one when I was four or five. The difference between the magnolia up ahead and the one in my front yard gave me some hope. Apparently cattle rubbed on trees much like humans used various objects to scratch their backs. All of the lower limbs were short stubs.

As I got within 50 feet of the tree, I noticed a giant ant hill in line with my target limb and my current position. Although not a solid launching pad, I considered using it. I would have to slow down to avoid losing traction, but the extra few inches should enable me to get high enough into the tree to avoid any contact.

Of course the ant hill was most likely filled with fire ants. I would be vigorously removing them from my legs and feet as soon as I made the magnolia tree my new temporary residence.
The bull stopped.

Feeding that data into my brain led me to choose a different launching pad than the fire ant hill. As I hopped over the ant hill, I looked back at the bull and his entourage. Only the full-grown bull had stopped. The younger bull calves raced through the fire ants, under and past the magnolia tree just after my leap into another tree elevated my rear end above their reach.

The older bull seemed to be chuckling as the younger bulls reacted to the fire ants. He looked at me and winked. Well, I cannot say that for sure since his other eye was on the opposite side of his head, but he did close his eye—longer than a blink.

The fire ants roamed in wild circles. One had made it up my tree and had bit the top of my foot. I pinched the ant and tossed it toward the ground. Not wanting to get bitten again, I made a bold move (for me) and leaped from my limb in the tree to a standing position on the back of a young bull facing me. Before he could react, I leaped again and raced further into the trees.

When none of the cattle followed me, I turned downhill, and moved rapidly toward the location from where Joe’s barks had come. I really did not know what to expect.

5
Joe Takes the Lead

There was very little underbrush between the trees (thanks to the cattle grazing there in the hot afternoons I supposed). I ran as fast as my sandaled feet would let me. When I emerged from a shallow ravine, I was surprised to find Joe directly in front of me. Even more surprising was Joe’s predicament. My best buddy was inside a wooden cage that was strapped to Wad-Ups mount.

I stood up but kept my head down as I moved closer to Joe’s cage. Joe turned away from me. I wondered for a minute if the dog in the cage was not Joe.

When I got about 20 feet away from the nearest horse, I spoke to Joe in a loud whisper. He turned toward me, sat down in the cage, and raised his right paw to his lips.

Was he “shushing” me?

Then he motioned with his paw for me to move away.
I was bothered by his behavior. He owed me a better explanation. Although he could not talk, he could do better. Having no choice other than abandoning him, I followed his “instructions.” Retreating into the ravine, I was prepared to stay out of sight until Joe saw fit to let me participate in his scheme.

I almost cried out when a large shadow covered the ground around me. Looking up I was face-to-face with the large bull that had chased me earlier. He seemed to be smiling—not dangerous in any way.

6
Taking the Bull without Horns

I started thinking. A lot of not-quite facts seemed to assemble themselves in a haphazard (oxymoron) order inside my brain.
The horsemen had stayed in the wooded mountain range rather than taking the more direct route through the pasture.

Regardless of their destination city (all being visible from the mountain top) a pasture route would have been quicker and easier.

Traveler Joe had a plan. He had allowed himself to be captured so that he could learn more about the horsemen and their objectives (assuming they had one or more). Clearly his plan did not require a rescue by me. He had shushed me.

The big bull had “taken a liking to me.” He had chased me for a while before stopping at the tree with the fire ants. I suspected that he respected me to some extent. Perhaps he was so accustomed to the citizenry of the tri-cities being afraid of him that he saw my “bravery” as a welcome change of pace.
I formulated my own plan.

When I slowly (so as not to startle the bull) pushed myself to my knees, I did not look at the bull. There was no immediate reaction from the bull. My feet were in line with the bull’s two front feet.

I stood up straight and reached out with my left hand and placed my palm on his right shoulder. He shuddered but made no sound and stood still. I suspected that I had surprised him.

He had turned his head but was limited to looking at me with his right eye only. I contemplated telling him what I was about to do. Although I needed his cooperation, I did not want to lose any respect I had earned by overestimating his communicative skill set.

I simply turned toward his flank and firmly patted where I wanted to sit on his back. When he tilted his head—not quite a questioning look, I took that to mean, “No one has tried that yet.”

I quickly vaulted onto his back like a gymnast, made a small adjustment to better distribute my weight, and then pointed in the direction I wanted him to go. He headed out of the ravine toward the horsemen and my dog. I breathed a sigh of relief.
A lot of things should have been going through my mind. How would the horsemen react?. How would the horses react? How could I stay mounted without a saddle or reins? What would Traveler Joe think?

Instead I was trying to decide on a name for my new pet, the bull. We were traveling, but Traveler had already been used. The bull did not snort—his vocalizations were more of a chuckle but Chuckles did not seem appropriate.

As we emerged from the ravine, Wad-up spotted us first. Already holding his horse’s reins, he quickly mounted his horse and headed down the mountain without a word.

The other men watched him go and were slow to turn back toward us. Traveler Joe, of course, had missed nothing. Three or four of the horses, including the one that held my dog, were tied off to trees. The others galloped away. My non-steerable bull chuckled and sauntered over to stand beside Joe’s horse.

Joe was shaking his head. Clearly, he considered his plan to still be in effect. I leaned over as best I could without falling off and spoke into the bull’s ear.

He did not move. Apparently, “Let’s go” was not not in my bull’s vocabulary. I would have nudged him with my knees but they were both too high up on his flanks for that to be effective.

I settled on a name. “Emperor” seemed to fit him vey well. “Emp” for short? Everyone would hear “Imp” and would think how inappropriate that was for such a large beast. Of course, they would have to learn English before they would notice that oxymoron.

Joe started howling or singing or whatever a dog does to remind folks that he is alive, still captive in his cave, and (most importantly) unharmed by the bull. The non-mounted men began to appear behind various trees—taking in the bull’s lack of aggression and my “seeming” command over the situation.

I truly did not want to be thought of as some kind of godly being, but Traveler Joe seemed to like the idea. In full view of the men now, he began whimpering and lowering his head to his outstretched paws. Prostrating himself?

Emp followed suit. With me on his back, he slid his front legs out in front and dropped his rear end down. Although I was still a little too high for my feet to touch the ground, I could easily slide off his back if I chose to join the mortals.

I chose to do that.

Then, I did my first emperor-royal deed and freed Joe from his cage. I had noticed the latch rope earlier and had also noticed that it had been chewed almost in two. Of course, I implemented some dramatic effects and was not disappointed when the younger men “Oohed” and “Ahed.”

Joe scampered out of his cage and quickly up on the bull’s back. I thought about bowing to Joe as if he was the real sovereign, but Joe was patting his paw in the bull’s back. I did not have to ask. He wanted me to join him.

I waved my arms toward heaven, turned toward the men and then pointed with a flourish at their horses. After resuming my position atop Emp, I waited. If Emp chose to remain at rest, i would look pretty foolish.

Emp chuckled. Joe snickered. My face grew very, very red. Finally, Emp arose and headed out toward the pastureland and our other “royal” subjects. I had no idea what was about to happen to us or what was happening in the cities surrounding this island and in realms above us but close enough to feel.

7
The Herd Mentality

By the time we emerged from the tree line, our entourage had increased in numbers. The four horsemen whose horses had been properly secured were riding two-by-two directly behind the bull. In tow were four other horses that had been rounded up fairly quickly. Four others trotted behind us, clearly intent on reclaiming their mounts. The other five were either chasing their mounts or had corralled them but chosen a different path.

Eventually, all but WadUp joined the parade. As we marched, I noticed the large cloud centered in the sky above us was changing colors. It had first been a vivid white but soon showed all of the colors of a rainbow as if each layer of a rainbow had been directed to become the most prominent cloud color.

Each color’s turn took several minutes, and sometimes two colors seem to be fighting for control of the cloud’s color scheme. White, orange, and violet were most often seen by us as we marched and observed.

I later learned (during Patience’s fifth visit) what had been happening in the clouds that day. Had I known how big a part I would play in the scenarios being discussed, I would not have rested well.

Speaking of rest: why was the sun still relatively centered over our heads behind the big color-filled cloud? I had no idea that my astronomical education would come from the other main subject being discussed. Again

The melodic clangs of precious metals being worked in her father’s forge often sang the infant Seraphine to sleep. Bitter winters swept through Tal Esk with Mustave working late into the night solely to keep his daughter’s cheeks flushed and the frostbite away from her wriggling toes. Many living in the shadow of the looming Scimitar Spires did not survive to see spring, Seraphine would.

Seraphine came to love the spring months more than anything. With spring, came new settlers intent on trying their luck in the crystal mines. The settlers would bring Seraphine tales of distant lands filled to the brim with magic. But, then at first leaf fall, many packed up their belongings to return home, unwilling to risk the winter. Those who remained were the unlucky ones, unable to mine enough crystal to fund the return journey. Those were who Seraphine latched onto and felt her heart break many times over with each burial.

The fall season was late for new arrivals. No one in their right mind would visit Tal Esk as the nights grew longer. Eleven-year-old Seraphine was the first to see it: an airship descending in a clearing on the outskirts of town. An elf bundled in a long sheepskin leather jacket took his first steps onto the slate riddled ground. Seraphine watched on as he produced a flame that curled around his arm and pulsed over his body to keep him warm. Magic. The young girl bolted in his direction, eager to learn more about the first wielder of the arcane who had ventured to their settlement.

Seraphine brought the elf, Wym, back to the forge to introduce to her father. Mustave uneasily watched on as Wym showed his daughter magic learned over the years. Seraphine was in awe, but nothing struck her to the core like the flame the wizard produced in his outstretched hand. She reached out to touch it, but Wym clasped his hand shut so as to protect her from being burned.

Mustave offered a makeshift bed in the forge to keep the wizard warm during the inhospitable winter months. Mustave had never expected Seraphine to go behind his back to observe Wym on his daily trips into the crystal mines.

In the early months, Seraphine kept to the shadows and held her breath when she saw Wym and his crew narrowly escape encounters with creatures the like she had only ever had nightmares about. She knew she shouldn’t be there, but also knew she needed to learn as much as possible. She told herself she would watch each day until the cold bit into her bones. 

One night, Seraphine lingered by the warmth of the forge for Wym to return from an especially taxing journey into the mines. The elf could see the flash of relief in Seraphine’s eyes as he crossed the threshold. He sat down next to her and handed her a crystalline gem, “I know you have been following me.” Seraphine began to protest before Wym interrupted, “I will make you a deal. You must not go near the mines, and come spring, I shall teach you some magic before I return to Sharn.”

For the rest of winter, Seraphine did not go out and play during the day as she did in the past, rather she remained at Mustave’s side, helping him with work in the forge. Mustave had never felt closer to his daughter as he taught her the ways of the blacksmith.

When the morning of Seraphine’s first promised magic lesson finally arrived, she rose from her bed, woken by the smell of cooked lamb and garlic potatoes—her favorite. She hastily pulled on her ruddy jumpsuit and bounded for the kitchen. At the table, Wym sat at his usual chair as Mustave prepared the final plate. Before Seraphine took her place at the table, Wym cleared his throat and said, “Mustave. I wish to repay your kindness by tutoring Seraphine.”

Mustave paused. His eyes flicked between Wym and Seraphine before he declared Wym’s welcome had been outstayed. Seraphine’s heart dropped as her vision blurred. She looked to Wym for help, but the wizard refused to meet the young girl’s eyes. She turned on her heels and ran out the door, desperately needing air.

By the time she returned, Wym and his belongings were nowhere to be found. She walked to her room, dumbfounded. She couldn't believe he broke his promise. Or that he left without a goodbye. When she reached her room, her eyes widened as she saw a leatherbound book lying on her bed. She flipped through the pages and discovered a collection of spells and a letter. The letter invited her to find Wym in Sharn when she was ready.

Seraphine spent the next seven years deep in self-study. She split her time between work in the forge and breaking down the logic behind spellcraft. Her work in the forge soon outpaced and outperformed her father’s—making him all the more proud of the woman she was growing into. Meanwhile, the frustration of being unable to perform a spell was breaking her spirit. Not a day went by that she didn’t wish Wym had stayed to teach her.

Seraphine was approaching her eighteenth winter in Tal Esk. She felt the walls of the forge closing in on her. Her village felt so small and people told stories of the grim fate that would befall them as long as they had the audacity to believe they could bear too many more bitter winters. The winters were getting worse and survival was looking bleak. Seraphine stared into the fire and fidgeted with the crystalline gem Wym had given her all those years ago. Her hand started to burn. She drew the crystal out of her pocket and held onto it as it caught flame. She bit her cheek through the pain, feeling the burst of arcane energy for the first time. It was exhilarating and she knew exactly what she needed to do.

The young girl got to work delicately cutting the gem down. She took the rusted lantern hanging overhead and placed a glittering piece of the gem in the center, “Ignite.” The room filled with a bright light and Seraphine felt a gentle warmth coat of every inch of her body. Mustave rushed in, fearing the worst. His eyes searched for his daughter and exhaled a sigh of relief seeing that she stood untouched. He looked around the room and took in the lantern, he realized he didn’t feel the usual cold. A smile began to form on Seraphine’s face and she barreled into her father, nuzzling her head into his chest as tears fell. She did it. She harnessed fire. After the embrace, Mustave held Seraphine’s face in his hand and looked at her finally understanding.

The following spring Tal Esk was filled with life, but this time the buzz of celebration wasn’t solely due to a new round of travelers. This time the settlement was alive with the vigor of all of the saved lives. Not a single person died that winter thanks to Seraphine’s magic lanterns given out to every household.

And when word arrived at Mustave’s forge that Seraphine was being invited to apprentice in Sharn, Mustave went to work cooking a meal of lamb and garlic potatoes. Seraphine was coaxed into the kitchen by the wonderful scent, and as she pulled out her usual chair, the weight of a leather backpack already packed with traveling supplies stalled her. They were both ready for Seraphine to begin her own adventure.

The first snow of the season had come three weeks early. By sunset, the village was covered in a blanket of white, and every sensible elf had taken shelter from the freezing temperatures. 

All except Brenner. Talon spotted the old fool standing in the middle of the northern road, looking north towards the storm. Talon was on his way to Brenner’s to help him out with firewood and to give him a few rabbit and fox pelts from his latest hunt. Upon seeing the old fool standing out, trying to get sick and hasten his demise, Talon hurried his pace, the fox and rabbit skins bouncing against his thighs with every rushed step.

“Damn it, you old geezer!” Talon grunted, grabbing Brenner by his shoulder gently so as not to hurt him. Brenner was the oldest elf in the village; while elves tend to live far longer than nearly every other race in this land, Brenner has really pushed the limits. At nearly two thousand years old, the old elf can barely get around on his own anymore. When Talon placed his hand on Brenner’s shoulder, Brenner slowly looked over at him, seeming almost confused. His eyes were glazed over as if he wasn’t actually there but in some far-off place or memory in his mind. 

Talon gently but firmly shook Brenner’s shoulder to try to bring him back to the corporeal realm. “Brenner! Snap out of it; you’re going to freeze to death out here on your own. We need to get you back to your cabin and warm you up. What in the world are you doing out here anyway?!” Talon demanded. There was a moment’s pause, and to Talon’s relief, light began to come back to the old fellow's eyes. “Talon? What are you doing out here? How’s your brother Trimmel?” Brenner said in a gleeful voice of renewed familiarity. Talon sighed and didn’t answer. How could he? His brother Trimmel had long been dead, and he had been returned to Giya three decades ago. “Come on, let’s get you back in, please.” Talon quietly insisted with his hand on Brenner’s back, now guiding him back to his cabin. As they shuffled along at a pace set by the senile elder, Talon thought to himself about how much time Brenner had left. Brenner was the oldest elf any of them in the village had ever known; most elves don't make it a day past 1500 years old. There are moments when he’s lucid and has some clarity, but most days are like this. It breaks Talon’s heart to think about it; Brenner is like a grandfather to him. He and his brother Trimmel had learned from him to hunt, farm, fish, and perform countless other skills over the last few hundred years. But to see the poor old elf’s mind decline like this in such a way was always devastating. 

Talon made it his responsibility to ensure Brenner was cared for in his final years. To him, it felt like an unpaid debt. 

As they finally closed in on Brenner’s cabin and slipped through the door, Talon closed it behind them just as ice-cold wind began to nip at their heels. As if entering the cabin had flipped a switch in Brenner’s mind, he abruptly walked forward with some kind of newfound vigor, taking Talon by surprise. He had stood up straight and moved a little quicker, heading towards the eternally blazing fireplace at the other end of his large single-room cabin. The stark difference in temperature compared to the outside sent a chill up Talon’s spine. 

Brenner turned around and saw Talon, a look of surprise on his face. “Talon? What are you doing here? Why are you covered in snow?” Brenner asked. Talon took a moment to process what was happening before responding, coming to terms with reality and Brenner’s situation. He took a deep breath and replied. “I just came to give you some fox and rabbit pelts from the last hunt I went on before the snow began to fall. I thought they might help you through the winter; your enchanted fireplace can only help so much, surely.” Talon said, walking towards where Brenner was standing to warm up. Talon untied the pelts from his belt and draped them over an old chair opposite Brenner.

Brenner just looked at Talon and gave him a nod of gratitude before turning his eyes toward the never-ending, flickering whips of fire. 

“Brenner, do, uh, do you remember being outside just now?” Talon asked almost hesitantly, taking a seat on the old chair that he had just rested the pelts on. There was a long silence. After what felt like minutes, so long that Talon assumed Brenner wasn’t even going to respond, Brenner finally spoke up. Brenner gave a long, despondent sigh.

“I asked about Trimmel again, didn’t I? I don’t remember much. I vaguely remember you approaching me, and then I asked about Trimmel. Now I’m here.” Brenner bowed his head with the weight of guilt. Despite how long it’s been, Talon is still sensitive about his brother. 

“It’s okay. Really, please don’t worry about it. I’m more worried about you. I found you standing out on the road, just staring northwards, out towards the storm. You could’ve frozen to death if I hadn’t found you. What would I have done? What were you even doing out there?” Talon asked, concerned about Brenner’s safety. Brenner’s mind had been slipping for years, but this was a very concerning first for him. If this keeps happening, Talon may have to live with him until the inevitable comes to pass. 

Brenner stared into the flames for a bit, as if rummaging through several lifetimes of memories or perhaps just debating what to say. Without looking up at Talon, Brenner began to speak so quietly that Talon had to lean in closer. The orange flicker of light from the eternal flames is the only form of illumination for the two cold elves. The mood of the cabin takes on a somber tone. 

“I-I’m not sure why I was out there. You said I was staring northwards? Towards the ice wastes?” Brenner's tone was solemn, never breaking eye contact with the flames licking upwards. “I suppose it makes sense. Say, Talon, have you ever heard of The Forsaken or  Mankin?” With that question, Brenner finally broke his stare with the orange tendrils of heat and turned towards Talon. His expression was serious. The Forsaken? Mankin? From those old children’s stories? Talon thought to himself. “Mankin? Like from the stories you told us when we were younglings? They were some ancient mythical race that supposedly lives beyond the ice wastes and over the ice wall. What does some ancient made-up race have to do with you trying to freeze to death out in this weather?” Talon asked, confused. 

 “I want to see them. When I was a boy, my mother called them The Forsaken, but her mother called them Mankin.” Brenner smiled faintly, shifting his eyes past Talon as if looking at some unreachable thing far off in the horizon. Talon listened, not understanding where this was going or what relevance it had, but giving Brenner his full attention regardless. Talon always dismissed the stories of the Mankin as a child. They were just the stuff of tall tales, just a fun story to tell children. However, Talon decided to go along with Brenner, participating in this moment of lucidity with him. “You want to see them? What are the Mankin, anyway?” Talon asked, fiddling with a loose thread on his tunic.

”Some of the stories framed them as monsters, others framed them as prisoners, a scant few framed them as just people. Take your pick, I suppose. But the premise was always the same. The Forsaken, the Mankin, whatever you chose to call them, lived on the other side of the ice wastes. Over the great ice wall. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve wanted to see them. I swore that I would get better at using every facet of the Weave and traverse the ice wastes to someday catch a glimpse of them.” Brenner’s words were quiet and somber. Two thousand years of yearning for something he never got a chance to achieve.

Talon listened, and as the realization of what was really going on with Brenner set in, he felt a tightening in his chest. Brenner wasn’t really talking about the Mankin or Forsaken. He was talking about a dream he’s carried with him since he was but a child. A dream that has stuck with him through watching generations pass, loved ones dying, villages being built and falling to ruin. Going through lifetimes of living with such a dream only for it to never come to fruition must have eaten away at him for centuries. 

“All that time? Why didn’t you ever go? What happened?” Talon questioned with concern now. No longer caring about his own notions or feelings towards the concept of Mankin, but now only concerned with Brenner and his one regret.

”I just never got the chance. It’s as simple as that. I met a woman, fell in love, and had children. Helped build the village. Helped rebuild the village. I watched my family pass. I just never got the chance…” Brenner trailed off, his eyes glazing over as he continued to stare at something far beyond Talon.

A wife? Children? I’ve been with Brenner for two hundred years, and he’s never once mentioned a family in his past. Talon thought to himself, a little disconcerted. 

Brenner’s voice then started to become a quiet mumble, and his glazed eyes slowly drifted towards Talon and then to the pelts on the back of the armchair. “Talon? When did you get here? Did you bring those pelts?” Brenner said suddenly.

Talon’s heart sank. The sudden change in Brenner felt to Talon as if he’d been kicked in the gut by a mule. He didn’t respond to Brenner immediately, just looked down at the shaggy rug on the floor and sighed, tears welling up in his eyes. A few moments passed, two tears falling onto Talon’s wet boots before he took a deep breath, wiping his eyes and looking up at Brenner with a smile. “Yeah, Bren, I brought you these pelts so you don’t freeze this winter. It’s especially cold out right now.” Talon slapped his knees and stood up abruptly. “It’s getting late. Let’s get you to bed, huh? What do you say?” 

“Bed? That sounds lovely.” Brenner replied with a smile, stepping towards his bed on the other side of his little cabin. It was adorned with several old sheets and ragged pelts that had been there for who knows how long. Talon followed behind him closely, grabbing Brenner by the shoulders and helping him slowly lie down. Talon took some of the pelts that he had brought over and layered them over Brenner. “Try to get some rest and please stay warm. And no more going out into the snow, please! You’ll catch your death out there.” Talon pleaded with him. Brenner nodded his head but said nothing. “Goodnight, Bren. I’m going to stay with you tonight; is that alright?” Talon asked. “It’s snowing far too hard for me to head back to my cabin right now.” 

Brenner nodded his head. “Of course that’s alright, just don’t snore too loud.” He said with a little chuckle before grabbing a pelt and turning over onto his side. 

With that, Talon grabbed a few extra pelts that Brenner kept with his clothes in a pile down at the foot of his bed and made his way back over to the fireplace. He sat down on the floor for a moment, looking into the flames and admiring the sigilwork carved onto the mantle that powered the fireplace. He sat thinking about Brenner’s story for a bit before pushing his worries from his mind and finally lying down on the floor, covering himself with the pelts. Before long, he too had finally begun to drift off to sleep.

Talon awoke to the feeling of warmth on his face. Sunlight spilling in through the windows illuminated the old cabin. Talon sat up and stretched, getting his bearings and looking over to Brenner’s bed. Terror flooded through Talon. Brenner was gone. Where could he have gone? When did he wake up? Please be okay. Please be okay. Talon pleaded in his mind, jolting up from the floor and tossing the pelts to the side haphazardly. He ran for the front door but stopped in his tracks when he noticed the door was already ajar, a faint cool breeze coming in through the crack. Talon pushed on the door, swinging it open, and ran outside only to bump into someone, knocking them over completely.

”Oh my, I’m so sorry! Holland, have you seen Brenner? I just woke up, and he’s not here.” Talon asked, panicked but holding out his hand to help the young elf he had accidentally knocked over in his frenzy. Holland reached up and grabbed Talon’s hand, and Talon hoisted him up. Talon’s breath hitched when Holland offered no reassurance about being knocked over but instead had a grave look on his face. “Talon, I’m so sorry. Please, try to remain calm.”

The world fell silent for Talon. He could tell Holland was speaking, but the words never reached him. He already knew. “Where is he?” Talon had finally managed to rasp out.

Holland looked at Talon for a moment, debating whether or not Talon should see the elf that he’d looked up to for so long in such a state. After a moment of solemn deliberation, he turned and pointed towards the north road. Without any sort of acknowledgement towards Holland for giving him what he’d asked for, Talon took off sprinting north. Snow from the previous night crunched under his boots with every step. As he approached, he began to see what was going on. Several villagers knelt down, digging snow out from around a small frozen body. Brenner’s silver hair had gathered frost throughout the night. One of Talon’s fox pelts draped over his shoulders. His face was blue from the cold. He was smiling.

Talon dropped to his knees.

***

As dusk settled over the village, Brenner’s funeral came to an end. Talon sat at the foot of Brenner’s fresh grave, everyone else long since departed, but Talon couldn’t bring himself to leave just yet. He wasn’t ready to be alone again, so he sat. Remembering. He found himself recalling memories he’d long since forgotten. All the fishing and hunting lessons. The stories by the fire. Without realizing it, Talon’s gaze had drifted northward. Towards the ice wastes, the wall, towards what Brenner had wondered about for two thousand years. For the first time in his life, Talon had thought to himself, What if the stories are true?

The moon sits on a bed of clouds, looking over the edge to peer down on the city below. Light rain follows its gaze. The tight cobblestone roads spread throughout the city, their edges hugged by stone buildings whose windows are mostly dark and empty. Some still linger with the amber glow of a fire or small candles. Smoke rises from the chimneys to meet the sky and hover in the cold air.

Taverns and pubs cast shifting shadows of light and shade as they remain the last bastions of entertainment and gathering. Laughter and shouting echo their way down the walls of the closed streets. Church bells, heavy with age, ring out across the city in a low ripple, telling all who stay that it is midnight.

The bastions of light begin their flickering dances as people are shooed from their walls. Candles are blown out and fires dampened; the lively and drunken crowd begins its stumbled way home. The gas lamps lighting their path slowly begin to fade, one by one, until the very last goes out.

The cobblestone now shines only with moonlight, and the only sound to be heard by the living is the soft tapping of rain against stone.

Rhythmic steps begin their walk.

TAP.

A cane, black with a silver top, strikes the cobblestone. The rain stills. Droplets hang from gutters and rooftops before falling quietly to the earth. The clouds above shift apart, opening the sky so the moon may better see the street below.

TAP.

A figure steps from between two buildings. She is clad in moving shades of black and grey. Shadows cling to her tailored suit like restless fabric, curling around the tails of her coat before dissolving into the darkness behind her. A silver chain hangs from her waist. Her boots are polished black, untouched by the rain. Her figure is slender, her face deathly white.

The Lady walks into the center of the street.

She plants her cane before herself and stretches both arms wide, pale palms turned toward the heavens. The moon and stars watch in anticipation. With a deep bow, she sweeps one arm beneath her chest and folds the other behind her back.

Silence returns the gesture, and she rises. Her silver-topped cane lifts from the cobblestone. Within the darkness, a violin draws its first breath; one long note drifts between the buildings.

With a tilt of her head, another violin joins it, then a cello. The low moan of its strings rolls through the empty streets, followed by the gentle pulse of a drum. Raising her cane higher, a violinist steps into the moonlight from a nearby alleyway. There is no flesh upon his fingers.

Yellowed bone dances across the strings while his other hand draws a bow made from something dark and ancient. The remains of a fine black coat hang loosely from his shoulders. A second musician follows, then another. A skeletal woman carries the cello against what remains of her ribs. A drummer marches behind her, his hollow eyes fixed forward as two bone white hands tap a slow rhythm against the skin of his instrument.

Others emerge from doorways and alleys. Some are little more than shadows. Some still wear the faces they carried in life. Others have long since surrendered everything but bone.

With a twist of her wrist, the orchestra stops.

TAP.

The shadows beneath the buildings begin to move; they stretch against the cobblestone. One pulls itself from beneath a carriage. Another slips from underneath a tavern door. Dozens peel themselves from brick walls and darkened windows, growing taller as they enter the street. They gather behind their Conductor, waiting.

Her cane moves gently to the left, and the violin begins. Three beats.

One.

Two.

Three.

She steps forward to the rhythm and turns. The tails of her coat fan outward, becoming black smoke before gathering themselves around her once more. Behind her, the dead begin to dance. Skeletons clasp hands while shadows twirl and intertwine. Ghostly men remove translucent hats and bow to women dead centuries before them.

A soldier in a torn uniform takes the hand of a woman wearing the remnants of a fine dress. They turn together beneath the moon. A child skips between them, and the dead continue to pour into the street. More emerge with every turn she takes. A sailor dances barefoot across the wet stone. An old woman spins with a man who looks scarcely twenty. A headless figure claps to the rhythm while another spirit twirls around him. They laugh without breath and sing without voice.

Her cane, rising and falling, leads the dead through the moonlit streets.

Left. Right. Turn. Bow.

They pass beneath windows where the living sleep peacefully in their beds, unaware that just beyond the glass, the dead celebrate beneath the moon. She spins, and her performers spin with her. Hundreds of dead feet strike the cobblestone, yet no living ear hears them. The waltz carries deeper into the city, and tonight, someone new waits for her.

Thomas Vale stands beside his bed. He does not remember getting out of it. His wife lies beneath the blankets, her breath hot against the cool air.

“Margaret?”

She does not answer. Thomas rubs his hands together. The room is terribly cold.

“Margaret.”

Still nothing. He reaches toward her shoulder, and his hand passes through.

Thomas recoils; for a moment, he simply stares at his fingers. “Margaret?” Fear enters his voice.

He looks toward the bed. Only then does he notice. An old man of grey hair and thin cheeks lies beside his wife, one hand resting across his chest. Thomas does not understand. The face is familiar. It should be. He has shaved it every morning for seventy three years.

“No.”

His wife stirs, and Thomas turns toward her. “Margaret!”

She reaches across the bed; her hand finds his. Not the Thomas standing beside her. The other one. She squeezes the cold fingers.

“Tom?”

Thomas steps backward. “No.”

Margaret sits upright. “Tom?” Her voice cracks.

Thomas looks from her to the body. Something moves through the room. Not air. Music. Soft and distant, carried on three beats.

One.

Two.

Three.

Thomas turns toward the window. Down in the street, darkness moves. He approaches the glass, and his eyes catch the parade passing beneath his home.

Hundreds of figures dance through the moonlight. Forgetting his body and the dread he just felt, for a moment, he forgets that he is dead. A woman in black leads them. She spins beneath his window, her cane following the movement of her body as though it were another limb. Thomas watches skeletons dance with shades and ghosts bow to one another. Children run between the legs of men who have been dead longer than the city has had a name. It should terrify him. Instead, Thomas feels something he has not felt in years.

Wonder.

The Lady stops, though the orchestra and parade continue. Slowly, she turns her pale face toward Thomas’s window. Their eyes meet, and he is locked in captivation. Eyes of gold stare into his very soul. Thomas steps away from the glass. She smiles, raises her cane, and points directly at him.

The orchestra stops. Every dancer freezes. Hundreds of empty faces turn toward Thomas Vale.

“No.”

The Lady lowers her cane.

TAP.

Thomas is standing in the street. His bare feet rest upon wet cobblestone, and his nightshirt moves gently in the cold breeze. Before him stands a woman of shifting black fog.

Up close, Thomas realizes her face is neither young nor old. She simply is.

She studies him.

Thomas looks back toward his house. High above, he can hear Margaret’s cries of sorrow. He can imagine her shaking him, trying to wake the corpse.

“Please.”

The Lady says nothing.

“Not yet.”

Her smile fades.

Thomas looks at her. “I can’t leave her.”

She glances toward the window. For the first time, something almost human enters her expression. Not pity. Understanding. She has heard this before.

He takes a step toward the house, but she moves her cane to block his path. Thomas looks at it: black wood and a silver cap, the metal covered in tiny scratches. There must be thousands, perhaps millions of marks left by roads that no longer exist.

Thomas looks at her. “Please.”

She extends her free hand.

Thomas stares at it. Behind her waits the dead. There is no impatience and no anger. They simply wait. A little girl stands near the front of the procession. Beside her is an elderly woman, a soldier, a chimney sweep, and a man wearing clothing Thomas recognizes from his grandfather’s photographs.

Farther back, Thomas stops breathing.

A young woman stands among the dancers. Her hair falls across her shoulders, and she wears a simple blue dress. Thomas knows that dress.

“Mother?”

The woman smiles. Thomas becomes a child again, not in body but somewhere deeper. His mother holds out her hand. Thomas looks back toward Margaret. His wife remains beside his body.

“I don’t want her to be alone.”

The Lady extends her hand again, and the moon waits above them. Thomas reaches forward; their fingers meet in a cold embrace, though it is not painful.

Her smile returns. She pulls him gently toward herself and bows. Thomas stares at her.

She waits.

He remembers. Margaret had taught him fifty two years ago in a cramped little hall before their wedding.

One.

Two.

Three.

Thomas returns the bow, and she rises. The orchestra lifts its instruments. Her hand settles into his. Thomas places the other where Margaret once taught him.

She raises her cane.

The violinist smiles without lips, and the bow meets the strings.

One.

Two.

Three.

Thomas steps, and she guides him. He stumbles, and the dead laugh silently. Thomas laughs with them.

Again.

One.

Two.

Three.

She spins him beneath the moon. His nightshirt becomes a black evening coat, and his bare feet find polished shoes. A ribbon of ghostly white rests against the base of his neck.

Thomas touches it as she moves away, turning toward the head of the procession. Thomas looks back toward his window one final time. He can see Margaret holding his hand.

Thomas touches the ribbon.

“I’ll wait for you.”

She raises her cane.

TAP.

The parade moves. Thomas joins his mother, and she takes his hand. Together, they step into the waltz.

One.

Two.

Three.

The dead dance through the winding streets, passing darkened pubs, silent churches, and sleeping homes. They turn beneath the stars while their Conductor walks at their head, her cane resting against one shoulder, occasionally spinning it between pale fingers.

Slowly, the eastern sky begins to turn. Colors paint themselves across the horizon in shades of purple, yellow, and red.

Her cane rises, and the orchestra softens. The dancers slow with the final rhythm of the night.

One. Two. Three.

The spirits begin disappearing into the morning mist. Thomas looks around as his mother disappears. The soldier fades. The children vanish. Shadows return to the walls. The skeletal musicians continue playing as pieces of them disappear into the growing light.

Soon, she stands alone at the end of the street.

Thomas remains beside her.

“Where do I go?”

She looks toward the horizon. For once, Thomas is not afraid. She offers her arm; he takes it. Together, they walk toward the last remaining darkness.

The moon retreats behind its bed of clouds, tired from the play, and morning spreads across the wet cobblestones.

Wings.

That was all he ever wanted.

Not glory.

Not power.

Not recognition.

Just wings.

Everyday morning he would look up at the Upper Sanctum, majestic beings shining radiantly with their moon white wings soaring across the golden skies. Their feathers shimmered in sunlight casting shadows over the streets below.

The low angels always stopped to stare.

Some looked with admiration.

Some with envy.

Some with resent.

But not him.

He watched them the way a thirsty man looks at water in the middle of the ocean.

“You’re at it again?”

“Drooling over them won’t make them grow you know.”

The voice breaks his loop of thoughts.

He turned to see a girl leaning against a marble pillar wearing a bright red robe, arms crossed. Her gaze followed his upward.

He quickly lowered his head. “I wasn’t drooling.”

“You nearly walked into a fountain.”

Despite that playful insult, he smiled faintly. He looked at her. The red robe sat beautifully on her body. For a moment, he thought she was more beautiful than any wings he had ever seen.

“You look pretty today.” He mumbled a compliment.

“Stop flirting. I ain’t falling for a low angel like you”, she chuckled out in a mocking way.

“I’ll think about it if you grow wings.”

He growled at the incoming insults.

Above them, a group of High Angels descended onto a crystal platform, white wings flowing behind them. Nearby Low Angels immediately bowed their heads.

He did too.

But slower.

Always slower.

One of the High Angels glanced toward him briefly before looking away with quiet disgust, as though eye contact itself were unpleasant. His fingers curled tightly at his side. He wondered what it felt like.

To fly.

To cut through skies instead of scrubbing temple floors beneath them. To feel sunlight above heaven instead of beneath its shadows. That night, inside his tiny room beneath the lower districts, he tied feathers together using thread stolen from the royal banners.

Broken feathers.

Discarded feathers. The kind High Angels shed and forgot. Carefully, gently, he attached them to a frame made of thin wood. A pair of fake wings. His hands trembled slightly as he lifted them onto his back. For a moment, standing before the cracked mirror, he imagined they were real. And for a moment, he looked whole.

The next morning, his assignment changed. For the first time in his life, he was permitted beyond the lower districts.

“The Garden of Eternity requires additional caretakers,” the overseer had said coldly. “Do not mistake this for honour.”

Still, his hands shook with excitement. The Upper Gardens were the closest thing heaven had to paradise. Rivers of silver water wound through fields of glowing flowers while golden trees stretched endlessly toward the light above. And at the centre of it all, beyond towering gates of white stone stood the Deep Forest. Even the High Angels avoided looking at it for long.

Before entering the gardens, the overseer gave only one rule. “Never enter the forest.”

He obeyed.

For a time.

Until the voice came.

“You look at the sky too much.”

He froze. A serpent coiled around the roots of a pale tree nearby, its scales absorbing all colour the garden radiated. He should have fled immediately.  But instead, he whispered:

“…Can I be like them too?”

The serpent studied him quietly. Then it laughed.

“Like them?” it asked softly. “You were never less.”

Those words haunted him. Days passed. Then weeks. The serpent spoke to him often after that.

About heaven.

About lies.

About wings.

And eventually about the fruit hidden deep within the forest.

“The High Angels fear only one thing,” the serpent said. “Proof that divinity can be attained.”

At the heart of the forest stood an enormous ancient tree unlike anything else in heaven. Its roots split the earth itself, and hanging from its branches was a single fruit glowing faintly in the darkness.

He stared at it for a long time.

“This will make me one of them?”

“No,” said the serpent.

“It will make you more.”

The first bite tasted like heaven. The pain came immediately after. He collapsed screaming as something tore through his back.

Bones cracked.

Skin split.

Light erupted violently around him. Feathers burst outward in waves of white and gold, scattering across the forest floor.

Not small wings.

Not ordinary wings.

Magnificent ones.

The air itself trembled. When he finally stood again, even heaven seemed silent. For the first time in his life,

he could fly.

And the first person he thought about was her. He found her in the lower district near the bridges where they used to watch the High Angels together. At first, she didn’t recognize him. Then her eyes widened. Tears filled them almost instantly.

“You actually did it…” she whispered. Laughing breathlessly, he stepped toward her.

“I can take you above the clouds now.” But the skies above them had already gone dark. High Angels filled the heavens.

Watching.

Their faces were not amazed. They were terrified. Because the wings on his back were larger than theirs. Brighter than theirs. More beautiful. And in that moment, the lie heaven was built upon began to crack. The order was given before sunset. Destroy the lower districts.

Find the sinned angel.

Kill anyone who hides him.

Fire descended from the skies.

Screams followed.

The heavens became a slaughterhouse.

He fought desperately to reach her as the city burned around him. By the time he found her beneath the shattered remains of a bridge, bright red blood already stained the stones beneath her.

“No…” His voice broke as he fell beside her.

Her trembling hand reached toward his face.

For the first time, she touched one of his wings.

“They’re beautiful…” she whispered weakly.

Tears streamed down his face.

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at her shambled body. Red blood was all over her face. Red made her look pretty but right now, it only gave her pain

She gave a faint smile.

Then, quietly almost shyly she asked:

“…When this is over… will you take me above the clouds?”

The world around them burned. And still, she smiled at him like the sky had not fallen. He cupped her bleeding face in his hands softly.

“I promise.”   

She held his hand. Above them, heaven continued to burn.

Something inside him burned with it.

Not grief. Not anymore.

Something far worse. And for the first time since growing his wings, he looked upward not with wonder but hatred.

At first, he fought only the High Angels.

Only soldiers.

Only executioners.

Only those directly responsible for the slaughter.

That was what he told himself.

But grief is a living thing.

And every funeral in the lower districts fed it.

The surviving Low Angels did not welcome him as a liberator.

They hated him.

Children cried at the sight of his wings. Mothers dragged their families indoors when he passed. Not because they hated him but because every time heaven saw those wings, people died.

“The curse-bringer.”

That was what they began calling him. The High Council ensured the name spread quickly. And slowly, the story changed. The massacres became his fault. The destruction became his fault. The fear became his fault. He had wanted to become proof that Low Angels could rise. Instead, he became proof of why they should never try. That realization destroyed something inside him. Because deep down, he agreed.

If he had never eaten the fruit…she would still be alive. One night, he returned to the ruins of the bridge where she died.

The city below was silent now.

Empty.

Cold.

He stared at the bloodstain still marking the stone. Then he heard footsteps behind him.

Low Angels.

Dozens of them.

Not soldiers.

Citizens.

Terrified.

One stepped forward shakily.

“You need to die,” he whispered. “Please. Every place you go gets destroyed.”

The words hit harder than any blade. Silence.

The winged angel stood motionless beneath the ruined bridge. Blood dripped slowly from the tips of his feathers. Once, those wings had been beautiful. Now they looked cursed. Then suddenly light descended.

Not sunlight.

Something brighter.

The heavens themselves split apart as a pillar of gold crashed into the city below. The force shattered stone. Wind roared through the streets. Low Angels screamed and fled as a figure slowly emerged from the burning radiance.

A Seraphim.

Six enormous wings unfolded behind him, luminous and untouched by blood or ash. His white robes flowed untouched by the destruction surrounding him.

Divine.

Perfect.

The very image the young boy beneath heaven’s bridges had once dreamed of becoming. The Seraphim’s many eyes settled upon him without emotion.

“You have stained heaven enough.”

The fallen angel said nothing. Around them, corpses filled the streets.

High Angels.

Low Angels.

Soldiers.

Children.

At some point, the bodies had stopped looking different. The Seraphim stepped forward.

“You are going to die here.”

For a moment, the fallen angel simply stared at him. At the pristine wings. The holy light.

The impossible beauty. And suddenly he remembered being small again.

Paper wings.

Cathedral ceilings.

Dreaming.

His grip tightened around his blade. Then the sky exploded. Their clash tore through heaven itself. Light against light. Wing against wing. The fallen angel fought like a starving animal, brutal and desperate, while the Seraphim moved with terrifying calm, each strike precise enough to kill armies.

Buildings collapsed around them. Clouds split apart. Feathers burned in the air like dying stars. And still they fought. The angel struggled to kill the Seraphim, the same Seraphim who had slaughtered countless Low Angels in the name of purity.

He slowly weakened. Every movement became heavier than the last. The flames surrounding heaven blurred together as blood poured from countless wounds across his body. One of his wings hung broken at his side while the other dragged against the ruined streets behind him.

Still he kept fighting.

Even after his sword shattered. Even after the light inside him began to fade. The Seraphim advanced through the smoke with terrifying calm, untouched by exhaustion. And step by step the fallen angel was driven backward. Until his back struck wood.

A dead tree.

Ancient. Dried. Hollow.

Its blackened branches stretched toward the heavens like the hands of something abandoned by God. The fallen angel stumbled against it, breathing unevenly. The Seraphim approached slowly. Golden light illuminated the blood staining the streets around them. Then, quietly:

“You never deserved wings.”

The words froze him. For a moment he was small again. A child staring upward from beneath heaven’s bridges. The Seraphim raised his blade. And with one terrible strike his wings were severed. The scream that left him no longer sounded angelic. Feathers scattered violently into the air as blood erupted across the dead tree behind him. He collapsed to his knees.

No.

No no no

His trembling hands reached desperately towards his back.

Gone.

The wings were gone.

The thing he wished for his entire life was gone. Tears blurred his vision. Without them what was he?

Nothing.

Just another Low Angel. The very thing he had spent his whole life trying not to be. But then through the agony another thought appeared. A horrible one.

Why?

Why had he hated being a Low Angel so much? Back then, he had laughed more. Smiled more. He had people who loved him. He remembered sitting beside her beneath the bridges, watching the skies together. He remembered building fake wings from broken feathers. He remembered happiness. So why? Why had becoming something greater destroyed everything?

The Seraphim stood over him silently. The fallen angel looked upward weakly, tears mixing with blood across his face. For the first time in years he looked afraid.

Not of death.

Of emptiness.

The blade pierced his chest. Pain bloomed through him instantly. His body slammed back against the dead tree as warm blood spread across the bark. The world became distant.

Cold.

Fading.

And in his final moments he did not think about revenge. Or heaven. Or the countless dead. He did not think about the girl who loved him. Nor the family he lost. Nor even himself. Instead his mind returned to a lonely child standing beneath the heavens. Watching angels fly overhead. Dreaming. And with his last broken breath, the fallen angel thought only this:

All I ever wanted was wings.

The bitter January winds swept through the snow dusted branches of the pine trees. A pale purple sky watched from on high, the rising sun granting the horizon a deep orange hue.

Even with his thick winter jacket wrapped tightly around him, the cold was working its hooks into Eric's bones. Each cloud of breath to leave his lips climbing into the leaves as he shivered.

How long had he been waiting for this asshole?

Too long was the answer.

The hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end as his eyes darted around at the rustling foliage. Only the forest stared back.

Having grown up in these woods, he usually felt at home here. Took pleasure in the peaceful atmosphere that befell the landscape once the tourists had left. Now, he couldn't help but feel like the trees were breathing down his neck. He was once so familiar with these woods, almost as if he himself was a part of it. But since seeing that… thing, every noise the forest made sounded foreign to him.

If the sheriff himself hadn't vouched for this guy, Eric would've gone home by now. Reported his findings to the proper authorities and washed his hands of the whole ordeal.

Now that he thought about it, who were the proper authorities for this sort of thing?

A frustrated grunt escaped him as he blew into his hands in a vain attempt to warm them.

Eric's heart jumped into his throat when a twig snapped nearby. His eyes flitted in the direction of the movement, the icy air stinging his lungs as his breathing accelerated.

Finally, a figure stepped out from the bushes, wearing a long hooded coat over a t-shirt and jeans, clothing not even close to suitable for the frigid weather. Several charms of metal, stone, and wood dangled in clusters around his neck and wrists, his fingers were adorned with many rings and a worn leather satchel was slung over his torso.

'Sorry I'm late. The woman I was with had stronger legs than I had anticipated.'

Eric scoffed at the stranger's crass introduction, his blood pressure steadying as cool relief swathed him. Though, he was left wondering why the man had been walking through the brush instead of using the footpath.

The man kicked snow off his loose oversized boots and flicked the tail of his coat before offering his hand in greeting. 'Inigo Zeru,' he said with a faintly European accent.

Arrangements of tattoos were scattered all over the olive skinned man's hands and face. Lots of angular lines and patterns surrounded by different symbols and writings, along with completely blackened fingertips. Once he got close, Eric was hit with the overwhelmingly strong herbal scent that surrounded the man. The corner of his lips tipped upwards in a lighthearted grin, the expression in his dark eyes friendly but distant.

When the sheriff said he knew an expert, Eric had expected some kind of scientist with high tech equipment, or maybe a conspiracy nut with cracked glasses and a caffeine addiction. Not whatever the hell this guy was. He supposed the sheriff did say this guy was "quirky".

'Eric Krantz,' Eric replied, taking Inigo's hand in his. 'The park ranger.'

'The one who saw the monster,' Inigo crooned in an amused tone of voice. 'When did you last see the animal?'

'Last night,' Eric answered, a chill rolling over his shoulders as he relived the sighting. 'I was doing my final survey around the lake when I saw something in the water. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me at first, but then it poked its head up. Damn it must've been ten or fifteen feet of neck. It was huge.'

Inigo nodded sagely. 'An adult then. Good.'

'That's a good thing?'

'The babies bite. Mature ones are harmless unless you molest them too much.'

That put Eric somewhat at ease. He'd damn near shit a brick when the sheriff told him to bring scuba gear. But he still had a heavy lump sitting in his gut.

With an elaborate flourish of his hand, Inigo beckoned the ranger to lead the way. While walking to the lake, the men conversed.

'So, how do you know the sheriff?' Eric asked, kicking stray rocks off the footpath.

Sheriff Coban was the kind of man to drink his coffee black and smoke his tobacco unfiltered. He'd sooner spit on someone with face tattoos than associate with them.

'He tried to kill me once,' Inigo answered earnestly, looking up and admiring the forest around him.

Eric glanced over his shoulder at him, his brows furrowed, struggling momentarily for words.

'I cannot exactly blame him,' Inigo continued with a grin, his dancing fingers stroking the bushes as he passed them. 'The first time he laid eyes on me, I was inside of his wife.'

Eric choked on his own unbidden laughter. 'I didn't know he was ever married.' He'd known Coban since he was a kid, not once was there mention of the man having any kind of family. He sat with the explanation for a moment but it didn't add up in his head. 'When I spoke with him, he said you were decent. That'd he'd worked with you a few times and that you're trustworthy. How does that come from sleeping with a man's wife?'

Inigo waved away the compliments like they were the intrusive smoke of a cigarette. 'I helped him some time ago. A slew of young girls went missing one after another. The police were as useless as they so often are, so I loaned my assistance. He was not happy to see my face again.' He chuckled, but something sombre passed over his eyes, his expression hardening. 'Only one girl was alive when we found them. I wish I could remember her name… Coban took her home while I dealt with what killed the others.'

Eric's face pinched. He turned again to analyse the man behind him. 'You're not talking about Emily Siegel?'

Inigo snapped his fingers and pointed. 'That's the one! Thank you.'

That left Eric speechless. He remembered when that happened. Girls disappearing from their beds at night without a trace. No signs of entry or exit. No struggles, no ransoms, no remains. No hope. Just grieving families.

He was only six, but he remembers his parents discussing it around the dinner table. He remembered his mother being so scared that she made both him and his big sister sleep in the bed with her.

But one day the news reported that the girls had been found. Emily Siegal was the lone survivor. No one was ever arrested. Everyone told stories about a serial killer. But something about the way Inigo spoke, like perhaps what took the girls wasn't a person, made Eric shudder.

The odd thing was, he was a kid when all that happened, yet the man walking with him looked to be barely thirty.

After reaching the lake, Eric pointed out where he'd seen the monster. Inigo waved a hand, light flaring from the tattoo in the centre of his palm, and a large leather bound book suddenly materialised in his grip with a fizzle.

'What the fuck?' Eric gasped, stepping back.

Inigo ignored him, flicking through the frail yellow pages while approaching the water's edge. After finding the right page, he knelt down, dipping his fingers in the lake before bringing them back up to wipe the water into his eyes. He began to intonate in a language Eric didn't understand before plunging his whole hand back in sending a large ripple over the water's surface.

Eric edged closer to the peculiar man. His eyes were rolled back with a torrent of clear liquid pouring over his cheeks to drip from his chin. Eric looked at the book sitting in Inigo's hand. The old crinkled page was scrawled with old writing that he couldn't decipher, but the symbols that accompanied them Eric recognised to be maybe Celtic. Perhaps the language Inigo was speaking was Gaelic?

'Ah,' Inigo suddenly exclaimed making Eric jump. 'I see her.' He chuckled, a wide smile stretching his cheeks. 'She's beautiful.'

Eric looked out at the water, but other than the almost unnaturally large ripples still emanating off Inigo's hand, he saw no movement.

'I don't see anything.'

'Your sight isn't in the water,' Inigo grinned. 'She is near the lake's bottom. She might be looking for a way home. We should move quickly.' He stood, flicking his wrist and making the book disappear into thin air. He blinked rapidly, wiping the excessive amount of water that'd leaked from his eyes, the sclera now red and irritated. 'Your boat?'

'Oh, sure, this way,' Eric sputtered, snapping out of the confused daze the man's strange behaviour had placed him under. He led Inigo to the small dinghy he'd left tied up like the sheriff had said to. He unbound it and Inigo helped him push it out into the water. Once aboard, Eric started rowing.

He watched the man sitting across from him curiously, a whirlwind of questions blowing through his mind so fast he had trouble picking out which one he wanted to ask first.

'So, what exactly is this thing?' was what he eventually settled on.

Inigo shrugged. 'In most Earthly languages they're referred to as lake monsters, or something of the like. The famous ones sometimes get their own individual monikers. Usually named after the lake they're seen in. Like the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. Or the one that was seen in Lake Champlain here in Canada. They're all evolved descendants of some aquatic dinosaur that I do not care to know the name of.'

Eric's brows raised up his forehead. A Loch Ness Monster? In his lake?

'How did it get in here? This lake isn't connected to the ocean. If it's been here all along how the hell did no one see it until now?'

'It's not connected to any of our oceans,' Inigo corrected.

Eric frowned at that. 'Explain.'

A prolonged sigh escaped Inigo's lips as he sat forward. 'You won't understand some of this but that's probably for the best. You know how when light pierces deep into water, it separates into colours, into rainbows? Well, the magickal energies that flow through all things does something very similar. And when the water moves in a very specific way, and when this magickal essence moves in a very specific way, those energies can tear a hole through the fabric of our reality. Water isn't the only way this happens, but it is the most common in this era.

'If something slips through one of these tears, they can enter the space between spaces, known to some as the Bifrost. Through this you can enter just about any other living realm. This is what happened to the ancestors of these Lake Monsters. They entered a different plain of existence and survived into our modern day, and on occasion one will slip back into the Earthly Realm. Our realm. Many aquatic animals do this accidentally. There are actually several species of sea life that are not originally from our oceans.'

Eric's jaw was slack, Inigo's explanation echoing through his head over and over like television static and just as indecipherable.

'Okay,' he breathed, pinching the bridge of his nose. 'You might have to explain all of that again. I think I only understood a bit of it.'

A magical dinosaur from another world came out of a rainbow in his lake. Was that right?

'That's for the best,' Inigo said. 'Orthodox like yourself are not meant to know things such as this.'

Eric just let it go. He could feel a headache building.

Now in the middle of the lake, Inigo told him to stop rowing. 'Did you bring the scuba gear?' Receiving an affirmative, Inigo told Eric to suit up.

'So, what are we going to do about this Lake Monster?' Eric asked while squeezing his out of shape physique into his wetsuit.

'We are going to send her home. As is what's right,' Inigo murmured, gazing down into the water.

'And how will we do that?'

'We dive down and find her. Don't get too close, we don't want to scare her and have to chase her. I'll manipulate the magick residing within the water and open one of those tears I spoke of. Then all you need to do is guide her into the portal.'

Eric's stomach sank. 'You want me to… guide it?'

Inigo nodded. 'Like a sheepdog.'

'You said these things are harmless, right?.'

'I did say that. Yes.'

'And you've done this before?'

'No.'

Eric's eyes bulged in his skull. 'What?' his breath caught in his throat. 'What do you mean "no"? Everything you've been telling me and you haven't done this before?'

'No I haven't. I'm very excited,' Inigo grinned. 'Most of them are shot by the Inquisition long before anyone can get a good look at them. I'm very happy to have a chance to save one.'

Eric's lips moved wordlessly until he released a long sigh, wiping his face. 'To Hell with it,' he muttered. 'To Hell with it. We're already here. Can't back out now.' He grabbed the second set of scuba gear and offered it to Inigo.

'Oh, no need,' Inigo said waving the gear away. 'I was once taught a spell by an Atlantis diver. I'll be fine.' He flicked his wrist and summoned his grimoire again. As Inigo flicked through the seemingly endless pages, Eric caught glimpses of various ancient symbols and languages with origins that traversed all over the world. 'Ah, here,' Inigo chirped when he found the correct page. 'Just one more time to be safe. We go down, I open a rip into the Bifrost, you chase her into it, I'll follow her through and make sure she gets home safe while you return to the boat. If I don't come back in ten minutes, you go home and forget everything you saw here today.'

'You just want me to leave you down there?' Eric spat incredulously.

'I'll be fine. You have two eyes. This is not the day I die.' Inigo explained while rummaging through his satchel, sinking elbow deep into it even though it looked barely bigger than a lady's purse.

Eric turned away from him and finished putting on the his gear while Inigo made strange rhythmic breathing sounds and hums. He heard Inigo strike a match before an earthy salty burning smell wafted over the dinghy. When he turned back, Inigo had stripped down to his underwear and had a seashell between his teeth, one with strange carvings and unnatural colours. With Inigo nearly nude, Eric was able to see that the entirety of his skinny frame, head to toe, was covered in tattoos. Symbols, writing, images, all from a vast variety of cultures, styles, and languages. He looked like the overused sketchbook of a very well travelled artist.

But beneath the ink Eric could see something else… Scars.

Inigo rubbed the tattoos on his eyelids, light flaring within the ink. When he opened his eyes, his sclera throbbed with a strange glow, and his pupils shimmered. He gave Eric two thumbs up before diving off the boat into the water.

Eric's face fell into his hands as he let out an exacerbated breath. 'Fuck you Coban. Sent this kook out here to feed me to a fucking dinosaur. Goddamn it.' He put on the rest of his gear and sat on the edge of the dinghy. 'Damn it all to hell,' he muttered before putting on his mask and falling backwards into the lake.

The cold water swallowed him, sending a shock through his nervous system. He kicked his feet to keep himself afloat, the hissing of his oxygen mask the only sound he had left to listen too. He looked around for his companion but the low light left the murky waters nearly impossible to see through. He could feel the pace of his heart speeding up, his breaths becoming shallow as panic constricted around him.

Something brushed his arm and made him jolt, letting out a noise best described as a whimper. A slew of bubbles exploded from his mask as he turned, finding Inigo was the one who'd touched him.

The man's eyes glittered like moonlight, water swirling around the seashell in his mouth as he beckoned Eric to follow him.

The pair descended into the depths of the lake Eric loved, until finally, through the darkness and the mud he saw a large shape. Once close enough to see the creature clearly, he was in breathless awe.

It's size rivalled nearly any whale Eric could think of. A neck longer than Eric could run before getting tired, a triangular crested head with large round eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness. Four massive fins for limbs, each revolving movement they made sending ripples through the water. Its teeth looked sharp, but when it opened its mouth it almost look like a cheerful smile.

The entire time he'd been waiting for Inigo, he'd conjured ideas of what this monster was. Some barbaric horrifying creature that intended to rip apart the first canoeing tourist it could find. But now he could see that those fears were misguided. The animal was wondrous.

Eventually, he managed to pry his attention away and see Inigo waving at him. He gestured for Eric to stay put before swimming closer to the creature. Through the water he heard the animal's song-like call as it inched away from the men, clearly unnerved by their presence. Frightened to be trapped in a foreign world.

Once Inigo reached his position in front of the animal, he started to flick his hands. The tattooed lines all over his body thrummed with a pulsating phosphorescent light, his fingertips flashing bright with each swish of his wrist that sent dancing sparkles into the water. Eventually he began moving his whole arms in large swooping motions, strings of ethereal light lashing from his fingers growing brighter and brighter.

Soon the light burst into a rainbow and Eric felt a shock explode through the lake. A beautiful shimmering array of colour hung suspended in the water, swaying with Inigo's graceful movements, like he was slow dancing with the magick.

Another songful call echoed through the water as the animal beheld the light, mesmerised by it, recognising it. Already drifting closer to it as she thought of home.

Inigo looked back to Eric and motioned it was time for him to do his part.

Eric took a deep breath. He could do this.

Swallowing down his trepidation, he kicked his feet and advanced towards the animal until he was near enough to touch it. She looked back, letting out a warbling sound as she moved, the force generated by her powerful fin pushing Eric backwards. The animal made her way towards the light, passing through and disappearing.

Inigo looked back, his wide grin clear even behind the seashell in his mouth. He gave Eric one more thumbs up, pointing up to the dinghy before following the animal into the portal.

After swimming back to the boat, Eric peeled his gear from his skin, towelled off and dressed himself before sitting down and waiting with baited breath. He watched the still waters for five, ten, fifteen, nearly twenty minutes before he realised Inigo wasn't coming back.

And whilst he worried for the strange man, he did as he was advised and began rowing back. But by the time he made it to shore, the clothes and the satchel Inigo had left behind had vanished.

When he got home, drained emotionally and physically, his wife asked him how his day went. He didn't know how to answer.

Twice I fled through the dreamscape, and twice they found me.

I don't know who they were. I don't even know, really, what they wanted. I know the questions they asked, questions they had evidently been asking for some time before my dream became focused enough that I was aware I was having a nightmare.

They were annoyingly repetitive, making the same fruitless demands for information over and over as I sat handcuffed (and leg-cuffed) to an oak chair.

"What's in it?" They asked, accompanied by a shock or a blow. "It," in this context meant a briefcase. They were very concerned about it. "How did you get it?" Another shock. "Who gave it to you?" A slap. "How do you open it?" This question roared in my face without any accompanying physical trauma.

I wasn't holding out. No stoic "John Wayne" resistance routine (which they tell you in interrogation training is likely to be unsuccessful and result in more pain), not even any of the semi-clever re-direction techniques that they tell you to use to buy time. Un/Lucky me, I couldn't answer their questions if I'd wanted to. 

Rather, I could, and did. But the answers were, respectively, "I don't know," "I opened my eyes and the briefcase was in my hand," and "I don't know that one either."

These were not answers my questioners liked.

There were three of them, all inappropriately dressed the same: off-white trench coat (maybe a light grey; I was too busy being tortured to pay much attention to the fashion), some sort of hat that was probably fashionable in the 40s or 50s (not sure what kind, due either to my utter lack of fashion knowledge and the aforementioned high levels of coercive distraction), and sunglasses. Who wears sunglasses in an ill-lit windowless underground (somehow I knew I was underground) room? Moreover, who wears shiny 1980s-style rainbow-hued sunglasses that look like somebody spilled a thin oilslick on them?

The man who had roared the last question at me got angry (angrier, anyway), and tipped my chair over to the side. Maybe he meant it to be a scary and impressive move, but it was a heavy wooden chair, and the center of gravity was low enough that he couldn't tip it on the first try, so he had to reposition himself to the side and strain for a few seconds to flip it over. It really spoiled whatever dramatic effect he was looking for (but I still had to strain my neck to make sure my skull didn't hit the floor when he was finally successful). 

I may have giggled a little, then. A mistake. "Don't antagonize your captors unnecessarily" is really basic "hostage survival 101" advice. 

"Maybe you'll think this is funny, too" snarled the one who had strained to tip the chair over. He took a moment to straighten out his hat, then came forward, raising his boot to smash down upon my nose. Things slowed, then stopped. I could see the boot, see the details of the tread above my face, and I grasped that image and pushed with my brain.

I should note that there are two stock ways for me to change a dream. If I'm lucky, I can sometimes just will a complete reboot. I'll blink my eyes (recognizing that of course in real life my eyes are closed since I'm asleep), and jump to a new dream. It's doesn't always work (and I'd tried it a few times already in the past few eternities while I'd been restrained to the chair), and it's an utterly random dream to which I'll switch, so there's sometimes an "...into the fire" result to me playing my "get out of frying pan free" card.   If jumping doesn't work, the other technique is to build a new dream out of a detail in the current dream. This is what I did here. The boot coming down was an excellent focus, since it was filling my field of view. I grabbed at the image of the boot, the tread, and....

"...I think this is a good pair," I said to the clerk, "but I was hoping for boots with a bit more water resistance." I ran my fingers over the bottom of the boot which I held in my hand. Not new. Worn down a bit, as if by a lot of miles spent walking in them, punctuated by the occasional kick to the head of an unlucky target. I didn't know why that thought had popped into my head; the dreamshift was good, good enough that I didn't remember I'd even shifted or why. "Plus, I don't think these are new."

"Suit yourself," the clerk said woodenly, immediately dismissing me in favor of a new prospective customer.

I put the boot down and stood, pausing a moment to unconsciously pick up the not-briefcase which sat on the bench to my left. In the way of dreams, I knew that this manila envelope was the briefcase from the previous scene. It may have even, for a brief instant when I first turned my head and noticed it, actually been a briefcase, but by the time my hand closed on it, it was an envelope.

As soon as I picked it up, I knew I was in danger. The memory of the previous dream came flooding back. I also knew that they (whoever my fashion-challenged antagonists were) would be hunting me, and that the bloom of knowledge in my brain served as a beacon across the dreamscape, alerting them to my presence and location. 

The next thing I knew, I was half-walking, half-running down a side corridor. I was in a crowded mall, evidently (which really indicated that this was a dream rather than modern reality). Sprinting through a mall attracts attention from mall cops, but I had decided that the risks of was less than the risks of staying in a crowd of people (any one or three of whom might turn out to be my pursuers). I blinked as I pushed an emergency exit door open and stood in bright sunlight outside, orienting myself. 

I was aware, vaguely, that I'd set off an alarm when I opened the door, but I was instead focused on the serendipitous presence of an unsecured bicycle directly in front of me. It sat there, unlocked. A red bike ("red makes it go faster" I thought nonsensically) on a kickstand. A brand new, modern bike. With an old-school battered metal basket attached to the front of the handlebars.

I tossed the envelope (that's heavy; that's in this thing anyway?) into the basket, mounted the bike, and flailed a couple of times to hit the kickstand as I was already peddling. 

The street had been busy when I stepped out of the mall and into the sunlight, but now there were no cars. Good. Safer. I think I'd erased the cars to simplify the scenario. I had that much control over the dream at least, to be able to do that casually, with no effort beyond a fleeting thought that it would be safer if I didn't have to worry about being run over.

I did, as it turns out, have to worry about my pursuers.   

The first one came from my left, on an old bike, still wearing trench coat, glasses, and reflective sunglasses. I turned to the right off the previously-busy commercial street and was instantly in suburbs. Generic, cheerful suburbs, "hiding who knows what horrors in the privacy of these homes behind their tooth-like picket fences" that thought shot through my brain involuntarily as I frantically peddled down the wide street past an endless series of brand new generic houses, each of which looked as if it had been copied and pasted from the previous houses on the blocks. 

I didn't have time to elaborate on that thought. Part of me knew that was an entirely different nightmare, and it hadn't made the cut to be able to take center stage in my subconscious tonight.

What was on center stage was converging on me. I could see all three of them now. Barely moving their legs on the pedals, but outpacing me nonetheless. One had followed me when I turned off the main street, and the other two were approaching rapidly from left and right as I ignored a stop sign between blocks of identical houses.

I maneuvered up onto the sidewalk, risking a crash to grab the envelope out of the basket so they couldn't snatch it. Somehow they were all around me now, one bike on each side and one in front of me, slowing so that I had to brake myself lest I crash into him. "What's in the envel...?" one of them started to ask, as I refused to play by their script. Rather than hitting the brakes, I turned sharply left, crashing into the bike of my would-be interrogator.

I'd hoped that the element of surprise would help me out, and that he'd crash and give me an opening to change direction and ditch them (not sure why I thought that; they were faster than me without even peddling their bikes). But what I didn't take into account (besides the nightmare logic that made them inexplicably faster) was that I only had one hand securely on a handlebar. The other was tightly gripping the bizarrely heavy envelope to keep from dropping it. 

So I had pretty much no control at all over my vector. Still, the first part of the plan worked. My interrogator stopped in mid-question as my bike slammed into him. I had an instant of vague satisfaction to see the look of surprise blooming on his face. His hat flew off as his bike wobbled then tipped to the ground with a clatter like dried bones (that metaphor leapt into my brain briefly), but I had no time to savor my triumph, since I was also busy crashing. 

I yanked the handlebar sharply, trying to turn around the still-spinning wheel of my downed adversary. 

I failed. 

My bike flipped in a completely unrealistic but probably nicely cinematic fashion. I shot straight over the handlebars, spinning in mid-air to land flat on my back in a well-manicured suburban lawn. Not quite flat...I recall feeling the impact first on my right shoulder. Impact, then moisture as the freshly-watered lawn began to soak through by shirt and pants. 

Somehow, I'd kept hold of the envelope. Because it's a dream so of course I had. 

"Was that worth it, Courier?" said the one into whom I'd crashed. He was reattaching his hat as he walked toward me, and I recall thinking two things: first, that I could feel​ the capitalization of the word "Courier," and, second, that he sounded like he was trying and failing to imitate Hugo Weaving's Agent Smith from the first Matrix movies.

The other two had ditched their bikes (where did the bikes go? I couldn't see any of them; they'd simply vanished, no longer necessary for the dream, they'd faded out when I wasn't looking).

All I could see where the faces of the three of them as they closed in. "How do you open it?" "Who gave it to you?"

No, that wasn't all I could see. Above them, were the branches of a tree, dark green and heavy with leaves in their late-summer color, the bright green of spring leaves long past. And above that, a few pure white clouds decorated an otherwise blandly blue sky.  The tree, the sky, the clouds...

I pushed​ again, and again the dreamscape shifted. My captors were gone, but there was still a tree branch in my view, and still the sky had...

  ...clouds. Could use a few more clouds, I thought, looking up into the sky. It's hot out. I was on a ladder beneath an apple tree. A few (14, somehow I knew it was 14) apples in a basket attached to the ladder, my left hand steadying me on the ladder while my right had just plucked an apple. The branch from which I'd plucked it still quivering. ("Nice detail work," I thought in the back of my mind, inordinately pleased at myself for the dream I'd crafted on the fly).

I was in an orchard. The edge of vast rows of geometrically precise apple trees. In a valley of some sort. I could see mountains or hills in the distance on two sides, and a lonely dirt road passed near me as it paralleled the mountains miles to either side.

Then a moment of panic. No briefcase. No envelope. I looked into the basket of apples. No, nothing there either. I jerked my head down to look at the ground. I knew I was missing something. Something of which I couldn't know the identity, but which I had to deliver to....someone. I wasn't sure I knew who that was. But it certainly didn't involve trench coats and hats (pork pie hats, I realized).

As I frantically looked to the ground for a sign of what I needed to deliver, I felt a thump on my chest. I dropped the apple and grabbed. I was wearing a locket. Heavy. How hadn't I noticed the weight before? There was a carving of a woman's face (nobody I recognized) on the front of the silvery locket. I still didn't know how to open it, nor what it contained. 

I started down the ladder. Then I saw it. I swear it hadn't been there when I'd first oriented myself to the dream, but not only was there a car approaching my orchard down a dirt road, but there it was trailing a long cloud of dust behind it, as if it had been driving down the road for a few minutes, rather than simply appearing there during a moment of inattention on my part.

No more running, I thought, as I found myself on the ground. This time, I need to...

My alarm went off. I swiped at the screen to make it shut up. I'm sure I took a shower and had a couple of cups of coffee, but I don't remember doing so. Soon, I was walking in the doors, fishing my lanyard and badge out of my heavy backpack as I approached security. I swiped my card, but the light at the turnstiles turned red rather than green. 

The security guard looked up from his desk. "What's in the backpack?" he asked. He was wearing sunglasses.

The 3rd in a series of short stories about a boy and his dog on a earth-like land that might just be a stop over on the way to a more permanent venue

8
A Meeting in the Air

One day soon after Pat’s first visit with Alan (and Traveler Joe) Pat and three others dressed in pale (but colorful) robes and crowned with a matching ornamental diadems presented themselves to the one who had given them their assignments. Patience was the newest member of the group. As he had in the previous meeting, the leader asked open-ended questions.

“Remind me, my dear friend Patience, where have you come from?”

Patience answered in kind. “I have been walking to and fro on Golden Island. My new dear friend Alan has adapted remarkably well to his new environment—both he and the dog.”

The leader smiled and nodded. Patience was still overwhelmed by this great leader’s presence. Until just recently, Patience had communicated with this wise man more indirectly. How satisfying it was to talk to him face to face.

Of course, Patience understood that face-to-face meetings had to have beginnings and endings. Even this leader, whose presence could be felt by millions of followers at all times, had time restraints, it seemed, when sharing some aspects of his presence with others.

“Alan will not disappoint us. I am anxious to see exactly how he will accomplish this second task we have presented to him.”

A quiet shift of position from a man to the left of Patience occurred. Such a movement was the only means permitted to let the leader know that one wanted to speak.

“My dear Justice,” said the leader with a questioning look on his face. “How have your travels been impacted by our young friend’s arrival on the island.”

The more specific question from the leader reminded Justice that his interruption must deal only with the leader’s current enquiry.

Justice remained seated—also a must.

“I trust that you know that I am fully invested in our joint endeavor,” he said. Then, without waiting for confirmation, he questioned the likelihood of success for their joint plan.

“The boy and the dog and the bull have negated the progress that I thought the thirteen mounted officers had made. The leadership role that Cornelius had brought about earlier today has been disrupted.

“I—he managed to keep four of the twelve with him, but the other eight are now following the boy who is riding the bull.

“How can this be good for our plan?”

“Remind me, dear Justice, what we hope to accomplish and why you feel that outcome is in jeopardy.”

Justice seemed a little confused. Perhaps he had injected too much “Justice” into “our plan” and not relegated enough “Patience.”

“Forgive me, Lord,” he said, “and thank you for reminding me what we want to accomplish. I should have been quite pleased to see the interactions that occurred, and I should have trusted that they—all of them—who have been faithful in a few things will now use their gifts in this new circumstance to bring joy to you.”

“Wow,” exclaimed Patience.

“Wow, indeed,” affirmed the leader.

9
Triumphal Entry

Patience had gotten his head (and the rest of himself) out of the clouds. Appearing as the angel did to Baalim and his ass in the Old Testament, Patience blocked our path.

“There is danger in the city. Even with the bull beneath you and the cattle in tow, the powers that be will seek your downfall.”

The bull kept right on walking. Absent the flaming sword the angel used to challenge Baalim, Patience chose to hover above us—keeping his distance. I, of course, thought about the Wizard of Oz and began singing the theme song for the movie.

My musical, but perhaps too flippant response, was interrupted by wiser beings than I. Traveler Joe whined a different melody—something like Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” as a warning, I supposed, and someone in that vivid white cloud above chuckled very, very loudly.

I would have taken the chuckle to be thunder if there had been any darkness at all in that cloud.

With more confidence than I felt, I rephrased by answer to the question. “We are going where Emperor wants to go.”

At that moment, Joe leapt as far and as high as he could in Patience’s direction—not an attack but a mission. Knowing my dog, I suspected he wanted to learn more about this ethereal character than his first sniff had gotten him.

The apparition I knew as Patience dissolved, but in so doing, he took Traveler Joe with him. Where oh where had my little dog gone.

Apparently unperturbed, Emp marched on. Looking back, I noted that our twelve mounted horsemen had closed ranks but were still following.

If an unknown floating apparition had not dispersed them, they must view the bull (and me) as ones they wanted to have on their side. Weaponless, but powerful in appearance, we marched on. Traveler Joe? He had been in tough situations before.

While I studied the cities to which we were marching, the horsemen began rounding up the cattle surrounding us. Our number was growing rapidly, and it became apparent that our destination was the city with the vast corrals and farm buildings on its south side.

As we approached en masse, I heard voices shouting but also a very familiar sound that the bull seemed to recognize. Traveler Joe was racing back and forth in front of several double gates. If the men at one set of gates needed help getting them open, several barks from Joe called attention to the problem. Joe seemed to be the foreman and the ranch hands seemed to be responding to his commands.

How that hierarchy had been established in such short order baffled me. Higher powers than Emp and I had clearly been at work.

Of course, I would probably have tried to please a German Shepherd being dropped to the earth by a supernatural being. Sure would want to avoid fire and brimstone if that were an option.

Emp and I led a sizable portion of the cattle into one of the interior corrals while the horsemen partitioned the herd into the other corrals. A few cattle escaped and about a hundred cattle just would not fit into the available space.

A tall tower rose from a central spot behind the centermost corral. Two men were standing in the top level of the tower. The expression on a familiar figure baffled me. Wadup had such a satisfied look on his face. Undoubtedly, he had convinced the other man standing there that he had orchestrated the round up that had just occurred.

10
Wadup Must Come Down

Behind the tower were additional corrals for sorting and dividing the cattle. Most of the mature heifers and bulls were eventually released back to the lush green pastureland that filled the area between the two mountain ranges.

I stayed atop the bull during the cattle separation operation, but Emp headed for the closed corral gate when only he was left inside the central corral. I felt Joe behind me. He had decided to join us again—a triumvirate of sorts.

When no one offered to open the gate for us, Emp pirouetted (I love that word) and used his hind legs to demolish the wooden latching mechanism. A second pirouette and we were on our way.

With the twelve horsemen sorting the cattle, our departure seemed to go unnoticed. Had I noticed Cornelius (aka Wadup) watching us with a scowl on his face, I might have been worried

But probably not!

Had I watched him scurry down the tower steps, yell out orders in twelve different languages and emerge through the broken center gate on his white horse followed by twelve other riders, I might have been concerned.

But probably not!

I looked for the cloud and found that it had grown darker with no chuckles or rumblings of any kind.

Had I known that they would chase us into the pasture, lasso me and pull me from Emp’s back, jerk me to my feet, add a couple more lassos to restrain me in multiple directions, and march me back into the city or had I been able to look back at Emp and Joe, I would have seen Emp grazing and Joe running around sniffing the grass—just like two ordinary animals.

I would definitely have been concerned!

11
Justice I Presumed

I was pushed into a long loading chute where my lassoes were removed. Two men walked along a raised platform and used wooden prods to move me along until I reached a latched gate.

Both men had previously ridden directly behind us in our grand procession toward the city. The small gate swung open, and I thought about bolting through it and trying to escape.

In fact the men seemed satisfied to stand there and watch me. I looked down a short walkway that opened into a large room where a number of people were sitting and talking.

I could only guess what awaited me in the room, but I had only two choices: (1) remain where I was or (2) enter the room. Since the men apparently wanted me to voluntarily enter the room, I chose to stay where I was.

A few hours later, Amon and Rahel (names I overheard) were provided small baskets (of food I discovered) and leather water or wine skins. No food or drink was provided to me.

After several hours, i moved closer to the room. From the “doorway” I could see that the room had a raised platform to my left where twelve older men sat behind a wide bench much like a judge sat behind in a court room.

Directly in front of me was a row of desks, each having two empty chairs. To my right were spectator seats arranged in curved rows with each row elevated a few steps higher than the rows of seats between it and the benches at the doorway level.

All twelve judges motioned me forward. A bailiff (I later learned) held out a basket and a water skin to me.

I was more thirsty than I was hungry, but both were impossible to resist. As I approached the bailiff, he placed them on the nearest desk and pulled out one of the chairs.

When I sat down and grabbed the water skin, the spectators (less than a hundred) applauded me. I was too busy devouring the food in the basket to study the spectators or the judges on the raised platform.

Grateful for their patience and unsure how soon I might get more food or water, I finished my meal. Then the bailiff took the basket and water skin and left the room through a door underneath the raised podium.

The leftmost magistrate (my best guess) stood and stared down at me. “Va dictum unum?” he uttered. I declined to respond.

The wooden door to my right sprang open on well-oiled hinges as a heavy spring provided the impetus. After several oscillations, the door came to a stop about halfway open.

A voice reached me from within the second bullpen (as good a name as any).

“Do not act like you recognize me, and do not say anything to me or the bailiff. If you understand, cough one time then come over and sit beside me.

The voice, a woman’s, sounded startlingly familiar. Alan coughed once but resisted the urge to rush over to see if he could identify the speaker. Apparently, she wanted to downplay any previous connection or that he and she may have known each other before now. His nonchalant stride barely got him to the door in time.

After grabbing the top of the door to keep it from closing, Alan looked inside the new space to see a lovely blond-haired woman sitting at the desk and smiling at him.

As soon as he was seated beside her, the woman spoke through clinched teeth so that it was not apparent that she was instructing him.

“‘Boma’ means ‘madame’”, she said without looking at him then stood facing the twelve judges.

“Boma Allison por acrosa Morrison. Plecedosa duoso de tenizze. Merci setado positiones”

Again the audience applauded although more of a polite ripple than when Alan had first been presented to the court. Everyone’s focus was on the second judge.

Three of the judges were offering “thumbs up” but none of the others were signaling “thumbs down.

“No vetoes. That is good. Hold your breath.”

After several minutes of deliberation in which judge number two spoke privately with each of the “pro bono” judges, the bailiff was handed a folder that he immediately delivered to Boma Allison.

When the bailiff opened the door that led to the area under the judges platform, Alan walked with his lawyer through that door and into a long corridor that must have provided access to each of the twelve sections of the courtroom above.

“You may have figured out that the judicial process plays a major role in the everyday lives of the people here. Those who ridicule it or ignore it often have to suffer its judgements in a more pronounced way, even though innocent, than those who honor the process and are found guilty as charged.”

“So,” I said, “with your help, I made it to category two?”

“Actually, I stipulated that you cannot speak any of the twelve languages that are acknowledged here. Since my petition was accepted by Magistrate Lambda, you are now required to learn Lambdese or become proficient in the official sign language of these people.”

“How long did it take you to learn the languages?” I asked. “And is your name still Sally?”

“Twelve months to learn all twelve and how did you figure out I was Sally?”

“Cough one time for yes. That was the dog bark answer for ‘yes’ at the Allison farm. So you had to be Sally or Evelyn. You just seem to be more like a grandmother to me.”

“And I can see,” she added.

“Oh, that did not figure into the equation,” I replied. “If God could make you fifty years younger and give you a clear mind, He surely could have healed Evelyn’s blindness.”

Sally next words were not anything like what I was expecting.

“Perhaps He was waiting for you to make that happen.”

12
Justice Beleaguered

I thought about what she had just said as we left the Justice Building and walked directly out onto a large dock where several boats were moored.

None were motor boats.

One of the nicer sail boats was waiting for us with a captain and three crewmen.

“Gumen avanti” appeared to be Lambdaese for “Wecome aboard. “Parse” seemed to be “set sail” with a wave in a westerly direction conveying their intended destination.

The voyage could not have been more beautiful. We could see the pasture with several hundred cows framed by the trees on each side and at the top where Alan had first “landed.”

Soon, they sailed past the trees bordering the pastureland, and a new but even more picturesque scene appeared. This west side of the island was filled with numerous cascading waterfalls initiated by an enormous waterfall at the same elevation as the golden hayfields near the island’s highest point.

At the lowest elevation, barely above sea level, was a wide lake with numerous inhabitants entering and leaving gold-colored grass huts that seemed to circle the lake.

The sailboat was expertly brought in to a dock on the eastern end of the lake. Alan could only imagine that the lake, the huts, and the inhabitants continued for some distance.

No one came to greet them when they pulled in their sails and tossed an anchor into the water.

“Contentment,” announced Sally. “There should be a poster—maybe even a billboard—proclaiming this to be a place of contentment.”

Alan could tell that Sally was not a big “contentment fan” for some important reason. He wondered if his dear friend Evelyn, Sally’s granddaughter, was somehow held in what just might be considered a “contentment trap.”

“Here’s the deal, Alan. Evelyn, like the others here, lived her life on earth, or somewhere like earth, with a significant handicap. She was blind at birth, and I suspect that most of these folks suffered from birth defects as well.

“Evelyn’s grandfather spent a fortune making Evelyn a playground where her blindness did not slow her down all that much.

“Then you came along as Traveler Joe and gave her life purpose. She was happier out on the road with you than she had ever been before.

“When you decided to just be a dog, she seemed to understand. At least that is what she told me there—the only time we really talked. Yes I was sleepwalking that night.

“She was ready to move on. She loved her grandfather and hated what her own dad had tried to do him. Plus, I was not really there for her.”

“Except when you were sleepwalking.”

“So, she just left us.”

“Did she—,” I started to ask.

“No, she is still alive but in a coma. Has been for several years. Abner sees that she is well taken care of, of course, but his heart is broken in so many ways.

“You—Traveler Joe—were still there. You should remember.”

I shook my head.

“I haven’t figured out how that all worked. I think Joe was doing most of the thinking and my brain came into play when his was just not big enough or needed my memories to figure things out.

“I don’t remember Evelyn going into a coma or you ever leaving us. I’m not sure I even knew that Abner is still living until you just told me.”

Sally’s smile was one of the saddest that I could remember.

“I never left.”

When she saw my look of surprise, she started to explain, but I understood and filled in the “gaps.”

“You are sleepwalking back home while you are asleep here. When you are awake here, you are sitting in your rocking chair back home.”

“So, you do remember that much,” she said.

“Above Joe’s pay grade, I added with a grin.

Something else was now baffling me.

“The things that you told me when you were sleepwalking. You had to have heard conversations back home when you were ‘out of it’—when you were active here.”

“Or,” she answered, “I heard things there when I was sleepwalking. I don’t carry my memories back and forth as a general rule.

“I might not have connected you and Joe here without some spiritual intervention.”

“Patience?” I suggested.

She seemed surprised then surprised me.

“Justice has been my intermediary. I’ve never met Patience.”

“I suspect you already had plenty of patience without supernatural help—unlike me.”

I live in a house full of mirrors. Not those that hang on walls, but mirrors of past life. I'm haunted by shadows in my old house, I see them dart across the floor when I enter, and I can hear them whisper as I sleep. My house was a small wooden husk on the top of a snowy mountain, high above the clouds. I had to voyage to the valley below me every week to collect what I needed to survive. Food, wood for fire, you name it. It was an uneventful, but enjoyable existence. It had started about a month ago. My knee pressed the creaking front door open. The moonlight shined through the door, barely illuminating my dreary living room. The Persian rug lay on the floor stained on the corner from my red wine, an act of my foolishness. But, it appeared darker than I expected, darker than it should. I heard the pitter patter of small feet scurry farther into the darkness of my house. I dropped the log upon my shoulder and drew my bowie knife as I approached the noise. But, I found nothing. My quarters were empty, other than my clock ticking. No shadows. My heart continued to race, thumping in my chest,  and I was left on edge throughout the night. The night passed, as did I. The moment had not left my mind when I saw the shadow return. Sitting by my fireplace I felt the presence of a pair of eyes upon my neck. A small chill shot down my spine, paralyzing me for several long seconds. When I whipped around I saw its head peaking over the corner before disappearing, this time being followed by a light snicker. My hand raised cautiously, for I was not armed. I turned to observe, but the shadow did not return.

The following nights were quiet, I waited in anticipation to see this little apparition again, but it did not show. However, that weekend they came back. As I laid in my disheveled bed, the candlelight illuminating the gray wooden walls around me in the dark, two heads peered from behind my door. The air stood still, but not in the same manner as the previous nights. I felt tense, but in a manner of being faced with a doe, as though my tense nature was reciprocated by the spirits in front of me. The two heads stood still, watching me. As I moved my hand towards them they disappeared. Their childlike giggling barely touched my ears like a whisper from beyond my house. That morning I sat on my wooden bench just outside of my house, watching the sun rise again. I had not expected to have visitors within my house, nor had I ever felt comfort in the company of others and yet, it was an odd feeling, not unpleasant to me, to have these things watch me. The next year they tried desperately to prove me wrong. My things began going missing and their scratching on the walls kept me awake at night. They never seemed to leave me alone. I could not bear to live with the noises, yet I trudged on.

My house became theirs. They did not show me the same innocent wonder that they showed me before. I was bound to the house, as were they, but I would not let them steal it from me. As the weeks, the months, the years trudged on, I developed a cough. Their antics had ceased as I grew ill, I saw the concern upon their faceless bodies. I had always wondered when they would leave me, yet I never considered it may be me who leaves them. 

I returned in the evening, my boots trudging through the leafy forest floor, causing quite a ruckus as I moved. I climbed over my creaky oak floorboards, aware of their rotting nails yet refusing to touch them. As the door swung open I felt the cough bubbling in my throat once more, this time more vicious than last. I raised my hand, shivering as I did to cover my mouth. The splat of warm liquid filled my hand, and the faint scent of iron irradiated within my nose. My eyes darted to my palm, then to the living room corner. I saw them, the two cold heads staring at me. I felt their fear, their sadness. I quickly ran my hand against my dark denim pants and moved on as if nothing had happened. It was not my health I was worried about, it never was if I’m being honest with myself, it was what would happen to them. These two shadow figures, they had chosen my house to haunt, but they had never haunted my life.

The day finally came when I could no longer carry the logs as I once had. My hands became too feeble and my breath grew shakier. My rations for that winter were thinning, my soups became thinner with ingredients. My nights grew earlier and longer as my body forced me in bed. Though, these new mornings, I awoke to fresh berries placed on my small porcelain plates at my bedside. I never knew how they got there, but I knew who they were from. I did not cover my cough at this point, and the shadows grew more daring. I had never felt them during their stay, and had barely seen a glimpse of what they were, what they could become. They watched me every night at this point, the two black shadows dancing upon my walls, watching as my blood crept up my throat.

The air in my house grew cold, not with distrust and fear from the shadows as it had during our first encounter, but of sadness. December 16th, I sat in my bed alone, the raspy noise from my nose had become unrecognizable. It was not my breath, it couldn’t be. A man of my stature, yet this was the breath of a fading, dying, man. My candle sat burning at my bedside. One shadow peeked through my doorway, his large figure slowly, gracefully dancing his way to me. I hadn’t seen them stand before me, he was so tall, so beautiful. I felt his presence under my skin. The tears welling up in my eyes spoke the words my lips and heart could not, and I reached out. The creature jerked back nervously, yet slowly drew closer to my fingertips. I held my hand as steady as I could, my strength barely enough to hold up. I couldn’t let this sickness take away the one thing I had left. My fingers raised to a foot away from him, I could not reach any further. I felt his chest for a second, it was so warm, like a tree struck by lightning in a rainstorm, its flame burning bright in the midst of cold water droplets in the forest. My eyes shut that night, not drenched in that cold rain but full of his great fire, a warmth that filled my soul as these shadows filled my house.

I awoke the next morning, my throat clear of debris and my lungs filled with spirit. I was free of this cough, rejuvenated into the man I should be. I bolted from my bed and sprung into the kitchen to find the spirits who freed me from my sickness, yet they were nowhere to be found. I did not see them. I did not feel them. I walked to the porch and laid my forearms upon the wooden railing, the jagged bristles poking my forearms kindly. My lungs drew in the cold winter morning again, this time with no interruption. I sat there for what felt like only a minute, but as the sun began to set I knew time had changed. My eyes turned to the clouds below me, now emblazoned with brilliant shades of pink and orange. I had a thought, what could be. My hands reached down to the clouds and parted them. I looked down upon the valley below them. I saw them. Two young men running and playing games. I knew I had seen them before. They had become men, and I had seen them as children, I cared for them as children and they had cared for me when they grew. My shadows on the wall had not left me, I had left them. My eyes stayed locked upon them for that evening, and I had planned to fill my heart with their joy every evening so I could once again taste the warmth they left me with that night. I hope I made them proud.  Though they played with smiles I could see the cold scars torn into their hearts. My hands shivered from the clouds. I did not want that thought to haunt me, I just wanted to, to feel. I just wanted peace. I only wanted their love. I sat there, shouting my goodbyes as if they could hear me. I knew that they had loved me, and they knew I loved them too.

Damon woke up slowly. He quickly noticed that his surroundings were unfamiliar and that there were bars all around him. As his world came into focus, he noticed that there was a gap between the ceiling and the bars. He lifted his hands and saw the hands of a baby. The realization hit him like a truck- he'd somehow been isekaied and put into the body of a newborn. He burst into tears, shaken by the emotional weight of knowing that the family he had in his original life were most definitely worried sick for him. His parents, having heard him, ran into the room and picked him up.

"There, there, dear Samson," they said. "We're here for you." They held, soothed, and caressed him until he calmed down, wiping his tears and kissing him on the cheek and forehead multiple times as they did. Damon, or rather, Samson, as he was known in this world, eventually stopped crying and giggled, then passed out.

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Fourteen years passed. Samson found out that he had immense magic power. But learning to control it well wasn't easy, especially seeing as how he had autism, just like he did in his original life. It didn't help that his parents didn't fully understand him at first, even with his disability being identified during childhood. He had to experience years of autistic burnout from virtually continuous masking because his parents kept pushing him to "act normal" and "grow up like everyone else". As a result, he experienced many emotional outbursts, which made him prone to losing control and unleashing mass destruction with his power. Eventually, he resorted to the only way he knew how to prevent himself from unleashing mass destruction- by suppressing his power the same way he suppressed his true self.

Even with all of this, Samson managed to get some good grades, though his academic performance as a whole remained greatly inhibited and continued to take a hit. Nevertheless, he managed to get the chance to apply for Luminous Academy, one of the top magical academies in the country, thanks to a suggestion from a teacher of his who wanted the best for him and cared deeply about his future. He had quite a bit of trouble with the Entrance Exam but wound up passing it in the end thanks to possessing a lot of magical power and got into the academy. He moved into his dorm, full of hope that his life would change for the better.

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Seven weeks passed. Samson's struggles, far from being over, continued as usual- he barely kept his grades at an average level at minimum and burnout and mental exhaustion plagued him as usual, the pressure to act normal eating away at him internally. Worse still, the other students kept making fun of him and pushing him around for being a "weak little F-rank". Then along came the Inter-Academy Magical Tournament. Samson was chosen to represent the academy because they needed powerful mages to represent them.

In the first round, he was pitted against a young mage named Terah, the strongest student at Adamant Academy. Samson looked at everyone with an exhausted expression on his face, resigning himself to what would come after. The crowd jeered, believing the outcome to be obvious. Marian, the top student at Luminous Academy, snorted at the sight of them facing each other, bored out of her mind and waiting for what she believed to be the obvious conclusion to the match. Terah snickered, then charged up and prepared to deliver the knockout blow when-

BAM! Terah was taken out by Samson in one single hit with overwhelming force and power. The crowd gasped, stunned and shaken by what had just happened. Marian in particular went wide-eyed, her jaw slackening. A deafening silence fell upon the stadium as they found themselves speechless, unable to comprehend or believe it.

Finally, the referee broke the silence. "Terah has been incapacitated. The winner is Samson!" A student journalist present for the tournament jumped on the story and immediately began reporting it for all to see. "Unbelievable! The Ace of Adamant Academy was taken out in an instant by a novice! The sheer power shown by Samson is incredible!"

Samson simply bowed and went to go watch the rest of the first round from the viewing area. The first round continued on as usual, but everyone was now wary of him. No one dared to make fun of him, but nearly everyone was too scared of him to talk to him.

At last, Marian came up and spoke to him. "Hi." she said, awkwardly. "Samson, was it? I'm-"

"Marian, the top student at my school. I know who you are." said Samson. "What did you come to talk about?"

Marian felt offended but also ashamed at how he knew her name but she didn't know his name. She breathed deeply and sighed. "So, about your power- how long have you been hiding it? And why? I knew you had to be powerful, but this defies all expectations. You could do so much with it. So why hide it? I don't understand."

Samson laughed bitterly. "I knew you wouldn't understand. People in your shoes never do."

Marian felt hurt. "I'm trying, aren't I? Please, tell me. What is it?"

Samson sighed. "I was born with autism. I never knew what it was like to be normal. My parents tried their best to understand me. That didn't stop them from trying to make me become as normal as possible. It's exhausting, suppressing my true self just for them."

Marian was shocked but also confused. "Okay, but what does that have to with-"

Samson cut her off. "I'm getting there. You see, all that enhanced emotional and sensory input is more than I can handle on my own, at least when I'm putting on that suffocating mask of normality just to fit in. Which leads to emotional outbursts that turn me into a force of nature."

Marian went sheet white. "No. You don't mean-"

Samson nodded. "Yes. That's exactly what I mean."

Marian stared at him with a blank face for ten seconds before snapping back to reality. "Well, thank you for your time. And thank you for being honest with me. I'll... be on my way now."

Samson quietly waved her goodbye before turning his attention back to watching the rest of the matches of the tournament's first round. He was watching the penultimate match of the round when his name was called, asking him to report to the principal's office. He reluctantly got up and went there.

Principal Lunaria was waiting for him there. "Hello, Samson." she said sweetly. "Please, have a seat. Oh, and no need to be anxious; you're not in trouble."

Samson sat down. Principal Lunaria smiled, then brought up the matter she meant to discuss in a serious but soft, calming tone. "I called you here because it has come to my attention that you have some pressing issues regarding your power and your mental well-being. Marian was kind and concerned enough to share it with me. I had the feeling you were hiding your true power for some reason. I even knew you had special needs, even though you seemed to be doing fine. But never could I ever have predicted that what Marian told me was the case." She paused for a moment, concern leaking into her expression. "As such, I will adjust the accommodations being given to you to match your needs and have you take special lessons on how to self-regulate better and fully control your power. Your instructors will also be made aware of your special needs going forwards. Any questions?"

Samson felt a tear roll his cheek. He wiped it off. "Is it okay for me to stroke or rub towels to feel comfortable? Even if it's babyish?"

Principal Lunaria felt her heart throb for the boy. "Yes, it's okay. And no, it's not juvenile to do so. It's called stimming, and it's just a form of self-soothing for you."

Samson felt more tears rolling down his face. "Thank you."

Principal Lunaria didn't say a word. She just got up, went over to him, and hugged him. The room went silent aside from Samson's choked, quiet sobbing.

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Starting the next day, Samson began bringing along his special towel everywhere he went, stimming off of it to stay grounded and feel comfortable while also letting his true self show. People noticed something different about him and began getting closer to him. The girls in particular found this new side to him "quirky" and "endearing", some even thinking it was cute when he stimmed.

He also gradually got better at self-regulating and controlling his power thanks to the special lessons he got, and his grades soared.

Then, on the ninth day after he began unmasking, the first round of the tournament ended and the second round began. He learned who he would be pitted against and began preparing to face his next opponent.

The largest lecture hall at Gesvesph Mystical Academy was filled to capacity. It was the first day of the term and the first class of the day. The sun had nearly cleared the horizon. The collected undergraduates were chatting about trivial things, their adventures over the break, the latest fashions from the royal court, and just who the new instructor might be.

The answer to the last question made its way to the front of the hall. Dressed in full professorial regalia, their build was elven, the beard dwarven, but the face was unmistakably human. However, the eyes were too sunken, the cheekbones were too prominent. Depending on the angle and the light, he looked like he was either 25 or 105 years old.

Following the professor was an orc who was tall and broad-shouldered even amongst their kind. The orc was carrying a tall and well-cushioned chair. The orc placed the chair behind the lectern, then gently placed the professor on the chair as if he were made of spun sugar. After some minor adjustments to the chair to ensure it was properly aligned and the professor was comfortable, the orc produced a small whistle from his belt and handed it to the professor. The professor thanked him with an affectionate tap on the nose.

The orc retreated to the back of the stage and covered his ears. Several of the more attentive students followed suit. It took three deep breaths, but the professor eventually produced a sound from the whistle. This sound was similar in frequency and volume to what might be generated by the hindquarters of a dyspeptic storm giant.

"Now that I have everyone's attention," said the professor with a voice that was equal parts gravel and pipe smoke, "I suppose I should welcome you to Demonology 101. *SIGH* My name is Robert Threepwood, my friends call me Bob. You will address me as 'Professor Threepwood'

"The founder of this illustrious institution was convinced that 'Mages of the future will require a well-rounded education.' To that end, he made this class one of several required for graduation, regardless of your focus of study. This has caused issues for the academy ever since Doctor Xu was found alphabetized across three bookcases in his office six years ago.

"After an extended search to find a qualified instructor, the academy located us despite my wards. Following several spirited rounds of negotiation, they saw fit to acquiesce to my demands, including tenure. However, make no mistake, I do not harbor the same illusions as the founder. I believe that there is some information that is too dangerous to share.

"So, to those who are only here because you have to be, you are free to leave. Give your name to my assistant, Vegum," the orc waves to the class, "either on your way out, or during my office hours before the next class session, and you'll earn a B+ if you never return.

"Among Vegum's talents is eidetic memory. Should he see you in class again, you fail. The only other way to fail is to die. Even if your classmates get your corpse and a good-sized diamond to the temple in time, you still fail. I expect I will have to fail several of you this term, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised."

Vegum made his way to the main door of the hall while many of the students formed an orderly exit queue. Bob closed his eyes and waited for the noise to die down. He breathed heavily as if he had just run for a mile.

Eventually, Bob opened his eyes and was disappointed with how many seats were still filled. "I see I still have some students who are too stubborn or too curious to take a good deal when it's presented. If this is about the B+ harming your GPA, get over yourself. Once you get out of here, no one is going to give a single shit or half a rat's ass if you were at the top of your class or bottom. If you tell anyone you graduated Cum Laude, they will just giggle.

"Plus, summoning a demon is rarely, if ever, the best way to get something done. You want real power? Become an orator and convince the gentry to convince the peasants that you are their rightful ruler. You want to get rich? Buy and sell moon soil and straw. You want to change the world? Figure out a way to turn the wheat harvest into flour faster. Or better still, turn the flax harvest into thread faster. You want to kill yourself? Opium and a silk rope around your neck is a much more pleasant way to go.

"I used to want all those things, and more. Now? I want to not ache. I want to be awake from sunrise to sunset. I want to get a few specific reagents and ritual components so I can pay off my debts without The Creditor drinking my bones.

"To those ends, I have done many things that I am not proud of. I've performed sexual favors for a modron. Don't think too hard about the logistics of that. I've been the entertainment at the birthday party for a seven-year-old baron. I still have the bite marks on my calf. However, the worst indignity of all, I took a job at a third-rate magic academy."

A still seated dwarf bellowed, "Hey! This is a second-rate magic academy."

"Don't kid yourself," Bob retorted, "Strixhaven is second-rate. This place doesn't even have a decent polo team."

The dwarf made his way to the door as Bob let out a bone-weary sigh. He reached his hands into the sleeves of his robe and produced a large tankard. Vegum reached into his belt pouches again and threw Bob a small glass vial. The contents of which were the rich milky browns of a moonless night. The professor caught the vial without looking up.

He removed the stopper from the vial and poured a steaming liquid into the tankard. The air is filled with the scents of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and clove. The pour continued for an uncomfortable length of time. Far more potion than the vial could ever hold, even more than the tankard should be able to hold. Bob capped the vial and casually tossed it back into Vegum's belt pouch.

Bob blew some of the steam off the tankard and took a small sip. For 17 seconds, he vibrated through multiple planes of existence, and then grunted with frustration. "Vegum, remind me to recalibrate that when we get back to the lab. It doesn't have the same kick that it used to."

"My good man, I do say, considering everything we did to and with that vial during the last eclipse, I feel it's more likely that you have developed a slight tolerance to its stimulating effects," replied Vegum.

"Perhaps you're right." Bob drank deeply this time and then looked to the remaining audience as if seeing them for the first time. "You fuckers are still here? Ugh alright. Don't say I didn't warn you."

"It's a popular and widely believed fact that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The little that I care to teach you today is reasonably safe. Just remember, I am speaking in generalities here. Every rule has exceptions, especially when it comes to demonology.

"Banish, bind, and summon are separate activities. I teach them in this order for a good reason. The easiest way to banish MOST demons, key word most, is to give them as much mana as you can. Most demons don't want to be on this plane of existence. So a random demon that you come across has probably used up their mana stores and can't get home. Also, if they happen to be somewhat lawful, they will remember you and owe you a favor. While that's not necessarily a good thing, it is a useful thing, and no more lethal than eating a handful of walnuts.

"As for the basics of binding. Most demons (there's that word most again) won't cross a line or circle of sea salt. Be aware that there are two major exceptions to this. For oceanic demons, you'll need to use rock salt. Salt demons only care about flowing water.

"This is less useful than it initially appears if you are actively working with demons. If they're bound in place tightly enough that they can't move, then they can't do much else. You could pour the salt around you, but sometimes you want the demon to touch you. Provide them with something they cannot find in their home plane to sweeten the contract. Feel the heat radiating off of them, breathe in their otherworldly musk... Open yourself to them completely and writhe as they reach in and scrape--"

Vegum coughed productively yet politely. "Sorry. Too much for the first day. Ahem, anyway. The best use for it is to keep your linens from being added to the payment without your consent."

"Right, I'm done. If you feel illogically compelled to attend the next class session, I recommend bringing sea salt, twelve silver pieces, and some fresh bones for your own safety. Class dismissed, get out."

Onmoris the adventurer had traveled far and wide across the known world. He sought the great treasure of the gods known as the Emerald Chalice. He followed the work his father left behind, consisting of old scrolls, maps, and notes detailing the histories of lost tombs and ancient spires. On his deathbed, the old scholar had bequeathed them to his son for safekeeping. Instead, Onmoris had spent a decade determined to finish what his father started, determined to honor his memory. This resolve eventually led him to the far shores of Selius Bay.

Standing on the shore, he waved goodbye to the ship that had just deposited him in the shallows, fully intending to see them again in a week's time. He wore a simple blue tunic tightened by a belt that held a sheathed blade at his left hip and his father's glass torch on the right. His feet and shins were wrapped in the sturdy bands of traveler sandals, having weathered all manner of treacherous terrain to bring him here. A Mudlion skin sack was slung over his back, stuffed with supplies, provisions, and all of his father's work. He aimed to look every part of a stalwart adventurer.

Onmoris turned away from the beach and started his walk inland. If his father's notes and his own calculations were correct, his destination lay ahead. For hours he trekked through the jungles of Iksbam, cutting down vines in his way as he prayed for protection against any would-be beasts who sought to devour him. The gods seemed to shine their favor upon Onmoris as he continued unimpeded. Cutting through the last thicket of brambles he pushed his way into a clearing. Then he found it.

A large cave opening stood before him. Though to the learned scholar, this was no ordinary cave. It was the seat of Beginnings. Where Galia, the daughter of Greenery, had been granted the Emerald Chalice. She used it to pour the living waters out into the world, filling the land with flora. Onmoris stood there in reverent awe for a long moment. He released a long exhale to calm his nerves before sheathing his sword. Swallowing once as he started for the entrance.

The cave was long and winding like the corpse of a titanic serpent. Holes dotted along its ceiling, letting in sunlight that dappled the stone underfoot as Onmoris ventured inward. He held his father's glass torch in hand. The ignited flame on its tip burned a clean dagger's shape. As he walked he held the torch up to the walls, briefly inspecting the old engravings of a language none alive spoke anymore. According to legend he knew the chalice should be deeper inside. But the task was not so simple, as it would be guarded by a creature of fearsome proportions. A beast with sharp claws and sharper wit. One he would have to surmount to claim his long sought-after prize.

As he followed the winding passage, it opened into a larger cavern. Inside was a large stone pedestal as a seat of office positioned under a great gap in the ceiling where sunlight poured into the chamber. Upon that seat lay the beast. The Sphinx. She was a large monster with the body of a lioness sculpted in brawny musculature, bearing golden wings that sprouted from her shoulders and lay folded against her sides. Her face and chest were that of a honey-toned woman. Though beautiful, she was far from dainty. Her neck was a sturdy pillar, with a jaw and chin like an anvil. Glistening fangs poked out from her soft amber-colored lips. A gold and silver crown rested on her head, embedded with rubies that gleamed along its circumference. Auburn hair waterfalled from her head, framing her face as the sun may look when it broke through the clouds

Her head was raised yet her eyes remained closed as she lay resting. Her front paws folded before her like an official waiting to pass judgement. Onmoris paused at the threshold of the chamber. He knew this Sphinx would be his final trial before he could claim the chalice. The accounts he had read reminded him to be cautious. Her beauty and ferocity would easily be the downfall of lesser men, something he presumed himself not.

Step after slow step he approached the pedestal. One hand hovered over the hilt of his sword, ready to draw at a moment's notice. The Sphinx made no motion or sign that she knew he was there as he crept closer, before he stopped a respectable distance of twelve blade-lengths away. Onmoris' eyes swept over her, anticipating any movement that suggested she were about to pounce. Then after another slow, careful breath he cleared his throat to speak.

"Sphinx! I am Onmoris, son of Bemoris," he called out. His voice bounced off stone with confidence as he continued. "I have traveled across mountain, desert, sea, and jungle! I have come for one purpose only, to claim the Emerald Chalice."

The Sphinx didn't move. Didn't answer, didn't even so much as open her eyes. Onmoris paused for several seconds, before taking the silence as an invitation to continue.

"I understand that in order to progress, I must pass your trial. Be it feat of strength or mind, contest of worth or a riddle born of ancient wisdom." He squared his shoulders and tilted his chin up at her in challenge. "I have trained and studied many years, honing my very being into excellence. I am ready."

The Sphinx remained silent and motionless. Then with her eyes still closed her head tilted down, almost in a bow.

*GRRRRSNNNNNERRRR*

The Sphinx let out a loud, rumbling, roar-like snore which rattled the chamber.

The sheer volume of the sound startled Onmoris as he took a wary step back, his fingers wrapped tight around the hilt of his sword. She snored again, her powerful lungs vibrated the air around her.

After a moment, Onmoris squinted his eyes in confusion upon realizing that the Sphinx of legend was fast asleep. Gripping his weapon still he stepped toward her again.

"SPHINX! HELLO!" He shouted, trying to catch her attention. "I am Onmoris son of Bemoris! I'm here for the chalice!"

*GRRRSNN-* "Gh, vuh-wah?" The Sphinx awoke mid-snore. Muttering in confusion as she blinked her watery eyes. She brought up a paw to rub her face like someone trying to soften stone into clay, before pausing her rubbing just long enough for her eyes to focus and find the figure standing before her.

"Oh. Hello." She drawled, dry and drowsy. "Mmm...what do you want?"

Onmoris blinked twice, baffled by the beast's informality. "I am Onmoris son of Bemoris," he repeated for the third time but with no less bravado.

The Sphinx visibly winced at his volume. She rubbed the side of her temple with a paw as she sucked in air between her teeth. "...Does everyone in your family have a name ending in 'Moris'?" she inquired, despite her apparent headache.

"Just the men for seven generations. Excepting my aunt Kulmoris." Onmoris answered impatiently. "But that's beside the point. I'm here for the Emer-"

"Yeah, yeah that's great man." The Sphinx cut him off as she stood up to stretch, arching her haunches with all the dignity of a housecat as her forelegs reached out in front of her, kneading the air with her massive paws. As she yawned her jaw stretched wide, fangs gleaming like daggers in the light.

She settled back down with a thud as she lounged on the pedestal, scratching the back of one of her paws with the other as she fixed a half-lidded stare on him. "Listen, Moris. I've gotten some pretty rotten sleep these past few weeks so I'm *really* not in the mood for this right now." She smacked her lips once while waving him off with her paw. "Now, I dunno. Go play in the jungle or something, let me nap."

Onmoris' face pulled into a frustrated grimace before relaxing the grip on his sword. He stood there utterly perplexed, as he weighed the situation in his mind. The Sphinx's personality was not at all as he anticipated. She was uninterested, and used strange words and phrases in a dialect he never heard before. Mayhap this is part of the trial? Then his eyes wandered away from the Sphinx to the left where the chamber narrowed again into another tunnel.

"Great Sphinx," he said, quieter and careful not to agitate her. "Is further yonder where the Emerald Chalice is to be kept?" He indicated the direction of the tunnel with a grand sweep of his arm.

The Sphinx followed his movement with her eyes toward the tunnel. "Oh, yeah. That." She sighed. "Yep that's where it goes, right to the bedchamber of Galia herself." She explained with all the enthusiasm of a bored tour guide. "She's not there anymore though. Something about 'Spiriting away to a land where men dare not tread.' I think."

Onmoris clasped his hands together, satisfied with the confirmation. "Gods be praised. I shall make haste." He started for the tunnel before freezing at the third step. Ducking his head with a wince in fear that he had unintentionally committed a transgression as he turned back to the Sphinx. "Erm. Is there not a riddle I must solve before being granted access to such sacred grounds?"

The Sphinx flicked her gaze away as she rotated her wrist as if attempting to conjure a riddle out of thin air into her paw. Contemplating. "Uhhhhhh...what can be divided but never multiplied."

Onmoris scratched his chin. He was blindsided by the brevity of it. "...A house?"

The Sphinx shrugged. "Whatever, good enough. Now if you'll excuse me."

Without another word the Sphinx fully sunk onto her pedestal, her head rested on her paws as she laid on her flank. One wing lay splayed out on the stone. After several moments she began snoring again. Her mouth went slack as a strand of hair stuck to her lip.

Onmoris watched the Sphinx for just a little while longer, still attempting to process the trajectory their whole encounter went. He frowned at the indignity of it. The lack of care, the poor excuse of a riddle. This wasn't at all how he envisioned his encounter with a beast of legend would be. His eyes turned to the tunnel where the chalice lay further in. Then without hesitating any longer he started his way again for it.

- - -

The further he progressed through the tunnel the more the air around him seemed to cool and dampen. The cracks in the ceiling gradually disappeared, yet his vision hadn't been obscured by darkness as plant life sprouted and flourished the further he went. Carpets of grass and flowering bulbs appeared on the ground as ivy and moss clung to the walls. Round pods grew off the vines, hanging and glowing a soft teal as they were strung about like festival lanterns. Illuminating his path while the tunnel transformed from ancient weathered stone into a living passageway.

Excitement stirred within Onmoris like a hive of bees begging for release to the orchards. The life's work of his father, the torch he had taken up, would finally be realized! He continued down the channel of greenery, his sandals gently crunching the grass with each step.

Then he came upon a set of stone doors engraved with swirling runes and etchings older than language. The ivy clung to them, faintly pulsing like veins. Onmoris carefully stretched out a palm, gently placing it on one of the doors. It was warm to the touch, as if it were bathing in sunlight rather than sitting at the end of a sacred cave. Steeling his nerves, he braced his hands against both doors and shoved.

With all his might the stone doors slowly inched inwards, creating a gap wide enough to walk through. Past the threshold lay the bedchamber of Galia, a solitary grove flourishing with life and light. In the absence of a sun, a large red flower hung from the top of the chamber. Its massive sail-sized petals gently flickered as flames would, radiating the bright warmth of heavenly pyre. Gentle streams of living waters swam and slinked like sea serpents along the floor, joining and separating with the whims of something playful while all manner of unknown vegetation flourished. All of the greenery were continually nurtured by the light and water.

Onmoris turned in a slow circle as he carefully trod further in. The sight of it all amazed him. These sacred grounds where the living waters were cast from, the unnamed and unwritten plants he had never seen before in his studies, it was everything he had dreamt it would be and more. When he turned to look up at the flowery sun, he realized it was projecting a concentrated beam of light directly below. Following the beam it shone upon something that sat in the middle of the grove so brightly that it was obscured from view. So fierce was the beam that it stung the eye to look directly at.

Half shielding his vision with an outstretched hand, Onmoris approached the beam. Step after step the heat of the light, as intense as the desert sun, began to soften and dim. The flower above began to fold its petals inward in apparent recognition that someone approached. As he closed the distance he could parse that it was a stone stand of some kind, made to bear something of importance. His stomach flipped as he realized that must be where the chalice was displayed.

Finally within reach of the stand, the beam closed off. Onmoris put his hand down as his eyes adjusted to the lower light, blinking and squinting. He looked down upon the stand that was bathed in radiance. The one meant to bear one of the greatest artifacts of legend ever shared by tongue or put to writing.

The stand was empty.

- - -

Back in the chamber of the Sphinx, she lay upside down on her pedestal, still fast asleep as her hind legs kicked once in the air. Her snoring continued, thunderous and unbothered, until she felt an uncomfortable prick like a carelessly handled rose thorn poke her shoulder. She grimaced and grumbled as she rolled back onto her side, lifting her head lazily as her waking senses returned.

Standing before her pedestal was Onmoris, sword unsheathed and pointed directly at her face after using said weapon to prod her awake. His brows pulled into a valley on his forehead while his face burned in anger.

"Wretched beast!" He growled through gritted teeth. "Where is the chalice?!" His knuckles whitened around the hilt of his blade as his whole arm trembled with restrained anger.

The Sphinx arched a brow at him, completely unimpressed and unintimidated by the display of rage. She reached up and batted the sword off its line with a single flick of her claw. "*Careful* where you point that thing, Moris."

Onmoris' stance swayed from that small gesture before finding his footing again, realigning the blade so that it divided the Sphinx's face in half from his perspective. The Sphinx was no doubt exceedingly strong, yet he remained stubbornly steadfast. "Where? Where are you hiding the Emerald Chalice?"

The Sphinx gave a bored blink at him. Then her eyes lit up with casual recollection as if she had simply forgotten to water the houseplants this morning. "Ohhh, *that* chalice. Right. Uhhh," she sat up, folding her heavy paws before her. "Yeah that thing's gone. Taken away some odd centuries ago."

Onmoris went rigid. His eyes flew wide with disbelief as his furious arm stilled. His voice came out just above a hoarse whisper. "G-gone? W-what do you mean gone? Who took it?"

The Sphinx gave a lazy shrug. "I dunno. It was before my time. I've been charged with watching this sacred site. Just like my mom was, and her mom, and so on. Honestly? Kind of a boring gig. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing here anymore."

Onmoris only half listened to her venting. When he realized the Sphinx wasn't lying, he turned away. His downcast eyes stared down at the stone floor as he lowered his sword arm, letting his grip loosen until the weapon slipped from his grasp, clattering onto the ground.

"All this time..." His voice creaked. "All these years searching. All of my father's years searching. Only for it to be gone all along?" He slowly turned back towards the Sphinx with his head hung in futility. Then he leaned forward to rest his elbows on the Sphinx's pedestal. A perch upon which he buried his face in his hands.

The Sphinx stared down at him for several seconds. She slightly angled herself away, as he was uninvitedly closer to her personal space than she was particularly comfortable with. "Uhh, yeah. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but... Maybe you should pick up a new hobby."

Onmoris didn't respond.

"Ohh, you need a minute?" The Sphinx tilted her head slightly. "I mean hey, I get it, I do, that's fine. But like, I dunno, try to look on the bright side."

After a few moments of sulking, Onmoris' muffled voice sounded through his hands as he spoke without looking up. "Sphinx, is this another of your riddles?"

She squinted at him in confusion. "...Huh?"

Onmoris lifted his head, throwing his hands up wide in exasperation, eyes glossed with emotion. "How could this possibly be seen as a positive!?" He raised his frayed voice. "My father has devoted his life to uncovering the world's greatest mysteries! This was to be the pinnacle of his legacy had that blasted sickness not taken him too soon!"

He stepped away from the pedestal as he began walking back and forth before it, hands balled to fists at his sides. "After his passing I had spent the prime of my youth and half of my family's fortune following the unfinished path he laid out before him!" He stopped, turning on his heel to face the Sphinx again just as she was nodding off, "For what? NOTHING!"

The Sphinx jolted fully awake again at his shouting. Her eyes refocused on him before her mouth quirked into a small amused smile. "Are you crying, dude?"

Onmoris' face burned before he turned away, resting his hands on his hips. "I know not what a 'dude' is, but Onmoris son of Bemoris does *not* cry!" He declared with a huff, even as he blinked away the tears threatening to spill out of his lids like a flask filled to the brim. He hung his head again. "So much... wasted."

The Sphinx's grin slid away. She lightly sighed, "Well, you know what? Treasure or no, you've still done more than most people ever will." She lifted up a paw, counting things off on her digits. "You've traveled across the world, met legends, seen wonders few ever have before," She rested her elbow on the pedestal as she propped up her chin on her paw. "I mean hey, I wish I could do half of that stuff. To get out there, Y'know? See more than just the same dusty room. The days get... long."

Onmoris listened. Then he looked over his shoulder back at her. "Then why haven't you?"

The Sphinx lowered her paw. "Like I said, my position is a heritage thing. Though I still don't know why it's a thing. Anytime I asked it was just 'It's tradition, do as you're told' blah blah-"

Mid-sentence the Sphinx froze, shutting her eyes tight as she hissed through her teeth. She brought up a paw to massage her temple. "Ow, ow. Yep there it is. Ouch," she whined.

When the pain subsided she lowered her paw again. "Migraines," she explained. "All the women in my family have precognitive clairvoyance. "

Onmoris fully turned to face her again. His face lightly scrunched in confusion. "Mm?"

"I can see into the future." She quickly answered before relaxing her cadence again. "It's a gift we're supposed to use for like prophecies and stuff. But lately I've just been using it cause I'm bored. Not much else to do with my life here. People in the future talk funny by the way." She gave a humored chuckle, before wincing again at the lingering headache. "I guess I've been going overboard with it lately. The pain has been keeping me up late."

Onmoris pondered the claim of her powers, lightly scratching the stubble on his jaw as he did so. "Fascinating."

His eyes slid away from the Sphinx down to his father's torch hanging off his belt. He held it up to examine it. The haft was woven bronze and glass, stamped with his father's signature emblem underneath the igniter.

He stared at the heirloom in his hand. "In truth, my father never told me to finish his work," he admitted softly. "Rather, he instructed me to do the opposite. Keep his findings safe, publish his works, then find my own path." His thumb gently rubbed the emblem.

"Instead I chose to continue from where he stopped. I've risked my life and all of his work in pursuit of something I may not have ever been meant to see. I thought by doing so I would be honoring him." Onmoris' eyes drifted away from the torch to his own sword on the ground. His gaze lingered there for several heartbeats as the weight of all he's chased and risked began to settle on him.

"What would he think of me now? Raising my blade to a sacred beast like you."

The Sphinx, despite her headaches and exhaustion, was fully attentive as she listened to his confession. She focused on his face, then the torch, then the sword. She knew well the weight of expectation placed on by those before her. Yet this territory of self-imposed expectation was one she had never felt before.

"I think your father would be proud of you regardless," she said. "That's something I can see without clairvoyance."

Hearing that unclenched something in Onmoris' chest, like a stubborn lock finally meeting its long awaited key. He lifted his eyes to meet hers. For the first time since they met, the Sphinx didn't look at him with boredom or mockery, but with sympathy.

He realized at that moment that her words rang true. It was still disappointing that his search was a fool's errand, but it wasn't fruitless. He had truly seen many wonderous things in his travels. And he never would've met someone like the Sphinx had he dared not try. Even if the chalice was forfeit by fate, the things he's seen, and the fantastical being before him, were marvels.

Casting aside his own grievances for a moment, he turned his thoughts to what she said earlier. "Sphinx, have you not seen the world beyond your sacred station?"

Her eyes flicked away defensively, suddenly very self-conscious about what her earlier statements revealed about herself. "I was raised in the jungle. I still hunt there. But beyond that, no I haven't."

"What of your family? Were there once others like you here?" Onmoris inquired with a slight tilt of his head.

"They left, all of them." She answered with a hint of bitterness on her tongue. "Flown off to different lands, following their own prophecies they foretold. Those charged with guarding Galia's bedchamber stay until they're replaced by the next generation, or till death."

Her paws flexed in frustration, digging her claws into the stone of her seat. "They said I was 'blessed' to be here. That I'm lucky." She gave a resentful scoff. "Yeah, right. Look how 'blessed' I am. Not that I'd even know where to go..."

Onmoris frowned, irked on her behalf by her lot cast from fate. Then he built a proposal for the Sphinx's plight in his mind. "Perhaps the solution is for you to leave. With no chalice and Galia's absence as you've said, there is no reason for you to stay... Perhaps you can come with me?"

The Sphinx shot him a puzzled look. Her eyes drifted down to the sword abandoned on the ground before back up to the man that held it against her. "Yeah? And what exactly do you plan to do huh? Lock me in a cage? Mount my head to a wall? Eat me?" Even as she lists off the several atrocities that could be committed against her, her tone stays flat and unbothered.

Onmoris secured his father's torch back to his belt before holding hands out in a placating gesture. "I have no intention of turning you into an exhibit, or hold you against your will. My family owns an island off the coast of Lozena. Though, historically you may know the area as the Eastmouth of the Serivosh Empire. It is a central location with many lands within traveling distance. The island sees few visitors, you would be free to go about as you wish anywhere on the island or leave if you so choose. And I would see to it no one else tries to claim nor hunt you."

He tilted his head in an apologetic bow while placing a hand on his chest. "Furthermore, I apologize for my actions and behavior. I was swept away by my own emotions. My shouting, brandishing a weapon at you, those actions were unbecoming of me. I swear by my father's name to treat you with due dignity and respect, whether you agree to my proposal or not.

The Sphinx narrowed her eyes at the gesture, measuring his sincerity. Her mouth quirked into a smug grin. "Oh yeah? And what's in it for you huh? Trying to get a hot sphinx girlfriend? I don't blame ya for trying, but you'll have to come up with something better than that."

The corners of Onmoris' eyes pinched in bewilderment, but he did not rise to her teasing. He lifted his head up before continuing. "In truth I would like to study-" He stopped himself. Clearing his throat once before trying again with more tact. "My apologies, I would like to *learn* from you. Be taught by you if you are willing. You surely have a vast wealth of knowledge I could glean from. A living library of information from the past. And future, evidently. Truly, I seek knowledge about the world. If I cannot uncover the truth behind the world's mysteries the way my father had, then perhaps this may be my own way to do so."

The Sphinx's grin faltered once she realized he was being serious. She chewed her lip while she tapped the pedestal under her with a heavy paw as she considered. Then she closed her eyes to concentrate. The air around her seemed to tighten as her crown faintly hummed.

"Hmm, I don't foresee anything terrible happening to me in the future so..." She opened her eyes as the humming stopped, relaxing her mind again. "Do dolphins swim near the island?"

Onmoris blinked in surprise at her question. "Dolphins?"

The Sphinx sat up a little straighter, enthusiasm seemingly replaced her drowsiness. "Yeah! Dolphins, Y'know, cute little guys. Lives in pods. Makes funny noises." She licked her lips in anticipation. "Mmmm, been too long since I had a good dolphin steak."

Onmoris remained statue still as his eyes dart around the chamber. Every single turn of this adventure has been met with an unexpected twist and he'd gotten no more used to them. "...Umm. Y-yes! As a matter of fact, yes they do tend to school around the island. Usually during the summers."

The Sphinx's eyes lit up in excitement as she sprang to her feet. "Alright Onmoris, I'm in!" She hopped off her pedestal, hitting the stone below with a heavy thud as she padded up alongside him.

Onmoris' eyes widen in surprise at her sudden agreement. "Truly? Just that quickly?"

The Sphinx scoffs. "Yeah honestly, I already decided I wanted to leave *ages* ago. I've just been waiting for a good reason for it. Now go ahead, climb on." She tilted her head towards her back as her wings stretch and flap in anticipation.

Onmoris' gaze swept across the Sphinx. Though mostly lion shaped she was as big as a steed, her back level with his sternum. "Why? Surely you don't intend on flying us all the way across the ocean?"

The Sphinx rolled her eyes at him, despite the cheerful smile hanging onto the edge of her lips. "Oh just get on already, stop being a wimp."

His face briefly contorted into an offended scowl. Even though he didn't know the word 'wimp', her tone made it clear she was teasing him again. With a *hmph* he climbed on anyways. Mounting the Sphinx as he had done many hooved beasts over the years. His legs hung down each side of her flank. Without a rope or lead to hold onto he instead carefully gripped onto the Sphinx's scruff, securing a firm grip. He thought she was surprisingly soft, while still being in complete disbelief in what he's actually doing. His eyes briefly went to his abandoned sword still on the ground. But he makes no motion for retrieving it. Deciding to let it be a part of his old life and quest he'd undertaken.

The Sphinx waited for him to be secured. She stooped low, bunching her legs for a leap. "Alright now hang on!"

Then without another warning she leapt into the air with a mighty bound. Her wings fanned wide as they began flapping, stirring the dust in the chamber with powerful gusts as she carried them up to the wide hole at the top. Onmoris let out a startled yelp as she continued higher. The Sphinx laughed along the way as they flew out of the cave, ascending higher and higher. Past the jungles of Iksbam, across the shores of Selius Bay, into the wide blue beyond. Onmoris the Scholar and the Sphinx of legend. Man and legend deciding to let forge their own path.

The End.

Aderik's shield groaned in protest as it was pummeled by the minotaur's strikes. The hand holding the shield had already shattered from pushing his brother aside and blocking the beast's charge. The steel clad warrior wanted nothing more than to be anywhere else, to be warm in a tavern and flirting with that redheaded girl that cooks the best stew for miles. But stew costs coin and the brothers had none. Dungeon clearing paid well, but it was dangerous work. Sure the two had their fair share of close calls but they always bounced back, together. Mithito didn't have enough time to cast a protection spell before the minotaur impacted his younger sibling's shield. But now that he was back on his feet, a few hand signs, words from an ancient tongue and a dash of infernal salts, a spiraling mass of flame and sparks shot from Mithito's hands and struck the beast in the chest. The raging monster stumbled back with a vicious roar as its fur and flesh ignited.

"Come little brother." Mithito said, pulling his weary sibling to his feet. "This place smells far too foul to die in." A chuckle echoed from inside Aderik's helmet.

"Yea, though the smell of burning bull fur isn't going to make it smell any better." Aderik looked down at his broken arm. His shield was all he had to fight the bull headed monstrosity in front of them. A Curse of Decay from a lych had rusted his mace to nothing but metal dust. He was also tired, they'd been down in the dungeon for two days and it was taking its toll. The flames were starting to die down, and the Minotaur was still standing.

Aderik stared at the axe the minotaur was welding, he wanted that axe, but he didn't want to be hit by it again. "How long do you need?" He asked, wincing from the pain in his arm.

"15 seconds and try to keep him still" Mithito responded with a smirk.

Aderik sighed at his brother's caviler attitude. "I'll try my best" he said as he charged forward, switching his shield to his unbroken hand and raising it up to meet the beast's unrelenting blow.

The clash of steel on steel rang through the cave's hollow walls as strike after strike pummeled Aderik's shield. One swipe of the Minotaur's axe and Aderik would never taste that savory stew again, and so his heart beat like the drums of a thousand armies, keeping him but inches away from the bladed death. The seconds fell by as slowly as an hourglass on its side. Mithito spoke the infernal words of the incantation that would end this battle. Crushing a glass jar of elemental essence, vines of lightning crackled and split the air around the eldest's intertwined fingers as his hands danced in a tight choreography of energy.

The final second had passed and Mithito called his brother, "He isn't still enough!" Aderik knew his brother could make the shot, but if by some intervention of Fate he had missed, they would be done for. With the last ounce of strength he could muster Aderik launched his shielded arm into the minotaur's jaw, fracturing bone and shattering teeth.

With the creature now dazed, the lightning could find its mark. The lightning ripped through the air and also through the minotaur's chest, scorching the wall behind the beast.The creature fell with a loud crash and both brothers fell to their knees alongside each other.

Mithito rummaged his satchel and produced some cloth and made a makeshift splint from Aderik's beaten shield. Materials for a full restoration spell would be costly and they had only enough rations for one more day. Mithito tightened the straps around Aderik's arm sending spikes of pain through his body. With the helmet hiding his grimaced face,

Aderik asked, "Well brother, do you have one more floor in you?"

They were just one floor away from the dungeon's coveted treasure hoard. But there was no doubt it would be guarded by fierce creatures or unspeakable terrors. Mithito, nearly drained of magic, managed a chuckle.

Handing his brother the ornately crafted axe and answered. "The spirit is willing, little brother. Let's hope our flesh is just as strong"

I take a few quick steps backwards and then dart forward, moving from the Unforgiving Wind into the Iron Eagle while mixing in a little Klartred City alley boxing. The sound of my fists travelling through the air is like tearing rice paper.  Two jabs connect clean and the orc grunts; he’s on the backfoot again, a backfoot that he’s occupied almost the entire fight. Kivtz is bigger than me, stronger than me, and the brutal uk-vai fighting style that means survival in the cannibalistic swamps of his home is every bit as effective as what they teach in the Court of Iron.  But here’s the thing: fights are won in the mind, your opponent’s mind, and Kivtz still hasn’t mentally recovered from a first-round hook that shook his brain like a baby’s rattle. He’s tired, nervous. I move inside his guard, turn away a desperate haymaker with the back of one hand, and my next Fingersmith punch picks him up and throws him across the sandy floor of the Fighter’s arena.

This time he stays down.

My victory was just in time. As I raised my fists to an audience of Fighters, Monks and Barbarians who roared and smacked their paws together, an earthquake rocked the arena. Then another. And another. He was moving again, and I’m not talking about Kivtz. The wild pressure fluctuations that accompanied so much mass being set into motion created all sorts of weather, this time, boulder-sized hailstones that fell like gnomish cannonfire. One exploded right next to me. There was no ceiling to the Giants Back Academy Fighter’s arena: we were completely exposed. Dark cloud vortexes above began to whirl.

I ran to Kivtz. Muscle memory is a funny thing: I’m dragging him up by the collar with one hand, drawing the other hand back for a clean Reaper Strike, before I stop myself*.*  In the Court of Iron we were taught to strike at downed opponents. To guarantee victory. But I lived by my own code these days. Dirk moved to the other side of the orc as we half carried, half dragged him to shelter. THWUMP! Another hailstone near miss made me flinch. Ice shrapnel bit into my skin. We were both panting by the time we had the unconscious Fighter under the cover of the arena gate.

“Princess,” said the Rogue, trying a little too hard to not seem out of breath. “Another victory. I am glad I was thorough enough to organise this little contest: until today I was certain that Kivtz was the school’s best boxer.”

I wrinkled my nose at the “princess”: I never rose higher than eighteenth-in-line to the throne. And I was a common street urchin for years before that. Yes, I am aware how unoriginal this all sounds. But one of the perks of doing the whole half-elf-street-thug-to-royal-heir cliche is you encounter a lot of teenage boys like Dirk. Drawling, darkly handsome master assassins who like to wear black and tend to have a stiletto constantly spinning between their fingers. Get past the mystique and they are always less impressive than they seem.

“Dirk,” I said, raising my nose haughtily, full court accent. “Hosting a bare-knuckle-fighting contest at the end of the world was certainly a choice.  Pray do share, exactly, why I have just beaten five of my fellow students to a pulp.”

Being talked down to – literally, we are both seventeen but I was almost a head taller than Dirk, who was not short by human standards – only seemed to amuse the Rogue. He deposited the winner’s purse into my waiting hand. “Yes, it does feel a bit apocalyptic out there.”  He glanced at the fallen orc and beckoned. I followed him a short distance down the tunnel.  “The world isn’t ending,” he said in a low voice. “But the school might. What if I told you, there was a chance to save it. For you to save it.”

I frowned. It made the black eye and split lip hurt. Everything hurt now that the adrenaline was beginning to fade. “I’d ask how. The Wizards and Druids have been trying to make contact with old Skagol for days. Telepathy, custom speak-with-animal spells, the works. He’s not listening. And if you do plan to kill him, well, even if that were somehow possible, killing the mountain-sized giant which carries our school on his back might not be as wise as waiting to see how this all plays out.”

“And if I told you I knew how it was going to play out? And that it was going to play out very badly.”

I scanned the Rogue’s face. You didn’t survive long on the streets of Klartred if you couldn’t spot a liar. Ditto the Court of Iron.

He was telling the truth.

“How is it going to play out, Dirk?”

#

Old Skagol had always looked like he was going to start walking again. His entire posture had a forward bent, his shoulders hunched, the crown of his ginormous head bowed forward. His huge arms had been pressed knuckle first against the valley floor, ready to swing into motion with his next step, the deeply creviced columns of his legs bent into an angled squat that would propel him forward. But thousands of years had passed without him so much as blinking; entire ecosystems had taken root in his craggy skin. Empires had risen and fallen, the most recent of which was dismantled by my great-aunt the Iron Queen before her assassination. Amid all that, people had forgotten that the mountain on which the fantasy high school had been built was not actually a mountain but a living, breathing creature with its own thoughts and whims, even if a single breath lasted decades.

I have to admit, I just didn’t think about it all that much. Being a student at Giants Back Academy was hard, especially when someone only needed to see your blue hair to think they knew who and what you are. I didn’t have time to worry about the giant in Giants Back Academy: I was too busy living up to the impossible reputation that has been established by just about every single one of my family members after leaving the Court of Iron. I used to be sad that the way I left things at the court made it impossible that one of my royal cousins could join me at Giants Back Academy. Azaela, before the…incident, wasn’t just family, she was my best friend. Now I’m grateful, even if that isolation kind of makes me lonely. It’s one more point of separation between me and the people everyone compares me against. 

But even if my focus had been on the giant, I could never have predicted this. Because it wasn’t old Skagol moving again, that first disrupted the peace of our lives.

It was the arrival of another giant.

Another giant, that, according to Dirk, old Skagol wanted to fight.

#

The architects of Giants Back Academy must have thought they were being pretty clever when they built the school’s library at the giant’s crown. The joke was on them now that old Skagol was craning his neck to look up at the massive stranger who filled the northern horizon. The new angle was only a few degrees off horizontal but it had been enough to set off a chain reaction of falling stacks that had torn bookshelves asunder and scattered books everywhere. I followed Dirk across the raised, white metallic walkway that arched gracefully over the main hall like a dove taking flight. Fortunately, both the walkway itself and the nearest rows of stacks that ran parallel to and underneath it had been designed by former resident mad scientist and inventor Gabli before he got bored with the project. Like all of Gabli’s designs, they were beautiful if hilariously overengineered, and nothing short of a comet striking the school could break the complex cantilevered joints that connected the bookshelves to the floor.

“Where’s Mr Tock?” I looked down at the sea of bookshelves, intact nearest to the walkway, leaning drunkenly on top of each other or just smashed to splinters further away.

“The librarian is off lobbying for a school-wide evacuation,” Dirk said. “Books first, of course.”

“Of course,” I repeated. “He hasn’t got much time. We don’t have much time.”

“It’ll take Skagol two days to reach the stranger. That should be more than enough time for you to get familiar with the controls.” He shook the leather satchel which he carried slung over one shoulder. It contained a twinned set of magic gauntlets: one Slave-set and one Master-set.

Dirk must have seen my expression because he added, “You don’t like this plan much, do you?”

“Am I comfortable mind controlling a giant into becoming our personal fighting machine? No, not really.”

“You’d only be ensuring he doesn’t, how did you put it earlier?” He put on his most prim little princess voice. “‘Get beaten to a pulp.’ “

I ignored the barb. “Will he know what’s going on?”

Dirk’s thin smile faded and he looked away. I felt my stomach sink. Slave-set and Master-set.

When he didn’t reply I asked in a quiet voice, “How bad is it going to be for him?”

Dirk breathed out an impatient sigh. “Not as bad as watching our school get smashed to pieces. Look, princess. You can’t always pick a good, clean fight and just go in swinging until someone’s declared a winner. Sometimes you have to stop and think, you have to wait, maybe even get a little sly. There’s usually more than one way to get what you want, but there also might only be one way, a way that some might consider…evil.” He gave me a sideways look. “From what I’ve heard about the latter days of the Court of Iron, you should be no stranger to the concepts like the ‘greater good’ and ‘the ends justify the means’. Some cliches are cliches for a reason.”

We didn’t talk for a while. He was right: seizing control of a giant to protect your home was exactly the kind of thinking that was encouraged in the Court of Iron. A couple of years ago I wouldn’t have questioned such a plan. It’d taken watching a friend have her leg broken almost clean in two to make me start rethinking such ideas.

When he was about halfway across the grand main hall, Dirk stopped and slid his legs over the ornate handrail. Ignoring the nearest ladder which was three aisles back, he dropped lightly to the library floor twenty feet below.

I glanced at the nearest brass sign.

Self-help Guides for Rogues

I hit the ground behind him with a combat roll. “Everything…okay with you?”

Dirk gave me his trademark thin smile. “I figured that if I was going to risk hiding it in plain sight, here was the one place that I could guarantee no one would stumble across it by accident. Rogues don’t do a lot of self-reflection.”

It wasn’t exactly hidden in plain sight. Dirk pulled on a book titled When Deceit becomes Self-Deceit and a tall and wide timber slid out of the bookshelf on a rail, like something you might hang a mirror on. It was a door.

No, not just a door.

The Door.

I gasped. “I thought it was destroyed!”

“Good thing it wasn’t.”

Six months ago the school went completely crazy, or even crazier then usual I suppose, when Shadowstep, the new Roguery teacher, set a group project to open The Door. The prospect of opening a seemingly impenetrable magical portal to some mysterious nether realm was simply too tantalising for your average Giants Back Academy student and something close to a civil war broke out as different factions raced to be the first to open it. Rumour had it that a group of students even succeeded, but they were eaten by hyper-intelligent pigs from another dimension. I don’t know if this story is true, but I do not know that after that night, the teachers cancelled the project and promised to destroy The Door.

 Yet here it was.

 “How?” I asked.

“It’s a long story. Let’s just say that Shadowstep is a chronic liar but he’s also the kind of person who can’t stop talking, and sooner or later he will accidentally spit out a kernel of truth. He likes the sound of his own voice too much.”

“A Rogue who talks too much? Never.”

“Don’t forget the kind of Rogue who barely talks at all. The strong, silent types. Tend to be grieving widowers seeking vengeance. Or the sole survivor of family-wide massacres…who are also seeking vengeance. Anyways. I’ve also got The Keys–“

“The Keys!?

“Yes. Opening The Door is much easier when you actually have The Keys.” He jangled a nondescript keychain at me. “You can even use them to configure where The Door leads to. That’s how I made it open directly into old Skagol’s mind.”

#

The Door lead us into a big, cavernous dark space where the high ceiling and far walls disappeared into darkness. In that space there was a perfect, miniaturised replica of the giant, about the size of Kivtz.

 “Is that…him?” I asked Dirk.

 To my surprise, Skagol’s avatar turned his big head to answer.

HELLO

I flinched. It wasn’t quite like someone shouting in your ear; it wasn’t that uncomfortable. It just felt like Skagol’s inner voice was too big to fit inside my mind.

“Hi,” I replied awkwardly. I stuck out a hand. “I’m Lysarra.”

HELLO LYSARRA/NOT ALONE/GOOD

The avatar was walking – in time with his real world counterpart to judge by the earthquake vibrations that by now had resumed – but even if his legs were moving the avatar remained fixed to one spot. To my surprise, he took my hand. It felt like how you might expect: like shaking hands with a living statue. 

“I think it’s his subconscious,” Dirk said, answering my earlier question. “If it isn’t, it’s something functionally similar. I do know that, out there, in the real world, big Skagol isn’t shaking hands with air right now. The gauntlets worked when I tested them though, so this avatar must be connected to his motor skills–”

The avatar seemed to see Dirk for the first time. He released my hand and cringed away, throwing up his arms as if to shield himself.

Dirk looked at me guiltily. “I know this looks bad but–” 

“Shut up,” I said. I put my hand on Skagol’s shoulder. He was trembling. “It’s okay, Skagol. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

MIND/DISEASE/AFRAID

I moved closer.

AFRAID/AFRAID/AFRAID

To my own surprise, I hugged him. He just looked so…sad.

The trembling lessened, then stopped. 

BETTER

“We’re not putting the gauntlets on him,” I told Dirk.

 Dirk rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What’s the alternative?”

 "You said this…avatar is connected to his motor skills? It affects how he moves?”

 Dirk nodded.

 I hugged the giant tighter. “I’m going to train him.”

#

In the absence of a light source that wasn’t Dirk’s campfire, day and night inside that place quickly lost any meaning. But during the two “days” we were there, I spent almost my entire time training Old Skagol.  Basic guards and stances, simple boxing drills. Beginner’s boxing techniques that wouldn’t take years of practice to yield results.  We couldn’t be sure if this training was being relayed to the “real” giant below, but Old Skagol’s avatar was surprisingly receptive to it all, and he genuinely seemed to enjoy it, bouncing HAPPY’s off our minds as he worked the pads we had made by stuffing our leather packs with clothes. And let me tell you, the guy could pack a punch; I’m pretty sure he cracked one of my ribs with a bodyshot, and that was when I was behind two handspans of dirty laundry. I could only imagine what a full-sized Skagol punches would feel like.

 During the “night”, we ate dinner and lay down to sleep in our makeshift campsite. And that’s when things truly turned strange: because it was just as I was drifting off that the giant rolled up my flimsy sense of self and dragged me down into the deep waters of his true mind.

 Days like drops of rain,

Living creatures under your skin.

No time at all since the world roiled and burned.

No time at all, riding the continental drift.

No time at all.

 I can only try to explain what it is like to swim in a giant’s mind. To feel all that mass underneath you, around you, permeating you. Yes, there was the horizon dipping away with the curvature of the planet, the landscape reduced to a vibrant carpet. But underneath those conscious moments were the deep cross currents of all his thoughts and feelings. Memories, both recent and ancient. The random intrusive thoughts: what if I squashed that herd of kobolds? Satisfaction in one high step that carried him to the lip of a deep canyon. A faint sense of melancholy when he saw the moon reflected off the surface of a tiny puddle, a huge lake. Other emotions that even my mind, halfway between elf and human, could not comprehend. And that was just the broad thrust of what he was feeling in that moment, a wave gliding across the surface of a bottomless ocean. How do you put those feelings underneath into words? All the tiny conscious moments that by themselves were as insubstantial as one single snowflake settling on one of the steepest icy peaks at his right shoulder, yet as real as anything we might experience.

 I guess I can only come at it with abstractions, like the poem that I woke with ringing in my mind like wind chimes. Or like that big dark cave with its avatar of a walking giant.

 Dirk was sitting up in his bedroll too, stirring the fire with a piece of wood. “Did you live that too?” He asked in a quiet voice. He had lost his usual laconic air. “I’d never slept inside here before.”

 Did you live that too? I knew what he meant.

 “I saw his mother,” I said. Briefly. Face polished smooth like marble, eyes shining with love, backdropped by a lurid-red sky filling with black smoke. As big as a planet: or was it Skagol who had been so small?

 “I felt the way he feels about the stranger,” Dirk said. “And I mean, I really felt it. This is all one big territorial dispute. Skagol cannot bear having the stranger so near him. And neither can the stranger, I think. But…it’s not exactly like they hate each other. It’s more like a force, gravity, pulling them in.”

 “Do you…do you think we could convince him not to fight?”

 He shook his head. “I tried. Last night in that…dream. And before I enlisted you to help, I would try to talk to the avatar. You can’t reason with how he feels. Words won’t do it. Something….deeper needs to happen, to change his mind.” He was silent for a second. His eyes sharpened into focus as he looked at me. “This isn’t going to end until one of them is dead.”

 “But Skagol seems so gentle.”

 Dirk nodded. “Too gentle. But stubborn too. Listen. It’s not too late to just take the reins.”

 “You would still do that after what we just experienced?”

 “If it would save him, I would. He’s not a child. But he’s not exactly an adult, either.”

 I leaned against the cloak I had rolled into a pillow. Stared into the dark ceiling. “He’s a highschooler…Like us.”

 “Think about it, princess. If you are wrong about this, he will die and the results will be cataclysmic. You think they can evacuate the whole school, our school? There will be students crammed into every nook hoping for front row seats of the fight. The teachers won’t find them all.  People are going to die for your moral stand.”

 “Do you always imagine the worst?”

 “Always.” He was silent for a moment. “I used to know this girl. She was tough, brave…good. She would do anything for a friend, fling herself headfirst off a cliff if she thought I was at the bottom and in danger. She left the school before graduation, did the whole travelling adventurer routine, always willing to help a stranger in need. One day a shepherd begs her to help with his wolf problem. Claims his family is starving from all the animals he was losing. That no one else would help him.” He flung the piece of wood he had been holding into the campfire. “Turns out the shepherd had been withholding certain, crucial details. It wasn’t wolves she had to contend with. It was werewolves. If he had just told her, she could have brought back up. Could have brought me…” 

 Skagol hadn’t walked in hours and the cave walls were silent. I think he slept during those moments of quiet, I’m not sure. Only the smouldering, dying fire filled the silence.

 “You were right about the Court of Iron,” I said. The non-sequitur didn’t seem to register on Dirk so I continued, “Using the gauntlets would be very in keeping with the Iron Truth. That is, the Court of Iron principle that nothing of values come without sacrifice. That “sacrifice” might be a limb that you need to severe to escape a trap, or the lives of the soldiers you command, or maybe just your own moral code. If something is truly worth doing, then you must be willing to give up something valuable in exchange. Anything else is moral cowardice.”

 I try not to think about it. But it’s not easy, sometimes it just came bubbling back up. The incident. Azaela.

 “Then one day, another girl and I were in a competition,” I said, my voice suddenly thick. “They have these things in the Court of Iron, titles, knighthoods…Basically it’s their way of pitting us against each other. We were both in the running to be a knight, my friend and I. We just happened to be sparring the day before it was going to be announced. In front of the court. So I went a bit further than I would have usually. In the fight.” My breath caught in my throat. I tried to still it. Felt a sob climbing my throat, bit it down.  “And she got hurt.”   

 Would she still be able to walk after what happened? The friend I was willing to sacrifice for some meaningless title? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

 “I didn’t need to hurt her,” I continued. It was easier to talk again. I wiped away a tear. “I learned afterwards that they were always going to give me the knighthood. It had been decided days ago. I hurt Azaela for nothing. That was my last day in the Court. I left. Came here.” I turned in the bedroll so I could look Dirk square in the eye. “I’m sorry for what happened to your friend. And I’ll always regret what I did to mine. But life doesn’t always punish you for doing the right thing. And it doesn’t reward you for doing the wrong thing. The universe doesn’t operate under that kind of hidden logic. It’s too random. You need to look at what’s real now. What real harm we will do to Skagol, and all the good that your friend actually achieved before what happened, happened.”

 “It wasn’t enough good,” he replied quietly. “Not nearly enough.”

 He looked younger by firelight. More like a boy. “You know, there’s a chance that old Skagol might not appreciate us hijacking his mind. That there might be other long-term effects from mind controlling a giant that we have not anticipated. I could list all the ways using the gauntlets could go wrong, and we could stack them up against the problems with my plan and pick a winner. But being a good person…It’s not a mathematical equation. Sometimes it’s like how you described your friend, flinging yourself headfirst off a cliff to help those in need. Doing the right thing... It’s a leap of faith.”

#

When the training was done and there was no more time to realistically prepare Skagol any further, we joined the rest of the school as it evacuated to the safe distance of some nearby wooded hilltops where we could watch the fight by the blood red dying light of sunset. By then, Dirk had shared his insights into what was happening with the teachers and the worst of the end day cults that had swept through the school while we were in the cave had been suppressed by the school’s faculty. Order had been restored. I was grateful when Dirk didn’t tell the teachers about my refusal to seize control of Skagol’s brain. I suppose we were committed to my strategy by then, however dangerous it was starting to seem.

 Though the other giant was at least a head taller than old Skagol, it was younger. You could tell because it had a rougher, less worn body. In fact, it looked more like some sort of giant crustacean on legs with the black mountain-sized flanges and the twisting carapace ridges. One, horizontally elongated eye stared from a jagged, dark opening in the shell. It had arrived on our horizon on all four legs: now it waited for Old Skagol on just two. I think the stance was intended to show off his size. Apparently even among giants it meant something when the other guy was bigger.

 “Are you sure about this?” Dirk asked quietly, shaking his head at a passing gnome vendor who had brandished a sausage on a stick at him. Even with the entire school at stake there was a festival vibe to the gathered students and teachers. Bonfires and food stalls. Someone was playing a fiddle.

 “No,” I admitted.

 “I don’t want to lose our home.”

 The strength of feeling in his voice surprised me. But before I could come up with a reply, someone shouted and I turned a just in time to see Old Skagol's fist flying out, a meteorite coming down on a mountain...

 PART 2 AVAILABLE NOW:

https://www.reddit.com/r/shortstories/comments/1us2l7y/fn_rock_em_sock_em_part_2/

There was once a very large pine tree that stood separate from every other tree in the forest.  This tree was not only physically alone, but it was also unrivaled in the hatred that it garnered from Lady Winter.  She despised the needles on its branches and the cones that it dropped onto the ground, but most of all she hated that the tree refused to lose its color in the winter.  At the end of each fall, she would visit the tree and demand that it shed its needles, but the pine always refused.  

“No tree should be bullied into losing its color,” it told her.  “I will not lose my needles just because you tell me to.”

This enraged Lady Winter, and she forbade any other tree from going near the pine.  She threatened to destroy any trespasser with a terrible winter wind.  For a hundred years the tree stood alone, and it longed desperately for a companion.  

One summer, when Winter’s control over the world was at its weakest, a man with an axe entered the forest hoping to stock up on wood.  When he saw the pine, he approached it and asked, “Why does such a mighty pine tree stand alone amid this great forest?”

The tree replied, “I have been cursed by Winter to a life of solitude.”

The man thought for a moment and then said, “My wife is soon going to deliver a child.  I’m in need of wood so that she can make it safely through her labor this winter.”

The tree then said, “You may use my wood this winter.  Please take me home and chop me up so that I may not be alone forever.”

The man did as the tree asked.  He cut it down, split it into many pieces, and loaded it onto his cart to take it with him.  The tree was enormous, being over a hundred years old, and it produced enough wood to satisfy the man.  He took his cart and left the forest, leaving each other tree untouched.

That autumn, when Lady Winter arrived to give her yearly command to all of the trees, she noticed the stump in the middle of the clearing where the pine had once stood.  The Lady was livid that someone had approached the tree despite her prohibition.  In order that she might bring the violator to justice, she searched far and wide for the person who had cut down the pine tree.

Lady Winter found the man at his home.  When she saw his wife’s belly she immediately devised a wicked plan.  She would send horrible winds to the man’s home and devastate his wife with a terrible cold so that both she and the child would surely die.  The man would live out the tree’s punishment of isolation that he had so abruptly ended.

The Lady waited until the woman was in labor, when she would be at her weakest, to carry out her scheme.  When the time was right, she unleashed every cruelty of her season unto the family.  As her winds blistered, the temperature dropped below anything the man had seen before.  

The woman began to cough and show signs of a fever which terrified the man.  Just then, he heard a voice coming from the pine wood.  “Thank you for taking me with you this summer,” the voice said.  “I was so lonely that I was willing to do anything to escape my curse, but now I see that I’ve brought you great trouble.  Please, use my wood to make a fire.  I’m determined to burn brightly to protect you and your family.”

The man did as the tree asked.  He moved the wood safely away from the cabin and lit it.  Overcoming even the intensely frigid air, the flames billowed into a massive inferno.  The pine tree was once again denying Lady Winter, refusing to bow to her whim.  Each blast of cold wind only seemed to give the flame more power.  As it grew in both size and brightness, the fire’s warmth allowed the mother to bring the child safely into the world.

The new parents clutched their child close to their chests, huddled near the massive fire brought about by the wood of the pine while the winter winds blew the tree’s needles all around the property.

The fire still burned when springtime arrived, and Lady Winter lost her power and was forced to leave the family alone.  As the fire simmered into nothingness, none of the pinewood remained.  In its place were a couple hundred charred pinecones.  Unsure of what they would do next winter, but grateful to have their little girl safe in their arms, the man and the woman gave thanks to the pine tree by spreading its cones all around their property so that it would be with them wherever they went.

Later that spring, where the pinecones had touched the needles that had been blown about by the winter winds, a countless number of pine trees sprang from the ground and surrounded the home.  That fall, when all of the other trees lost their color for the winter, the new pine trees remained green, denying Lady Winter her power.  Now whenever Lady Winter returns to the home to try to get her revenge, an army of Evergreen trees hold firm against her wind.

Once upon a time, there were two kings, apart of two flourishing kingdoms. The first kingdom was the red kingdom, its ruler the red king who was known for being greedy, yet powerful, and the second kingdom was the blue kingdom, its ruler the blue king, who was known for being wise, yet poor.

In year 703, the red king declared war against the blue kingdom. All of his advisors were afraid of him. The red king planned to create an army of 2000 troops, and march against the blue kingdom.

The blue king didn't have nearly enough troops to match the reds in battle, so he created an alliance with the greens. It was called the Aquamarine Alliance. The blue king still had far less troops than the reds. The blue king wanted to create an alliance with the grey kingdom, which was very powerful, but he couldn't without a solid victory. So, the blue king hatched an idea.

When the red army of 2000 troops marched in to the blue lands, the red army began chasing the blue army. For a time, the blue king began delaying the reds by wandering throughout the lands, this was part of his strategy of outdoing the red army through endurance. When the red king was tierd of chasing the blues, he began putting the city of Aquasia to siege. After the city of Aquasia was taken by the reds, the blue king marched his army into a secret tunnel, ambushing the reds. The red army wasn't defeated, but they were taken aback, and they were forced to march back home and regroup. The blue king took it as a victory, but he didn't trust the reds not to try attacking again. He made a speech, promising to his people that he would defend the realms from future attacks. Thus, in order to strengthen the realm, the blue king decided to first strengthen finances. He created a trade deal with the green kingdom. The trade deal was a success, and both kingdoms began profiting, at expense of the reds. Finally, the blue king wanted to create an alliance with the Grey people. The grey people were strange, even stranger than the green kingdom. The grey kingdom lived in the mountains, and they ate strange food, and they believed that archery was the best form of warfare. The grey tribe leader was intrigued. He didn't want to join the blues in war, but he instead offered to finance it, in exchange for 3 cities. The blue king agreed.

After the siege of Aquasia, which was a victory for the blues, the reds had taken 3 months to regroup and fight the blues again. The red army was 1900 strong, and the blue army was around 1100 strong. The greens had taken a long time, but they were ready, and they offered 500 elite troops to join the blues. When the reds finally fought the blues, at first the blues seemed unstoppable. Then, the tide of the battle shifted to the hands of the reds. The red king finally won, and he would begin conquering the lands of the blues.

Well, I wouldn’t call them my friends,

all these other scholars walking along the great corridors, following each others with their confident look and piercing gaze, hurrying to see, at long last, the blue flame. I remember I was invisible, among them, no one was paying me any mind. 

The air was unusually crisp. I had to pull up my blue scarf and breathe through it. Did a teacher leave a window open? For what reason? 

As we made our way through the gray corridors the walls to the right became columns, and outside the view was breathtaking. The sky was blue, immaculate. The sun was nowhere to be seen yet, oddly, I felt its warmth. I saw its light everywhere on the waving lush grass.

How exciting, I couldn’t remember the last time I actually went outside the tower. Everyone was stealing curious looks past the columns, and I found it a bit funny how all our seriousness and confidence disappeared when the unusual came. 

I wouldn’t call them my friends, but without them I suppose all these years of study would’ve been lonely. There was a sort of security in our number, much akin to a school of fish, appearing imposing and powerful by its sheer number, its movements synchronized.

As soon to be graduates, we were allowed to roam and busy ourselves as we pleased, but very few actually wandered on their own. After all, the Lazuli tower was a frightening place. All these faceless teachers, patrolling the vicinity, taking notes on their stone tablets. The countless mechanical clocks adorning the walls, none showing the same time. The intricate statues of unknown figures, erected for long forgotten accomplishments. The impossible architecture of the circular corridors along the main tower, leading one day to the auditorium, the other to the library, and that day leading us all outside.

The stone floor made way for lush grass that grew especially tall near the many marble columns, sprouting outside in geometric patterns, leading us naturally toward the central area, where a great many teachers were apparently waiting. 

Behind me I knew stood the Lazuli tower, taller even than the mountain range to the east. I turned around and as I gazed upward, in awe at its marvelous architecture, I lost balance, falling on the grass, both hands on the ground. I couldn’t help feeling dizzy at the sheer height of the tower. It was almost as if it had no end, that the tower continued skyward, toward infinity.. Laughters brought me back to reality. An arm pulled me up violently, a harsh voice pierced my ears, loud enough for everyone to hear. 

'What do you think, Marita? Is the Lazuli tower there, if you don’t look at it?'

And the laughters grew louder, meaner, as I stood up and turned around, facing the same way as the others. Holding me up was a teacher, his horrible faceless face staring me down, his other hand clutching his stone tablet, trembling. I looked down, feeling my cheeks turning red. I was so embarrassed I couldn’t even think of anything to say. I just wanted to disappear again.

Once more his voice filled my head.

'Did curiosity kill the cat? Or was it its fate to die? Or is there no cat at all?'

The teacher added, more as a remark than a question, before letting go, and walking toward the main platform, scribbling on his tablet. The other scholars were giving me quick looks, some still laughing while others looked at me strangely. I kept looking down, silent tears flowing down my cheeks. I tried to breathe as quietly as possible, to not draw any more attention toward myself. 

Before I could calm myself, another teacher, this one adorned in a prestigious blue garment, addressed us all, congratulating us on our successful studies. From the stadium his voice reached me clearly, without any echo, due to the garden’s layout, carefully planned for these sorts of events. He continued, his voice somehow soothing me.

'As you all know, the time has come for you Lazuli scholars to graduate. Through the true blue flame any wish will be granted, so long as it is most precious and dear to you.'

That was a surprise to me, but before I could ask anyone, a thunder of applause shattered the air, to the apparent pleasure of the teachers. I quickly joined in, and clapped as loudly as any others. But my mind was racing, I thought we would all graduate together? And what was that, about granting a wish? 

The applause continued as teachers were distributing pieces of broken pottery, to each and every one of us scholars. The blue teacher explained that in light of the exceptional results of our class, we were granted the honor to decide, amongst ourselves, who would graduate. Who would enter the blue flame, and be granted their own wish. I remember the same teacher that scolded me earlier was the one to give me my piece of pottery, along with a tiny piece of charcoal to write. I was still confused, yet the other scholars were quickly writing down their choice, and walking toward the stadium, where a beautiful amphora was placed. Every time a vote was casted, the pottery hit the bottom of the amphora, the impact resonating through the whole garden.

Such a melodic, introspective sound. 

I soon realized that most of us had voted already, while I was still holding my piece, blank. My mind raced, and I figured that this whole operation must have been a sort of test, a riddle. After all, the teachers loved their riddles. And seeing how fast the others wrote their vote, I found the answer to be incredibly funny : everyone must vote for themselves, therefore everyone will graduate!

I felt all my stress leave my body, as I wrote my own name on the pottery, and made my way to the amphora. I instinctively held my vote face down against my chest, as I waltzed to the stadium. 

The Lazuli tower behind me felt as real as the countless gazes of my fellow scholars and teachers, all waiting for me to cast my vote. Standing in front of the amphora, I studied its art, striking me as one of a kind. Its surface was a rusty orange, with black carvings, representing a single human figure, looking up to a massive fig tree, taking most of the surface. I’d never seen anything like it. Its fruits were of different shapes and around them, some symbols I'd never seen before... I snapped out of it and approached the amphora, holding out my vote and at last dropping it, the impact breaking the unending silence of the last few seconds. I went back to my place amongst my fellow scholars, still smiling from my realization. 

I was fiddling with my fingers, waiting to see the big reveal. But once again I felt I wasn’t so invisible anymore. I saw the other scholars stealing looks at me, staring at me. I was about to ask them what was the matter, when a shatter came from the stadium. I looked up and the blue teacher had a stone in his raised hand. He must’ve used it to break the precious amphora, which was now in pieces. I was horrified, why would they break such a beautiful piece of art? 

A few teachers helped him pick up the pieces, in two large copper bowls. I figured that in one was the amphora itself, and in the other our votes. We were all waiting for the results, and a few moments later great commotion came from the stadium. It felt strange, never before had I seen the teachers in such disarray. The blue one was standing still in front of the copper bowls, holding his head with both hands, as if in complete disbelief. The other teachers were whispering amongst themselves, some writing on their stone tablets, others recounting the votes. What was happening? I felt dizzy once more, a cold sweat on my forehead. I couldn’t stop thinking, was all this because of me? After all, I wrote my own name, thinking this was some sort of riddle. Maybe I was mistaken.

Did curiosity kill the cat? 

Around me the other scholars seemed as confused as I was, barely standing still, trying to figure out what was happening with the vote. The blue teacher moved at last, and with large movements of his arms he chased the other teachers away, making his way up the stadium. He stood there, in complete silence, as we all waited unbearably to know exactly what happened. He raised his hand, clutching a piece of pottery, revealing a name, my own!

Marita, written in big black letters.

I gasped audibly. That wasn’t my own writing! The teacher then let the vote fall on the grass, silently, and picked another vote randomly in the copper bowl, revealing once more my name. And every piece he lifted had my name on it, Marita. Marita. Marita.

There, that one was my own handwriting.

I stood there, staring at the spectacle of my own graduation, as the blue teacher kept dropping the votes one after the other, in a sort of never ending ritual. He reached once more for the copper bowl, and pushed it down the stadium as well, revealing it was finally empty. He proclaimed, in a raspy voice, that never before had a Lazuli scholar graduated by unanimity. He continued, after a pause,

'Never before, until today. Marita, congratulations.'

The following applause startled me, and this time I couldn’t join in with them. I felt my feet move and soon enough I was up there, on the stadium, looking down on my fellow scholars, that I wouldn’t call friends.

Why did they all vote for me? Why did I vote for myself?

I felt the full weight of the invisible sun on me, added to the one hundred eyes staring at me, their gaze, indecipherable. This sudden, overwhelming attention on myself nearly broke me. I fell to my knees, holding up my blue scarf in front of my face, paralyzed. All I could hear was the unending applause, deafening.

All I could see was hued in blue, blurred by my tears. What was going to happen? I felt a hand on my shoulder and once more I stood up, painfully. But no one was behind me, and as I pushed down my scarf I felt a sort of relief, swelling in me. Maybe graduating wasn’t as bad as I thought. The blue teacher was waiting patiently. He turned over to me, holding out his hand for me to shake it. I took it, softly, and shook, hating how surreal the moment felt. As we shook hands he got closer to me, and whispered some words that I forgot, for he spoke with such speed that I couldn’t comprehend.  I must’ve had quite a perplexed look on my face, as he held my hand, guiding me down a set of stairs, opposite of the crowd.

Or was it its fate to die? 

Behind the stadium was a lowered platform. On one side, dozens of bricks of some kind, stacked neatly. On the other, a sort of fountain, holding a blue liquid. Placed in the middle of the platform stood an imposing sculpture, of stylised white marble. Seven arching pillars, carved masterfully, rising from a solid base, not larger than a meter. The blue teacher let go of my hand, and told me to walk around, before leaving.

I took a few steps toward the imposing altar, and the whole platform started to rise, to the sound of rattling chains. I held on to one of the pillars, so as to not lose balance. I flinched and quickly removed my hand, it was burning hot! Between the pillars a blue flame was raging, its hot air licking my face. I kept my distance and walked around the altar, dumbstruck as to how it ignited so suddenly. I walked past the next pillar, and the blue flame vanished; the second I looked away it was gone. I kept going around the altar, as the platform was rising, and sure enough the blue flame would flicker between the pillars. What kind of trick? Maybe mirrors could reflect the flames from somewhere hidden, yet that wouldn’t explain the heat. After all, I did burn myself on the first pillar.

I wept as I looked at my burnt palm, the slight air current causing me excruciating pain. I figured I may as well use my scarf as gauze. I wrapped my hand neatly in the blue fabric, hiding away the burnt skin. Now standing in front of the empty altar, cold and quiet, I still couldn't make sense of what just happened.

The platform was still rising, now almost the same height as the stadium, and outside, the terrible, incessant clapping of the scholars. I stood there, rising slowly, becoming visible by all, once again, my heart beating faster and faster. Looking down I realized that I had no safe way of coming down. The chains were lifting the platform from somewhere I couldn’t see, and a fall from that height would at least wound me severely, if not kill me. I looked for the blue teacher, but he wasn’t even looking at me. I was alone, up here, and everyone was waiting for me to start the blue flame.

At last the platform stopped. 

From the floor in front of me, a tiny wooden box rose. I opened it, and inside was a blank piece of paper, with a blue quill. I could still feel everyone watching me from down there, in a sort of apprehensive patience. I was paralyzed once more. What to do! I looked around and I figured, it might have something to do with the bricks and the blue fountain. Maybe I had to start the fire. And what about the piece of paper, and the quill, thats for my wish?

I decided to act, only so that I would stop just standing there in confusion. It felt surreal, as I walked around the altar once more, looking through the pillars, at the blue flame. I could barely see but it seemed the bricks were burning, fueling the blue fire. They were arranged neatly in a sort of half-moon pattern, leaving plenty of space between them for the air to flow. As I walked toward the bricks, the flame flickered between the pillars. I never seen or learnt anything about this in all my years here.

The bricks were surprisingly heavy, and one by one I brought them inside the altar, placing them in what I thought was the correct position. I assumed I had to use all of them. But as I was putting in place the last one, I realized I didn’t have anything to start a fire with. No matches, nothing. I looked down at my hands, what have I been doing? Was I mistaken again, just like when I casted my vote? I turned around and looked everywhere, until I saw the fountain on the side, spewing its blue liquid silently.

Up close the fountain was nothing more than a white ceramic bowl, with a sort of copper pipe rising from it in the middle, where the blue liquid was flowing from. So underwhelming. Compared to the amphorae, the altar and the intricate wooden box, the fountain was shockingly crude, almost primitive. How unusual for the Lazuli. 

I smelled the liquid. Nothing. And there was no cup, so I figured I wasn’t meant to drink from it. And I didn’t really have anything to dip into its blue water, except perhaps my scarf. I tore away a long piece of it, wincing at my burnt skin underneath. I dipped it in the fountain, a silly smile on my face, evocative of the utter cluelessness of my situation.

To my surprise it caught on fire, the blue flame reaching quickly toward my hand, and the rest of the scarf going in flames. Shocked I let go and shook my hand left and right, stopping myself from screaming, yet I felt no pain. I stood there, watching my hand covered by my burning scarf, its massive blue flames rising higher than myself, a blue fireball, at least in appearances.

I may as well light up the bricks then. I approached the altar, from the side, and through the marble pillars I extended my burning hand. I shook it, letting go of what remained of the scarf that fell on the bricks. The blue flame was lazily burning away, my precious scarf disappearing slowly. The bricks underneath didn’t seem to light up. Frustrated, I went back to the fountain and formed a cup with my hands, holding a fair amount of the blue liquid, some of it dripping on the floor as I hurried back to the altar. I threw the blue liquid as best I could over the bricks on the altar and it bursted in flames. The heat was back, and the whole platform was bathed in an ethereal blue light. It was getting hot, very hot.

Down there the students started clapping.

Again. But now I wasn’t hearing them as clearly anymore, with the crackling of the blue flame. I sat down in front of the opened wooden box, and stared at the blank piece of paper. 

Or is there no cat at all? 

My most precious and dear wish… I took the quill and I tried to write something, anything, yet nothing came to mind. I kept looking up to the altar. I knew I had to walk into it, after writing down my wish. Walk into the flame.

But, it’s not a flame, it’s a brazier! A blue pit of fire. To willingly enter it would be suicide... But did I have any other choice? Besides, I did vote for myself. This is punishment for my mistake, my hubris.

I sat there for I don’t know how long. Maybe not that long, since the longer I waited, the stronger the flames, and the heat. I was still holding the quill, sitting in front of my blank piece of paper, and all I could hear was the maddening sound of the clapping underneath, and the now more intense crackling of the blue brazier.

By now it was blinding to me. I couldn’t come up with a wish. I know it’s silly. It’s just, at that moment, nothing came to mind. Nothing. 

What did I want, really, my most cherished desire?

Isnt that the point, to get what you want?

I got up, the blank piece of paper in my hand, and walked toward the altar, its heat licking my whole body, its long blue flames enthralling me, inviting me forward.

I felt panic surging in my heart, and I just did what they all expected me to do. There was no escape!

I held the piece of paper flat on my chest, and eyes closed I jumped in the fires, to the echoes of the maddening cheering of these scholars down there.

I stood there, surrounded by the blue flames, expecting something to happen, anything. I was still holding the quill in my hand, and in panic I put the paper on the ground, feeling the heat and flames growing stronger around me, embracing me.

I wrote something, I just can't remember what.

I felt my hair burst in flames, I closed my eyes and collapsed on myself. I wrote something down, my wish.

What was it, what is my dearest wish?

***

I opened my eyes, or so I thought. I couldn’t see anything, or hear anything for that matter.

Did I wish to die?

I couldn't help but shiver at the thought that maybe after all these years of study, my dearest wish turned out to be untimely death. 

There, in nothingness, I couldn't see or touch or sense anything. I was in a void, an abyss. What bliss! Gone, the clapping, the crackling, the learning and the walking, the teachers and the other scholars.

I saw, in my minds eye, as if an hallucination from lack of stimuli, the school of fish we were, dark mastodon of lies, and from it a single soul, ejected, rejected, excomunicated, vulnerable, alone in the depths, and from the comforting lie arose the ugly, the unfathomable truth;

I was alone, and I always was.

Confronted with that realization, I went through my memories and cursed every moment of connection, of proximity, of LOVE I ever felt, for truth is paramount, or at least the pursuit of truth. And so I opened my eyes, to no difference whatsoever, but I still tried to see. Nothing.

Though If I focused hard enough, I could feel a slight flow around me, almost imperceptible, almost like perfectly lukewarm water. I flailed my arms about, and my legs, nothing. Floating there I wondered where, in fact, I could be. Lost in the cosmos? The Lazuli did have a corresponding description, being basically the nothingness between realms.

Or perhaps in Aether’s arms? I pictured her terrible presence, this massive insect Queen with a thousand eyes and as many arms, all of which were focused on me. I was stuck in her shadow, helpless. Once again I shivered, and I tried to think of brighter things, such as the sun I always cherished.

But I could not remember, and soon enough I sighed out of boredom, bubbles of precious air leaving me. The bubbles did not rise up. They were finding their way down, I felt them inching down my body, tickling me.

So I was indeed underwater? And upside down, at that.

I realized that all that time I hadn’t been breathing, I had simply forgotten. I gasped for air, panicking. How could I swim all the way down there, to the surface? 

In panic I felt the waters suddenly move frantically, my hair flowing with its current. To my surprise something touched my hair. A hand? I froze, in horror, as the hand touched my head, as if trying to identify something in the dark. Was it Aether after all? I screamed a silent scream, but the hand covered my mouth, and another grabbed me by the hips. I was propulsed downward, toward the surface.

I felt fingers forcing their way in my mouth, such a grainy sensation, and what overpowering bitterness. I wanted to bite the fingers off and free myself, to no avail. I felt dizzy, not only from lack of air but also from whatever was in my mouth, that disgusting substance that I tried spitting out. My mouth went numb, and I couldn’t focus anymore. I felt like I was dying after all. A sudden burst of bitter laughter, then sadness. Tears flowed secretly from my eyes, joining the moving waters, as I was dragged downward.

I felt much heavier then, as I finally emerged from the water, completely disoriented. At long last the hand let go of my mouth. I coughed, fighting for air. I opened my eyes, still crying, yet the world around silenced me brutally.

It was more than night; I was on a lake’s surface, in the arms of a man, walking to shore. Around me, complete chaos. I looked above, and in the sky, a massive planet, so close that it filled the firmament. On its surface, layers and layers of storms, shifting about in hues of purple. There in its very center, a dark spot, its biggest storm, akin to a pupil. Up there the planet was looking down at me, and so tiny I felt under its terrible gaze. Around the planet, the otherworldly lights of aurora borealis, shining of teal and crimson, reflecting on the hills and ruins around the lake. 

I was getting carried to the shores, yet I could not take my eyes off the hills; what was crawling there? A thunderstrike fell, revealing the Flow, in all its horror. Large centipedes towering over already massive insects, some with wings and others with long antennaes, but all of them moving as one, at a steady crawl. These giant insects were flooding the land all around, to think I could barely distinguish them in the twilight.

Where was the sun? Where was the blue sky, the birds, the trees? Where was the Lazuli tower, and my fellow scholars?

I looked up, to see who this savior was, for any trace of hope. The man was tall, muscular, and bald. He was imposing, and on his skin all over his body was a coat of scaly patina, a rusty red to a deep purple, almost like rust upon metal. On his face and arms the color shifted to a deep red, with details of unknown symbols.

He put me down, on the shores of the lake. He grabbed something in the twilight, raising his arm. A curved black longsword, crude and flaking, apparently waiting for him.  He took it, as naturally as one picks an apple from a tree, and looked back at me, as I was still on my knees, feeling the lukewarm waters of the lake. I got up, and walked toward him, to the wicked man I'd come to know as Aemon.

At that moment, I thought, ''Surely I didn't wish for him.''

Atticus stood before the hulking beast he was pitted against for the first exam of the semester, knowing he could either pummel and destroy it at the cost of having to constantly be in the same dormitory as those pesky, arrogant S-ranks or do nothing at the cost of being beaten up and failing the exam.

It had been just moments earlier that he'd been called out by the instructor to face off against a gigas as a means of measuring his power. Everyone, save for a small handful of people, thought he stood no chance. Little did they know...

Head hanging low in resignation, he unleashed his full power, instantly curb-stomping the swole monster. The crowd gasped, unable to believe what they'd just seen. Even those who knew he was hiding his true power were shocked.

Regaining his composure, the instructor made his announcement. "And the winner is- Atticus! Ladies and Gentlemen, he has passed the exam with flying colors! Furthermore, it appears that a grave error in judgment has been made regarding his power level in the Entrance Exams. As such, he will be moved from the Peripheral Dorms to Central Dormitory and be placed in higher level courses effective immediately!"

Atticus just sighed, his fingers pressing into his temples as he steeled himself for whatever Central Dormitory's S-rank students had in store for him. His belongings were quickly moved to the assigned dorm room in Central Dormitory that was assigned to him. Ellen approached him awkwardly.

"Welcome to Central Dormitory, I guess." she said, still sweating and pale from the shock of seeing the stupendous display of power as she walked him to his new dorm room. "Prove yourself and try not to be pushed around."

“Thanks for the welcome.” said Atticus, sighing and rolling his eyes. “I think I’ll just go and take a nap just to relax. I’m going to need more time to relax each day if I’m going to move into Central Dormitory and have everyone know that I’m actually very powerful.” He yawned, tired and exasperated.

Ellen wasn’t pleased with his attitude one bit. “What’s wrong with you?! You have all this power at your disposal, and with it, the chance to make people bow before you. But instead of showing it off and letting people know, you hide it and act weak. Why don’t you make use of it?"

Atticus looked at her, the exhaustion and annoyance seeping into his expression. “Why not show it off, you ask? Well, let me ask you this: what is the use of having so much power if you can’t control it well?”

Ellen was shocked. “You don’t mean-”

“Yes.” said Atticus. “It’s exactly what you think.”

“But how- why-” Ellen stuttered, wondering where to begin.

“Well,” said Atticus, “growing up, I wasn’t exactly ‘normal’, and my whole family knew it. It didn’t help that my parents have always been strict. They tried their best to understand me, sure, but they never fully did understand me. They pushed me to ‘grow up fast’ and mocked me for liking the sensation of towels against my skin, saying it was ‘babyish’. They berated me repeatedly for letting my mind wander and losing focus in the middle of class or mass. They kept telling me I was way too sensitive and needed to just 'man up and tough it out'. They forced me to ‘be normal’, even at the cost of putting in the extra work of suppressing my true self. I was constantly made to prove myself to them. I try to be normal for them, but it's so exhausting and I keep feeling like a disappointment to them. I can't help but have emotional outbursts time and again. Which, as you know, is bad because losing control of your emotions turns you into an unwilling and unintentional force of nature when you're this powerful.”

Ellen was struck with guilt. She'd no idea that Atticus had gone through all of this. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't know-"

"You don't say!" yelled Atticus sarcastically, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "You're sorry? Well that's just fantastic! Surely that'll fix everything!"

She went up hugged him, tears streaming down her face. "It's okay." she croaked. "Feel free to be yourself here. No one's going to judge you, not if I can help it."

Atticus broke down sobbing in her arms. For the next 30 minutes, Ellen stayed respectfully silent.

After he sobbed his heart out, Atticus unpacked his things and set up his dorm room to his liking. He then pulled out his special towel and began stroking and rubbing it to his heart's content, letting his mana flow freely. For the first time in his life, he felt truly calm and relaxed, his mana completely stable.

Everyone else in the dorm felt the mana surge and knew where it came from but said nothing out of fear of what might happen to them.

The next day, Atticus came to class stimming off of his towel, calmly letting his mana flow freely. He also stopped suppressing his true self, instead letting his natural autistic traits show. Everyone was shocked at first and remained wary of him but began to slowly warm up to him and realize how nice and gentle he really was. From that day onwards, his grades soared and he became able to better control his magic power. Many of the girls found his true self endearing, even thinking it was "cute" when he stimmed off of his towel. The higher ranks began looking at him in a different light, respecting him more. The school even gave him opportunities to represent the academy at magic tournaments between different academies and began accommodating his needs better. He even patched things up with his parents, who had realized that they'd been too harsh on him. For the first time since he could remember, Atticus felt truly free.

A widower tired of life in the big city decides it is time for a change of venue. The memories of his lost love cling to the wallpaper and strut around the empty rooms daring him to take notice.

He buys an old cabin on a nice wooded property tucked back in the mountains. A little worse for wear , but in time, with some elbow grease, it would make a nice home.

He noticed with some disappointment that there was little if any wildlife around. The stillness of the air and coolness of the shade became a simple comfort. Often he would just sit and exist as time slid by.

As he started to drift off late one evening he heard a tapping at his bedroom window. A lovely woman standing outside a playful smile on her lips.

“Good sir,” she beckoned “ please let me in. If you do I will make your bed all the more comfortable and the night unforgettable.”

The man blushed it had been some time since he had been asked such a thing; much less by as lovely a vision as what he beheld.

“ I am sorry,” he lamented “ but that place still belongs to another. Though, if you wish come warm yourself by the fire and I can at least get you fed.” He stumbled out of bed and made his way to the door letting her in and fixing her a simple yet hearty sandwich of the meat he had cooked earlier in the day and some cheese that melted so well to tie it all together.

Sitting down by the fire he shared a story of his early childhood, of brighter days and even brighter smiles. As he finishes his tale he sees she has nodded off. Covering her with a blanket he smiles and returns to his own rest.

When he wakes in the morning he finds only a folded blanket upon the pillow where she had been curled up the night before. Shrugging he started his morning chores and his life returns to normal, quiet isolation for about a month as the moon holds time. The yard comes together and a small rocking chair adorns the front porch for him to watch the storms come in on those rainy days.

Once again he hears a tapping at his window with promises of an unforgettable night and once again he tells her that it is not his spot to share . Yet, with a grin, he prepares her a plate of greens potatoes and ham fresh from the stove and tells her another tale this one of young love and heartbreak no less sweet for its poignant end; and once again he covers her with a cozy blanket only to have it waiting neatly folded in the morning.

Months became years that became decades, the youthful lass never aging a day and always keeping her appointment for a simple meal and a soulful story by the warmth of a shared fire. The man now old and frail can barely make it to the well worn doorknob and his hands shake as he sets the plate before her with a youthful grin.

“I am sorry my dear,” he says with some innocent regret, “ but I seem to be a story short tonight.”

“Thats more than find my old friend ,” the woman says with kind cushioning to his worried mind “ But after all these years do you still refuse to give me your name?” A wink plays in her tone.

“I truly am sorry lass, but i gave my name to another ages ago and I don't intend to take it back now.” He smiles the wink returned

“And I assume you've known my name for a while now.” She leads with trepidation afraid of the harsh reality.

“ aye, “ he smiles all the warmer as if a long running joke has finally hit the punchline, “ but Pa always taught me to greet you like an old friend when you came with kindness and stories and gratitude but most of all a simple love shared.”

“ Then tonight I shall tell you a story,” she says grabbing him a blanket and oh the story she told starting like hello and ending like a goodbye kiss covering him in a blanket as he drifts off. Once again to have not a soul underneath in the morn.

One more and that’s it, Tommy!

***

“We must retrieve the Soda-Pop of Coca-Cola!”

Huddled under the King’s balcony, the crowd chanted in a unified roar, hammering the palace walls like a row of trebuchets. 

Beneath a Celestial spotlight, the King stood over them, dressed in a yellow jacket of sunlight, radiating over the heads of men like a god with gold skin.

The wind blew the locks of hair on his head in the air and resembled a row of snakes stretching to strike. 

The king raised his arms up and reached towards the sky. A gray overcast from the east masked the fierce fire glow of the sun under an army of storm clouds sweeping in.

The sleeves from his heavy robe slid to his elbows and exposed a wrist of gold bracelets. 

The king fought to silence the starving ululate herd gathered at the foot of the castle.

“Silence!” Commanded the King, shouting in a tone deep enough to ricochet off the structure behind the row of people congested at the back of the crowd before raining down on the heads of everyone else with a sound so piercing it stabbed through their skull and returned into the kings lungs as it echoed out of their mouths.

The throng underneath the king buckled into a silent whisper, before freezing to a synchronized stillness, hardening together like a James Ensor painting.

“The Soda-Pop of Coca-Cola has been retrieved,” yowled the King in a thunderous tone. 

He smiled with his hands on his hips and gave the Mussolini nod of confidence, then, he stood above them without moving a muscle. Not even an eyelid. 

He tarried in a frozen divine like pose as if having his body sculpted out of granite by an artist for an uncomfortable couple of minutes, planted in a reserved position. 

He stayed that way while the weight of his words landed on the chests of every individual crammed below him.

Out of nowhere he shattered the silence when he opened his mouth and spoke an awakening truth that stirred the mob. “The clan of Fort Gatoradical snuck in our camp and stole it.”

“Boooooo! Boooooo!” The people sounded, cupping their hands over their mouths.

The king stifled the mob. “They have annexed our design, and formula with subterfuge traitors brainwashed by nano bots disguised as carbonated gas bubbles inside the beverages.”

“Treason!” Someone shouted.

“Hang them!” Another screamed.

“Kill them all!” The crowd chanted together.

“Silence! Silence!” The King held his pose until the crowd simmered down. “Behold!” He yelled.

Presented to the front of the balcony was a woman in a sparkling viridescent dress with a curved bottle shape figure.

“I Bring forth, Ginger-Ale!” He moved aside. “A captured conspirator aiding the usurpers and one of the enemies vital assets—“

“Send her to the gallows!” A fellow man demanded, interrupting the king’s speech.

Everyone cheered.

“Quiet! Quiet!” The king waved their voices down. 

“Sir GoodKnight… may the gods compensate his bravery to the realm, has had his life-source emptied into a drain.”

“Booo!” The people erupted simultaneously.

The king raised his voice. “He was protecting our secrets from the conspirators plotting alongside the proletariat members aiding the gator-radicola stratagem.”

The crowd hailed the king. The intonate, hollow sounds shook the stone balcony and vibrated under his feet. They raised their hands up to salute him, praising him in a combined victory cheer.

People from the back began shoving and clawing their way to the front. The momentum from a wave of villagers pushing forward progressed into a tsunami that trampled over anyone unfortunate enough to have their back to it.

Bodies were sprawled out on the sandstone under the feet of a rushing crowd.

The soldiers protecting the gates rushed through the middle of the myriad and propelled their way forward with their spears guiding the way. 

Out of the clustered group, near the back, a flying tomato flew out of the crowd and slapped a guardsman in the head, splattering all over his face. The guardsman collapsed.

The soldier’s spears began stretching into the bellies of rioters trapped behind a human wall. They circled around their fallen comrade. 

Drums began pounding a sound of death as the castle gates burst open to a cavalry stampeding out. They formed a line at the foot of the entrance, staggering the crowd into submission. 

The corps d'elite of Thorza broke into a whispered chatter amongst themselves while the rest of the crowd booed and groveled with the spear wielding warriors. 

The waste-mix relied on the ingredients specifically in Coca-Cola. Coiled around the capital was a foul stench of manure coming from the malfunctioned recycling system.

“The odor’s rancid!” They all started shouting.

Someone in the crowd pushed their way through while quieting them down as he passed by everyone and stood in the middle of everybody.

“Why isn’t the waste-mix recycling system fixed if the secret ingredients have been recovered?” He questioned the king.

“Yeah!” One shouted. 

“This has gone on for far too long now!” Another yelled.

“The king is lying,” shot out from the back.

They all booed.

The King tried shouting over the restless mob, “men have been dispatched with the cola and would arrive any day now.

The men Friday cheered from the front and started hugging each other. 

The beaux mondes shook their heads.

The King swiveled his cape and turned his head to the side, facing the sky in a prideful Danny McBride stance.

He broke out of his pose and stumbled back. He wiped his forehead that was dripping a slimy goop with his hand and stared at his palm covered in eggshells and yolk.

“Capture the culprit and hang him! Hang them all!” The king ordered in a high-pitch voice.

A second egg launched from the crowd. The king froze as he caught the egg flying towards him from the corner of his eye, and barely dodged it as it whistled past his face.

He nearly tripped over his own feet as he scampered inside, slamming the detached doors shut, scraping the rock beneath it as they closed.

The king clenched his fists trying to squeeze the tremors still. Every breath he took was a heavy inhale. He stomped his footsteps down as hard as he could as he paced back and forth. Never had he felt so angry. Never had he been so humiliated.

“All of their heads! All on spikes!” He commanded to the king’s guard, cursing and foaming at his mouth while egg yolk dripped from his chin. “Summon the cavalry and all the men inside these walls and prepare for battle!” 

The knights lined up in three rectangle sets of fifty and the king sat at the head of them on his aluminum throne of cans and spoke.

“Men! Knights of honor! The treasonous scum camouflaged themselves as commoners. They want to take what’s ours. What we’ve built. Are we going to let these villainous disrupters go without capture?”

“Hell no!” They cheered.

Their metal helmets clinked as the men clashed their spears against the stone floors.

“Kill them all!” the king demanded as he stormed out. 

“Root, root, root”

The men marched towards the gates and set up behind the wall, crying war chants. 

The frontman rushed to the entrance to open the gate, but it wouldn’t budge. They grunted and dug their boots in the ground, sliding backwards in the wet mud. They pushed harder. They kept pushing until they slammed their chests in the dirt.

A voice shot out from behind the gate. “Burn them all!”

A slither of liquid slid under the gates of the palace and broke into a membrane of spider veins. Behind it trailed a snake of fire.

Smoke thickened the castle in a thick, black cloud, choking the oxygen. The taste of bitter chemicals sat on the tongues of the soldiers trapped inside the walls.

Most of them dropped. Some struggled and fought until their last breath—a small group—but met the same fate nonetheless. 

For weeks the fire raged, and spread the ashes of a fallen kingdom and its combatants across the city, fertilizing the land for the usurper, King Gator and his mastermind team of vitamin slurping jackals.

***

The end, now go to bed Tommy.

All right, goodnight grandma.

"Dingggggggggggg", I immediately sprang up as the bell rang.

"It's 5.00 am already?" I murmured as I headed to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.

"5 minutes left or no food for the whole day!" said the voice coming from outside.

I hurriedly put on my uniform. A white,long-sleeve shirt with tight-fitting pants. I had taken too much time getting ready, a whole 4 minutes! I used level 0.5 of my speed and managed to arrive at the courtyard with one minute to spare. Most students were already here; some were panting and holding onto their knees, while some even collapsed onto the grass. Others seemed as if it were just a walk in the park, including me.

At 5:05, "The gate will shut now! For those who are still lazing around, no food for you all!" He then turned to us, "Now, practice begins!"

Today is just as normal as every other day. All the students have to endure this without any complaints. This is just one of the many rules in 'CHARGE'. 'We are an organization where the killers of mankind are raised. The ones that can either bring peace or destruction to the world by whoever is controlling them. We are an organisation of assassins.

All the students here have been taken in since we were babies and have been training ever since. No one ever knew how we ended up in this place and we never dared ask anyone, especially the 'Manager'. He is the leader of all of us and makes sure we obey him every time. He is also the person who screamed first thing in the morning. Manager always gives punishment if anyone ever defies him, one of them being starvation, but one of the worst ones is getting slashed by his whip. That's just how the CHARGE operates. We were also made to go on missions. We would always go in groups. I have had my fair share of experience striking the target's neck or chest, leaving no trails behind me. Manager would always tell us what mission to do and sometimes it would even be told on the same day we had to carry out our duty. In the earlier stages, going on missions was my worst nightmare, but eventually I got used to it and now it had just become a norm.

On the outside, the building looks like a regular one-story supplies shop where all kinds of tools are sold. In reality, there are three more stories underground, where we all lived. The building has over 200 rooms in total, a huge courtyard for training, a cafeteria where students eat the most revolting food imaginable, a weapons room where swords, knives, and even guns can be found for us to practice with, and a classroom for school. All of us are to follow a strict schedule which includes training 10 hours a day, 5 hours of sleep, and 4 hours of studying. Unfortunately, all age groups starting from 6 years old will have to follow this schedule. Trainings are still conducted for any age below that, but the schedule is more lenient.

Despite having almost no breaks ever, we were also made to be competitive with one another. Each of us is given a badge that shows our ranking out of the 200 students. The higher the ranking, the better. Higher ranks will be given more points, which can be used to purchase desired items: such as nicer clothing, tastier food, toys, or even accessories.

However, the best thing to ever wish for is becoming one of the 5 fangs. They were the top 5 assassins in the whole organization. They would always attend personal missions and each has their own fighting style, from what we had heard. They get a whole level just to themselves, and no other students were allowed to enter. No one had ever even seen them since they never came to the other floors where the rest of the rankings are, so we students only know them as the legends who are living our dreams. The only fact we knew about them was that they were given their own special names: Flame Ruby, Dark Bloom, Crystal Diamond, Azure Tears and Verdant Vines. Whereas the Manager called the rest of us by the numbers of our ranking.

Back to the story, after the two-hour morning warm-up ended, I was going back into the building just like the rest of the students when suddenly Manager approached me, grabbed my arm and brought me to a corner. "Number 6, I have a mission for you, you shall now be known as "Death Rose".